UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 HAWTHORNE'S WORKS 
 
 WITH 1 ItOntJCTIONB BY 
 
 KATi^ E LEE BATES 
 
 r oi Kiigli .ratlin- in Wcllesley College 
 
 from an 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS : : : NEW YORK
 
 MOSSES FROM AN 
 
 OLD MANSE 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900 AND 1902, 
 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION v 
 
 THE OLD MANSE . . . . i 
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 31 
 
 A SELECT PARTY '5 
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN .* v* yv V^v*^ .*~l'* 1 8ua--*,Vvuv . 66 < 
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER . . " 81 
 
 MRS. BULLFROG 114 
 
 FIRE-WORSHIP f 122 
 
 BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES 131 
 
 MONSIEUR DU MIROIR 141 
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 153 
 
 s THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 166 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 185 
 
 -f FEATHERTOP . 200
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE sombre hues of the Twice-Told Tales are inten- 
 sified in the Mosses from an Old Manse ; the themes, 
 unvaried in general character, probe still deeper into 
 the mysteries of sin and sorrow ; yet the interval be- 
 tween the publication of that first volume of the Tales, 
 in 1837, and the appearance of the Mosses, in 1846, had 
 brought to Hawthorne supreme joys of love, marriage, 
 and fatherhood. Morbid thoughts and feelings had been 
 born of the long seclusion in which his genius ripened. 
 He chose to fancy, in one of the magazine sketches 
 which he did not republish, Fragments from the Jozirnal 
 of a Solitary Man, that " Oberon " had died in youth. 
 ^Esthetic fairy that he was, this seemed to him not at 
 all amiss, for he had dreaded the unloveliness of old 
 age, and often, gazing on his reflection in the glass, had 
 shuddered at the fancy of yellowed cheeks and wrinkled 
 brow, and preferred to change this vision for " the dead 
 face of a young man, with dark locks clustering heavily 
 round its pale beauty," but nevertheless he lamented 
 the end that must cut short his hopes of travel, fame, 
 and love. 
 
 " It is hard to die without one's happiness ; to none 
 more so than myself, whose early resolution it had been 
 to partake largely of the joys of life, but never to be 
 burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy ! The very 
 hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence 
 seems one long toil, has something preferable to my 
 best pleasures. Merely skimming the surface of life, I 
 know nothing, by my own experience, of its deep and 
 warm realities. I have achieved none of those objects 
 which the instinct of mankind especially prompts them 
 to pursue, and the accomplishment of which must there- 
 fore beget a native satisfaction. The truly wise, after
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 all their speculations, will be led into the common path, 
 and, in homage to the human nature that pervades them, 
 will gather gold, and till the earth, and set out trees, 
 and build a house. But I have scorned such wisdom. 
 I have rejected, also, the settled, sober, careful glad- 
 ness of a man by his own fireside, with those around 
 him whose welfare is committed to his trust and all 
 their guidance to his fond authority. Without influence 
 among serious affairs, my footsteps were not imprinted 
 on the earth, but lost in air; and I shall leave no son 
 to inherit my share of life, with a better sense of its 
 privileges and duties, when his father should vanish like 
 a bubble ; so that few mortals, even the humblest and 
 the weakest, have been such ineffectual shadows in the 
 world, or die so utterly as I must. Even a young man's 
 bliss has not been mine. With a thousand vagrant fan- 
 tasies, I have never truly loved, and perhaps shall be 
 doomed to loneliness throughout the eternal future, be- 
 cause, here on earth, my soul has never married itself 
 to the soul of woman." 
 
 The character of these " vagrant fantasies " is indi- 
 cated in a passage of lighter tenor, never reprinted, 
 two paragraphs that formed the original opening of 
 The Vision of the Fountain : 
 
 " Dear ladies, could I but look into your eyes, like a 
 star-gazer, I might read secret intelligences. Will you 
 read what I have written ? You love music and the 
 dance and are passionate for flowers; you sometimes 
 cherish singing-birds, and sometimes young kittens. 
 You sigh by moonlight. Once or twice you have wept 
 over a love-story in the annuals. Sleep falls upon you, 
 like a lace veil, rich with gold-embroidered dreams, and 
 is withdrawn- as lightly, that you may see brighter 
 dreams than those. Maiden pursuits, and gentle medi- 
 tations, the sunshine of maiden glee, and the summer- 
 cloud of maiden sadness these make up the tale of 
 your happy years. You are in your spring, fair reader, 
 are you not ? I am scarce in my summer time. Yet I 
 have wandered through the world, till its weary dust 
 has settled on me; and when I meet a bright, young
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 girl, a girl of sixteen, with her untouched heart, so 
 sweetly proud, so softly glorious, so fresh among faded 
 things, I fancy that the gate of Paradise has been left 
 ajar, and she has stolen out. Then I give a sigh to the 
 memory of Rachel. 
 
 " Oh, Rachel ! How pleasant is the sound to me, thy 
 sweet old scriptural name ! As I repeat it, thoughts 
 and feelings grow vivid again, which I deemed long ago 
 forgotten. There they are, yet in my heart, like the 
 initials and devices engraved by virgin fingers in the 
 wood of a young tree, remaining deep and permanent, 
 though concealed by the furrowed bark of after years. 
 The boy of fifteen was handsome, though you would 
 shake your head, could you glance at the altered fea- 
 tures of the man. And the boy had lofty, sweet, and 
 tender thoughts, and dim, but glorious visions ; he was 
 a child of poetry." 
 
 It was clearly high time that the sunshine of common 
 life melt this enchanted castle of sentiment and revery. 
 In a happy hour Hawthorne called on his neighbors, 
 the Peabodys, and fell in love with the invalid daughter, 
 who, like another Elizabeth Barrett, responded to the 
 joy-cure. Pending her recovery, the rarest genius of 
 the land, eager to prepare a home, gained from a Demo- 
 cratic administration the privilege of weighing coal in 
 the Boston Custom-house, "a very black business." The 
 Whigs promptly turned him out, and in 1842, after a 
 taste of Brook Farm, Hawthorne brought his bride to 
 the Old Manse, where they lived in the happiness that 
 "is a part of eternity," and where, for some four years, 
 he made a manful, unavailing effort to support a frugal 
 little family by the pen. 
 
 The first volume of Twice-Told Tales had been issued 
 by aid of Hawthorne's college friend, Horatio Bridge, 
 true Horatio to this Hamlet, who guaranteed the 
 publishers against loss. It was several years before 
 the sales covered expenses, and meanwhile the author's 
 profits were all in the airy coin of reputation, not cur- 
 rent in the corner grocery. A few reviews welcomed, 
 not too enthusiastically, the work of this " graceful and
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 graphic pen," and assured Hawthorne that he wrote 
 better than Willis, almost as well as Longfellow, whose 
 fame then chiefly rested on Outre-Mer, that his style 
 had a touch of Lamb and was even remotely suggestive 
 of Irving. One critic, impressed by the melancholy 
 tone of the tales, pictured their writer as " a stricken 
 deer in the forest of life " ; and another regretted that, 
 in America, only the gentle types of mind took to 
 authorship, while business and politics absorbed the 
 robust intellect of the country. " Never can a nation 
 be impregnated with the literary spirit by minor authors 
 alone. They may ripple and play round the heart and 
 ensnare the affections in their placid flow, but the 
 national mind and imagination are to be borne along 
 only on the ocean-stream of a great genius. Yet men 
 like Hawthorne are not without their use." Longfellow 
 gave the little volume friendly greeting in the North 
 American Review, claiming for it "the freshness of 
 jnorning and of May," and noting with generous appre- 
 ciation the "bright, poetic style," "quiet humor," and 
 " vein of pleasant philosophy." But although praise 
 might butter the bread, there must be bread to butter. 
 
 Hawthorne was now enabled, however, to break loose 
 from his dependence on " Peter Parley " and The Token. 
 After his promised contribution of five tales to The 
 Token for 1838, the annuals knew him no more. For 
 another decade or so these evanescent flowers of lit- 
 erature blossomed in our Christmas snows, Lily, Vio- 
 let, Moss-rose, Morning-glory, Wintergrecn, Winter-bloom, 
 Mayflower, Magnolia, Hyacinth, Rose of Sharon, Passion 
 Flower, Amarinth, but not even The Dewdrop might 
 mirror Hawthorne's musing smile. He had found more 
 dignified and more profitable market for his dreams in 
 a new periodical, The United States Magazine and 
 Democratic Review, a monthly of national pretensions. 
 The editors had engaged Hawthorne, at the outset, as 
 a regular contributor, and for a while he averaged an 
 article in every other issue. In 1839 ancl l8 4O> when, 
 as he said, he was " murdering so many of the brightest 
 hours of the day at the custom-house," the number of
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 his contributions fell off to one a year. In 1843, when 
 happily established at the Old Manse, he supplied an 
 article for every month from February through August, 
 but not, apparently, without feeling the pressure. At 
 all events, his contribution for August, " Roger Malvin's 
 Burial," had appeared in The Token for 1832, and his 
 contribution for July, "The Two Widows," merely re- 
 produced, under a title that seems to have suffered a 
 prose translation, "The Wives of the Dead," originally 
 printed in that same issue of Goodrich's annual. The 
 tales for the next year are fewer, but still in his richest 
 vein. The editors, not able to pay him as well as they 
 had hoped, made what amends they could by a eulogistic 
 notice in the April number, 1845, "manufacturing" him 
 " into a Personage." Hawthorne's contributions to the 
 Democratic Review, as to other periodicals after 1837, 
 are signed, as a rule, with his own name. The memo- 
 rial notice of Jonathan Cilley is anonymous. " Chippings 
 with a Chisel" appears as by the "Author of Twice- 
 Told Tales" and "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving" 
 (March, 1840) would pass itself off as by the Rev. A. A. 
 Royce. The Democratic Review, notwithstanding its'" 
 financial embarrassments, had a proud roll of contribu- 
 tors, including Bryant, Whittier, Emerson, Thoreau, 
 Lowell, Longfellow, Cranch, Curtis, Poe. Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's " Drama of Exile " was published here. But 
 Hawthorne, with the wolf baying softly at the door of 
 the Old Manse, did not disdain less weighty periodi- 
 cals. "Ethan Brand, or the Unpardonable Sin," for 
 instance, stands as the opening story in Holderis Dollar 
 Magazine (May, 1851), fronted by a frightful illustra- 
 tion. Of the twenty sketches garnered in the second 
 volume of the Twice-Told Tales, 1842, only seven are x 
 chosen from the Democratic Review. These are "Howe's 
 Masquerade" (May, 1838); "Edward Randolph's Por- 
 trait" (July, 1838); "Lady Eleanore's Mantle" (De- 
 cember, 1838); "Old Esther Dudley" (January, 1839); 
 "Footprints on the Seashore" (January, 1838); "Snow- 
 flakes " (February, 1838); "Chippings with a Chisel" 
 (September, 1838). To these Hawthorne added four
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 stories from The Token for 1838, "Peter Goldthwaite's 
 Treasure," " The Shaker Bridal," " Night Sketches be- 
 neath an Umbrella," " Endicott and the Red Cross." 
 He harked back to The Token of 1833 for "The Seven 
 Vagabonds," to The Token of 1835 for "The Haunted 
 Mind" and "The Village Uncle," and to The New 
 England Magazine of 1835 for " The Ambitious Guest" 
 (June) and "The White Old Maid" (July). "Edward 
 Fane's Rosebud" was reclaimed from The Knickerbocker 
 (September, 1837), and "The Threefold Destiny" from 
 The American Monthly Magazine (March, 1838), where 
 it was signed Ashley Allen Royce. "The Lily's Quest" 
 seems to have been drawn by flowery sympathies to 
 The Southern Rose, a Charleston weekly edited by Mrs. 
 Caroline Gilman, a lady of Boston family. Our " apo- 
 logue " has the place of honor in the issue of January 
 J 9> I ^39. This is far afield for Hawthorne, to whom 
 the editorial attention may have been turned by the 
 enthusiasm of a Southern planter. This travelled gen- 
 tleman, in March of the same year, describes through 
 the columns of the little magazine " A Day of Disap- 
 pointment in Salem." Thither he had repaired, de- 
 lighted by Twice- Told Tales, as brought him in a Boston 
 book-store by "the graceful and obliging shop-boy," 
 and eager to greet the author, " another genuine origi- 
 nal on this threadbare earth," but had failed to run his 
 lion down. One sketch is still unaccounted for, " The 
 Sister Years," which originally appeared in a " fine little 
 pamphlet" as the "Carrier's Address" (January I, 1839), 
 presented by the newsboys to the patrons of the Salem 
 Gazette. The address for 1838, "Time's Portraiture," 
 was also written by Hawthorne. The Miscellany of 
 this very readable journal kept up well with current 
 literature, quick to copy such unconscious classics as 
 Thanatopsis, Drake's American Flag, The Psalm of 
 Life, and, from time to time, new tales by the mod- 
 est Salem author, in whom it took a moderate local 
 pride. 
 
 Four years later, in collecting the Mosses from an 
 Old Manse, Hawthorne sifted his early writings yet
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 again. The Token for 1837 yielded him "Mrs. Bull- 
 frog," which could have been spared, and " Monsieur 
 Du Miroir," while " Roger Malvin's Burial" dates from 
 The Token for 1832. The New England Magazine 
 gave up, under title of " Passages from a Relinquished 
 Work," the first chapters of "The Story Teller" (Novem- 
 ber and December, 1834); "Young Goodman Brown" 
 (April, 1835); an< l "Sketches from Memory " (Novem- 
 ber and December, 1835). Of these three, however, 
 the first and last were not included in the earlier edi- 
 tions. But the most of the Mosses are gathered from 
 the Democratic Review, "The New Adam and Eve" 
 (February, 1843); "Egotism, or the Bosom Serpent" 
 (March, 1843); "The Procession of Life" (April, 1843); 
 "The Celestial Railroad" (May, 1843); "Buds and Bird 
 Voices" (June, 1843); "Fire Worship" (December, 
 1843); "The Christmas Banquet" (January, 1844); 
 "The Intelligence Office" (March, 1844); "The Artist 
 of the Beautiful" (June, 1844); "A Select Party" (July, 
 1844); " Rappaccini's Daughter" (December, 1844); 
 " P.'s Correspondence" (April, 1845). For the rest, 
 "The Old Apple-Dealer" is credited by the Salem 
 Gazette of December 27, 1842, to Sargent's Magazine, 
 which I have not found. " A Virtuoso's Collection " 
 opened the May number (1842) of the Boston Miscel- 
 lany of Literature and Fashion, fronting a colored fron- 
 tispiece representing the latest Paris modes. " Earth's 
 Holocaust" was the leading article in the May number 
 of Graham s Magazine, 1844, and " Drowne's Wooden 
 Image " condescended to Godey's Lady's Book (July, 
 1844). A magazine of higher strain, The Pioneer, which 
 lived only through the first three months of 1843, pub- 
 lished in its February number " The Hall of Fantasy," 
 and, in March, "The Birthmark." " Feathertop " did 
 not appear in the first editions, but was added later, 
 after its publication in two instalments in The Interna- 
 tional Magazine, 1852. 
 
 \ It may be added that of the seventeen tales collected 
 in 1852 for The Snow Image volume, only four were 
 subsequent, in date of writing, to the Mosses. More
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 than half of them were drawn from those old reservoirs, 
 The Token and The New England Magazine. 
 
 This troublesome matter of times and seasons is indis- 
 pensable to a just understanding of the Mosses from an 
 Old Manse. When Mr. Lathrop^for example, writes : 
 "The Mosses are the work of a man who has learned to 
 know the world, and the atmosphere in which they were 
 composed seems almost dissonant with the tone of some 
 of them; 'The Birthmark,' 'The Bosom Serpent,' 'Rap- 
 paccini's Daughter,' and the terrible and lurid parable 
 of ' Young Goodman Brown,' are made up of such hor- 
 ror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere," he 
 loses sight of the fact that the last of this group is sepa- 
 rated by an interval of eight years from the other three, 
 being of earlier date than the first volume of Twice-Told 
 Tales. Mr. James, too, uses this same story, a midnight 
 picture of the haunted forest, where the young Puritan's 
 heart is blasted by beholding his three months' bride in 
 the communion of fiends and witches, as evidence that 
 Hawthorne's literary output was independent of his 
 personal surroundings. " These duskiest flowers of his 
 invention sprang straight from the soil of his happiest 
 days. This surely indicates that there was but little 
 direct connection between the products of his fancy and 
 the state of his affections. . . . The magnificent little 
 romance of ' Young Goodman Brown,' for instance, evi- 
 dently means nothing as regards Hawthorne's own state 
 of mind, his conviction of human depravity, and his 
 consequent melancholy; for the simple reason that, if 
 it meant anything, it would mean too much." The 
 illustration fails in that Hawthorne, when he wrote 
 "Young Goodman Brown," was no joyous bridegroom 
 at the Old Manse, but a brooding hermit in the "owl's 
 nest " at Salem, Sophia Peabody as yet unknown even 
 to his eyes. 
 
 It now becomes apparent why Mosses from an Old 
 Manse, although containing the most richly wrought of 
 Hawthorne's parables, does not, as a book, make so 
 individual an impression as Twice-Told Tales. Those 
 two earlier volumes are essentially homogeneous, per-
 
 INTRODUCTION xin 
 
 vaded throughout by that " clear, brown, twilight atmos- 
 phere " of the retirement in which they were written. 
 On the other hand, The Snow Image collection, the last 
 of the series, is a patch of grays and purples. The 
 volume in hand derives a certain artistic unity from the 
 large proportion of work actually done under the condi- 
 tions of life at the Old Manse, but the coherence is not 
 complete. -The veritable Mosses number, in addition to 
 the introductory account of this " time-worn mansion " 
 which served Hawthorne and his bride as a fresh Eden, 
 .nineteen out of twenty-five, but many of these, though 
 blooming in Concord, sprang from Salem seed. On the 
 testimony of the Note-Books, we know that "The Christ- 
 mas Banquet," "The Bosom Serpent," "A Virtuoso's 
 Collection," even "The New Adam and Eve," had been 
 shaping themselves in Hawthorne's mind since 1836. 
 The germ of "The Birthmark" is in the brief note of 
 1837, "A person to be in possession of something as 
 perfect as mortal man has a right to demand ; he tries 
 to make it better, and ruins it entirely." The jotting 
 x next after this, " A person to spend all his life and 
 splendid talents in trying to achieve something natur- 
 ally impossible, as to make a conquest over Nature," 
 hints, though more remotely, at " The Artist of the 
 Beautiful." Various suggestions of subjects drawn from^ 
 poison and insanity precede ".Rappaccini's DaughtgrJ' 
 and " P.'s Correspondence." The development from \ 
 Twice- Told Tales to Mosses from an Old Manse is f ar ] \ 
 less in choice of theme than in fulness and force of 
 treatment. Shut into his "delightful little nook of a 
 study," Hawthorne had but to flutter the leaves of his 
 old note-books to find scores upon scores of significant 
 fantasies awaiting, his creative touch. " To make a story 
 out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes," whispers 
 the rustling leaf, or " A bonfire to be made of the gal- 
 lows and of all symbols of evil." The romancer puts 
 hand to pen, and behold ! " Feathertop " and " Earth's 
 Holocaust." Indeed, why should Hawthorne have 
 sought new visions, with that shadowy train so long 
 pressing for recognition? Having desired for nine
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 years to write "an article on fire," he takes his oppor- 
 tunity at the Old Manse and produces " Fire Worship." 
 . Hawthorne's "tales" fall into three classes. ^The 
 symbolic romances, brief in compass as they are, probe 
 the spiritual secrets of humanity, the slavery of sin, 
 the ghastliness of hypocrisy, the mystery of conscious- 
 ness, the thirst for immortal youth, the quest for the 
 ideal, death's mockery, life's agony, and the eternal 
 hope. Jh_essay_s^ polished to a jewel-lustre, blend the 
 minutest observation with tender, humorous, poetic medi- 
 tation. The stories ^of thg_olden time reproduce, and 
 yet transform, our Puritan New England, misting over 
 the grimness of that " rockbound coast " with a strange 
 autumnal beauty. In Mosses from an Old Manse little 
 of the historical element appears. The essays are few, 
 but one of these, " Buds and Bird Voices,'x is unsur- 
 passed in radiant charm. It is the " allegories of the 
 heart" that are most fully developed here. Leisure 
 and happiness, with the measure of success attained, 
 nerved the artist with new energy and daring. In pro- 
 portion as his own hold on life had grown more definite 
 and strong, the dreams bred of his early solitude took 
 on color, movement, body. Still speaking in parables, 
 Hawthorne is nevertheless on his way toward The Scar- 
 let Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Shadow 
 is becoming substance. 
 
 KATHARINE LEE BATES.
 
 MOSSES FROM AN OLD 
 
 MANSE 
 
 THE OLD MANSE 
 The Author makes the Reader acquainted with his Abode. 
 
 BETWEEN two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone 
 (the gate itself having fallen from its hinges, at 
 some unknown epoch), we beheld the gray front of the 
 old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black 
 ash-trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the funeral 
 procession of the venerable clergyman, its last inhabit- 
 ant, had turned from that gate-way towards the village 
 burying-ground. The wheel-track, leading to the door, 
 as well as the whole breadth of the avenue, was almost 
 overgrown with grass, affording dainty mouthfuls to two 
 or three vagrant cows, and an old white horse, who had 
 his own living to pick up along the roadside. The glim- 
 mering shadows, that lay half asleep between the door 
 of the house and the public highway, were a kind of 
 spiritual medium, seen through which, the edifice had 
 not quite the aspect of belonging to the material world. 
 Certainly, it had little in common with those ordinary 
 abodes, which stand so imminent upon the road that 
 every passer-by can thrust his head, as it were, into the 
 domestic circle. From these quiet windows, the figures 
 of passing travellers looked too remote and dim to dis- 
 turb the sense of privacy. In its near retirement, and 
 accessible seclusion, it was the very spot for the resi- 
 dence of a clergyman ; a man not estranged from human 
 life, yet enveloped, in the midst of it, with a veil woven 
 of intermingled gloom and brightness. It was worthy 
 to have been one of the time-honored parsonages of
 
 2 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 England, in which, through many generations, a suc- 
 cession of holy occupants pass from youth to age, and 
 bequeath each an inheritance of sanctity to pervade the 
 house and hover over it, as with an atmosphere. 
 
 Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse ever been profaned 
 by a lay occupant, until that memorable summer after- 
 noon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built 
 it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men, 
 from time to time, had dwelt in it; and children, born 
 in its chambers, had grown up to assume the priestly 
 character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons 
 must have been written there. The latest inhabitant 
 alone he, by whose translation to Paradise the dwell- 
 ing was left vacant had penned nearly three thousand 
 discourses, besides the better, if not the greater number, 
 that gushed living from his lips. How often, no doubt, 
 had he paced to and fro along the avenue, attuning his 
 meditations to the sighs and gentle murmurs, and deep 
 and solemn peals, of the wind among the lofty tops of 
 the trees! In that variety of natural utterances, he 
 could find something accordant with every passage of 
 his sermon, were it of tenderness or reverential fear. 
 The boughs over my head seemed shadowy with solemn 
 thoughts, as well as with rustling leaves. I took shame 
 to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, 
 and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon 
 me with the falling leaves of the avenue ; and that I 
 should light upon an intellectual treasure in the Old 
 Manse, well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold, 
 which people seek for in moss-grown houses. Profound 
 treatises of morality a layman's unprofessional, and 
 therefore unprejudiced views of religion; histories 
 (such as Bancroft might have written, had he taken up 
 his abode here, as he once purposed), bright with picture, 
 gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought ; these 
 were the works that might fitly have flowed from such 
 a retirement. In the humblest event, I resolved at least 
 to achieve a novel, that should evolve some deep lesson, 
 and should possess physical substance enough to stand
 
 THE OLD MANSE 3 
 
 In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no 
 pretext for not fulfilling it, there was, in the rear of the 
 house, the most delightful little nook of a study that 
 ever offered its snug seclusion to a scholar. It was 
 here that Emerson wrote " Nature " ; for he was then an 
 inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian 
 dawn and the Paphian sunset and moonrise from the 
 summit of our eastern hill. When I first saw the room, 
 its walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered 
 years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puri- 
 tan ministers that hung around. These worthies looked 
 strangely like bad angels, or, at least, like men who had 
 wrestled so continually and so sternly with the devil, 
 that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been imparted 
 to their own visages. They had all vanished now ; a 
 cheerful coat of paint, and golden-tinted paper hangings, 
 lighted up the small apartment ; while the shadow of a 
 willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, 
 attempered the cheery western sunshine. In place of 
 the grim prints, there was the sweet and lovely head of 
 one of Raphael's Madonnas, and two pleasant little pic- 
 tures of the Lake of Como. The only other decora- 
 tions were a purple vase of flowers, always fresh, and 
 a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books (few 
 and by no means choice ; for they were chiefly such 
 waifs as chance had thrown in my way) stood in order 
 about the room, seldom to be disturbed. 
 
 The study had three windows, set with little old- 
 fashioned panes of glass, each with a crack across it. 
 The two on the western side looked, or rather peeped, 
 between the willow branches, down into the orchard, 
 with glimpses of the river through the trees. The 
 third, facing northward, commanded a broader view of 
 the river, at a spot where its hitherto obscure waters 
 gleam forth into the light of history. It was at this 
 window that the clergyman, who then dwelt in the 
 Manse, stood watching the outbreak of a long and 
 deadly struggle between two nations ; he saw the irregu- 
 lar array of his parishioners on the farther side of the 
 river, and the glittering line of the British, on the hither
 
 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 bank ; he awaited, in an agony of suspense, the rattle 
 of the musketry. It came and there needed but a 
 gentle wind to sweep the battle smoke around this quiet 
 house. 
 
 Perhaps the reader whom I cannot help consider- 
 ing as my guest in the Old Manse, and entitled to all 
 courtesy, in the way of sight-showing perhaps he will 
 choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot. 
 We stand now on the river's brink. It may well be 
 called the Concord the river of peace and quietness 
 for it is certainly the most unexcitable and sluggish 
 stream that evei loitered, imperceptibly, towards its 
 eternity, the sea. Positively, I had lived three weeks 
 beside it, before it grew quite clear to my perception 
 which way the current flowed. It never has a vivacious 
 aspect, except when a northwestern breeze is vexing its 
 surface, on a sunshiny day. From the incurable indo- 
 lence of its nature, the stream is happily incapable of 
 becoming the slave of human ingenuity, as is the fate 
 of so many a wild, free mountain torrent. While all 
 things else are compelled to subserve some useful pur- 
 pose, it idles its sluggish life away, in lazy liberty, with- 
 out turning a solitary spindle, or affording even water 
 power enough to grind the corn that grows upon its 
 banks. The torpor of its movement allows it nowhere 
 a bright pebbly shore, nor so much as a narrow strip of 
 glistening sand, in any part of its course. It slumbers 
 between broad prairies, kissing the long meadow grass, 
 and bathes the overhanging boughs of elder bushes and 
 willows, or the roots of elms and ash-trees, and clumps 
 of maples. Flags and rushes grow along its plashy 
 shore, the yellow water-lily spreads its broad flat leaves 
 on the margin, and the fragrant white pond-lily abounds, 
 generally selecting a position just so far from the river's 
 brink that it cannot be grasped, save at the hazard of 
 plunging in. 
 
 It is a marvel whence this perfect flower derives its 
 loveliness and perfume, springing, as it does, from the 
 black mud over which the river sleeps, and where lurk 
 the slimy eel, and speckled frog, and the mud-turtle,
 
 THE OLD MANSE 5 
 
 whom continual washing cannot cleanse. It is the 
 very same black mud out of which the yellow lily sucks 
 its obscene life and noisome odor. Thus we see, too, 
 in the world, that some persons assimilate only what is 
 ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which 
 supply good and beautified results the fragrance of 
 celestial flowers to the daily life of others. 
 
 The reader must not, from any testimony of mine, 
 contract a dislike towards our slumberous stream. In 
 the light of a calm and golden sunset, it becomes lovely 
 beyond expression; the more lovely for the quietude 
 that so well accords with the hour, when even the wind, 
 after blustering all day long, usually hushes itself to 
 rest. Each tree and rock, and every blade of grass, is 
 distinctly imaged, and, however unsightly in reality, 
 assumes ideal beauty in the reflection. The minutest 
 things of earth, and the broad aspect of the firmament, 
 are pictured equally without effort, and with the same 
 felicity of success. All the sky glows downward at our 
 feet ; the rich clouds float through the unruffled bosom 
 of the stream, like heavenly thoughts through a peace- 
 ful heart. We will not, then, malign our river as gross 
 and impure, while it can glorify itself with so adequate 
 a picture of the heaven that broods above it ; or, if we 
 remember its tawny hue and the muddiness of its bed, 
 let it be a symbol that the earthliest human soul has an 
 infinite spiritual capacity, and may contain the better 
 world within its depths. But, indeed, the same lesson 
 might be drawn out of any mud-puddle in the streets 
 of a city and, being taught us everywhere, it must be 
 true. 
 
 Come ; we have pursued a somewhat devious track, 
 in our walk to the battle-ground. Here we are, at the 
 point where the river was crossed by the old bridge, 
 the possession of which was the immediate object of the 
 contest. On the hither side grow two or three elms, 
 throwing a wide circumference of shade, but which 
 must have been planted at some period within the three- 
 score years and ten that have passed since the battle- 
 day. On the farther shore, overhung by a clump of
 
 6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 elder-bushes, we discern the stone abutment of the 
 bridge. Looking down into the river, I once discov- 
 ered some heavy fragment of the timbers, all green 
 with half a century's growth of water-moss ; for, during 
 that length of time, the tramp of horses and human 
 footsteps have ceased, along this ancient highway. The 
 stream was here about the breadth of twenty strokes of 
 a swimmer's arm ; a space not too wide, when the bul- 
 lets were whistling across. Old people, who dwell here- 
 abouts, will point out the very spots, on the western 
 bank, where our countrymen fell down and died ; and, 
 on this side of the river, an obelisk of granite has grown 
 up from the soil that was fertilized with British blood. 
 The monument, not more than twenty feet in height, is 
 such as it befitted the inhabitants of a village to erect, 
 in illustration of a matter of local interest, rather than 
 what was suitable to commemorate an epoch of national 
 history. Still, by the fathers of the village this famous 
 deed was done ; and their descendants might rightfully 
 claim the privilege of building a memorial. 
 
 An humbler token of the fight, yet a more interesting 
 one than the granite obelisk, may be seen close under 
 the stone wall, which separates the battle-ground from 
 the precincts of the parsonage. It is the grave 
 marked by a small, moss-grown fragment of stone at the 
 head, and another at the foot the grave of two British 
 soldiers, who were slain in the skirmish, and have ever 
 since slept peacefully where Zechariah Brown and 
 Thomas Davis buried them. Soon was their warfare 
 ended ; a weary night-march from Boston a rattling 
 volley of musketry across the river; and then these 
 many years of rest! In the long procession of slain 
 invaders, who passed into eternity from the battle-fields 
 of the Revolution, these two nameless soldiers led the 
 way. 
 
 Lowell, the poet, as we were once standing over this 
 grave, told me a tradition in reference to one of the 
 inhabitants below. The story has something deeply 
 impressive, though its circumstances cannot altogether 
 be reconciled with probability. A youth, in the service
 
 THE OLD MANSE 7 
 
 of the clergyman, happened to be chopping wood, that 
 April morning, at the back door of the Manse ; and 
 when the noise of battle rang from side to side of the 
 bridge, he hastened across the intervening field, to see 
 what might be going forward. It is rather strange, by 
 the way, that this lad should have been so diligently at 
 work, when the whole population of town and country 
 were startled out of their customary business by the 
 advance of the British troops. Be that as it might, the 
 tradition says that the lad now left his task, and hurried 
 to the battle-field, with the axe still in his hand. The 
 British had by this time retreated the Americans 
 were in pursuit and the late scene of strife was thus 
 deserted by both parties. Two soldiers lay on the 
 ground ; one was a corpse ; but, as the young New 
 Englander drew nigh, the other Briton raised himself 
 painfully upon his hands and knees, and gave a ghastly 
 stare into his face. The boy it must have been a 
 nervous impulse, without purpose, without thought, and 
 betokening a sensitive and impressible nature, rather than 
 a hardened one the boy uplifted his axe, and dealt 
 the wounded soldier a fierce and fatal blow upon the 
 head. 
 
 I could wish that the grave might be opened ; for I 
 would fain know whether either the skeleton soldiers 
 has the mark of an axe in his skull. The story comes 
 home to me like truth. Oftentimes, as an intellectual 
 and moral exercise, I have sought to follow that poor 
 youth through his subsequent career, and observe how 
 his soul was tortured by the blood-stain, contracted as it 
 had been, before the long custom of war had robbed I 
 human life of its sanctity, and while it still seemed / 
 murderous to slay a brother man. This one circum- j 
 stance has borne more fruit for me than all that history 
 tells us of the fight. 
 
 Many strangers come in the summer-time, to view the 
 battle-ground. For my own part, I have never found 
 my imagination much excited by this, or any other scene 
 of historic celebrity ; nor would the placid margin of the 
 river have lost any of its charm for me, had men never
 
 8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 fought and died there. There is a wilder interest in the 
 tract of land perhaps a hundred yards in breadth 
 which extends between the battle-field and the northern 
 face of our Old Manse, with its contiguous avenue and 
 orchard. Here, in some unknown age, before the white 
 man came, stood an Indian village convenient to the 
 river, whence its inhabitants must have drawn so large 
 a part of their subsistence. The site is identified by the 
 spear and arrow heads, the chisels, and other imple- 
 ments of war, labor, and the chase, which the plough 
 turns up from the soil. You see a splinter of stone, 
 half hidden beneath a sod ; it looks like nothing worthy 
 of note ; but, if you have faith enough to pick it up 
 behold a relic ! Thoreau, who has a strange faculty of 
 finding what the Indians have left behind them, first set 
 me on the search; and I afterwards enriched myself 
 with some very perfect specimens, so rudely wrought 
 that it seemed almost as if chance had fashioned them. 
 Their great charm consists in this rudeness, and in the 
 individuality of each article, so different from the pro- 
 ductions of civilized machinery, which shapes every- 
 thing on one pattern. There is exquisite delight, too, in 
 picking up, for one's self, an arrow-head that was dropt 
 centuries ago, and has never been handled since, and 
 which we thus receive directly from the hand of the red 
 hunter, who purposed to shoot it at his game, or at an 
 enemy. Such an incident builds up again the Indian 
 village, and its encircling forest, and recalls to life the 
 painted chiefs and warriors, the squaws at their house- 
 hold toil, and the children sporting among the wigwams ; 
 while the little wind-rocked pappoose swings from the 
 branch of a tree. It can hardly be told whether it is a 
 joy or a pain, after such a momentary vision, to gaze 
 around in the broad daylight of reality, and see stone- 
 fences, white houses, potato-fields, and men doggedly 
 hoeing, in their shirt-sleeves and homespun pantaloons. 
 But this is nonsense. The Old Manse is better than a 
 thousand wigwams. 
 
 The Old Manse ! we had almost forgotten it, but 
 will return thither through the orchard. This was set
 
 THE OLD MANSE 9 
 
 out by the last clergyman, in the decline of his life, 
 when the neighbors laughed at the hoary-headed man 
 for planting trees from which he could have no pros- 
 pect of gathering fruit. Even had that been the case, 
 there was only so much the better motive for planting^ 
 them, in the pure and unselfish hope of benefiting hisx. 
 successors : an end so seldom achieved by more ambi- 
 tious efforts. But the old minister, before reaching his 
 patriarchal age of ninety, ate the apples from this orchard 
 during many years, and added silver and gold to his 
 annual stipend, by disposing of the superfluity. It is 
 pleasant to think of him, walking among the trees 
 in the quiet afternoons of early autumn, and picking 
 up here and their a windfall ; while he observes how 
 heavily the branches are weighed down, and computes 
 the number of empty flour-barrels that will be filled by 
 their burthen. He loved each tree doubtless, as if it 
 had been his own child. An orchard has a relation to 
 mankind, and readily connects itself with matters of the 
 heart. The trees possess a domestic character ; they 
 have lost the wild nature of their forest-kindred, and 
 have grown humanized by receiving the care of man, as i/y* 
 well as by contributing to his wants. There is so much ] fy( 
 individuality of character, too, among apple-trees, that it r 
 gives them an additional claim to be the objects of 
 human interest. One is harsh and crabbed in its mani- 
 festations; another gives us fruit as mild as charity. 
 One is churlish and illiberal, evidently grudging the few 
 apples that it bears : another exhausts itself in free- 
 hearted benevolence. The variety of grotesque shapes 
 into which apple-trees contort themselves, has its effect 
 on those who get acquainted with them : they stretch 
 out their crooked branches, and take such hold of the 
 imagination, that we remember them as humorists and 
 odd fellows. And what is more melancholy than the 
 old apple-trees, that linger about the spot where once 
 stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined 
 chimney, rising out of a grassy and weed-grown cellar ? 
 They offer their fruit to every wayfarer apples that 
 are bitter-sweet with the moral of time's vicissitude.
 
 io MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 I have met with no other such pleasant trouble in 
 the world, as that of finding myself, with only the two 
 or three mouths which it was my privilege to feed, the 
 sole inheritor of the old clergyman's wealth of fruits. 
 Throughout the summer, there were cherries and cur- 
 rants ; and ' then came autumn, with his immense bur- 
 then of apples, dropping them continually from his 
 over-laden shoulders, as he trudged along. In the 
 stillest afternoon, if I listened, the thump of a great, 
 apple was audible, falling without a breath of wind, 
 from the mere necessity of perfect ripeness. And, 
 besides, there were pear-trees, that flung down bushels 
 upon bushels of heavy pears ; and peach-trees, which, 
 in a good year, tormented me with peaches, neither 
 to be eaten nor kept, nor, without labor and perplex- 
 ity, to be given away; The idea of an infinite gen- 
 erosity and exhaustless bounty, on the part of our 
 Mother Nature, was well worth obtaining through 
 such cares as these. That feeling can be enjoyed in 
 perfection only by the natives of summer islands, 
 where the bread-fruit, the cocoa, the palm, and the 
 orange grow spontaneously, and hold forth the ever 
 ready meal; but, likewise, almost as well, by a man 
 long habituated to city life, who plunges into such a 
 solitude as that of the Old Manse, where he plucks 
 the fruit of trees that he did not plant ; and which, 
 therefore, to my heterodox taste, bear the closer resem- 
 blance to those that grew in Eden. It has been an 
 apophthegm these five thousand years, that toil sweet- 
 ens the bread it earns. For my part (speaking from 
 hard experience, acquired while belaboring the rugged 
 furrows of Brook Farm), I relish best the free gifts of 
 Providence. 
 
 Not that it can be disputed that the light toil, 
 requisite to cultivate a moderately sized garden, im- 
 parts such zest to kitchen-vegetables as is never found 
 in those of the market-gardener. Childless men, if 
 they would know something of the bliss of paternity, 
 should plant a seed be it squash, bean, Indian-corn, 
 or perhaps a mere flower, or worthless weed should
 
 THE OLD MANSE n 
 
 plant it with their own hands, and nurse it from infancy 
 to maturity, altogether by their own care. If there 
 be not too many of them, each individual plant be- 
 comes an object of separate interest. My garden, that 
 skirted the avenue of the Manse, was of precisely 
 the right extent. An hour or two of morning labor 
 was all that it required. But I used to visit and re- 
 visit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep con- 
 templation over my vegetable progeny, with a love 
 that nobody could share or conceive of, who had never 
 taken part in the process of creation. It was one 
 of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe 
 a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of 
 early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a 
 line of delicate green. Later in the season, the hum- 
 ming-birds were attracted by the blossoms of a peculiar 
 variety of bean ; and they were a joy to me, those 
 little spiritual visitants, for deigning to sip any food 
 out of my nectar-cups. Multitudes of bees used to 
 bury themselves in the yellow blossoms of the summer- 
 squashes. This, too, was a deep satisfaction ; although, 
 when they had laden themselves with sweets, they 
 flew away to some unknown hive, which would give 
 back nothing in requital of what my garden had con- 
 tributed. But I was glad thus to fling a benefaction 
 upon the passing breeze, with the certainty that some- 
 body must profit by it, and that there would be a little 
 more honey in the world, to allay the sourness and 
 bitterness which mankind is always complaining of. 
 Yes, indeed ; my life was the sweeter for that honey. 
 
 Speaking of summer-squashes, I must say a word of 
 their beautiful and varied forms. They presented an 
 endless diversity of urns and vases, shallow or deep, 
 scalloped or plain, moulded in patterns which a sculptor 
 would do well to copy, since art has never invented 
 anything more graceful. A hundred squashes in the 
 garden were worthy in my eyes, at least of being 
 rendered indestructible in marble. If ever Providence 
 (but I know it never will) should assign me a super- 
 fluity of gold, part of it shall be expended for a service
 
 12 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of plate, or most delicate porcelain, to be wrought into 
 the shapes of summer-squashes, gathered from vines 
 which I will plant with my own hands. As dishes 
 for containing vegetables, they would be peculiarly 
 appropriate. 
 
 But not merely the squeamish love of the Beautiful 
 was gratified by my toil in the kitchen-garden. There 
 was a hearty enjoyment, likewise, in observing the 
 growth of the crook-necked winter-squashes, from the 
 first little bulb, with the withered blossom adhering 
 to it, until they lay strewn upon the soil, big, round 
 fellows, hiding their heads beneath the leaves, but 
 turning up their great yellow rotundities to the noon- 
 tide sun. Gazing at them, I felt that, by my agency, 
 something worth living for had been done. A new 
 substance was born into the world. They were real 
 and tangible existences, which the mind could seize 
 hold of and rejoice in. A cabbage, too, especially 
 the early Dutch cabbage, which swells to a monstrous 
 circumference, until its ambitious heart often bursts 
 asunder, is a matter to be proud of, when we can 
 claim a share with the earth and sky in producing it. 
 But, after all, the hugest pleasure is reserved until these 
 vegetable children of ours are smoking on the table, 
 and we, like Saturn, make a meal of them. 
 
 What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and 
 the garden, the reader begins to despair of finding his 
 way back into the Old Manse. But, in agreeable 
 weather, it is the truest hospitality to keep him out of 
 doors. I never grew quite acquainted with my habi- 
 tation till a long spell of sulky rain had confined me 
 beneath its roof. There could not be a more sombre 
 aspect of external nature than as seen from the windows 
 of my study. The great willow-tree had caught and re- 
 tained among its leaves a whole cataract of water to be 
 shaken down, at intervals, by the frequent gusts of wind. 
 All day long, and for a week together, the rain was drip- 
 drip-dripping and splash-splash-splashing from the eaves, 
 and bubbling and foaming into the tubs beneath the 
 spouts. The old, unpainted shingles of the house and
 
 THE OLD MANSE 13 
 
 out-buildings were black with moisture ; and the mosses 
 of ancient growth upon the walls looked green and 
 fresh, as if they were the newest things and afterthought 
 of time. The usually mirrored surface of the river was 
 blurred by an infinity of rain-drops. The whole land- 
 scape had a completely water-soaked appearance, con- 
 veying the impression that the earth was wet through, 
 like a sponge ; while the summit of a wooded hill, about 
 a mile distant, was enveloped in a dense mist, where the 
 demon of the tempest seemed to have his abiding-place, 
 and to be plotting still direr inclemencies. 
 
 Nature has no kindness no hospitality during a 
 rain. In the fiercest heat of sunny days, she retains a fl , i 
 secret mercy, and welcomes the wayfarer to shady nooks / / f 
 of the woods, whither the sun cannot penetrate. But Q\ 
 she provides no shelter against her storms.^ It makes 
 us shiver to think of those deep, umbrageous recesses 
 those overshadowing banks where we found such 
 enjoyment during the sultry afternoons. Not a twig of 
 foliage there, but would dash a little shower into our 
 faces. Looking reproachfully towards the impenetrable 
 sky if sky there be, above that dismal uniformity of 
 cloud we are apt to murmur against the whole system 
 of the universe ; since it involves the extinction of so 
 many summer days, in so short a life, by the hissing and 
 spluttering rain. In such spells of weather and it is 
 to be supposed, such weather came Eve's bower in 
 Paradise must have been but a cheerless and aguish 
 kind of shelter ; nowise comparable to the old parson- 
 age, which had resources of its own, to beguile the 
 week's imprisonment. The idea of sleeping on a couch 
 of wet roses ! 
 
 Happy the man who, in a rainy day, can betake him- 
 self to a huge garret, stored, like that of the Manse, with 
 lumber that each generation has left behind it, from a 
 period before the Revolution. Our garret was an arched 
 hall, dimly illuminated through small and dusty windows ; 
 it was but a twilight, at the best ; and there were nooks, 
 or rather caverns, of deep obscurity, the secrets of which 
 I never learned, being too reverent of their dust and
 
 i 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 cobwebs. The beams and rafters, roughly hewn, and 
 with strips of bark still on them, and the rude masonry 
 of the chimneys, made the garret look wild and uncivil- 
 ized; an aspect unlike what was seen elsewhere, in the 
 quiet and decorous old house. But, on one side, there 
 was a little white-washed apartment which bore the tradi- 
 tionary title of the Saint's chamber, because holy men, 
 in their youth, had slept, and studied, and prayed there. 
 With its elevated retirement, its one window, its small 
 fireplace, and its closet, convenient for an oratory, it was 
 the very spot where a young man might inspire himself 
 with solemn enthusiasm, and cherish saintly dreams. 
 The occupants, at various epochs, had left brief records 
 and speculations, inscribed upon the walls. There, too, 
 hung a tattered and shrivelled roll of canvas, which, on 
 inspection, proved to be the forcibly wrought picture of 
 a clergyman, in wig, band, and gown, holding a Bible in 
 his hand. As I turned his face towards the light, he 
 eyed me with an air of authority such as men of his pro- 
 fession seldom assume, in our days. The original had 
 been pastor of the parish more than a century ago, a 
 friend'of Whitefield, and almost his equal in fervid elo- 
 quence. I bowed before the effigy of the dignified 
 divine, and felt as if I had now met face to face with the 
 ghost, by whom, as there was reason to apprehend, the 
 Manse was haunted. 
 
 Houses of any antiquity, in New England, are so in- 
 variably possessed with spirits, that the matter seems 
 hardly worth alluding to. Our ghost used to heave 
 deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlor; and 
 sometimes rustled paper, as if he were turning over a 
 sermon, in the long upper entry ; where, nevertheless, 
 he was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine that 
 fell through the eastern window. Not improbably, he 
 wished me to edit and publish a selection from a chest 
 full of manuscript discourses, that stood in the garret. 
 Once, while Hillard and other friends sat talking with 
 us in the twilight, there came a rustling noise, as of a 
 minister's silk gown sweeping through the very midst of 
 the company, so closely as almost to brush against the
 
 THE OLD MANSE 15 
 
 chairs. Still, there was nothing visible. A yet stranger 
 business was that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used 
 to be heard in the kitchen, at deepest midnight, grind- 
 ing coffee, cooking, ironing performing, in short, all 
 kinds of domestic labor although no traces of any- 
 thing accomplished could be detected the next morning. 
 Some neglected duty of her servitude some ill-starched 
 ministerial band disturbed the poor damsel in her 
 grave, and kept her at work without any wages. 
 
 But to return from this digression. A part of my 
 predecessor's library was stored in the garret ; no unfit 
 receptacle, indeed, for such dreary trash as comprised 
 the greater number of volumes. The old books would 
 have been worth nothing at an auction. In this vener- 
 able garret, however, they possessed an interest quite 
 apart from their literary value, as heirlooms, many of 
 which had been transmitted down through a series of 
 consecrated hands, from the days of the mighty Puritan 
 divines. Autographs of famous names were to be seen, 
 in faded ink, on some of their fly-leaves ; and there were 
 marginal observations, or interpolated pages closely 
 covered with manuscript, in illegible short-hand, perhaps 
 concealing matter of profound truth and wisdom. The 
 world will never be the better for it. A few of the 
 books were Latin folios, written by Catholic authors ; 
 others demolished papistry as with a sledge hammer, in 
 plain English. A dissertation on the Book of Job 
 which only Job himself could have had patience to read 
 filled at least a score of small, thickset quartos, at 
 the rate of two or three volumes to a chapter. Then 
 there was a vast folio Body of Divinity ; too corpulent a 
 body, it might be feared, to comprehend the spiritual 
 element of religion. Volumes of this form dated back 
 two hundred years, or more, and were generally bound 
 in black leather, exhibiting precisely such an appearance 
 as we should attribute to books of enchantment. Others, 
 equally antique, were of a size proper to be carried in 
 the large waistcoat pockets of old times; diminutive, 
 but as black as their bulkier brethren, and abundantly 
 interfused with Greek and Latin quotations. These little
 
 16 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 old volumes impressed me as if they had been intended 
 for very large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted 
 at an early stage of their growth. 
 
 The rain pattered upon the roof, and the sky gloomed 
 through the dusty garret windows ; while I burrowed 
 /among these venerable books, in search of any living 
 thought, which should burn like a coal of fire, or glow 
 like an inextinguishable gem, beneath the dead trumpery 
 that had long hidden it. But I found no such treasure ; 
 all was dead alike ; and I could not but muse deeply 
 and wonderingly upon the humiliating fact, that the 
 works of man's intellect decay like those of his hands. 
 Thought grows_mouldy. What was good and nourish- 
 ing food tor tne~ spirits of one generation, affords no 
 sustenance for the next. Books of religion, however, 
 cannot be considered a fair test of the enduring and 
 vivacious properties of human thought ; because such 
 books so seldom really touch upon their ostensible sub- 
 ject, and have therefore so little business to be written 
 at all. So long as an unlettered soul can attain to sav- 
 ing grace, there would seem to be no deadly error in 
 holding theological libraries to be accumulations of, for 
 the most part, stupendous impertinence. 
 
 Many of the books had accrued in the latter years of 
 the last clergyman's lifetime. These threatened to be 
 of even less interest than the elder works, a century 
 hence, to any curious inquirer who should then rummage 
 them, as I was doing now. Volumes of the Liberal 
 Preacher and Christian Examiner, occasional sermons, 
 controversial pamphlets, tracts, and other productions 
 of a like fugitive nature, took the place of the thick 
 and heavy volumes of past time. In a physical point 
 of view, there was much the same difference as between 
 a feather and a lump of lead ; but, intellectually regarded, 
 the specific gravity of old and new was about upon a 
 par. Both, also, were alike frigid. The elder books, 
 nevertheless, seemed to have been earnestly written, and 
 might be conceived to have possessed warmth at some 
 former period ; although, with the lapse of time, the 
 heated masses had cooled down even to the freezing
 
 THE OLD MANSE 17 
 
 point. The frigidity of the modern productions, on the 
 other hand, was characteristic and inherent, and evi- 
 dently had little to do with the writers' qualities of mind 
 and heart. In fine, of this whole dusty heap of litera- 
 ture, I tossed aside all the sacred part, and felt myself 
 none the less a Christian for eschewing it. There ap- 
 peared no hope of either mounting to the better world 
 on a Gothic staircase of ancient folios, or of flying thither 
 on the wings of a modern tract. 
 
 i Nothing, strange to say, retained any sap, except what 
 had been written for the passing day and year, without 
 the remotest pretension or idea of permanence. There 
 were a few old newspapers, and still older almanacs, 
 which reproduced, to my mental eye, the epochs when 
 they had issued from the press, with a distinctness that 
 was altogether unaccountable. It was as if I had found 
 bits of magic looking-glass among the books, with the 
 images of a vanished century in them. I turned my 
 eyes towards the tattered picture, above-mentioned, and 
 asked of the austere divine, wherefore it was that he 
 and his brethren, after the most painful rummaging and 
 groping into their minds, had been able to produce 
 nothing half so real as these newspaper scribblers and 
 almanac-makers had thrown off, in the effervescence of 
 a moment. The portrait responded not ; so I sought an 
 answer for myself. It is the age itself that writes news- 
 papers and almanacs, which therefore have a distinct 
 purpose-arid meaning at the time, and a kind of intelli- 
 gible .ftrutly for all times ; whereas, most other works 
 being written by men who, in the very act, set them- 
 selves a/part from their age are likely to possess little 
 ificanc^>when new, and none at all when old. Genius, 
 indeedTmelts many ages into one, and thus effects some- 
 thing permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to 
 that of the more ephemeral writer. A work of genius 
 is but the newspaper of a century, or perchance of a 
 hundred centuries. 
 
 Lightly as I have spoken of these old books, there 
 yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for litera- 
 ture of all kinds. A bound volume has a charm in my
 
 i8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 eyes, similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for 
 the good Mussulman; he imagines that those wind- 
 wafted records are perhaps hallowed by some sacred 
 verse ; and I, that every new book, or antique one, may 
 contain the "Open Sesame" the spell to disclose 
 treasures, hidden in some unsuspected cave of Truth. 
 Thus it was not without sadness that I turned away 
 from the library of the Old Manse. 
 
 Blessed was the sunshine when it came again, at the 
 close of another stormy day, beaming from the edge of 
 the western horizon ; while the massive firmament of 
 clouds threw down all the gloom it could, but served 
 only to kindle the golden light into a more brilliant 
 glow, by the strongly contrasted shadows. Heaven 
 smiled at the earth, long unseen from beneath its heavy 
 eyelid. To-morrow for the hilltops and the wood- 
 paths ! 
 
 Or it might be that Ellery Channing came up the 
 avenue, to join me in a fishing excursion on the river. 
 Strange and happy times were those, when we cast 
 aside all irksome forms and strait-laced habitudes, and 
 delivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the 
 Indians or any less conventional race, during one bright 
 semicircle of the sun. Rowing our boat against the 
 current, between wide meadows, we turned aside into 
 the Assabeth. A more lonely stream than this, for a 
 mile above its junction with the Concord, has never 
 flowed on earth nowhere, indeed, except to lave the 
 interior regions of a poet's imagination. It is sheltered 
 from the breeze by woods and a hillside ; so that else- 
 where there might be a hurricane, and here scarcely a 
 ripple across the shaded water. The current lingers 
 along so gently, that the mere force of the boatman's 
 will seems sufficient to propel his craft against it. It 
 comes flowing softly through the midmost privacy and 
 deepest heart of a wood, which whispers it to be quiet, 
 while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy 
 borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another 
 to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along its course, and 
 dreams of the sky, and of the clustering foliage ; amid
 
 THE OLD MANSE 19 
 
 which fall showers of broken sunlight, imparting specks 
 of vivid cheerfulness, in contrast with the quiet depth 
 
 'of the prevailing tint. Of all this scene, the slumbering 
 river had a dream-picture in its bosom. Which, after 
 all, was the most real the picture, or the original ? 
 the objects palpable to our grosser senses, or their 
 apotheosis in the stream beneath ? Surely the disem- 
 bodied images stand in closer relation to the soul. But 
 both the original and the reflection had here an ideal 
 charm ; and had it been a thought more wild, I could 
 have fancied that this river had strayed forth out of the 
 rich scenery of my companion's inner world ; only the 
 vegetation along its banks should then have had an 
 oriental character. 
 
 Gentle and unobtrusive as the river is, yet the tran- 
 quil woods seem hardly satisfied to allow it passage. 
 The trees are rooted on the very verge of the water, 
 and dip their pendent branches into it. At one spot, 
 there is a lofty bank, on the slope of which grow some 
 hemlocks, declining across the stream, with outstretched 
 arms, as if resolute to take the plunge. In other 
 places, the banks are almost on a level with the 
 water ; so that the quiet congregation of trees set ' 
 their feet in the flood, and are fringed with foliage 
 down to the surface. Cardinal flowers kindle their 
 spiral flames, and illuminate the dark nooks among the 
 shrubbery. The pond-lily grows abundantly along the 
 margin; that delicious flower which, as Thoreau tells 
 me, opens its virgin bosom to the first sunlight, and 
 perfects its being through the magic of that genial 
 kiss. He has beheld beds of them unfolding in due 
 succession, as the sunrise stole gradually from flower 
 
 f to flower ; a sight not to be hoped for, unless when a 
 poet adjusts his inward eye to a proper focus with the 
 
 \outward organ. Grape-vines, here and there, twine 
 themselves around shrub and tree, and hang their 
 clusters over the water, within reach of the boatman's 
 hand. Oftentimes, they unite two trees of alien race 
 in an inextricable twine, marrying the hemlock and 
 the maple against their will, and enriching them with
 
 20 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 a purple offspring, of which neither is the parent. 
 One of these ambitious parasites has climbed into the 
 upper branches of a tall white pine, and is still ascend- 
 ing from bough to bough, unsatisfied, till it shall crown 
 the tree's airy summit with a wreath of its broad foliage 
 and a cluster of its grapes. 
 
 The winding course of the stream continually shut 
 out the scene behind us, and revealed as calm and 
 lovely a one before. We glided from depth to depth, 
 and breathed new seclusion at every turn. The shy 
 kingfisher flew from the withered branch close at 
 hand, to another at a distance, uttering a shrill cry 
 of anger or alarm. Ducks that had been floating 
 there since the preceding eve were startled at our 
 approach, and skimmed along the glassy river, break- 
 ing its dark surface with a bright streak. The pick- 
 erel leaped from among the lily-pads. The turtle, 
 sunning itself upon a rock, or at the root of a tree, 
 slid suddenly into the water with a plunge. The 
 painted Indian, who paddled his canoe along the As- 
 sabeth three hundred years ago, could hardly have 
 seen a wilder gentleness displayed upon its banks, and 
 reflected in its bosom, than we did. 
 
 Nor could the same Indian have prepared his noon- 
 tide meal with more simplicity. We drew up our skiff 
 at some point where the over-arching shade formed a 
 natural bower, and there kindled a fire with the pine- 
 cones and decayed branches that lay strewn plentifully 
 around. Soon the smoke ascended among the trees, 
 impregnated with a savory incense, not heavy, dull, 
 and surfeiting, like the steam of cookery within doors, 
 but sprightly and piquant. The smell of our feast 
 was akin to the woodland odors with which it min- 
 gled ; there was no sacrilege committed by our intru- 
 sion there; the sacred solitude was hospitable, and 
 granted us free leave to cook and eat, in the recess 
 that was at once our kitchen and banqueting hall. It 
 is strange what humble offices may be performed, in 
 *a beautiful scene, without destroying its poetry. Our 
 [fire, red gleaming among the trees, and we beside it,
 
 THE OLD MANSE 21 
 
 busied with culinary rites and spreading out our meal 
 on a moss-grown log, all seemed in unison with the 
 river gliding by, and the foliage rustling over us. 
 And, what was strangest, neither did our mirth seem 
 to disturb the propriety of the solemn woods ; although 
 the hobgoblins of the old wilderness, and the will-of- 
 the-wisps that glimmered in the marshy places, might 
 have come trooping to share our table-talk, and have 
 added their shrill laughter to our merriment. It was 
 the very spot in which to utter the extremest non- 
 sense, or the profoundest wisdom or that ethereal 
 product of the mind which partakes of both, and may 
 become one or the other, in correspondence with the 
 faith and insight of the auditor. 
 
 So, amid sunshine and shadow, rustling leaves, and 
 sighing waters, up-gushed our talk, like the babble of 
 a fountain. The evanescent spray was Ellery's ; and 
 his, too, the lumps of golden thought, that lay glim- 
 mering in the" fountain's 'bed, and Brightened both our 
 fac^s_J2y_Jhe_j^flectioiL. Could he have drawn out 
 
 that virgin gold, and stamped it with the mint-mark 
 that alone gives currency, the world might have had 
 the profit, and he the fame. My mind was the richer, 
 merely by the knowledge that it was there. But the 
 chief profit of those wild days, to him and me, lay 
 not in any definite idea not in any angular or 
 rounded Jruth, which we dug out of the shapeless 
 mass of problematical stuff but in the freedom which 
 we thereby won from all custom and conventionalism, 
 and fettering influences of man on man. We were 
 so free to-day, that it was impossible to be slaves 
 again to-morrow. When we crossed the threshold 
 of the house, or trod the thronged pavements of a 
 city, still the leaves of the trees that overhang the 
 Assabeth were whispering to us " Be free ! Be 
 free ! " Therefore, along that shady river bank, there 
 are spots, marked with a heap of ashes and half -con- 
 sumed brands, only less sacred in my remembrance 
 than the hearth of a household fire. 
 
 And yet how sweet as we floated homeward
 
 22 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 adown the golden river, at sunset how sweet was it 
 to return within the system of human society, not as 
 to a dungeon and a chain, but as to a stately edifice, 
 where we could go forth at will into statelier simplic- 
 ity ! How gently, too, did the sight of the Old Manse 
 
 best seen from the river, overshadowed with its 
 willow, and all environed about with the foliage of its 
 orchard and avenue how gently did its gray homely 
 aspect rebuke the speculative extravagances of the 
 day ! It had grown sacred, in connection with the 
 artificial life against which we inveighed ; it had been 
 a home, for many years, in spite of all ; it was my 
 home, too; and, with these thoughts, it seemed to 
 me that all the artifice and conventionalism of life was 
 but an impalpable thinness upon its surface, and that 
 the depth below was none the worse for it. Once as 
 we turned our boat to the bank, there was a cloud, in 
 the shape of an immensely gigantic figure of a hound, 
 couched above the house, as if keeping guard over it. 
 Gazing at this symbol, I prayed that the upper influ- 
 ences might long protect the institutions that had 
 grown out of the heart of mankind. 
 
 If ever my readers should decide to give up civilized 
 life, cities, houses, and whatever moral or material 
 enormities, in addition to these, the perverted ingenuity 
 of our race has contrived, let it be in the early 
 autumn. Then nature will love him better than at any 
 other season, and will take him to her bosom with a 
 more motherly tenderness. I could scarcely endure the 
 roof of the old house above me, in those first autumnal 
 days. How early in the summer, too, the prophecy of 
 autumn comes ! earlier in some years than in others, 
 
 sometimes even in the first weeks of July. There is 
 no other feeling like what is caused by this faint, doubt- 
 ful, yet real perception, if it be not rather a foreboding, 
 of the year's decay so blessedly sweet and sad, in the 
 same breath. Did I say that there was no feeling like 
 it ? Ah ; but there is a half-acknowledged melancholy, 
 like to this, when we stand in the perfected vigor of our 
 life, and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers-
 
 THE OLD MANSE 23 
 
 and that the next work of his never idle fingers must be 
 to steal them, one by one, away ! 
 
 I have forgotten whether the song of the cricket be 
 not as early a token of autumn's approach as any 
 other ; that song, which may be called an audible 
 stillness ; for, though very loud -and heard afar, yet the 
 mind does not take note of it as a sound ; so completely 
 is its individual existence merged among the accom- 
 panying characteristics of the season. Alas, for the 
 pleasant summer-time ! In August the grass is still 
 verdant on the hills and in the valleys ; the foliage of 
 the trees is as dense as ever, and as green ; the flowers 
 gleam forth in richer abundance along the margin of 
 the river, and by the stone-walls, and deep among the 
 woods ; the days, too, are as fervid now as they were a 
 month ago ; and yet, in every breath of wind, and in 
 every beam of sunshine, we hear the whispered fare- 
 well, and behold the parting smile, of a dear friend. 
 There is a coolness amid all the heat; a mildness in 
 the blazing noon. Not a breeze can stir, but it thrills 
 us with the breath of autumn. A pensive glory is seen 
 in the far, golden gleams, among the shadows of the 
 trees. The flowers even the brightest of them, and 
 they are the most gorgeous of the year have this 
 gentle sadness wedded to their pomp, and typify the 
 character of the delicious time, each within itself. The 
 brilliant cardinal flower has never seemed gay to me. 
 
 Still later in the season, Nature's tenderness waxes 
 stronger. It is impossible not to be fond of our Mother 
 now ; for she is so fond of us ! At other periods, she 
 does not make this impression on me, or only at rare 
 intervals ; but, in those genial days of autumn, when 
 she has perfected her harvests, and accomplished every 
 needful thing that was given her to do, then she over- 
 flows with a blessed superfluity pf love. She has lei- 
 sure to caress her children now. / It is good to be alive, 
 and at such times. Thank heaven for breath ! yes, 
 for mere breath ! when it is made up of a heavenly 
 breeze like this. It comes with a real kiss upon our 
 cheeks ; it would linger fondly around us, if it might ;
 
 / 
 
 24 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 but, since it must be gone, it embraces us with its whole 
 kindly heart, and passes onward, to embrace likewise 
 the next thing that it meets. A blessing is flung 
 abroad, and scattered far and wide over the earth, to be 
 gathered up by all who choose. I recline upon the still 
 \ j unwithered grass, and whisper to myself: "Oh, per- 
 fect day ! Oh, beautiful world ! Oh, beneficent 
 God ! " And it is the promise of a blessed Eternity ; 
 for our Creator would never have made such lovely 
 days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, 
 above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant 
 o to be immortal. This sunshine is the golden pledge 
 thereof. It beams through the gates of Paradise, and 
 shows us glimpses far inward. 
 
 By and by in a little time the outward world puts 
 on a drear austerity. On some October morning, there 
 is a heavy hoar-frost on the grass, and along the tops of 
 the fences ; and, at sunrise, the leaves fall from the 
 trees of our avenue without a breath of wind, quietly 
 descending by their own weight. All summer long, 
 they have murmured like the noise of waters ; they have 
 roared loudly, while the branches were wrestling with 
 the thunder-gust ; they have made music, both glad and 
 solemn ; they have attuned my thoughts by their quiet 
 sound, as I paced to-and-fro beneath the arch of inter- 
 mingling boughs. Now, they can only rustle under my 
 feet. Henceforth, the gray parsonage begins to assume 
 a larger importance, and draws to its fireside for the 
 abomination of the air-tight stove is reserved till wintry 
 weather draws closer and closer to its fireside the 
 vagrant impulses, that had gone wandering about, 
 through the summer. 
 
 When summer was dead and buried, the Old Manse 
 became as lonely as a hermitage. Not that ever in 
 my time, at least it had been thronged with company. 
 But, at no rare intervals, we welcomed some friend out 
 of the dusty glare and tumult of the world, and rejoiced 
 to share with him the transparent obscurity that was 
 floating over us. In one respect, our precincts were 
 like the Enchanted Ground, through which the pilgrim
 
 THE OLD MANSE 25 
 
 travelled on his way to the Celestial City. The guests, 
 each and all, felt a slumberous influence upon them ; 
 they fell asleep in chairs, or took a more deliberate 
 siesta on the sofa ; or were seen stretched among the 
 shadows of the orchard, looking up dreamily through 
 the boughs. They could not have paid a more accept- 
 able compliment to my abode, nor to my own qualities as 
 a host. I held it as a proof that they left their cares 
 behind them, as they passed between the stone gate- 
 posts, at the entrance of our avenue ; and that the so 
 powerful opiate was the abundance of peace and quiet 
 within and all around us. Others could give them 
 pleasure and amusement, or instruction these could 
 be picked up anywhere but it was for me to give 
 them rest. Rest, in a life of trouble ! What better 
 could be done for those weary and world- worn spirits ? 
 for him, whose career of perpetual action was im- 
 peded and harassed by the rarest of his powers, and the 
 richest of his acquirements ? for another, who had 
 thrown his ardent heart, from earliest youth, into the 
 strife of politics, and now, perchance, began to suspect 
 that one lifetime is too brief for the accomplishment of 
 any lofty aim ? for her, on whose feminine nature 
 had been imposed the heavy gift of intellectual power, 
 such as a strong man might have staggered under, and 
 with it the necessity to act upon the world ? in a 
 word, not to multiply instances, what better could be 
 done for anybody, who came within our magic circle, 
 than to throw the spell of a magic spirit over him ? 
 And when it had wrought its full effect, then we dis- 
 missed him, with but misty reminiscences, as if he had 
 been dreaming of us. 
 
 Were I to adopt a pet idea, as so many people do, 
 and fondle it in my embraces to the exclusion of all 
 others, it would be, that the great want which mankind 
 labors under, at this present period, is Sleep ! The>s^ 
 world should recline its vast head on the first conven- 
 ient pillow, and take an age-long nap. It has gone 
 distracted, through a morbid activity, and, while preter- 
 naturally wide-awake, is nevertheless tormented by
 
 26 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 visions, that seem real to it now, but would assume 
 their true aspect and character, were all things once 
 set right by an interval of sound repose. This is the 
 only method of getting rid of old delusions, and avoid- 
 ing new ones of regenerating our race, so that it 
 might in due time awake, as an infant out of dewy 
 slumber of restoring to us the simple perception of 
 what is right, and the single-hearted desire to achieve 
 it ; both of which have long been lost, in consequence 
 of this weary activity of brain, and torpor or passion of 
 the heart, that now afflict the universe. Stimulants, 
 the only mode of treatment hitherto attempted, cannot 
 quell the disease ; they do but heighten the delirium. 
 
 Let not the above paragraph ever be quoted against 
 the author ; for, though tinctured with its modicum of 
 truth, it is the result and expression of what he knew, 
 while he was writing it, to be but a distorted survey of 
 the state and prospects of mankind. There were cir- 
 cumstances around me, which made it difficult to view 
 the world precisely as it exists ; for, severe and sober 
 as was the Old Manse, it was necessary to go but a 
 little way beyond its threshold, before meeting with 
 stranger moral shapes of men than might have been 
 encountered elsewhere, in a circuit of a thousand miles. 
 
 These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted 
 thither by the wide-spreading influence of a great origi- 
 nal Thinker, who had his earthly abode at the opposite 
 extremity of our village. His mind acted upon other 
 minds, of a certain constitution, with wonderful mag- 
 netism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages, 
 to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries to 
 whom just so much of insight had been imparted, as to 
 make life all a labyrinth around them came to seek 
 the clew that should guide them out of their self- 
 involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists whose 
 systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an 
 iron framework travelled painfully to his door, not to 
 ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their 
 own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new 
 thought, or a thought that they fancied new, came to
 
 THE OLD MANSE 27 
 
 Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a 
 lapidary, to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, 
 troubled, earnest wanderers, through the midnight of 
 I the moral world, beheld his intellectual fire, as a beacon 
 [ burning on a hilltop, and climbing the difficult ascent, 
 1 looked forth into the surrounding obscurity, more hope- 
 fully than hitherto. The light revealed objects unseen 
 before mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of a crea- 
 tion among the chaos but also, as was unavoidable, it 
 attracted bats and owls, and the whole host of night- 
 birds, which flapped their dusky wings against the 
 gazer's eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for fowls 
 of angelic feather. Such delusions always hover nigh, 
 whenever a bea.con fire of truth is kindled. 
 / For myself, there had been epochs of my life when I, 
 I too, might have asked of this prophet the master-word 
 Ithat should solve me the riddle of the universe. But 
 jnow, being happy, I felt as if there were no question 
 /to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of 
 deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing 
 from him as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, 
 to meet him in the woodpaths or sometimes in our 
 /avenue, with th^j-ym-pJntpTjprtiial glpqm diffused about 
 /his presence, like the garment of^ jajshining nnp ; and he, 
 so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering 
 I each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he 
 could impart. And, in truth, the heart of many an ordi- 
 nary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could 
 not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity, 
 without inhaling, more or less, the mountain atmos- 
 phere of his lofty thought, which, in the brains of 
 some people, wrought a singular giddiness new truth 
 1 being as heady as new wine. Never was a poor little 
 'country village infested with such a variety of queer, 
 strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom 
 took upon themselves to be important agents of the 
 world's destiny, yet were simply bores, of a very intense 
 water. /Such, I imagine, is the invariable character of 
 persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker, 
 as to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus become
 
 28 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 imbued with a false originality. This triteness of novelty 
 is enough to make any man, of common sense, bias- 1 
 pheme at all ideas of less than a century's standing / 
 and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered 
 immovable, in precisely the worst moral and physical 
 state that it ever yet arrived at, rather than be benefited 
 by such schemes of such philosophers. 
 
 And now, I begin to feel and perhaps should have 
 sooner felt that we have talked enough of the Old 
 Manse. Mine honored reader, it may be, will vilify the 
 poor author as an egotist, for babbling through so many 
 pages about a moss-grown country parsonage, and his 
 life within its walls, and on the river, and in the woods, 
 and the influences that wrought upon him, from all 
 these sources. My conscience, however, does not re- 
 proach me with betraying anything too sacredly indi- 
 vidual to be revealed by a human spirit to its brother or 
 sister spirit. How narrow how shallow and scanty 
 too is the stream of thought that has been flowing 
 from my pen, compared with the broad tide of dim 
 emotions, ideas, and associations, which swell around 
 me from that portion of my existence! How little have 
 I told ! and of that little, how almost nothing is even 
 tinctured with any quality that makes it exclusively my 
 own ! Has the reader gone wandering, hand in hand 
 with me, through the inner passages of my being, and 
 have we groped together into all its chambers, and ex- 
 amined their treasures or their rubbish ? Not so. We 
 have been standing on the greensward, but just within 
 the cavern's mouth, where the common sunshine is free 
 to penetrate, and where every footstep is therefore free 
 to come. I have appealed to no sentiment or sensibili- 
 ties, save such as are diffused among us all. So far as 
 
 am a man of really individual attributes, I veil my 
 face ; nor am I, nor have I ever been, one of those 
 supremely hospitable people, who serve up their own 
 hearts delicately fried, with brain-sauce, as a tidbit for 
 their beloved public. - ta_ 
 
 Glancing back over what I have written, it seems but 
 the scattered reminiscences of a single summer. In
 
 THE OLD MANSE 29 
 
 fairy-land, there is no measurement of time ; and, in a 
 spot so sheltered from the turmoil of life's ocean, three 
 years hasten away with a noiseless flight, as the breezy 
 sunshine chases the cloud-shadows across the depths of 
 a still valley. Now came hints, growing more and more 
 distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for 
 his native air. Carpenters next appeared, making a 
 tremendous racket among the out-buildings, strewing 
 green grass with pine-shavings and chips of chestnut 
 joists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with 
 their discordant renovations. Soon, moreover, they di- 
 vested our abode of the veil of woodbine which had 
 crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the 
 aged mosses were cleared unsparingly away ; and there 
 were horrible whispers about brushing up the external 
 walls with a coat of paint a purpose as little to my 
 taste as might be that of rouging the venerable cheeks 
 of one's grandmother. But the hand that renovates is 
 always more sacrilegious than that which destroys. In 
 fine, we gathered up our household goods, drank a fare- 
 well cup of tea in our pleasant little breakfast-room 
 delicately fragrant tea, an unpurchasable luxury, one of 
 the many angel-gifts that had fallen like dew upon us 
 
 and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as 
 uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might 
 next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and 
 
 an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no 
 irreverence in smiling at has led me, as the news- 
 papers announce while I am writing, from the Old 
 Manse into a Custom-House ! As a story-teller, I have 
 often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary 
 personages, but none like this. 
 
 The treasure of intellectual gold, which I had hoped 
 to find in our secluded dwelling, had never come to light. 
 No profound treatise of ethics no philosophic history 
 
 no novel, even, that could stand unsupported on its 
 edges all that I had to show, as a man of letters, were 
 these few tales and essays, which had blossomed out like 
 flowers in the calm summer of my heart and mind. Save 
 editing (an easy task) the journal of my friend of many
 
 30 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 years, the African Cruiser, I had done nothing else. 
 With these idle weeds and withering blossoms, I have 
 intermixed some that were produced long ago old, 
 faded things, reminding me of flowers pressed between 
 the leaves of a book and now offer the bouquet, such 
 as it is, to any whom it may please. These fitful sketches, 
 with so little of external life about them, yet claiming no 
 profundity of purpose, so reserved, even while they 
 sometimes seem so frank, often but half in earnest, 
 .and never, when most so, expressing satisfactorily the 
 ^thoughts which they profess to image such trifles, I 
 truly feel, afford no solid basis for a literary reputation. 
 Nevertheless, the public if my limited number of 
 readers, whom I venture to regard rather as a circle of 
 friends, may be termed a public will receive them the 
 more kindly, as the last offering, the last collection of 
 this nature, which it is my purpose ever to put forth. 
 Unless I could do better, I have done enough, in this 
 kind. For myself, the book will always retain one charm, 
 as reminding me of the river, with its delightful solitudes, 
 and of the avenue, the garden, and the orchard, and 
 especially the dear Old Manse, with the little study on 
 its western side, and the sunshine glimmering through 
 the willow-branches, while I wrote. 
 
 Let the reader, if he will do me so much honor, imagine 
 himself my guest, and that, having seen whatever may 
 be worthy of notice, within and about the Old Manse, 
 he has finally been ushered into my study. There, after 
 seating him in an antique elbow-chair, an heirloom of 
 the house, I take forth a roll of manuscript, and entreat 
 his attention to the following tales : an act of personal 
 inhospitality, however, which I never was guilty of, nor 
 ever will be, even to my worst enemy.
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 
 
 IN the latter part of the last century, there lived a man 
 of science an eminent proficient in every branch 
 of natural philosophy who, not long before our story 
 opens, had made experience of a spiritual affinity, more 
 attractive than any chemical one. He had left his labo- 
 ratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine coun- 
 tenance from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of 
 acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman 
 to become his wife. In those days, when the compara- 
 tively recent discovery of electricity, and other kindred 
 mysteries of nature, seemed to open paths into the region 
 of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science 
 to rival the love of Woman, in its depth and absorbing 
 energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, 
 and even the heart, might all find their congenial ali- 
 ment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries 
 believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelli- 
 gence to another, until the philosopher should lay his 
 hand on the secret of creative force, and perhaps make 
 new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer 
 possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control 
 over nature. He had devoted himself, however, too un- 
 reservedly to scientific studies, ever to be weaned from 
 them by any second passion. His love for his young 
 wife might prove the stronger of the two ; but it could 
 only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, 
 and uniting the strength of the latter to its own. 
 
 Such an union accordingly took place, and was at- 
 tended with trulv remarkable consequences, and a> deeply 
 impressive moral^ One day, very soon after their mar- 
 riage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife, with a trouble in 
 his countenance that grew stronger, until he spoke. 
 
 " Georgiana," said he, " has it never occurred to you 
 that the mark upon your cheek might be removed ? " 
 31
 
 32 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " No, indeed," said she, smiling ; but perceiving the 
 seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply. " To 
 tell you the truth, it has been so often called a charm, 
 that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so." 
 
 " Ah, upon another face, perhaps it might," replied 
 her husband. " But never on yours ! No, dearest 
 Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand 
 of Nature, that this slightest possible defect which 
 we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty 
 shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imper- 
 fection." 
 
 " Shocks you, my husband ! " cried Georgiana, deeply 
 hurt ; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then 
 bursting into tears. " Then why did you take me from 
 my mother's side ? You cannot love what shocks you!" 
 
 To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned, 
 that, in the centre of Georgiana's left cheek, there was 
 a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the 
 texture and substance of her face. In the usual state 
 of her complexion, a healthy, though delicate bloom, 
 'the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imper- 
 fectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. 
 When she blushed, it gradually became more indistinct, 
 and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood, 
 that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. 
 But, if any shifting emotion caused her to turn pale, 
 there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the 
 snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fear- 
 ful distinctness. Its shape bore. not a little similarity 
 to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. 
 Georgiana's lovers were wont to say, that some fairy, 
 at her birth-hour, had laid her tiny hand upon the in- 
 fant's cheek, and left this impress there, in token of the 
 magic endowments that were to give her such sway 
 over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have 
 risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the 
 mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, 
 that the impression wrought by this fairy sign-manual 
 varied exceedingly, according to the difference of tem- 
 perament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 33 
 
 but they were exclusively of her own sex affirmed that 
 the Bloody Hand, as they chose to call it, quite de- 
 stroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered 
 her countenance even hideous. But it would be as 
 reasonable to say, that one of those small blue stains, 
 which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble, 
 would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Mas- 
 culine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their 
 admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, 
 that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal 
 loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw. After his 
 marriage for he thought little or nothing of the mat- 
 ter before Aylmer discovered that this was the case 
 with himself. 
 
 Had she been less beautiful if Envy's self could 
 have found aught else to sneer at he might have felt 
 his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic 
 hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing 
 forth again, and glimmering to-and-fro with every pulse 
 of emotion that throbbed within her heart. But, seeing 
 her 'otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow . 
 more and morX intolerable, with every moment of their 
 united lives,/ It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which 
 
 Nature, in 'one shape or another, 
 on all her productions, either to imply^that the,y ar^/ 
 temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be 
 wrought by toil and pain. The Crimson Hand ex- 
 pressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality clutches 
 the highest and purest of earthly inoiild^ degrading 
 them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the 
 very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to 
 dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his 
 wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's 
 sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birth- 
 mark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and 
 horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul 
 or sense, had given him delight. 
 
 At all the seasons which should have been their hap- 
 piest, he invariably, and without intending it nay, in 
 spite of a purpose to the contrary reverted to this one
 
 34 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so 
 connected itself with innumerable trains of thought, and 
 modes of feeling, that it became the central point of all. 
 With the morning twilight, Aylmer opened his eyes 
 upon his wife's face, and recognized the symbol of im- 
 perfection ; and when they sat together at the evening 
 hearth, his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and 
 beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the 
 spectral Hand that wrote mortality where he would fain 
 have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder 
 at his gaze. It needed but a glance, with the peculiar 
 expression that his face often wore, to change the roses 
 of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the 
 Crimson Hand was brought strongly out, like a bas- 
 relief of ruby on the whitest marble. 
 
 Late, one night, when the lights were growing dim, 
 so as hardly to betray the stain on the poor wife's 
 cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily took up 
 the subject. 
 
 " Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, 
 with a feeble attempt at a smile " have you any recol- 
 lection of a dream, last night, about this odious Hand ? " 
 
 " None ! none whatever! " replied Aylmer, starting ; 
 but then he added in a dry, cold tone, affected for the 
 sake of concealing the real depth of his emotion : "I 
 might well dream of it ; for, before I fell asleep, it had 
 taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy." 
 
 "And you did dream of it," continued Georgiana, 
 hastily; for she dreaded lest a gush of tears should 
 interrupt what she had to say "A terrible dream ! I 
 wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget 
 this one expression ? 'It is in her heart now we 
 must have it out ! ' Reflect, my husband ; for by all 
 means I would have you recall that dream." 
 
 The mind is in a sad state, when Sleep, the all-involv- 
 ing, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region 
 of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting 
 this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a 
 deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He 
 had fancied himself, with his servant Aminadab, at-
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 35 
 
 tempting an operation for the removal of the birth-mark. 
 But the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the 
 Hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have 
 caught hold of Georgiana's heart ; whence, however, 
 her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench 
 it away. 
 
 When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his 
 memory, Aylmer sat in his wife's presence with a guilty 
 feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close- 
 muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncom- 
 promising directness of matters in regard to which we 
 practise an unconscious self-deception, during our wak- 
 ing moments. Until now, he had not been aware of 
 the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his 
 mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his 
 heart to go, for the sake of giving himself peace. 
 
 " Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, " I know 
 not what may be the cost to both of us, to rid me of this 
 fatal birth-mark. Perhaps its removal may cause cure- 
 less deformity. Or, it may be, the stain goes as deep 
 as life itself. Again, do we know that there is a possi- 
 bility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this 
 little Hand, which was laid upon me before I came into 
 the world ? " 
 
 " Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought 
 upon the subject," hastily interrupted Aylmer "I am 
 convinced of the perfect practicability of its removal." 
 
 " If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued' 
 Georgiana, " let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. 
 Danger is nothing to me ; for life while this hateful 
 mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust 
 life is a burthen which I would fling down with joy. 
 Either remove this dreadful Hand, or take my wretched 
 life ! You have deep science ! All the world bears 
 witness of it. You have achieved great wonders ! Can- 
 not you remove this little, little mark, which I cover 
 with the tips of two small fingers ! Is this beyond your 
 power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your 
 poor wife from madness ? " 
 
 " Noblest dearest tenderest wife ! " cried Aylmer,
 
 36 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 rapturously. " Doubt not my power. I have already 
 given this matter the deepest thought thought which 
 might almost have enlightened me to create a being less 
 perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me 
 deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel my- 
 self fully competent to render this dear cheek as fault- 
 less as its fellow ; and then, most beloved, what will be 
 my triumph, when I shall have corrected what Nature 
 left imperfect, in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, 
 when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not 
 greater ecstasy than mine will be." 
 
 " It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling, 
 "and, Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find 
 the birth-mark take refuge in my heart at last." 
 
 Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek her right 
 cheek not that which bore the impress of the Crimson 
 Hand. 
 
 The next day, Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that 
 he had formed, whereby he might have opportunity for 
 the intense thought and constant watchfulness which 
 the proposed operation would require ; while Georgiana, 
 likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its 
 success. They were to seclude themselves in the ex- 
 tensive apartments occupied by Aylmer as a labora- 
 tory, and where, during his toilsome youth, he had made 
 discoveries in the elemental powers of nature, that had 
 roused the admiration of all the learned societies in 
 Europe. Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale phi- 
 losopher had investigated the secrets of the highest 
 cloud-region and of the profoundest mines ; he had 
 satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept 
 alive the fires of the volcano ; and had explained the 
 mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, 
 some so bright and pure, and others with such rich 
 medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth. 
 Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the won- 
 ders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the 
 very process by which Nature assimilates all her 
 precious influences from earth and air, and from the 
 spiritual world, to create and foster Man, her master-
 
 THE B T RTH-MARK 37 
 
 piece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long 
 laid aside, in unwilling recognition of the truth, against 
 which all seekers sooner or later stumble, that our great 
 creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently 
 working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful 
 to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended 
 openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits 
 us indeed to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous 
 patentee, on no account to make. Now, however, 
 Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations ; 
 not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first sug- 
 gested them ; but because they involved much physio- 
 logical truth, and lay in the path of his proposed scheme 
 for the treatment of Georgiana. 
 
 As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, 
 Georgiana was cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked 
 cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but 
 was so startled with the intense glow of the birth-mark 
 upon the whiteness of her cheek, that he could not 
 restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted. 
 
 " Aminadab ! Aminadab ! " shouted Aylmer, stamping 
 violently on the floor. 
 
 Forthwith, there issued from an inner apartment a 
 man of low stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair 
 hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the 
 vapors of the furnace. This personage had been 
 Aylmer's underworker during his whole scientific career, 
 and was admirably fitted for that office by his great 
 mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while 
 incapable of comprehending a single principle, he exe- 
 cuted all the practical details of his master's experi- 
 ments. With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his 
 smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that 
 encrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical 
 nature ; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intel- 
 lectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual 
 element. 
 
 "Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," 
 said Aylmer, " and burn a pastille." 
 
 " Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently
 
 38 MOSSES FROM AM OLD MANSE 
 
 at the^fdS)form of Georgiana ; and then he muttered 
 to himself : "If she were my wife, I 'd never part with 
 that birth-mark." 
 
 When Georgiana recovered consciousness, she found 
 herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fra- 
 grance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her 
 from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her 
 looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those 
 smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his 
 brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of 
 beautiful apartments, not unfit to be the secluded abode 
 of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous 
 curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur 
 and grace, that no other species of adornment can 
 achieve ; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their 
 rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and 
 straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite 
 space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pa- 
 vilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the 
 sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical 
 processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, 
 emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, 
 empurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, 
 watching her earnestly, but without alarm ; for he was 
 confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a 
 magic circle round her, within which no evil might 
 intrude. 
 
 "Where am I? Ah, I remember! " said Georgiana, 
 faintly ; and she placed her hand over her cheek, to hide 
 the terrible mark from her husband's eyes. 
 
 " Fear not, dearest ! " exclaimed he. " Do not shrink 
 from me ! Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this 
 single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to 
 remove it." 
 
 " Oh, spare me ! " sadly replied his wife. " Pray do 
 not look at it again. I never can forget that convulsive 
 shudder." 
 
 In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release 
 her mind from the burthen of actual things, Aylmer now 
 put in practice some of the light and playful secrets
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 39 
 
 which science had taught him among its profounder 
 lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms 
 of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, 
 imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. 
 Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of 
 these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost 
 perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband 
 possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, 
 when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, 
 immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the pro- 
 cession of external existence flitted across a screen. The 
 scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly 
 represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable 
 difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or 
 a shadow so much more attractive than the original. 
 When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes 
 upon a vessel, containing a quantity of earth. She did 
 so, with little interest at first, but was soon startled, to 
 perceive the germ of a plant, shooting upward from the 
 soil. Then came the slender stalk the leaves gradu- 
 ally unfolded themselves and amid them was a perfect 
 and lovely flower. 
 
 " It is magical ! " cried Georgiana. " I dare not touch 
 it." 
 
 " Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer, " pluck it, and 
 inhale its brief perfume while you may. The flower will 
 wither in a few moments, and leave nothing save its 
 brown seed-vessels but thence may be perpetuated a 
 race as ephemeral as itself." 
 
 / But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than 
 the whole plant suffered a blight, its Leaves turning coal- 
 black, as if by the agency of fire. / 
 
 " There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed 
 to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own 
 invention. It was to be effected by rays of light strik- 
 ing upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented 
 but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find 
 the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable;
 
 4 o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the 
 cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic 
 plate, and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid. 
 
 Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. 
 In the intervals of study and chemical experiment, he 
 came to her, flushed and exhausted, but seemed invigo- 
 rated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of 
 the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long 
 dynasty of the Alchemists, who spent so many ages in 
 quest of the universal solvent, by which the Golden Prin- 
 ciple might be elicited from all things vile and base. 
 Aylmer appeared to believe, that, by the plainest scien- 
 tific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility 
 to discover this long-sought medium ; but, he added, a 
 philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the 
 power, would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the 
 exercise of it. Not less singular were his opinions in 
 regard to the Elixir Vitae. He more than intimated, 
 that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should 
 prolong life for years perhaps interminably but that 
 it would produce a discord in nature, which all the world, 
 and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would 
 find cause to curse. 
 
 "Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, look- 
 ing at him with amazement and fear ; "it is terrible to 
 possess such power, or even to dream of possessing it ! " 
 
 " Oh, do not trouble, my love ! " said her husband, 
 " I would not wrong either you or myself, by working 
 such inharmonious effects upon our lives. But I would 
 have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is the skill 
 requisite to remove this little Hand." 
 
 At the mention of the birth-mark, Georgiana, as usual, 
 shrank, as if a red-hot iron had touched her cheek. 
 
 Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She 
 could hear his voice in the distant furnace-room, giving 
 directions to Aminadab, whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen 
 tones were audible in response, more like the grunt or 
 growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of 
 absence, Aylmer reappeared, and proposed that she should 
 now examine his cabinet of chemical products, and natural
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 41 
 
 treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed 
 her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained 
 a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of im- 
 pregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. 
 They were of inestimable value, the contents of that 
 little vial ; and, as he said so, he threw some of the per- 
 fume into the air, and filled the room with piercing and 
 invigorating delight. 
 
 " And what is this ? " asked Georgiana, pointing to a 
 small crystal globe, containing a gold-colored liquid. 
 " It is so beautiful to the eye, that I could imagine it 
 the Elixir of Life." 
 
 " In one sense it is," replied Alymer, " or rather the 
 Elixir of Immortality. It is the most precious poison 
 that ever was concocted in this world. By its aid, I 
 could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at whom you 
 might point your finger. The strength of the dose would 
 determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop 
 dead in the midst of a breath. No king, on his guarded 
 throne, could keep his life, if I, in my private station, 
 should deem that the welfare of millions justified me in 
 depriving him of it." 
 
 " Why do you keep such a terrific drug ? " inquired 
 Georgiana, in horror. 
 
 " Do not mistrust me, dearest ! " said her husband, 
 smiling; "its virtuous potency is yet greater than its 
 harmful one. But, see! here is a powerful cosmetic. 
 With a few drops of this, in a vase of water, freckles 
 may be washed away as easily as the hands are 
 cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood 
 out of the cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale 
 ghost." 
 
 " Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my 
 cheek ? " asked Georgiana, anxiously. 
 
 "Oh, no!" hastily replied her husband, "this is 
 merely superficial. Your case demands a rgjpfrty tha. 
 shall go deeper." 
 
 In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally 
 made minute inquiries as to her sensations, and whether 
 the confinement of the rooms, and the temperature of
 
 42 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the atmosphere, agreed with her. These questions had 
 such a particular drift, that Georgiana began to conjec- 
 ture that she was already subjected to certain physical 
 influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air, or 
 taken with her food. She fancied, likewise but it 
 might be altogether fancy that there was a stirring 
 up of her system : a strange, indefinite sensation creep- 
 ing through her veins, and tingling, half-painfully, half- 
 pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to 
 look into the mirror, there she beheld herself, pale as a 
 white rose, and with the crimson birth-mark stamped 
 upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so 
 much as she. 
 
 To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband 
 found it necessary to devote to the processes of combi- 
 nation and analysis, Georgiana turned over the volumes 
 of his scientific library. In many dark old^ tomes, 
 she met with chapters full of romance and poetry^ 
 They were the works of the philosophers of the middle^ 
 ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius AgrippaX 
 Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created thej 
 prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists I 
 stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued \ 
 with some of their credulity, and therefore were be- j 
 lieved, and perhaps imagined themselves, to have ac- 
 quired from the investigation of nature a power above 
 nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual 
 world. Hardly less curious and imaginative were the 
 early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Soci- 
 ety, in which the members, knowing little of the limits 
 of natural possibility, were continually recording won- 
 ders, or proposing methods whereby wonders might be 
 wrought. 
 
 But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was 
 a large folio from her husband's own hand, in which 
 he had recorded every experiment of his scientific 
 career, with its original aim, the methods adopted for 
 its development, and its final success or failure, with 
 the circumstances to which either event was attrib- 
 utable. The book, in truth, was both the history
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 43 
 
 and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet 
 practical and laborious, life. He handled physical 
 details, as if there were nothing beyond them ; yet 
 spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from 
 materialism, by his strong and eager aspiration towards 
 the infinite. In his grasp, the veriest clod of earth 
 assumed a soul. Georgiana, as she read, reverenced 
 Aylmer, and loved him more profoundly than ever, but 
 with a less entire dependence on his judgment than 
 heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could 
 not but observe that his most splendid successes were 
 almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal 
 at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the 
 merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in com- 
 parison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden 
 beyond his reach. The volume, rich with achieve- 
 ments, that had won renown for its author, was yet as 
 melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. 
 It was the sad confession, and continual exemplification, 
 of the shortcomings of the composite man the spirit 
 burdened with clay and working in matter; and of 
 the despair that assails the higher nature, at finding 
 itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Per- 
 haps every man of genius, in whatever sphere, might 
 recognize the image of his own experience in Aylmer's 
 journal. 
 
 So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana, that 
 she laid her face upon the open volume, and burst 
 into tears. In this situation she was found by her 
 husband. 
 
 " It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," 
 said he, with a smile, though his countenance was 
 uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there are pages 
 in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and 
 keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental 
 to you ! " 
 
 " It has made me worship you more than ever," said 
 she. 
 
 " Ah ! wait for this one success," rejoined he, " then 
 worship me if you will. I shall deem myself hardly
 
 44 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 unworthy of it. But, come ! I have sought you for the 
 luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest! " 
 
 So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to 
 quench the thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave, 
 with a boyish exuberance of gayety, assuring her that 
 her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and that 
 the result was already certain. Scarcely had he de- 
 parted, when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to 
 follow him. She had forgotten to inform Aylmer of 
 a symptom, which, for two or three hours past, had 
 begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in 
 the fatal birth-mark, not painful, but which induced a 
 restlessness throughout her system. Hastening after 
 her husband, she intruded, for the first time, into the 
 laboratory. 
 
 The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, 
 that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow 
 of its fire, which, by the quantities of soot clustered 
 above it, seemed to have been burning for ages. 
 There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. 
 Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, cruci- 
 bles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An 
 electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The 
 atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted 
 with gaseous odors, which had been tormented forth 
 by the processes of science. The severe and homely 
 simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and 
 brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Geor- 
 giana had become to the fantastic elegance of her 
 boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew 
 her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself. 
 
 He was pale as death, anxious, and absorbed, and 
 hung over the furnace as if it depended upon his 
 utmost watchfulness whether the liquid, which it was 
 distilling, should be the draught of immortal happiness 
 or misery. How different from the sanguine and 
 joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana's 
 encouragement ! 
 
 " Carefully now, Aminadab ! Carefully, thou human 
 machine! Carefully, thou man of clay!" muttered
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 45 
 
 Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant. " Now, if 
 there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over ! " 
 
 " Hoh ! hoh ! " mumbled Aminadab " look, master, 
 look ! " 
 
 Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, 
 then grew paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. 
 He rushed towards her, and seized her arm with a gripe 
 that left the print of his fingers upon it. 
 
 "Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in 
 your husband?" cried he, impetuously. "Would you 
 throw the blight of that fatal birth-mark over my labors ? 
 It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go ! " 
 
 " Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana, with the firmness of 
 which she possessed no stinted endowment, "it is not 
 you that have a right to complain. You mistrust your 
 wife ! You have concealed the anxiety with which you 
 watch the development of this experiment. Think not 
 so unworthily of me, my husband ! Tell me all the risk 
 we run ; and fear not that I shall shrink, for my share 
 in it is far less than your own ! " 
 
 "No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently, "it 
 must not be." 
 
 "I submit," replied she, calmly. "And, Aylmer, I 
 shall quaff whatever draught you bring me ; but it will 
 be on the same principle that would induce me to take 
 a dose of poison, if offered by your hand." 
 
 " My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, " I 
 knew not the height and depth of your nature, until 
 now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then, that 
 this Crimson Hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched 
 its grasp into your being, with a strength of which I 
 had no previous conception. I have already adminis- 
 tered agents powerful enough to do aught except to 
 change your entire physical system. Only one thing 
 remains to be tried. If that fail us, we are ruined ! " 
 
 "Why did you hesitate to tell me this ? " asked she. 
 
 " Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, 
 " there is danger." 
 
 "Danger? There is but one danger that this 
 horrible stigma shall be left upon my cheek ! " cried
 
 46 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 Georgiana. " Remove it ! remove it ! whatever be 
 the cost or we shall both go mad ! " 
 
 "Heaven knows, your words are too true," said 
 Aylmer, sadly. " And now, dearest, return to your 
 boudoir. In a little while, all will be tested." 
 
 He conducted her back, and took leave of her with a 
 solemn tenderness, which spoke far more than his words 
 how much was now at stake. After his departure, 
 Georgiana became wrapt in musings. She considered 
 the character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice 
 than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while 
 it trembled, at his honorable love, so pure and lofty that 
 it would accept nothing less than perfection, nor miser- 
 ably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than 
 he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious 
 was such a sentiment, than that meaner kind which 
 would have borne with the imperfection for her sake, 
 and have been guilty of treason to holy love- by degrad- 
 ing its perfect idea to the level of the actual. And, with 
 her whole spirit, she prayed, that, for a single moment, 
 she might satisfy his highest and deepest conception. 
 Longer than one moment, she well knew, it could not 
 be ; for his spirit was ever on the march ever ascend- 
 ing and each instant required something that was 
 beyond the scope of the instant before. 
 
 The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. 
 He bore a crystal goblet, containing a liquor colorless 
 as water, but bright enough to be the draught of immor- 
 tality. Aylmer was pale ; but it seemed rather the con- 
 sequence of a highly wrought state of mind, and tension 
 of spirit, than of fear or doubt. 
 
 "The concoction of the draught has been perfect," 
 said he, in answer to Georgiana's look. " Unless all my 
 science have deceived me, it cannot fail." 
 
 " Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed 
 his wife, "I might wish to put off this birth-mark of 
 mortality by relinquishing mortality itself, in preference 
 to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to 
 those who have attained precisely the degree of moral 
 advancement at which I stand. Were I weaker and
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 47 
 
 blinder, it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it 
 might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find 
 myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die." 
 
 "You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" re- 
 plied her husband. " But why do we speak of dying ? 
 The draught cannot fail. Behold its effect upon this 
 plant ! " 
 
 On the window-seat there stood a geranium, diseased 
 with yellow blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. 
 Aylmer poured a small quantity of the liquid upon the 
 soil in which it grew. In a little time, when the roots 
 of the plant had taken up the moisture, the unsightly 
 blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure. 
 
 "There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. 
 "Give me the goblet I joyfully stake all upon your 
 word." 
 
 "Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Ayl- 
 mer, with fervid admiration. " There is no taint of im- 
 perfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall 
 soon be all perfect." 
 
 She quaffed the liquid, and returned the goblet to his 
 hand. 
 
 " It is grateful," said she, with a placid smile. " Me- 
 thinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain ; for it 
 contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and 
 deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst, that had 
 parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. 
 My earthly senses are closing over my spirit, like the 
 leaves around the heart of a rose, at sunset." 
 
 She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as 
 if it required almost more energy than she could com- 
 mand to pronounce the faint and lingering syllables. 
 Scarcely had they loitered through her lips, ere she was 
 lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her 
 aspect with the emotions proper to a man, the whole 
 value of whose existence was involved in the process 
 now to be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, 
 was the philosophic investigation, characteristic of the 
 man of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped 
 him. A heightened flush of the cheek a slight irregu-
 
 48 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 larity of breath a quiver of the eyelid a hardly per- 
 ceptible tremor through the frame such were the 
 details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in 
 his folio volume. Intense thought had set its stamp 
 upon every previous page of that volume ; but the 
 thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last. 
 
 While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at 
 the fatal Hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, 
 by a strange and unaccountable impulse, he pressed it 
 with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very 
 act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, 
 moved uneasily and murmured, as if in remonstrance. 
 Again, Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without 
 avail. The Crimson Hand, which at first had been 
 strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's 
 cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained 
 not less pale than ever ; but the birth-mark, with every 
 breath that came and went, lost somewhat of its former 
 distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its depar- 
 ture was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rain- 
 bow fading out of the sky ; and you will know how that 
 mysterious symbol passed away. 
 
 " By Heaven, it is well-nigh gone ! " said Aylmer to 
 himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. " I can scarcely 
 trace it now. Success ! Success ! And now it is like 
 the faintest rose-color. The slightest flush of blood 
 across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so 
 pale ! " 
 
 He drew aside the window-curtain, and suffered the 
 light of natural day to fall into the room, and rest upon 
 her cheek. At the same time, he heard a gross, hoarse 
 chuckle, which he had long known as his servant Amin- 
 adab's expression of delight. 
 
 " Ah, clod ! Ah, earthly mass ! " cried Aylmer, laugh- 
 ing in a sort of frenzy. "You have served me well! 
 Matter and Spirit Earth and Heaven have both 
 done their part in this ! Laugh, thing of the senses ! 
 You have earned the right to laugh." 
 
 These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She 
 slowly unclosed her eyes, and gazed into the mirror,
 
 THE BIRTH-MARK 49 
 
 which her husband had arranged for that purpose. A 
 faint smile flitted over her lips, when she recognized how 
 barely perceptible was now that Crimson Hand, which 
 had once blazed forth with such disastrous brilliancy as 
 to scare away all their happiness. But then her eyes 
 sought Aylmer's face, with a trouble and anxiety that he 
 could by no means account for. 
 
 " My poor Aylmer ! " murmured she. 
 
 "Poor? Nay, richest ! Happiest! Most favored !" 
 exclaimed he. " My peerless bride, it is successful ! 
 You are perfect I " 
 
 " My poor Aylmer ! " she repeated, with a more than 
 human tenderness. "You have aimed loftily! you 
 have done nobly ! Do not repent, that, with so high 
 and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth 
 could offer. Aylmer dearest Aylmer, I am dying ! " 
 
 Alas, it was too true ! The fatal Hand had grappled 
 with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an 
 angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. 
 As the last crimson tint of the birth-mark that sole 
 token of human imperfection faded from her cheek, 
 the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into 
 the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near 
 her husband, took its heavenward flighfc Then a hoarse, 
 chuckling laugh was heard againJX'Thus ever does the 
 gross Fatality of Earth exult in its invariable triumph 
 over the immortal essence, which, in this dim sphere of 
 half-deveiopment, demands the completeness of a higher 
 state. /i"et, had Aylmer reached a profounder wisdom, 
 he need not thus have flung away the happiness which 
 would have woven his mortal life of the self-same tex- 
 ture with the celestial. /' The momentary circumstance 
 was too strong for him ; he failed to look beyond the 
 shadowy scope of Time, and living once for all in 
 Eternity, to find the perfect Future in the present.
 
 A SELECT PARTY 
 
 A MAN OF FANCY made an entertainment at one 
 of his castles in the air, and invited a select number 
 of distinguished personages to favor him with their pres- 
 ence. The mansion, though less splendid than many 
 that have been situated in the same region, was, never- 
 theless, of a magnificence such as is seldom witnessed 
 by those acquainted only with terrestrial architecture. 
 Its strong foundations and massive walls were quarried 
 out of a ledge of heavy and sombre clouds, which had 
 hung brooding over the earth, apparently as dense and 
 ponderous as its own granite, throughout a whole autum- 
 nal day. Perceiving that the general effect was gloomy 
 so that the airy castle looked like a feudal fortress, or 
 a monastery of the middle ages, or a state-prison of our 
 own times, rather than the home of pleasure and repose 
 which he intended it to be the owner, regardless of 
 expense, resolved to gild the exterior from top to bottom. 
 Fortunately, there was just then a flood of evening sun- 
 shine in the air. This being gathered up and poured 
 abundantly upon the roof and walls, imbued them with 
 a kind of solemn cheerfulness ; while the cupolas and 
 pinnacles were made to glitter with the purest gold, and 
 all the hundred windows gleamed with a glad light, as if 
 the edifice itself were rejoicing in its heart. And now, 
 if the people of the lower world chanced to be looking 
 upward, out of the turmoil of their petty perplexities, 
 they probably mistook the castle in the air for a heap of 
 sunset clouds, to which the magic of light and shade had 
 imparted the aspect of a fantastically constructed man- 
 sion. To such beholders it was unreal, because they 
 lacked the imaginative faith. Had they been worthy to 
 pass within its portal, they would have recognized the 
 truth, that the dominions which the spirit conquers for 
 5
 
 A SELECT PARTY 51 
 
 itself among unrealities, become a thousand times more 
 real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet, say- 
 ing, "This is solid and substantial ! this may be called 
 a fact!" 
 
 At the appointed hour, the host stood in his great 
 saloon to receive the company. It was a vast and noble 
 room, the vaulted ceiling of which was supported by 
 double rows of gigantic pillars, that had been hewn 
 entire out of masses of variegated clouds. So brilliantly 
 were they polished, and so exquisitely wrought by the 
 sculptor's skill, as to resemble the finest specimens of 
 emerald, porphyry, opal, and chrysolite, thus producing 
 a delicate richness of effect, which their immense size 
 rendered not incompatible with grandeur. To each of 
 these pillars a meteor was suspended. Thousands of 
 these ethereal lustres are continually wandering about 
 the firmament, burning out to waste, yet capable of im- 
 parting a useful radiance to any person who has the 
 art of converting them to domestic purposes. As man- 
 aged in the saloon, they are far more economical than 
 ordinary lamp-light. Such, however, was the intensity 
 of their blaze, that it had been found expedient to cover 
 each meteor with a globe of evening mist, thereby 
 muffling the too potent glow, and soothing it into a mild 
 and comfortable splendor. It was like the brilliancy of 
 a powerful, yet chastened, imagination ; a light which 
 seemed to hide whatever was unworthy to be noticed, 
 and give effect to every beautiful and noble attribute. 
 The guests, therefore, as they advanced up the centre 
 of the saloon, appeared to better advantage than ever 
 before in their lives. 
 
 The first that entered, with old-fashioned punctuality, 
 was a venerable figure in the costume of bygone days, 
 with his white hair flowing down over his shoulders, 
 and a reverend beard upon his breast. He leaned upon 
 a staff, the tremulous stroke of which, as he set it 
 carefully upon the floor, re-echoed through the saloon 
 at every footstep. Recognizing at once this celebrated 
 personage, whom it had cost him a vast deal of trouble 
 and research to discover, the host advanced nearly three-
 
 52 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 fourths of the distance, down between the pillars, to 
 meet and welcome him. 
 
 " Venerable sir," said the Man of Fancy, bending to 
 the floor, " the honor of this visit would never be for- 
 gotten, were my term of existence to be as happily pro- 
 longed as your own." 
 
 The old gentleman received the compliment with 
 gracious condescension ; he then thrust up his spec- 
 tacles over his forehead, and appeared to take a critical 
 survey of the saloon. 
 
 " Never, within my recollection," observed he, " have 
 I entered a more spacious and noble hall. But are you 
 sure that it is built of solid materials, and that the 
 structure will be permanent?" 
 
 " Oh, never fear, my venerable friend," replied the 
 host. " In reference to a lifetime like your own, it is 
 true, my castle may well be called a temporary edifice. 
 But it will endure long enough to answer all the pur- 
 poses for which it was erected." 
 
 But we forget that the reader has not yet been made 
 acquainted with the guest. It was no other than that 
 universally accredited character, so constantly referred 
 to in all seasons of intense cold or heat he that re- 
 members the hot Sunday and the cold Friday the wit- 
 ness of a past age, whose negative reminiscences find 
 their way into every newspaper, yet whose antiquated 
 and dusky abode is so overshadowed by accumulated 
 years, and crowded back by modern edifices, that none 
 but the Man of Fancy could have discovered it it 
 was, in short, that twin-brother of Time, and great- 
 grandsire of mankind, and hand-and-glove associate of 
 all forgotten men and things, the Oldest Inhabitant! 
 The host would willingly have drawn him into conver- 
 sation, but succeeded only in eliciting a few remarks as 
 to the oppressive atmosphere of this present summer 
 evening, compared with one which the guest had ex- 
 perienced about fourscore years ago. The old gentle- 
 man, in fact, was a good deal overcome by his journey 
 among the clouds, which, to a frame so earth-incrusted 
 by long continuance in a lower region, was unavoidably
 
 A SELECT PARTY 53 
 
 more fatiguing than to younger spirits. He was there- 
 fore conducted to an easy-chair, well-cushioned, and 
 stuffed with vaporous softness, and left to take a little 
 repose. 
 
 The Man of Fancy now discerned another guest, who 
 stood so quietly in the shadow of one of the pillars, that 
 he might easily have been overlooked. 
 
 " My dear sir," exclaimed the host, grasping him 
 warmly by the hand, "allow me to greet you as the 
 hero of the evening. Pray do not take it as an empty 
 compliment ; for if there were not another guest in my 
 castle, it would be entirely pervaded with your pres- 
 ence ! " 
 
 " I thank you," answered the unpretending stranger, 
 " but, though you happened to overlook me, I have 
 not just arrived. I came very early, and, with your 
 permission, shall remain after the rest of the company 
 have retired." 
 
 And who does the reader imagine was this unob- 
 trusive guest? It was the famous performer of ac-\ 
 knowledged impossibilities ; a character of superhuman 
 capacity and virtue, and, if his enemies are to be 
 credited, of no less remarkable weaknesses and defects. 
 With a generosity of which he alone sets us the ex- 
 ample, we will glance merely at his nobler attributes. 
 He it is, then, who prefers the interests of others to his 
 own, and an humble station to an exalted one. Care- 
 less of fashion, custom, the opinions of men, and the 
 influence of the press, he assimilates his life to the 
 standard of ideal rectitude, and thus proves himself 
 the one independent citizen of our free country. In 
 point of ability, many people declare him to be the only 
 mathematician capable of squaring the circle ; the only 
 mechanic acquainted with the principle of perpetual 
 motion ; the only scientific philosopher who can compel 
 water to run up hill ; the only writer of the age whose 
 genius is equal to the production of an epic poem ; and, 
 finally so various are his accomplishments the only 
 professor of gymnastics who has succeeded in jumping 
 down his own throat. With all these talents, however,
 
 54 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 he is so far from being considered a member of good 
 society, that it is the severest censure of any fashionable 
 assemblage to affirm that this remarkable individual 
 was present. Public orators, lecturers,' and theatrical 
 performers particularly eschew his company. For espe- 
 cial reasons, we are not at liberty to disclose his name, 
 and shall mention only one other trait a most singular 
 phenomenon in natural philosophy that when he hap- 
 pens to cast his eyes upon a looking-glass he beholds 
 Nobody reflected there ! 
 
 Several other guests now made their appearance, and 
 among them, chattering with immense volubility, a brisk 
 little gentleman of universal vogue in private society, 
 and not unknown in the public journals, under the title 
 of Monsieur On-Dit. The name would seem to indicate 
 a Frenchman ; but whatever be his country, he is thor- 
 oughly versed in all the languages of the day, and can 
 express himself quite as much to the purpose in English 
 as in any other tongue. No sooner were the ceremonies 
 of salutation over, than this talkative little person put 
 his mouth to the host's ear, and whispered three secrets 
 of state, an important piece of commercial intelligence, 
 and a rich item of fashionable scandal. He then assured 
 the Man of Fancy that he would not fail to circulate in 
 the society of the lower world a minute description of 
 this magnificent castle in the air, and of the festivities 
 at which he had the honor to be a guest. So saying, 
 Monsieur On-Dit made his bow and hurried from one to 
 another of the company, with all of whom he seemed to 
 be acquainted, and to possess some topic of interest 
 or amusement for every individual. Coming at last to 
 the Oldest Inhabitant, who was slumbering comfortably 
 in the easy-chair, he applied his mouth to that venerable 
 ear. 
 
 " What do you say ? " cried the old gentleman, starting 
 from his nap, and putting up his hand to serve the pur- 
 pose of an ear-trumpet 
 
 Monsieur On-Dit bent forward again, and repeated 
 his communication. 
 
 " Never, within my memory," exclaimed the Oldest
 
 A SELECT PARTY 55 
 
 Inhabitant, lifting his hands in astonishment, " has so 
 remarkable an incident been heard of ! " 
 
 Now came in the Clerk of the Weather, who had been 
 invited out of deference to his official station, although 
 the host was well aware that his conversation was likely 
 to contribute but little to the general enjoyment. He 
 soon, indeed, got into a corner with his acquaintance of 
 long ago, the Oldest Inhabitant, and began to compare 
 notes with him in reference to the great storms, gales of 
 wind, and other atmospherical facts that had occurred 
 during a century past. It rejoiced the Man of Fancy, 
 that his venerable and much respected guest had met 
 with so congenial an associate. Entreating them both 
 to make themselves perfectly at home, he now turned 
 to receive the Wandering Jew. This personage, how- 
 ever, had latterly grown so common, by mingling in all 
 sorts of society, and appearing at the beck of every 
 entertainer, that he could hardly be deemed a proper 
 guest in a very exclusive circle. Besides, being covered 
 with dust from his continual wanderings along the high- 
 ways of the world, he really looked out of place in a 
 dress party, so that the host felt relieved of an incom- 
 modity when the restless individual in question, after 
 a brief stay, took his departure on a ramble towards 
 Oregon. 
 
 The portal was now thronged by a crowd of shadowy 
 people, with whom the Man of Fancy had been acquainted 
 iii his visionary youth. He had invited them hither for 
 the sake of observing how they would compare, whether 
 advantageously or otherwise, with the real characters to 
 whom his maturer life had introduced him. They were 
 beings of crude imagination, such as glide before a young 
 man's eye, and pretend to be actual inhabitants of the 
 earth ; the wise and witty, with whom he would here- 
 after hold intercourse ; the generous and heroic friends, 
 whose devotion would be requited with his own ; the 
 beautiful dream-woman, who would become the help- 
 mate of his human toils and sorrows, and at once the 
 source and partaker of his happiness. Alas ! it is not 
 good for the full-grown man to look too closely at these
 
 56 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 old acquaintances, but rather to reverence them at a dis- 
 tance, through the medium of years that have gathered 
 duskily between. There was something laughably un- 
 true in their pompous stride and exaggerated sentiment ; 
 they were neither human, nor tolerable likenesses of 
 humanity, but fantastic masquers, rendering heroism 
 and nature alike ridiculous by the grave absurdity of 
 their pretensions to such attributes. And as for the 
 peerless dream-lady, behold ! there advanced up the 
 saloon, with a movement like a jointed doll, a sort of 
 wax figure of an angel a creature as cold as moon- 
 shine an artifice in petticoats, with an intellect of 
 petty phrases, and only the semblance of a heart yet, 
 in all these particulars, the true type of a young man's 
 imaginary mistress. Hardly could the host's punctilious 
 courtesy restrain a smile, as he paid his respects to this 
 unreality, and met the sentimental glance with which 
 the Dream sought to remind him of their former love- 
 passages. 
 
 "No, no, fair lady," murmured he, betwixt sighing 
 and smiling ; " my taste is changed ! I have learned 
 to love what Nature makes, better than my own crea- 
 tions in the guise of womanhood." 
 
 " Ah, false one ! " shrieked the dream-lady, pretend- 
 ing to faint, but dissolving into thin air, out of which 
 came the deplorable murmur of her voice " your in- 
 constancy has annihilated me ! " 
 
 " So be it," said the cruel Man of Fancy to himself, 
 " and a good riddance, too ! " 
 
 Together with these shadows, and from the same 
 region, there had come an uninvited multitude of shapes, 
 which, at any time during his life, had tormented the 
 Man of Fancy in his moods of morbid melancholy, or 
 had haunted him in the delirium of fever. The walls 
 of his castle in the air were not dense enough to keep 
 them out ; nor would the strongest of earthly architec- 
 ture have availed to their exclusion. Here were those 
 forms of dim terror, which had beset him at the entrance 
 of life, waging warfare with his hopes. Here were 
 strange uglinesses of earlier date, such as haunt chil-
 
 A SELECT PARTY 57 
 
 dren in the night-time. He was particularly startled by 
 the vision of a deformed old black woman, whom he 
 imagined as lurking in the garret of his native home, 
 and who, when he was an infant, had once come to his 
 bedside and grinned at him, in the crisis of a scarlet 
 fever. This same black shadow, with others almost as 
 hideous, now glided among the pillars of the magnificent 
 saloon, grinning recognition, until the man shuddered 
 anew at the forgotten terrors of his childhood. It 
 amused him, however, to observe the black woman, 
 with the mischievous caprice peculiar to such beings, 
 steal up to the chair of the Oldest Inhabitant, and peep 
 into his half-dreamy mind. 
 
 " Never within my memory," muttered that venerable 
 personage, aghast, " did I see such a face ! " 
 
 Almost immediately after the unrealities just described, 
 arrived a number of guests, whom incredulous readers 
 may be inclined to rank equally among creatures of 
 imagination. The most noteworthy were an incorrup- 
 tible Patriot ; a Scholar without pedantry ; a Priest with- 
 out worldly ambition, and a Beautiful Woman without 
 pride or coquetry ; a Married Pair whose life had never 
 been disturbed by incongruity of feeling ; a Reformer 
 untrammelled by his theory; and a Poet who felt no 
 jealousy towards other votaries of the lyre. In truth, 
 however, the host was not one of the cynics who con- 
 sider these patterns of excellence, without the fatal flaw, 
 such rarities in the world ; and he had invited them to 
 his select party chiefly out of humble deference to the 
 judgment of society, which pronounces them almost 
 impossible to be met with. 
 
 " In my younger days," observed the Oldest Inhab- 
 itant, " such characters might be seen at the corner of 
 every street." 
 
 Be that as it might, these specimens of perfection 
 proved to be not half so entertaining companions as 
 people with the ordinary allowance of faults. 
 
 But now appeared a stranger, whom the host had 
 no sooner recognized, than, with an abundance of cour- 
 tesy unlavished on any other, he hastened down the
 
 58 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 whole length of the saloon, in order to pay him emphatic 
 honor. Yet he was a young man in poor attire, with no 
 insignia of rank or acknowledged eminence, nor any- 
 thing to distinguish him among the crowd except a high, 
 white forehead, beneath which a pair of deep-set eyes 
 were glowing with warm light. It was such a light as 
 never illuminates the earth, save when a great heart 
 burns as the household fire of a grand intellect. And 
 who was he ? Who but the Ma_ster... Genius, for whom 
 our country is looking anxiously into the mist of time, as 
 destined to fulfil the great mission of creating an Ameri- 
 can literature, hewing it, as it were, out of the unwrought 
 granite of our intellectual quarries. From him, whether 
 moulded in the form of an epic poem, or assuming a 
 guise altogether new, as the spirit itself may determine, 
 we are to receive our first great original work, which 
 shall do all that remains to be achieved for our glory 
 among the nations. How this child of a mighty destiny 
 had been discovered by the Man of Fancy, it is of little 
 consequence to mention. Suffice it, that he dwells as 
 yet unhonored among men, unrecognized by those who 
 have known him from his cradle ; the noble counte- 
 nance which should be distinguished by a halo diffused 
 around it, passes daily amid the throng of people, toiling 
 and troubling themselves about trifles of a moment 
 and none pay reverence to the worker of immortality. 
 Nor does it matter much to him, in his triumph over all 
 the ages, though a generation or two of his own times 
 shall do themselves the wrong to disregard him. 
 
 By this time, Monsieur On-Dit had caught up the 
 stranger's name and destiny, and was busily whispering 
 the intelligence among the other guests. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " said one, " there can never be an American 
 GenjjisJ' 
 
 "Pish!" cried another, "we have already as good 
 poets as any in the world. For my part, I desire to see 
 no better." 
 
 And the Oldest Inhabitant, when it was proposed to 
 introduce him to the Master Genius, begged to be ex- 
 cused, observing that a man who had been honored with
 
 A SELECT PARTY 59 
 
 the acquaintance of Dwight, Freneau, and Joel Barlow, 
 might be allowed a little austerity of taste. 
 
 The saloon was now fast filling up, by the arrival of 
 other remarkable characters ; among whom were noticed 
 Davy Jones, the distinguished nautical personage, and a 
 rude, carelessly dressed, harum-scarum sort of elderly 
 fellow, known by the nickname of Old Harry. The 
 latter, however, after being shown to a dressing-room, 
 reappeared with his gray hair nicely combed, his clothes 
 brushed, a clean dicky on his neck, and altogether so 
 changed in aspect as to merit the more respectful appel- 
 lation of Venerable Henry. John Doe and Richard Roe 
 came arm-in-arm, accompanied by a Man of Straw, a 
 fictitious indorser, and several persons who had no ex- 
 istence except as voters in closely contested elections. 
 The celebrated Seatsfield, who now entered, was at first 
 supposed to belong to the same brotherhood, until he 
 made it apparent that he was a real man of flesh and 
 blood, and had his earthly domicile in Germany. Among 
 the latest comers, as might reasonably be expected, ar- 
 rived a guest from the far future. 
 
 " Do you know him ? do you know him ? " whispered 
 Monsieur On-Dit, who seemed to be acquainted with 
 everybody. " He is the representative of Posterity- 
 the man of an age' to come ! "" 
 
 "And how came he here?" asked a figure who was 
 evidently the prototype of the fashion-plate in a maga- 
 zine, and might be taken to represent the vanities of the 
 passing moment. " The fellow infringes upon our rights 
 by coming before his time." 
 
 " But you forget where we are," answered the Man 
 of Fancy, who overheard the remark ; " the lower earth, 
 it is true, will be forbidden ground to him for many long 
 years hence ; but a castle in the air is a sort of no-man's 
 land, where Posterity may make acquaintance with us 
 on equal terms." 
 
 No sooner was his identity known, than a throng of 
 guests gathered about Posterity, all expressing the most 
 generous interest in his welfare, and many boasting of 
 the sacrifices which they had made, or were willing to
 
 60 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 make, in his behalf. Some, with as much secrecy as 
 possible, desired his judgment upon certain copies of 
 verses, or great manuscript rolls of prose ; others 
 accosted him with the familiarity of old friends, taking 
 it for granted that he was perfectly cognizant of their 
 names and characters. At length, finding himself thus 
 beset, Posterity was put quite beside his patience. 
 
 "Gentlemen, my good friends," cried he, breaking 
 loose from a misty poet, who strove to hold him by the 
 button, " I pray you to attend to your own business, and 
 leave me to take care of mine ! I expect to owe you 
 nothing, unless it be certain national debts, and other 
 incumbrances and impediments, physical and moral, 
 which I shall find it troublesome enough to remove from 
 my path. As to your verses, pray read them to your 
 contemporaries. Your names are as strange to me as 
 your faces ; and even were it otherwise let me whisper 
 you a secret the cold, icy memory which one genera- 
 tion may retain of another is but a poor recompense to 
 barter life for. Yet, if your heart is set on being known 
 to me, the surest, the only method is, to live truly and 
 wisely for your own age, whereby, if the native force be 
 in you, you may likewise live for posterity ! " 
 
 " It is nonsense," murmured the Oldest Inhabitant, who, 
 as a man of the past, felt jealous that all notice should 
 be withdrawn from himself, to be lavished on the future, 
 " sheer nonsense, to waste so much thought on what 
 only is to be ! " 
 
 To divert the minds of his guests, who were consid- 
 erably abashed by this little incident, the Man of Fancy 
 led them through several apartments of the castle, re- 
 ceiving their compliments upon the taste and varied 
 magnificence that were displayed in each./ One of 
 these rooms was filled with moonlight, which did not 
 -, enter through the window, but was the aggregate of all 
 A/ the moonshine that is scattered around the earth on a 
 r\ summer night, while no eyes are awake to enjoy its 
 
 beauty v / Airy spirits had gathered it up, wherever they 
 found it gleaming on the broad bosom of a lake, or 
 silvering the meanders of a stream, or glimmering
 
 A SELECT PARTY 61 
 
 among the wind-stirred boughs of a wood, and had 
 garnered it in one spacious hall. Along the walls, illu- 
 minated by the mild intensity of the moonshine, stood 
 a multitude of ideal statues, the original conceptions 
 of the great works of ancient or modern art, which the 
 sculptors did but imperfectly succeed in putting into 
 marble. For it is not to be supposed that the pure idea 
 of an immortal creation ceases to exist ; it is only neces- 
 sary to know where they are deposited, in order to 
 obtain possession of them. In the alcoves of another 
 vast apartment was arranged a splendid library, the 
 volumes of which were inestimable, because they con- 
 sisted not of actual performances, but of the works 
 which the authors only planned, without ever finding 
 the happy season to achieve them. To take familiar 
 instances, here were the untold tales of Chaucer's Can- 
 terbury Pilgrims; the unwritten cantos of the Fairy 
 Queen ; the conclusion of Coleridge's Christabel ; and 
 the whole of Dryden's projected Epic on the subject of 
 King Arthur. The shelves were crowded ; for it would 
 not be too much to affirm that every author has imag- 
 ined, and shaped out in his thought, more and far better 
 works than those which actually proceeded from his 
 pen. And here, likewise, were the unrealized concep- 
 tions of youthful poets, who died of the very strength 
 of their own genius, before the world had caught one 
 inspired murmur from their lips. 
 
 When the peculiarities of the library and statue gal- 
 lery were explained to the Oldest Inhabitant, he ap- 
 peared infinitely perplexed, and exclaimed, with more 
 energy than usual, that he had never heard of such a 
 thing within his memory, and, moreover, did not at all 
 understand how it could be. 
 
 " But my brain, I think," said the good old gentle- 
 man, " is getting not so clear as it used to be. You 
 young folks, I suppose, can see your way through these 
 strange matters. For my part I give it up." 
 
 " And so do I," muttered the Old Harry. " It is 
 enough to puzzle the ahem ! " 
 
 Making as little reply as possible to these observa-
 
 62 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 tions, the Man of Fancy preceded the company to 
 another noble saloon, the pillars of which were solid 
 golden sunbeams, taken out of the sky in the first hour 
 in the morning. Thus, as they retained all their living 
 lustre, the room was filled with the most cheerful radi- 
 ance imaginable, yet not too dazzling to be borne with 
 comfort and delight. The windows were beautifully 
 adorned with curtains, made of the many-colored clouds 
 of sunrise, all imbued with virgin light, and hanging in 
 magnificent festoons from the ceiling to the floor. 
 Moreover, there were fragments of rainbows scattered 
 through the room ; so that the guests, astonished at one 
 another, reciprocally saw their heads made glorious by 
 the seven primary hues ; or, if they chose as who 
 would not ? they could grasp a rainbow in the air, 
 and convert it to their own apparel and adornment. 
 But the morning light and scattered rainbows were only 
 a type and symbol of the real wonders of the apartment. 
 By an influence akin to magic, yet perfectly natural, 
 whatever means and opportunities of joy are neglected 
 in the lower world, had been carefully gathered up, and 
 deposited in the saloon of morning sunshine. As may 
 well be conceived, therefore, there was material enough 
 to supply not merely a joyous evening, but also a happy 
 lifetime, to more than as many people as that spacious 
 apartment could contain. The company seemed to 
 renew their youth ; while that pattern and proverbial 
 standard of innocence, the Child Unborn, frolicked to 
 and fro among them, communicating his own un- 
 wrinkled gayety to all who had the good fortune to wit- 
 ness his gambols. 
 
 " My honored friends," said the Man of Fancy, after 
 they had enjoyed themselves awhile, " I am now to 
 request your presence in the banqueting-hall, where a 
 slight collation is awaiting you." 
 
 "Ah, well said ! " ejaculated a cadaverous figure, who 
 had been invited for no other reason than that he was 
 pretty constantly in the habit of dining with Duke Hum- 
 phrey. " I was beginning to wonder whether a castle in 
 the air were provided with a kitchen."
 
 A SELECT PARTY 63 
 
 r It was curious, in truth, to see how instantaneously 
 the guests were diverted from the high moral enjoy- 
 ments which they had been tasting with so much appar- 
 ent zest, by a suggestion of the more > solid as well as 
 liquid delights of the festive board/ They thronged 
 eagerly in the rear of the host, who /now ushered them 
 into a lofty and extensive hall, from end to end of 
 which was arranged a table, glittering all over with 
 innumerable dishes and drinking-vessels of gold. It is 
 an uncertain point, whether these rich articles of plate 
 were made for the occasion, out of molten sunbeams, or 
 recovered from the wrecks of Spanish galleons, that 
 had lain for ages at the bottom of the sea. The upper 
 end of the table was overshadowed by a canopy, be- 
 neath which was placed a chair of elaborate magnifi- 
 cence, which the host himself declined to occupy, and 
 besought his guests to assign it to the worthiest among 
 them. As a suitable homage to his incalculable antiquity 
 and eminent distinction, the post of honor was at first 
 tendered to the Oldest Inhabitant He, however, es- 
 chewed it, and requested the favor of a bowl of gruel at 
 a side table, where he could refresh himself with a quiet 
 nap. There was some little hesitation as to the next 
 candidate, until Posterity took the Master Genius of our 
 country by the hand, and led him to the chair of state, 
 beneath the princely canopy. When once they beheld 
 him in his true place, the company acknowledged the 
 justice of the selection by a long thunder-roll of vehe- 
 ment applause. 
 
 Then was served up a banquet, combining, if not all 
 the delicacies of the season, yet all the rarities which 
 careful purveyors had met with in the flesh, fish, and 
 vegetable markets of the land of Nowhere. The bill of 
 fare being unfortunately lost, we can only mention a 
 Phoenix, roasted in its own flames, cold potted birds of 
 Paradise, ice-creams from the Milky Way, and whip- 
 syllabubs and flummery from the Paradise of Fools, 
 whereof there was a very great consumption. As for 
 drinkables, the temperance people contented themselves 
 with water, as usual, but it was the water of the Foun-
 
 64 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 tain of Youth ; the ladies sipped Nepenthe ; the love- 
 lorn, the care-worn, and the sorrow-stricken were 
 supplied with brimming goblets of Lethe ; and it was 
 shrewdly conjectured that a certain golden vase, from 
 which only the more distinguished guests were invited 
 to partake, contained nectar that had been mellowing 
 ever since the days of classical mythology. The cloth 
 being removed, the company, as usual, grew eloquent 
 over their liquor, and delivered themselves of a succes- 
 sion of brilliant speeches ; the task of reporting which 
 we resign to the more adequate ability of Counsellor 
 Gill, whose indispensable co-operation the Man of Fancy 
 had taken the precaution to secure. 
 
 When the festivity of the banquet was at its most 
 ethereal point, the Clerk of the Weather was observed 
 to steal from the table, and thrust his head between the 
 purple and golden curtains of one of the windows. 
 
 " My fellow-guests," he remarked aloud, after care- 
 fully noting the signs of the night, " I advise such of 
 you as live at a distance to be going as soon as pos- 
 sible, for a thunder-storm is certainly at hand." 
 
 " Mercy on me ! " cried Mother Carey, who had left 
 her brood of chickens, and come hither in gossamer 
 drapery, with pink silk stockings, " how shall I ever get 
 home ?" 
 
 All now was confusion and hasty departure, with but 
 little superfluous leave-taking. The Oldest Inhabitant, 
 however, true to the rule of those long-past days in 
 which his courtesy had been studied, paused on the 
 threshold of the meteor-lighted hall, to express his vast 
 satisfaction at the entertainment. 
 
 " Never, within my memory," observed the gracious 
 old gentleman, " has it been my good fortune to spend a 
 pleasanter evening, or in more select society." 
 
 The wind here took his breath away, whirled his three- 
 cornered hat into infinite space, and drowned what fur- 
 ther compliments it had been his purpose to bestow. 
 Many of the company had bespoken Will-o'-the-Wisps 
 to convoy them home ; and the host, in his general 
 beneficence, had engaged the Man in the Moon, with an
 
 A SELECT PARTY 65 
 
 immense horn lantern, to be the guide of such desolate 
 spinsters as could do no better for themselves. But a 
 blast of the rising tempest blew out all their lights in 
 the twinkling of an eye. How, in the darkness that 
 ensued, the guests contrived to get back to earth, or 
 whether the greater part of them contrived to get back 
 at all, or are still wandering among clouds, mists, and 
 puffs of tempestuous wind, bruised by the beams and 
 rafters of the overthrown castle in the air, and deluded 
 by all sorts of unrealities, are points that concern them- 
 selves, much more than the writer or the public. People 
 should think of these matters, before they trust them- t 
 selves on a pleasure-party into the realm of Nowhere. 
 
 \\
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 
 
 WOUNG GOODMAN BROWN came forth at sunset, 
 X into the street of Salem village, but put his head 
 back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting 
 kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was 
 aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, 
 letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap, 
 while she called to Goodman Brown. 
 
 " Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather 
 sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee, put 
 off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own 
 bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such 
 dreams and such thoughts, that she 's afeard of herself, 
 sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear hus- 
 band, of all nights in the year ! " 
 
 " My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman 
 Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night must I 
 tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, 
 forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now 
 and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou 
 doubt me already, and we but three months married ! " 
 
 "Then God bless you!" said Faith with the pink 
 ribbons, " and may you find all well, when you come 
 back." 
 
 " Amen ! " cried Goodman Brown. " Say thy prayers, 
 dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will 
 come to thee." 
 
 So they parted ; and the young man pursued his way, 
 until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting- 
 house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still 
 peeping after him, with a melancholy air, in spite of her 
 pink ribbons. 
 
 " Poor little Faith ! " thought he, for his heart smote 
 him. " What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an 
 errand ! She talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she 
 66
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 67 
 
 spoke, there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had 
 warned her what work is to be done to-night. But no, 
 no ! 't would kill her to think it. Well; she 's a blessed 
 angel on earth ; and after this one night, I '11 cling to 
 her skirts and follow her to Heaven." 
 
 With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman 
 Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his 
 present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, 
 darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which 
 barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, 
 and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as 
 could be, ; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, 
 that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by 
 the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead ; 
 so that, with lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing 
 through an unseen multitude. 
 
 " There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," 
 said Goodman Brown to himself ; and he glanced fear- 
 fully behind him, as he added, " What if the devil him- 
 self should be at my very elbow ! " 
 
 His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the 
 road, and looking forward again, beheld the figure of a 
 man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an 
 old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's approach, and 
 walked onward, side by side with him. 
 
 "You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The 
 clock of the Old South was striking, as I came through 
 Boston ; and that is full fifteen minutes agone." 
 
 " Faith kept me back awhile," replied the young 
 man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden 
 appearance of his companion, though not wholly unex- 
 pected. 
 
 It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in 
 that part of it where these two were journeying. As 
 nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was 
 about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of 
 life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable 
 resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression 
 than features. Still, they might have been taken for 
 father and son. And yet, though the elder person was
 
 68 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner 
 too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the 
 world, and would not have felt abashed at the govern- 
 or's dinner-table, or in King William's court, were it 
 possible that his affairs should call him thither. But 
 the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as 
 remarkable, was his staff, which bore the likeness of a 
 great black snake, so curiously wrought, that it might 
 almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living 
 serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular 
 deception, assisted by the uncertain light. 
 
 " Come, Goodman Brown ! " cried his fellow-traveller, 
 "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a journey. 
 Take my staff, if you are so soon weary." 
 
 "Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace 
 for a full stop, " having kept covenant by meeting thee 
 here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I 
 have scruples, touching the matter thou wot'st of." 
 
 " Sayest thou so ? " replied he of the serpent, smiling 
 apart. " Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we 
 go, and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn back. 
 We are but a little way in the forest, yet." 
 
 " Too far, too far ! " exclaimed the goodman, uncon- 
 sciously resuming his walk. " My father never went 
 into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before 
 him. We have been a race of honest men and good 
 Christians, since the days of the martyrs. And shall I 
 be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this 
 path and kept " 
 
 "Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the 
 elder person, interrupting his pause. " Well said, Good- 
 man Brown ! I have been as well acquainted with your 
 family as with ever a one among the Puritans ; and 
 that 's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the 
 constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly 
 through the streets of Salem. And it was I that brought 
 your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, 
 to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war. 
 They were my good friends, both ; and many a pleas- 
 ant walk have we had along this path, and returned
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 69 
 
 merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with 
 you, for their sake." 
 
 " If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, 
 " I marvel they never spoke of these matters. Or, 
 verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the 
 sort would have driven them from New England. We 
 are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and 
 abide no such wickedness." 
 
 "Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the 
 twisted staff, " I have a very general acquaintance here 
 in New England. The deacons of many a church have 
 drunk the communion wine with me ; the selectmen, of 
 divers towns, make me their chairman ; and a majority 
 of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of 
 my interest. The governor and I, too but these are 
 state secrets." 
 
 " Can this be so ! " cried Goodman Brown, with a 
 stare of amazement at his undisturbed companion. 
 " Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and 
 council ; they have their own ways, and are no rule for 
 a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on 
 with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old 
 man, our minister, at Salem village ? Oh, his voice 
 would make me tremble, both Sabbath-day and lecture- 
 day ! " 
 
 Thus far, the elder traveller had listened with due 
 gravity, but now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, 
 shaking himself so violently, that his snakelike staff 
 actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy. 
 
 "Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he, again and again; then 
 composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go 
 on ; but, prithee, don't kill me with laughing ! " 
 
 " Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Good- 
 man Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my wife, 
 Faith. It would break her dear little heart ; and I 'd 
 rather break my own ! " 
 
 " Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en 
 go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not, for twenty 
 old women like the one hobbling before us, that Faith 
 should come to any harm."
 
 7 o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female figure 
 on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a 
 very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him 
 his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and 
 spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon 
 Gookin. 
 
 " A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far 
 in the wilderness, at nightfall ! " said he. " But, with 
 your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods, 
 until we have left this Christian woman behind. Being 
 a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting 
 with, and whither I was going." 
 
 " Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. " Betake you to 
 the woods, and let me keep the path." 
 
 Accordingly, the young man turned aside, but took 
 care to watch his companion, who advanced softly along 
 the road, until he had come within a staff's length of 
 the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of 
 her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and 
 mumbling some indistinct words, a prayer, doubtless, as 
 she went. The traveller put forth his staff, and touched 
 her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail. 
 
 "The devil!" screamed the pious old lady. 
 
 "Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" ob- 
 served the traveller, confronting her, and leaning on 
 his writhing stick. 
 
 " Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship, indeed ? " cried 
 the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the very image 
 of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of 
 the silly fellow that now is. But, would your worship 
 believe it ? my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, 
 stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, 
 and that, too, when I was all anointed with the juice of 
 smallage and cinque-foil and wolf's-bane 
 
 " Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born 
 babe," said the shape of old Goodman Brown. 
 
 " Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old 
 lady, cackling aloud. " So, as I was saying, being all 
 ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made 
 up my mind to foot it ; for they tell me there is a nice
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 71 
 
 young man to be taken into communion to-night. But 
 now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we 
 shall be there in a twinkling." 
 
 "That can hardly be," answered her friend. " I may 
 not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse, but here is my 
 staff, if you will." 
 
 So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, per- 
 haps, it assumed life, being one of the rods which its 
 owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian Magi. Of 
 this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take 
 cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, 
 and looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse 
 nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, 
 who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 " That old woman taught me my catechism ! " said 
 the young man ; and there was a world of meaning in 
 this simple comment. 
 
 They continued to walk onward, while the elder trav- 
 eller exhorted his companion to make good speed and 
 persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly, that his 
 arguments seemed r f tb.fntr > ~ p' r ^' 1 % 'np ?n the bosom of 
 his audltorpfrlair'to be suggested by himself. As they 
 went he plucked a blanch of mupkrrtrrserve for a walk- 
 ing-stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little 
 boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The moment 
 his fingers touched them, they became strangely with- 
 ered and dried up, as with a week's sunshine. Thus 
 the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly, 
 in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat 
 himself down on the stump of a tree, and refused to go 
 any farther. 
 
 "Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. 
 Not another step will I budge on this errand. What 
 if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil, 
 when I thought she was going to Heaven ! Is that 
 any reason why I should quit my dear Faith, and go 
 after her ? " 
 
 " You will think better of this by and by," said his 
 acquaintance, composedly. " Sit here and rest yourself
 
 72 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 awhile ; and when you feel like moving again, there is 
 my staff to help you along." 
 
 Without more words, he threw his companion the 
 maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight as if he 
 had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young 
 man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding 
 himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a con- 
 science he should meet the minister, in his morning 
 walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon 
 Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his, that very 
 night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but 
 purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith ! Amidst 
 these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman 
 Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and 
 deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the verge 
 of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that 
 had brought him thither, though now so happily turned 
 from it. 
 
 On came the hoof-tramps and the voices of the 
 riders, two grave old voices, conversing soberly as they 
 drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass 
 along the road, within a few yards of the young man's 
 hiding-place ; but owing, doubtless, to the depth of the 
 gloom, at that particular spot, neither the travellers 
 nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures 
 brushed the small boughs by the wayside, it could not 
 be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, 
 the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky, athwart 
 which they must have passed. Goodman Brown al- 
 ternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside 
 the branches, and thrusting forth his head as far as 
 he durst, without discerning so much as a shadow. 
 It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn, 
 were such a thing possible, that he recognized the 
 voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging 
 along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound 
 to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While 
 yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a 
 switch. 
 
 " Of the two, reverend Sir," said the voice like the
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 73 
 
 deacon's, " I had rather miss an ordination dinner than 
 to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our 
 community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, 
 and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island ; besides 
 several of the Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, 
 know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. More- 
 over, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into 
 communion." 
 
 " Mighty well, Deacon Gookin ! " replied the solemn 
 old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or we shall be 
 late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on 
 the ground." 
 
 The hoofs clattered again, and the voices, talking so 
 strangely in the empty air, passed on through the 
 forest, where no church had ever been gathered, nor 
 solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these 
 holy men be journeying, so deep into the heathen 
 wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of 
 a tree, for support, being ready to sink down on the 
 ground, faint and over-burthened with the heavy sick- 
 ness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting 
 whether there really was a Heaven above him. Yet, 
 there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening 
 in it. 
 
 "With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet 
 stand firm against the devil ! " cried Goodman Brown. 
 
 While he still gazed upward, into the deep arch of 
 the firmament, and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, 
 though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith, 
 and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still 
 visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass 
 of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in 
 the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a con- 
 fused and doubtful sound of voices. Once, the listener 
 fancied that he could distinguish the accents of town's- 
 people of his own, men and women, both pious and 
 ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion- 
 table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The 
 next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted 
 whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old
 
 74 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a 
 stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the 
 sunshine, at Salem village, but never, until now, from a 
 cloud of night. There was one voice, of a young 
 woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain 
 sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, 
 it would grieve her to obtain. And all the unseen 
 multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage 
 her onward. 
 
 " Faith ! " shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of 
 agony and desperation ; and the echoes of the forest 
 mocked him, crying "Faith! Faith!" as if bewil- 
 dered wretches were seeking her, all through the wil- 
 derness. 
 
 The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing 
 the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath 
 for a response. There was a scream, drowned immedi- 
 ately in a louder murmur of voices fading into far-off 
 laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the 
 clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But some- 
 thing fluttered lightly down through the air, and caught 
 on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it and 
 beheld a pink ribbon. 
 
 " My Faith is gone ! " cried he, after one stupefied 
 moment. "There is no good on earth, and sin is 
 but a name. Come, devil ! for to thee is this world 
 given." 
 
 And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud 
 and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set 
 forth again, at such a rate, that he seemed to fly along 
 the forest path, rather than to walk or run. The road 
 grew wilder and drearier, and more faintly traced, and 
 vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark 
 wilderness, still rushing onward, with the instinct that 
 guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled 
 with frightful sounds; the creaking of the trees, the 
 howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians ; while, 
 sometimes, the wind tolled like a distant church bell, 
 and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, 
 as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 75 
 
 was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank 
 not from its other horrors. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " roared Goodman Brown, when the 
 wind laughed at him. " Let us hear which will laugh 
 loudest ! Think not to frighten me with your deviltry ! 
 Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come 
 devil himself ! and here comes Goodman Brown. You 
 may as well fear him as he fear you ! " 
 
 In truth, all through the haunted forest, there could 
 be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman 
 Brown. On he flew, among the black pines, brandish- 
 ing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to 
 an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting 
 forth such laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest 
 laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his 
 own shape is less hideous, than when he rages in the 
 breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course, 
 until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light be- 
 fore him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a 
 clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid 
 blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He 
 paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him 
 onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, 
 rolling solemnly from a distance, with the weight of 
 many voices. He knew the tune. It was a familiar 
 one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse 
 died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not 
 of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted 
 wilderness, pealing in awful harmony together. Good- 
 man Brown cried out ; and his cry was lost to his own 
 ear, by its unison with the cry of the desert. 
 
 In the interval of silence, he stole forward, until the 
 light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an 
 open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, 
 arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural resemblance 
 either to an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by four 
 blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, 
 like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage, 
 that had overgrown the summit of the rock, was all on 
 fire, blazing high into the night, and fitfully illuminating
 
 76 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon 
 was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numer- 
 ous congregation alternately shone forth, then disap- 
 peared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the 
 darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once. 
 
 "A grave and dark-clad company ! " quoth Goodman 
 Brown. 
 
 In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering 
 to-and-fro, between gloom and splendor, appeared faces 
 that would be seen, next day, at the council-board of the 
 province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, 
 looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the 
 crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. 
 Some affirm, that the lady of the governor was there. 
 At least, there were high dames well known to her, and 
 wives of honored husbands, and widows a great multi- 
 tude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and 
 fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should 
 espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light, flashing 
 over the obscure field, bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he 
 recognized a score of the church members of Salem 
 village, famous for their especial sanctity. Good old 
 Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of 
 that venerable saint, his reverend pastor. But, irrever- 
 ently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious 
 people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames 
 and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and 
 women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean 
 and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It 
 was strange to see, that the good shrank not from the 
 wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. 
 Scattered, also, among their pale-faced enemies, were 
 the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared 
 their native forest with more hideous incantations than 
 any known to English witchcraft. 
 
 " But, where is Faith ? " thought Goodman Brown ; 
 and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled. 
 
 Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mourn- 
 ful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to words 
 which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin,
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 77 
 
 and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere 
 mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung, 
 and still the chorus of the desert swelled between, like 
 the deepest tone of a mighty organ. And, with the final 
 peal of that dreadful anthem, there came a sound, as if 
 the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, 
 and every other voice of the unconverted wilderness 
 were mingling and according with the voice of guilty 
 man, in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing 
 pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered 
 shapes and visages of horror on the smoke-wreaths, 
 above the impious assembly. At the same moment, the 
 fire on the rock shot redly forth, and formed a glowing 
 arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With 
 reverence be it spoken, the apparition bore no slight 
 similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine 
 of the New England churches. 
 
 " Bring forth the converts ! " cried a voice, that echoed 
 through the field and rolled into the forest. 
 
 At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the 
 shadow of the trees, and approached the congregation, 
 with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood, by the sym- 
 pathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He could 
 have well-nigh sworn, that the shape of his own dead 
 father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from 
 a smoke-wreath, while a woman, with dim features of 
 despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it 
 his mother ? But he had no power to retreat one step, 
 nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and 
 good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms, and led him 
 to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form 
 of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious 
 teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had 
 received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A ram- 
 pant hag was she ! And there stood the proselytes, be- 
 neath the canopy of fire. 
 
 " Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, 
 " to the communion of your race ! Ye have found, 
 thus young, your nature and your destiny. My chil- 
 dren, look behind you!"
 
 78 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 They turned ; and flashing forth, as it were, in a 
 sheet of flame, the fiend-worshippers were seen ; the 
 smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage. 
 
 "There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom 
 ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them 
 holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, 
 contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and 
 prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet, here are they 
 all, in my worshipping assembly ! This night it shall 
 be granted you to know their secret deeds ; how 
 hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered 
 wanton words to the young maids of their house- 
 holds ; how many a woman, eager for widow's 
 weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime, 
 and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how 
 beardless youths have made haste to inherit their 
 father's wealth ; and how fair damsels blush not, 
 sweet ones ! have dug little graves in the garden, 
 and bidden me, the sole guest, to an infant's funeral. 
 By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye 
 shall scent out all the places whether in church, 
 bed-chamber, street, field, or forest where crime has 
 been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole 
 earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood-spot. Far 
 more than this ! It shall be yours to penetrate, in 
 every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of | 
 all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more 
 evil impulses than human power than my power, 
 at its utmost ! can make manifest in deeds. And 
 now, my children, look upon each other." 
 
 They did so ; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled 
 torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the 
 wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed 
 altar. 
 
 " Lo ! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, 
 in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its de- 
 spairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could 
 yet mourn for our miserable race. " Depending upon 
 one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue 
 were not all a dream ! Now are ye undeceived !
 
 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN 79 
 
 Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be yourj 
 only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to 
 the communion of your race ! " 
 
 " Welcome ! " repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one 
 cry of despair and triumph. 
 
 And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, 
 who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness, 
 in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, 
 in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the 
 lurid light ? or was it blood ? or, perchance, a liquid 
 flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, 
 and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their 
 foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery 
 of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, 
 both in deed and thought, than they could now be of 
 their own. The husband cast one look at his pale 
 wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches 
 would the next glance show them to each other, shud- 
 dering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw ! 
 
 " Faith ! Faith ! " cried the husband. " Look up to ' 
 Heaven, and resist the Wicked One ! " 
 
 Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had 
 he spoken, when he found himself amid calm night 
 and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which 
 died heavily away through the forest. He staggered 
 against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a 
 hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled 
 his cheek with the coldest dew. 
 
 The next morning, young Goodman Brown came 
 slowly into the street of Salem village staring around 
 him like a bewildered man. The good old minister 
 was taking a walk along the grave-yard, to get an appe- 
 tite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and be- 
 stowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. 
 He shrank from the venerable saint, as if to avoid an 
 anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic 
 worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard 
 through the open window. " What God doth the 
 wizard pray to ? " quoth Goodman Brown. Goody 
 Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early
 
 8o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 sunshine, at her own lattice, catechising a little girl, 
 who had brought her a pint of morning's milk. Good- 
 man Brown snatched away the child, as from the 
 grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by 
 the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with 
 the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting 
 into such joy at sight of him that she skipt along the 
 street, and almost kissed her husband before the whole 
 village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly 
 into her face, and passed on without a greeting. 
 
 Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and 
 only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting ? 
 
 Be it so, if you will. But, alas ! it was a dream of 
 evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a 
 sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a des- 
 perate man did he become, from the night of that 
 fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the con- 
 gregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not 
 listen, because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon 
 his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain. When 
 the minister spoke from the pulpit, with power and 
 fervid eloquence, and with his hand on the open 
 Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint- 
 like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss 
 or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn 
 pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon 
 the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking 
 suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of 
 Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family 
 knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to 
 himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned 
 away. And when he had lived long, and was borne 
 to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an 
 aged woman, and children and grand-children, a goodly 
 procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no 
 hopeful verse upon his tombstone ; for his dying hour 
 was gloom.
 
 RAPPACCINFS DAUGHTER 
 
 A YOUNG man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, 
 very long ago, from the more southern region of 
 Italy, to pursue his studies at the University of Padua, ^y 
 Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats 
 in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy 
 chamber of an old edifice, which looked not unworthy 
 to have been the palace of a Paduan noble, and which, 
 in fact, exhibited over its entrance the aVnibrial bearings 
 of a family long since extinct. The young stranger, 
 who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country, 
 recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and 
 perhaps an occupant of this very mansion, had been 
 pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies 
 of his Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, 
 together with the tendency to heart-break natural to a 
 young man for the first time out of his native sphere, 
 caused Giovanni to sigh heavily, as he looked around 
 the desolate and ill-furnished apartment. 
 
 " Holy Virgin, signor," cried old dame Lisabetta, 
 who, won by the youth's remarkable beauty of person, 
 was kindly endeavoring to give the chamber a habitable 
 air, "what a sigh was that to come out of a young 
 man's heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? 
 For the love of Heaven, then, put your head out of the 
 window, and you will see as bright sunshine as you have 
 left in Naples." 
 
 Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman ad- 
 vised, but could not quite agree with her that the Lom- 
 bard sunshine was as cheerful as that of southern Italy. 
 Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden beneath 
 the window, and expended its fostering influences on a 
 variety of plants which seemed to have been cultivated 
 with exceeding care. 
 
 Si
 
 82 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " Does this garden belong to the house ? " asked 
 Giovanni. ^^ 
 
 " Heaven forbid, signer ! unless it were fruitful of 
 better pot-herbs than any that grow there now," an- 
 swered old Lisabetta. " No : that garden is cultivated 
 by the own hands of Sigor_jGiacoma Rappaccini, the 
 famous Doctor, who, I warrant him, has been_heard 
 of as far as Naples. It is said that he distils~~these"f"* 
 plants into medicines that are as potent as a charm. ' 
 Oftentimes you may see the signer Doctor at work, and 
 perchance the signora his daughter, too, gathering the 
 strange flowers that grow in the garden." 
 
 The old woman had now done what she could for the 
 aspect of the chamber, and, commending the young man 
 to the protection of the saints, took her departure. 
 
 Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look 
 down into the garden beneath his window. From its 
 appearance, he judged it to be one of those botanic 
 gardens, which were of earlier date in Padua than else- 
 where in Italy, or in the world. Or, not improbably, it /^ 
 might once have been the pleasure-place of an opulent 
 family ; for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in 
 the centre, sculptured with rare art, but so wofully 
 shattered that it was impossible to trace the original 
 design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The 
 water, however, continued to gush and sparkle into the, 
 sunbeams as cheerfully as ever. A little gurgling sound / 
 ascended to the young man's window, and made him feelj/ / 
 as if a fountain were an imrriprtal spirit, that sung its song 
 unceasingly, and without Heeding the vicissitudes around 
 it; while one century embodied it in marble, and an- 
 other scattered the perishable garniture on the soil. 
 All about the pool into which the water subsided grew 
 various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply 
 of moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and, 
 in some instances, flowers gorgeously magnificent. 
 There was one shrub in particular, set in a marble vase 
 in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of purple 
 blossoms, each of jwhich had the lustre and richness of 
 a gem ; and the whole together made a show so resplen- 
 
 '>
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 83 
 
 dent that it seemed enough to illuminate the garden, 
 even had there been no sunshine. Every portion of the 
 soil was peopled with plants an d^ herbs, which, if less 
 beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous care ; as if all had 
 their individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that 
 fostered them. Some were placed in urns, rich with old 
 carving, and others in common garden-pots ; some crept 
 serpent-like along the ground, or climbed on high, using 
 whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant 
 had wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which 
 was thus quite veiled and shrouded in a drapery of 
 hanging foliage, so happily arranged that it might have 
 served a sculptor for a study. 
 
 While Giovanni stood at the window, he heard a rus- 
 tling behind a screen of leaves, and became aware that a 
 person was at work in the garden. His figure soon 
 emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no 
 common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly-^ ' 
 looking man, dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He 
 was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, a 
 thin gray beard, and a face singularly marked with intel- 
 lect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his 
 more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of 
 heart. ,K/k 
 
 Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this 
 scientific gardener examined every shrub which grew in I 
 his path ; it seemed as if he was looking into their 
 inmost nature, making observations in regard to their 
 creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in 
 this shape, and another in that, and wherefore such and 
 such flowers differed among themselves in hue and per- 
 fume. Nevertheless, in spite of the deep intelligence 
 on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between 
 himself and these vegetable existences. On the con- 7 
 trary, he avoided their actual touch, or the direct inhal- 
 ing of their odors, with a caution that impressed 
 Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man's demeanor 
 was that of one walking among malignant influences, 
 such as savage beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, 
 which, should he allow them one moment of license,
 
 84 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 would wreak upon him some terrible fatality. It was 
 strangely frightful to the young man's imagination, to 
 see this air of insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, 
 that most simple and innocent of human toils, and which 
 had been alike the joy and labor of the unfallen parents 
 of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the 
 present world ? and this man, with such a perception of 
 harm in what his own hands caused to grow, was he the 
 Adam ? 
 
 The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the 
 dead leaves or pruning the too luxuriant growth ,of the 
 ', shrubs, defended his hands with a pair of thick gloves. 
 Nor were these his only armor. When, in his walk 
 through the garden he came to the magnificent plant 
 that hung its purple gems beside the marble fountain, 
 he placed a kind of mask over his mouth and nostrils, 
 >] as if all this beauty did but conceal a deadlier malice. 
 But finding his task still too dangerous, he drew back, 
 removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm 
 voice of a person affected with inward disease : 
 
 " Beatrice ! Beatrice ! " 
 
 " Here am I, my father ! What would you ? " cried a 
 rich and youthful voice from the window of the opposite 
 house ; a voice as rich as a tropical sunset, and which 
 made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep 
 hues of purple or crimson, and of perfumes heavily 
 delectable '"Are you in the garden?" 
 
 " Yes, Beatrice," answered the gardener, " and I need 
 your help." 
 
 Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal 
 the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness 
 of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as 
 the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one 
 shade more would have been too much. She looked 
 /-redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which 
 / attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were, 
 / and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin 
 zone. Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid, 
 while he looked down into the garden ; for the impres- 
 sion which the fair stranger made upon him was as if
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 85 
 
 here were another flower, the human sister of those vege- 
 table ones, as beautiful as they more beautiful than 
 the richest of them but still to be touched only with a 
 glove, nor to be approached without a mask. As Bea- / 
 trice came down the garden-path, it was observable that * 
 she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the plants 
 which her father had most sedulously avoided. 
 
 "Here, Beatrice," said the latter, "see how many 
 needful offices require to be done to our chief treasure. 
 Yet, shattered 'as I am, my life might pay the penalty 
 of approaching it so closely as circumstances demand. 
 Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned to your 
 sole charge." 
 
 " And gladly will I undertake it," cried again the rich 
 tones of the young lady, as she bent towards the mag- 
 nificent plant, and opened her arms as if to embrace it. 
 " Yes, my sister, my splendor, it shall be Beatrice's task 
 to nurse and serve thee ; and thou shalt reward her with 
 thy kisses and perfumed breath, which to her is as the 
 breath of life ! " 
 
 Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was 
 so strikingly expressed in her words, she busied herself 
 with such attentions as the plant seemed to require ; and 
 Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his eyes, and al-/ 
 most doubted whether it were a girl tending her favorite / 
 flower, or one sister performing the duties of affection to 
 another. The scene soon terminated. Whether Doctor 
 Rappaccini had finished his labors in the garden, or that 
 his watchful eye had caught the stranger's face, he now 
 took his daughter's arm and retired. Night was already ./ 
 closing in; oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from 
 the plants, and steal upward past the open window ; and 
 Giovanni, closing the lattice, went to his couch, and 
 dreamed of a rich flower and beautiful girl. Flower 
 and maiden were different and yet the same, and fraught JL| 
 with some strange peril in either shape. 
 
 But there is an influence in the light of morning that 
 tends to rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of 
 judgment,/we may have incurred during the sun's decline, 
 or among jthe shadows of the night, or in the less whole- 
 
 w
 
 86 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 some glow of moonshine. Giovanni's first movement, 
 on starting from sleep, was to throw open the window, 
 and gaze down into the garden which his dreams had 
 made so fertile of mysteries. He was surprised, and a 
 little ashamed, to find how real and matter-of-fact an 
 affair it proved to be, in the first rays of the sun, which 
 gilded the dew-drops that hung upon leaf and blossom, 
 and, while giving a brighter beauty to each rare flower, 
 brought everything within the limits of ordinary experi- 
 ence. The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of the 
 barren city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot 
 of lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It would serve, he 
 said to himself, as a symbolic language, to keep him in 
 communion with nature. Neither the sickly and thought- 
 worn Doctor Giacomo Rappaccini, it is true, nor his brill- 
 iant daughter, was now visible ; so that .Giovanni could 
 not determine how much of the singularity which he 
 attributed to both was due to their own qualities, and 
 how much to his wonder-working fancy. But he was 
 inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter. 
 
 In the course of the day, he paid his respects to Signer 
 Pietro Baglioni, professor of medicine in the Univer- 
 sity, a physician of eminent repute, to whom Giovanni 
 had brought a letter of introduction. The professor was 
 an elderly personage, apparently of genial nature, and 
 habits that might almost be called jovial ; he kept the 
 young man to dinner, and made himself "very agreeable 
 by the freedom and liveliness of his conversation, espe- 
 cially when warmed by a flask or two of Tuscan wine. 
 Giovanni, conceiving that men of science, inhabitants of 
 the same city, must needs be on familiar terms with one 
 another, took an opportunity to mention the name of 
 Dr. Rappaccini. But the professor did not respond 
 with so much cordiality as he had anticipated. 
 
 " 111 would it become a teacher of the divine art of 
 medicine," said Professor Pietro Baglioni, in answer to 
 a question of Giovanni, " to withhold due and well-con- 
 sidered praise of a physician so eminently skilled as 
 Rappaccini. But, on the other hand, I should answer 
 it but scantily to my conscience, were I to permit a
 
 RAPPACCIN^'S DAUGHTER 87 
 
 worthy youth like yourself, Signor Giovanni, the son of 
 an ancient friend, to imbibe er^^neous ideas respecting . 
 a man who might hereafter chance to hold your life and * 
 death in his hands. The truth is, our worshipful Doctor 
 Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the 
 faculty with perhaps one single exception in Padua, 
 or all Italy. But there are certain grave objections to 
 his professional character." 
 
 " And what are they ? " asked the young man. 
 
 " Has my friend Giovanni any disease of body or heart, 
 that he is so inquisitive about physicians ? " said the 
 professor, with a smile. " But as for Rappaccini, it is 
 said of him and I, who know the man well, can answer / 
 for its truth that he cares infinitely more for science v/ / 
 than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him 
 only as subjects for some new experiment. He would 
 sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or what- 
 ever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so 
 much as a grain of mustard-seed to the great heap of his 
 accumulated knowledge." 
 
 " Methinks he is an awful man, indeed," remarked 
 Guasconti, mentally recalling the cold and purely intel- 
 lectual aspect of Rappaccini. " And yet, worshipful 
 Professor, is it not a noble spirit? Are there many 
 men capable of so spiritual a love of_sdiencsJ^L-^'^^[^ t%^9^ 
 
 " God forbid," answereoTThe prof essor^ somewhat 
 testily "at least, unless they take sounder views of 
 the healing art than those adopted by Rappaccini. It 
 is his theory, that all medicinal virtues are comprised 
 within those substances which we term vegetable poi- 
 sons. These he cultivates with his own hands, and is 
 said even to have produced new varieties of poison, more 
 horribly deleterious than Nature, without the assistance 
 
 of this learned person, would ever have plagued the ^ 
 
 world with. That the signer Doctor does less mischief 
 than might be expected, with such dangerous substances, 
 is undeniable. Now and then, it must be owned, he has 
 effected or seemed to effect a marvellous cure. But, 
 to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should 
 receive little credit for such instances of success they
 
 88 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 &#> 
 
 being probably the work of chance but should be held 
 strictly accountable for his failures, which may justly 
 be considered his own work." 
 
 The youth might have taken Baglioni's opinions with 
 many grains of allowance, had he known that there was 
 a professional warfare of long continuance between him 
 and Doctor Rappaccini, in which the latter was gen- 
 erally thought to have gained the advantage. If the 
 reader be inclined to judge for himself, we refer him to 
 certain black-letter tracts on both sides, preserved in the 
 medical department of the University of Padua. 
 
 " I know not, most learned Professor," returned Gio- 
 vanni, after musing on what had been said of Rappac- 
 cini's exclusive zeal for science, "I know not how 
 dearly this physician may love his art ; but surely there 
 is one object more dear to him. He has a daughter." 
 
 " Aha ! " cried the professor, with a laugh. " So now 
 our friend Giovanni's secret is out. You have heard of 
 this daughter, whom all the young men in Padua are 
 wild about, though not half a dozen have ever had the 
 good hap to see her face. I know little of the Signora 
 Beatrice, save that Rappaccini is said to have instructed 
 her deeply in his science, and that, young and beautiful 
 as fame reports her, she is already qualified to fill a pro- 
 fessor's chair. Perchance her father destines her for 
 mine ! Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking 
 about or listening to. So now, Signer Giovanni, drink 
 off your glass of Lacryma." 
 
 Guasconti returned to his lodgings somewhat heated 
 with the wine he had quaffed, and which caused his 
 brain to swim with strange fantasies in reference to 
 Doctor Rappaccini and the beautiful Beatrice. On his 
 way, happening to pass by a florist's, he bought a fresh 
 bouquet of flowers. 
 
 Ascending to his chamber, he seated himself near the 
 window, but within the shadow thrown by the depth of 
 the wall, so that he could look down into the garden 
 with little risk of being discovered. All beneath his eye 
 was a solitude. The strange plants were basking in 
 the sunshine, and now and then nodding gently to one
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 89 
 
 another, as if in acknowledgment of sympathy and kin- 
 dred. In the midst, by the shattered fountain, grew the 
 magnificent shrub, with its purple gems clustering all 
 over it ; they glowed in the air, and gleamed back again 
 out of the depths of the pool, which thus seemed to 
 overflow with colored radiance from the rich reflection 
 that was steeped in it. At first, as we have said, the 
 garden was a solitude. Soon, however, as Giovanni 
 had half-hoped, half-feared, would be the case, a figure 
 appeared beneath the antique sculptured portal, and came 
 down between the rows of plants, inhaling their various 
 perfumes, as if she were one of those beings of old classic 
 fable, that lived upon sweet odors. On again beholding 
 Beatrice, the young man was even startled to perceive 
 how much her beauty exceeded his recollection of it ; so 
 brilliant, so vivid in its character, that she glowed amid 
 the sunlight, and, as Giovanni whispered to himself, posi- 
 tively illuminated the more shadowy intervals of the gar- 
 den path. Her face being now more revealed than on 
 the former occasion, he was struck by its expression of 
 simplicity and sweetness; qualities that had not entered v' 
 into his idea of her character, and which made him ask 
 anew, what manner of mortal she might be. Nor did he 
 fail again to observe, or imagine, an analogy between the 
 beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gem- 
 like flowers over the fountain ; a resemblance which 
 Beatrice seemed to have indulged a fantastic humor in 
 heightening, both by the arrangement of her dress and 
 the selection of its hues. 
 
 Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as 
 with a passionate ardor, and drew its branches into an 
 intimate embrace ; so intimate, that her features were 
 hidden in its leafy bosom, and her glistening ringlets all 
 intermingled with the flowers. 
 
 " Give me thy breath, my sister," exclaimed Beatrice ; 
 " for I am faint with common air ! And give me this 
 flower of thine, which I separate with gentlest fingers 
 from the stem, and place it close beside my heart." 
 
 With these words, the beautiful daughter of Rappac- 
 cini plucked one of the richest blossoms of the shrub,
 
 9 o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 and was about to fasten it in her bosom. But now, 
 unless Giovanni's draughts of wine had bewildered his 
 mses, a singular incident occurred. A small orange- 
 coiofebT~reptile, of the lizard or chameleon species, 
 chanced to be creeping along the path, just at the feet 
 of Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni but, at the dis- 
 tance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen 
 anything so minute it appeared to him, however, that 
 a drop or two of moisture from the broken stem of the 
 -flower descended upon the lizard's head. For an instant, 
 the reptile cdntof ted itself violently, and then lay motion- 
 less in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable 
 phenomenon, and crossed herself, sadly, but without sur- 
 prise ; nor did she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal 
 flower in her bosom. There it blushed, and almost glim- 
 mered with the dazzling effect of a precious stone, add- 
 ing to her dress and aspect the one appropriate charm, 
 which nothing else in the world could have supplied. 
 But Giovanni, out of the shadow of his window, bent 
 forward and shrank back, and murmured and trembled. 
 
 " Am I awake ? Have I my senses ? " said he to him- 
 self. " What is this being ? beautiful, shall I call her ? 
 or inexpressibly terrible? " 
 
 Beatrice now strayed carelessly through the garden, 
 approaching closer beneath Giovanni's window, so that 
 he was compelled to thrust his head quite out of its con- 
 cealment, in order to gratify the intense and painful 
 curiosity which she excited. At this moment, there 
 came a beautiful insect over the garden wall ; it had 
 perhaps wandered through the city and found no flowers 
 nor verdure among those antique haunts of men, until the 
 heavy perfumes of Doctor Rappaccini's shrubs had 
 lured it from afar. Without alighting on the flowers, 
 this winged brightness seemed to be attracted by Bea- 
 trice, and lingered in the air and fluttered about her head. 
 Now here it could not be but that Giovanni Guasconti's 
 eyes deceived him. Be that as it might, he fancied that 
 while Beatrice was gazing at the insect with childish de- 
 light, it grew faint and fell at her feet! its bright 
 wings shivered ! it was dead ! from no cause that he
 
 RAPPACCINFS DAUGHTER 91 
 
 could discern, unless it were the atmosphere of her 
 breath. Again Beatrice crossed herself and sighed 
 heavily, as she bent over the dead insect. 
 
 An impulsive movement of Giovanni drew her eyes 
 to the window. There she beheld the beautiful head of 
 the young man rather a Grecian than an Italian head, 
 with fair regular features, and a glistening of gold 
 among his ringlets gazing down upon her like a being 
 that hovered in mid-air. Scarcely knowing what he did, 
 Giovanni threw down the bouquet which he had hitherto 
 held in his hand. 
 
 " Signora," said he, " there are pure and health- 
 ful flowers. Wear them for the sake of Giovanni 
 Guasconti ! " 
 
 "Thanks, Signer," replied Beatrice, with her rich 
 voice that came forth as it were like a gush of music ; 
 and with a mirthful expression half childish and half 
 woman-like. " I accept your gift, and would fain'" 
 recompense it with this precious purple flower ; but if 
 I toss it into the air, it will not reach you. So Signor 
 Guasconti must even content himself with my thanks." 
 
 She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then 
 as if inwardly ashamed at having stepped aside from 
 her maidenly reserve to respond to a stranger's greet- 
 ing, passed swiftly homeward through the garden. 
 But, few as the moments were, k^e^med to Giovanni 
 when she was on the point of vanishing beneath the . 
 sculptured portal, that his beautiful bouquet was ^ 
 already beginning to wither in her grasp. It was an idle 
 thought ; there could be no possibility of distinguishing 
 a faded flower from a fresh one, at so great a distance. 
 
 For many days after this incident, the young man 
 avoided the window that looked into Doctor Rappac- 
 cini's garden, as if something ugly and monstrous 
 would have blasted his eyesight had he been betrayed 
 into a glance. He felt conscious of having put him- 
 self to a certain extent within the influence of an 
 unintelligible power, by the communication which he 
 had opened with Beatrice. The wisest course would 
 have been, if his heart were in any real danger, to quit
 
 92 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 his lodgings and Padua itself, at once; the next wiser, 
 to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the 
 familiar and daylight view of Beatrice ; thus bringing 
 her rigidly and systematically within the limits of 
 ordinary experience. Least of all, while avoiding her 
 sight, should Giovanni have remained so near this 
 extraordinary being, that the proximity and "possibility^ -^ 
 ^veiTorintercourse^should give a kind of substance and 
 reality to the wild vagaries which his imagination ran 
 riot continually in producing. Guasconti had not a deep 
 heart or at all events, its depths were not sounded 
 now but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern 
 temperament, which rose every instant to a higher fever- 
 pitch. Whether or no Beatrice possessed those terrible 
 attributes that fatal breath the affinity with those 
 so beautiful and deadly flowers which were indicated 
 by what Giovanni had witnessed, she had at least 
 instilled a fierce and subtle poison into his system. It 
 was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness 
 to him ; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to 
 be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed 
 to pervade her physical frame ; but a wild offspring of 
 both love and horror that had each parent in it, and 
 burned like one and shivered like the other. Giovanni 
 knew not what to dread ; still less did he know what to 
 hope ; yet hope and dread ,k,ept a continual warfare in 
 his breast, alternately vanquishing one another and 
 starting up afresh to renew the contest.'' Blessed are all 
 simple emotions, be they dark or bright ! It is the lurid 
 intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating 
 blaze of the infernal regions. JT 
 
 Sometimes he endeavored to assuage r the fever of his 
 spirit by a rapid walk through the streets of Padua, or 
 beyond its gates; his footsteps^kept time with the 
 throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to 
 accelerate itself to a race. One day he found himself 
 arrested; his arm was seized by a portly personage who 
 had turned back on recognizing the young man, and 
 expended much breath in overtaking him. 
 
 "Signer Giovanni! stay, my young friend!" cried
 
 RAPPACCINFS DAUGHTER 93 
 
 he. " Have you forgotten me ? That might well be the 
 case, if I were as much altered as yourself." 
 
 It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided, ever 
 since their firjj: meeting, from a doubt that the pro- 
 fessor's sagacity'would look too deeply into his secrets. 
 Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared forth wildly 
 from his inner world into the outer one, and spoke like 
 a man in a dream. 
 
 " Yes ; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor 
 Pietro Baglioni. Now let me pass ! " 
 
 "Not yet not yet, Signer Giovanni Guasconti," said 
 the professor, smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing 
 the youth with an earnest glance. " What ; did I grow 
 up side by side with your father, and shall his son pass 
 me like a stranger, in these old streets of Padua ? 
 Stand still, Signer Giovanni ; for we must have a word 
 or two before we part." 
 
 "Speedily, then, most worshipful Professor, speed- 
 ily ! " said Giovanni, with feverish impatience. " Does 
 not your worship see that I am in haste ? " 
 
 Now, while he was speaking, there came a man in 
 black along the street, stooping and moving feebly, like 
 a person in inferior health. His face was all overspread 
 with a most sickly and sallow hue, but yet so pervaded 
 with an expression of piercing and active intellect, that 
 an observer might easily have overlooked the merely 
 physical attributes, and have seen only this wonderful 
 energy. As he passed, this person exchanged a cold 
 and distant salutation with Baglioni, but fixed his eyes 
 upon Giovanni with an intentness that seemed to bring 
 out whatever was within him worthy of notice. Never- 
 theless, there was a peculiar quietness in the look, as if" j 
 taking merely a speculative, not a human, interest in the 
 young man. 
 
 " It is Doctor Rappaccini ! " whispered the professor, 
 when the stranger had passed. "Has he ever seen 
 your face before ? " 
 
 "Not that I know," answered Giovanni, starting at 
 the name. 
 
 " He has seen you ! he must have seen you ! " said
 
 94 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 Baglioni, hastily. " For some purpose or other, this 
 man of science is making a study of you. I know that 
 look of his ! It is the same that coldly illuminates his 
 face, as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, 
 which, in pursuance of some experiment, he has killed 
 by the perfume of a flower ; a look as deep as nature 
 itself, but without nature's warmth of love. Signer 
 Giovanni, I will stake my life upon it, you are the sub- 
 ject of one of Rappaccini's experiments ! " 
 
 " Will you make a fool of me ? " cried Giovanni, 
 passionately. " That, Signor Professor, were an un- 
 toward experiment." 
 
 " Patience, patience ! " replied the imperturbable 
 professor. " I tell thee, my poor Giovanni, that 
 Rappaccini has a scientific interest in thee. Thou 
 hast fallen into fearful hands! And the Signora 
 Beatrice? What part does she act in this mystery?" 
 
 But Guasconti, finding Baglioni's pertinacity intoler- 
 able, here broke away, and was gone before the professor 
 could again seize his arm. He looked after the young 
 man intently, and shook his head. 
 
 "This must not be," said Baglioni to himself. " The 
 youth is the son of my old friend, and shall not come to 
 any harm from which the arcana of medical science can 
 preserve him. Besides, it is too insufferable an imperti- 
 nence in Rappaccini thus to snatch the lad out of my 
 own hands, as I may say, and make use of him for his 
 infernal experiments. This daughter of his ! It shall 
 ._jDe_lpoked to. Perchance, most learned Rappaccini, I 
 ^ mayloil you where you little dream of it!" 
 
 Meanwhile, Giovanni had pursued a circuitous route, 
 and at length found himself at the door of his lodgings. 
 As he crossed the threshold, he was met by old Lisabetta, 
 who^sniirked and smiled, and was evidently desirous to 
 -attract his attention ; vainly, however, as the ebullition 
 of his feelings had momentarily subsided into a cold and 
 dull vacuity. He turned his eyes full upon the withered 
 face that was puckering itself into a smile, but seemed to 
 behold it not. The old dame, therefore, laid her grasp 
 upon his cloak. \
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 95 
 
 " Signer ! Signer ! " whispered she, still with a smile 
 over the whole breadth of her visage, so that it looked 
 not unlike a grotesque carving in wood, darkened by 
 centuries *' Listen, Signor ! There is a private en- 
 trance into the garden ! " 
 
 " What do you say ? " exclaimed Giovanni, turning 
 quickly about, as if an inanimate thing should start 
 into feverish life. "A private entrance into Doctor 
 Rappaccini's garden ! " 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! not so loud ! " whispered Lisabetta, 
 putting her hand over his mouth. "Yes; into the 
 worshipful Doctor's garden, where you may see all his 
 fine shrubbery. Many a young man in Padua would 
 give gold to be admitted among those flowers." 
 
 Giovanni put a piece of gold into her hand. 
 
 " Show me the way," said he. 
 
 A surmise, probably excited by his conversation with 
 Baglioni, crossed his mind, that this interposition of oldV^^^ 
 Lisabetta might perchance be connected with the 4ns. i<l 
 trigue, whatever were its nature, in which the professor 
 seemed to suppose that Doctor Rappaccini was involv- 
 ing him. But such a suspicion, though it disturbed 
 Giovanni, was inadequate to restrain him. The instant 
 he was aware of the possibility of approaching Beatrice, 
 it seemed an absolute necessity of his existence to do so. 
 It mattered not whether she were angel or demon ; he 
 was irrevocably within her sphere, and must obey the 
 law that whirled him onward, in ever lessening circles,^ <f7^ 
 towards a result which he did not attempt to f oreshadowT 
 And yet, strange to say, there came across him a sudden 
 doubt, whether this intense interest on his part were not/ 
 delusory whether it were really of so deep and positive 
 a nature as to justify him in now thrusting himself into 
 an incalculable position whether it were not merely the 
 fantasy of a young man's brain, only slightly, or not at 
 all, connected with his heart ! 
 
 He paused hesitated turned half about but 
 again went on. His withered guide led him along 
 several obscure passages, j and finally undid a door, 
 through which, as it was opened, there came the sight
 
 96 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 and sound of rustling leaves with the broken sunshir.e 
 glimmering among them. Giovanni stepped forth, and 
 forcing himself through the entanglement of a shrub 
 that wreathed its tendrils over the hidden entrance, he 
 stood beneath his own whnlpw, in the open area of 
 Doctor Rappaccini's garden. 
 
 How often is it the case, that, when impossibilities 
 have come to pass, and dreams have condensed their 
 misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves 
 calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances 
 which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to 
 anticipate ! Fate delights to thSvart us thus. Passion 
 will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and 
 lingers sluggishly behind, when an .appropriate adjust- 
 ment of events would seem to summon his appearance. 
 So was tt now with Giovanni. Day after day, his pulses ^^t 
 had throbbed with feverish blood, at the improbableTdeaT^ 
 of an interview with Beatrice, and pf standing with her, 
 face to face, in this very garden, basking in the oriental 
 sunshine of her beauty, and snatching from her full gaze 
 the mystery which he deemed the riddle of his own ex- 
 istence. But how there was a singular and untimely 
 animity within his breast. He threw a glance around 
 the garden to discover if Beatrice or her father were 
 present, and perceiving that he was alone, began a criti- 
 cal observation of the plants. 
 
 The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him ; 
 their gorgeousness seemed fierce, passionate, and even 
 unnatural. There was hardly an individual shrub which 
 a wanderer, straying by himself through a forest, would 
 not have been startled to find growing wild, as if an 
 unearthly face had glared at him out of the thicket. 
 Several, also, would have shocked a delicate instinct by 
 an appearance of artificialness, indicating that there had 
 , been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery, of 
 j various vegetable species, that, the production was no 
 longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of 
 man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery 
 of beauty. They were probably the result of experiment, 
 which, in I one or two cases, had succeeded in mingling 

 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 97 
 
 plants individually lovely into a compound possessing 
 the questionable and ominous character that distin- 
 guished the whole growth of the garden. In fine, 
 Giovianni recognized but two or three plants in the 
 collection, and those of a kind that he well knew to be 
 poisonous. While busy with these contemplations, he 
 heard the rustling of a silken garment, and turning, 
 beheld Beatrice emerging from beneath the sculptured 
 portal. 
 
 Giovanni had not considered with himself what should 
 be his deportment ; whether he should apologize for his 
 intrusion into the garden, or assume that he was there 
 with the privity, at least, if not by the desire, of Doctor 
 Rappaccini or his daughter. But Beatrice's manner 
 placed him at his ease, though leaving him still in doubt 
 by what agency he had gained admittance. She came 
 lightly along the path, and met him near the broken 
 fountain. There was surprise in her face, but brightened 
 by a simple and kind expression of pleasure. 
 
 "You are a connoisseur in flowers, Signer," said 
 Beatrice, with a smile, alhjriinff |n the bouquet which he 
 had flung her from the^window. "It is no marvel, 
 therefore, if the sight of my father's rare collection has 
 tempted you to take a nearer view. If he were here, he 
 could tell you many strange and interesting facts as to 
 the nature and habits of these shrubs, for he has spent 
 a lifetime in such studies, and this garden is his world." 
 
 " And yourself, lady " observed Giovanni " if fame 
 says true you, likewise, are deeply skilled in the virtues 
 indicated by these rich blossoms and these spicy per L _ 
 fumes. Would you deign to be my instructress, I should 
 prove an apter scholar than under Signor Rappaccini 
 himself." 
 
 " Are there such idle rumors ? " asked Beatrice, with 
 the music of a pleasant laugh. " Do people say that I 
 am skilled in my father's science of plants ? What a 
 jest is there ! No ; though I have grown up among 
 these flowers, I know no more of them than their hues 
 and perfume ; and, sometimes, methinks I would fain rid^ tsaCf 
 myself of even that small knowledge. There are many
 
 98 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 flowers here, and those not the least brilliant, that shock 
 and offend me, when they meet my eye. But, pray, 
 Signer, do not believe these stories about my science. 
 Believe nothing of me save what you see with your own 
 eyes." ' I 
 
 " And must I believe all that I have seen with my 
 own eyes ? " asked Giovanni, pointedly, while the recol- 
 lection of former scenes made him shrink. " No, Sig- 
 nora, you demand too little of me. Bid me believe 
 nothing, save what comes from your own lips." 
 
 It would appear that Beatrice understood him. There 
 came a deep flush to her cheek; but she looked full 
 into Giovanni' sVyes, and responded to his gaze of un- 
 easy suspicion with a queenlike haughtiness. 
 ^ so T)id 
 
 you, Signer ! " she replied. " Forget 
 whatever you may have fancied in regard to me. If 
 true to the outward senses, still it may be false in its 
 
 j essence. But the words of Beatrice Rappaccini's lips 
 are true from the heart outward. Those you may 
 believe ! "_, 
 
 A fervor glowed in her whole aspect, and beamed 
 upon Giovanni's consciousness like the light of truth 
 itself. But while she spoke, there was a fragrance in 
 the atmosphere around her rich and delightful, though 
 evanescent, yet which the young man, from an indefin- 
 able reluctance, scarcely dared to draw into his lungs. It 
 might be the odor of^the flowers. Could it be Beatrice's 
 breath, which thus efnbalmed her words with a strange 
 richness, as if by steeping them in her heart ? A faint- 
 ness passed like a shadow over Giovanni, and flitted 
 
 j away ; he seemed to gaze through the beautiful girl's 
 eyes into her transparent soul, and felt no more doubt 
 or fear.^j^ 
 
 The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice's man- 
 ner vanished : she became gay, and appeared to derive 
 a pure delight from her communion with the youth, not 
 unlike what the maiden of a lonely island might have 
 felt, cpnyersiogjEith a voyager from the civilized world. 
 Evidently her experience of life had been confined 
 within the .limits of that garden. She talked now about
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER *, 
 
 matters as simple as the daylight or summer-clouds, and 
 now asked questions in reference to the city, or Gio- 
 vanni's distant home, his friends, his mother, and his 
 sisters ; questions indicating such seclusion, and such 
 lack of familiarity with modes and forms, that Giovanni 
 responded as if to an infant. Her spirit gushed out 
 before him like a fresh' rill, that was just catching its 
 first glimpse of the sunlight, and wondering at the reflec- 
 tions of earth and sky which were flung into its bosom. 
 
 There came thoughts, too, from a deep source, and 
 fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and 
 rubies sparkled upward among tjie Bubbles of the foun- 
 tain. Ever and anon, there gleamed across the young 
 man's mind a sense of wonder, that he should be walk- 
 ing side by side with the being who had so wrought 
 upon his imagination whom he had idealized in such 
 hues of terror in whom he had positively witnessed 
 such manifestations of dreadful attributes that he 
 should be conversing with Beatrice like a brother, and 
 should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such 
 reflections were only momentary ; the effect of her char- 
 acter was too real, not to make itself familiar at once. 
 
 In this free intercourse, they had strayed through the 
 garden, and now, after many turns among its avenues, 
 were come to the shattered fountain, beside which grew 
 the magnificent shrub with its treasury of glowing blos- 
 soms. A fragrance was diffused from it, which Giovanni 
 recognized as identical wittTffiSt which he had attributed^ 
 to Beatrice's breath, but incomparably more powerful/ 
 As her eyes fell upon it, Giovanni beheld her press her 
 hand to her bosom, as if her heart were throbbing sud- 
 denly and painfully. 
 
 " For the first time in my life," murmured she, ad- 
 dressing the shrub, " I had forgotten thee ! " 
 
 "I remember, Signora," said Giovanni, "that you 
 once promised to reward me with one of these living 
 gems for the bouquet which I had the happy boldness 
 to fling to your feet. Permit me now to pluck it as a 
 memorial of this interview." 
 
 He made a step towards the shrub, with extended
 
 ioo MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 hand. But Beatrice darted forward, uttering a shriek 
 that went through his heart like a dagger. She caught 
 his hand, and drew it back with the whole force of her 
 slender figure. Giovanni felt her touch thrilling through 
 .. his fibres. "HflK- *A> N 
 
 " Touch it not ! " exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. 
 " Not for thy life ! It is fatal ! " 
 
 Then, hiding her face, she fled from him, and van- 
 ished beneath the sculptured portal. As Giovanni fol- 
 lowed her with his eyes, he beheld the emaciated figure 
 and pale intelligence of Doctor Rappaccini, who had 
 been watching the scene, he knew not how long, within 
 the shadow of the entrance. 
 
 No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber, than 
 the image of Beatrice came back to his passionate mus- 
 ings, invested with all the witchery that had been gath- 
 ering around it ever since his first glimpse of her, and 
 now likewise imbued with a tender warmth of girlish 
 womanhood. She was human; her nature was en- 
 dowed with all gentle and feminine qualities ; she was 
 worthiest to be worshipped ; she was capable, surely, on 
 her part, of the height and heroism of love. Those 
 tokens, which he had hitherto considered as proofs of a 
 frightful peculiarity in her physical and moral system, 
 were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle sophistry of 
 passion, transmuted into a golden crown of enchant- 
 ment, rendering Beatrice the more admirable, by so 
 much as she was the more unique. Whatever had 
 looked ugly, was now beautiful ; or, if incapable of such 
 a change, it stole away and hid itself among those shape- 
 less half-ideas, which throng the dim region beyond the 
 daylight of our perfect consciousness. Thus did Gio- 
 vanni spend the night, nor fell asleep, until the dawn 
 had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Doctor 
 Rappaccini's garden, whither his dreams doubtless led 
 him. Up rose the sun in his due season, and flinging 
 his beams upon the young man's eyelids, awoke him to 
 a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he became 
 sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand 
 in his right hand the very\hand which Beatrice had 

 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 101 
 
 grasped in her own, when he was on the point of pluck- 
 ing one of the gemlike flowers. On the back of that . / 
 hand there was now a purple print, like that of four 
 small fingers, and the likeness of a slender thumb upon 
 his wrist. JjV)Lt u 
 
 Oh, how stubbornly does love or even that cunning 
 Semblance of love which flourishes in the imagination, 
 but strikes no depth of root into the heart how stub- 
 bornly does it hold its faith, until the moment come, 
 when it is jl&nnfiLio vanish into thin mist! Giovanni 
 wrapt a handkerchief about his hand, and wondered 
 what evil thing had stung him, and soon forgot his pain 
 in a revery of Beatrice. 
 
 After the first interview, a second was in the inevi- 
 table course of what we call fate. A third ; a fourth ; 
 and a meeting with Beatrice in the garden was no 
 longer an incident in Giovanni's daily life, but the whole 
 space in which he might be said to live ; for the antici- 
 pation and memory of that ecstatic hour made up the / 
 remainder. Nor was it otherwise with the daughter of 
 Rappaccini. She watched for the youth's appearance, 
 and flew to his side with confidence as unreserved as if 
 they had been playmates from early infancy as if 
 they were such playmates still. If, by any unwonted 
 chance, he failed to come at the appointed moment, she 
 stood beneath the window, and sent up the rich sweet- 
 ness of her tones to float around him in his chamber, 
 and echo and reverberate throughout his heart "Gio- 
 vanni ! Giovanni ! Why tarriest thou ? Come down ! " 
 And down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous V 
 flowers. 
 
 But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still 
 a reserve in Beatrice's demeanor, so rigidly and invari- 
 ably sustained, that the idea of infringing it scarcely 
 occurred to his imagination. By all appreciable signs, 
 they loved ; they had looked love, with eyes that con- 
 veyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into 
 the depths of the other, as if it were too sacred to 
 be whispered by the way ; they had even spoken love, 
 in those gushes of passion when their spirits darted
 
 102 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 forth in articulated breath, like tongues of long-hidden 
 flame ; and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp 
 of hands, nor any slightest caress, such as love claims 
 and hallows. He had never touched one of the gleam- 
 ing ringlets of her hair; her garment so marked was 
 the physical barrier between them had never been 
 waved against him by a breeze. On the few occasions 
 when Giovanni had seemed tempted to overstep the limit, 
 . Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore such a 
 look of desolate separation, shuddermg vj at^itself, that 
 not a spoken word was requisite to repel him. At such 
 times, he was startled at the horrible suspicions that 
 rose, monster-like, out of the caverns of his heart, and 
 stared him in the face ; his love grew thin and faint as 
 the morning-mist; his doubts alone had substance. 
 But when Beatrice's face brightened again, after the 
 momentary shadow, she was transformed at once from 
 the mysterious, questionable being, whom he had 
 watched with so much awe and horror ; she was now 
 the beautiful and unsophisticated girl, whom he felt 
 that his spirit knew with a certainty beyond all other 
 knowledge. 
 
 A considerable time had now passed since Giovanni's 
 last meeting with Baglioni. One morning, however, he 
 was disagreeably surprised by a visit from the professor, 
 whom he had scarcely thought of for whole weeks, and 
 would willingly have forgotten still longer. Given up, 
 as he had long been, to a pervading excitement, he 
 could tolerate no companions, except upon condition of 
 their perfect sympathy with his present state of feeling. 
 Such sympathy was not to be expected from Professor 
 Baglioni. 
 
 The visitor chatted carelessly, for a few moments, 
 about the gossip of the city and the University, and 
 then took up another topic. 
 
 " I have been reading an old classic author lately," 
 said he, " and met with a story that strangely interested 
 me. Possibly you may remember it. It is of an Ind- 
 ian prince who sent a beautiful woman as a present 
 to Alexander the Great. She was as lovely as the
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 103 
 
 dawn, and gorgeous as the sunset ; but what especially 
 distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her 
 breath richer than a garden of Persian roses. Alex- 
 ander, as was natural to a youthful conqueror, fell in 
 love at first sight with this magnificent stranger. But 
 a certain sage physician, happening to be present, dis- 
 covered a terrible secret in regard to her." 
 
 " And what was that ? " asked Giovanni, turning his 
 eyes downward to avoid those of the professor. 
 
 "That this lovely woman," continued Baglioni, with 
 emphasis, " had been nourished with poisons from her 
 birth upward, until her whole nature was so imbued * -v/ 
 with them, that she herself had become the deadliest 
 poison in existence/ Poison was her element of life. 
 With that rich perfume of her breath, she blasted the 
 very air. Her love would have been poison ! her 
 embrace death \\ Is not this a marvellous tale ? " 
 
 " A childish fable," answered Giovanni, nervously 
 starting from his chair. " I marvel how your worship 
 finds time to read such nonsense, among your graver 
 studies." 
 
 " By the bye," said the professor, looking uneasily 
 about him, "what singular fragrance is this in your 
 apartment ? Is it the perfume of your gloves ? It is 
 faint, but delicious, and yet, after all, by no means 
 agreeable. Were I to breathe it long, methinks it 
 would make me ill. It is like the breath of a flower 
 but I see no flowers in the chamber." 
 
 " Nor are there any," replied Giovanni, who had 
 turned pale as the professor spoke ; " nor, I think, is 
 there any fragrance, except in your worship's imagi- 
 nation. Odors, being a sort of element combined of 
 ,the sensual and the spiritual, are apt to deceive us in 
 this manner. The recollection of a perfume the 
 bare idea of it may easily be mistaken for a present 
 reality." 
 
 " Aye ; but my sober imagination does not often play 
 such tricks," said Baglioni; "and were I to fancy any 
 kind of odor, it would be that of some vile apothecary 
 drug, wherewith my fingers are likely enough to be
 
 io 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as I have 
 heard, tinctures his medicaments with odors richer than 
 those of Araby. Doubtless, likewise, the fair and learned 
 Signora Beatrice would minister to her patients with 
 draughts as sweet as a maiden's breath. But woe to 
 him that sips them ! " /Z^^O 
 
 Giovanni's face evinced many contending emotions. 
 The tone in which the professor ajlnded^tq the pure 
 and lovely daughter of Rappaccini was 1l iortUre to his 
 soul ; and yet, the intimation of a view of her character, 
 opposite to his own, gave instantaneous distinctness to 
 a thousand dim suspicions, which now grinned at him 
 like so many demons. But he strove hard to quell 
 them, and to respond to Baglioni with a true lover's 
 perfect faith. 
 
 " Signer Professor," said he, " you were my father's 
 friend perchance, too, it is your purpose to act a 
 friendly part towards his son. I would fain feel noth- 
 ing towards you save respect and deference. But I 
 pray you to observe, Signer, that there is one subject on 
 which we must not speak. You know not the Signora 
 Beatrice. You cannot, therefore, estimate the wrong 
 the blasphemy, I may even say that is offered to her 
 character by a light or injurious word." 
 
 "Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!" answered the 
 professor, with a calm expression of pity, " I know this 
 wretched girl far better than yourself. You shall hear 
 the truth in respect to the poisoner Rappaccini and his 
 poisonous daughter. Yes ; poisonous as she is beauti- 
 ful. Listen ; for even should you do violence to my 
 gray hairs, it shall not silence me. That old fable of 
 the Indian woman has become a truth, by the deep and 
 deadly science of Rappaccini, and in the person of the 
 lovely Beatrice ! " 
 
 Giovanni groaned and hid his face. 
 
 " Her father," continued Baglioni, " was not restrained 
 by natural affection from offering up his child, in this 
 horrible manner, as the victim of his insane zea.1 for 
 science. For let us 'do him justice he is as true a 
 man of science as ever distilled his own heart in an
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 105 
 
 alembic. What, then, will be your fate? Beyond a 
 doubt, you are selected as the material of some new 
 experiment. Perhaps the result is to be death per- 
 haps a fate more awful still ! Rappaccini, with what he 
 calls the interest of science before his eyes, will hesitate 
 at nothing." 
 
 " It is a dream ! " muttered Giovanni to himself, 
 " surely it is a dream ! " 
 
 " But," resumed the professor, " be of good cheer, 
 son of my friend! It is not yet too late for the rescue. 
 Possibly, we may even succeed in bringing back this 
 miserable child within the limits of ordinary nature, 
 from which her father's madness has estranged her. 
 Behold this little silver vasej It was wrought by the 
 hands of the renowned Benvenuto Cellini, and is well 
 worthy to be a love-gift to the fairest dame in Italy. But 
 its contents are invaluable. One little sip of this antidote * 
 would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the * 
 
 Borgias iiffiodiJous. Doubt not that it will be as effica- - 
 
 cious against those of Rappaccini. Besto\v~T:he 
 
 and the precious liquid within it, on your Beatrice, and 
 
 hopefully await the result." 
 
 Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver phial 
 on the table, and withdrew, leaving what he had said to 
 produce its effect upon the young man's mind. 
 
 " We will thwart Rappaccini yet ! " thought he, 
 chuckling to himself, as he descended the stairs. " But, 
 
 let us confess the truth of him, he is a wonderful man ! .^ g 
 
 a wonderful man, indeed ! A vile~empiric, however, 
 in his practice, and therefore not to be tolerated by 
 those who respect the good old rules of the medical 
 profession ! " 
 
 Throughout Giovanni's whole acquaintance with Bea- 
 trice, he had occasionally, as we have said, been haunted 
 by dark surmises as to her character. Yet, so thor- 
 oughly had she made herself felt by him as a simple, 
 natural, most affectionate and guileless creature, that 
 the image now held up by Professor Baglioni looked as 
 strange and incredible as if it were not in accordance 
 with his own original conception. True, there were
 
 io6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 ugly recollections connected with his first glimpses of 
 the beautiful girl ; he could not quite forget the bouquet 
 that withered in her grasp, and the insect that perished 
 amid the sunny air, by no ostensible agency save the 
 fragrance of her breath. These incidents, however, 
 dissolving in the pure light of her character, had no 
 longer the efficacy of facts, but were acknowledged as 
 mistaken fantasies, by whatever testimony of the senses 
 they might appear to be substantiated. There is some- 
 thing truer, and more real, than what we can see with 
 the eyes and touch with the finger. On such better 
 evidence had Giovanni founded his confidence in Bea- 
 trice, though rather by the necessary force of her high 
 attributes, than by any deep and generous faith on his 
 part. But now his spirit was incapable of sustaining 
 itself at the height to which the early enthusiasm of 
 passion had exalted it ; he fell down, grovelling among 
 earthly doubts, and defiled therewith the pure white- 
 ness of Beatrice's image. Not that he gave her up ; 
 he did but distrust. He resolved to institute some de- 
 cisive test that should satisfy him, once for all, whether 
 there were those dreadful peculiarities in her physical 
 nature, which could not be supposed to exist without 
 some corresponding monstrosity of soul. His eyes, 
 gazing down afar, might have deceived him as to the 
 lizard, the insect, and the flowers. But if he could wit- 
 ness, at the distance of a few paces, the sudden blight 
 of one fresh and healthful flower in Beatrice's hand, 
 there would be room for no further question. With 
 this idea, he hastened to the florist's, and purchased a 
 bouquet that was still gemmed with the morning dew- 
 drops. 
 
 It was now the customary hour of his daily interview 
 with Beatrice. Before descending into the garden, 
 Giovanni failed not to look at his figure in the mirror ; 
 a vanity to be expected in a beautiful young man, yet, 
 as displaying itself at that troubled and feverish mo- 
 ment, the token of a certain shallowness of feeling and 
 insincerity of character. He did gaze, however, and 
 said to himself, that his features had never before pos-
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 107 
 
 sessed so rich a grace, nor his eyes such vivacity, 
 nor his cheeks so warm a hue of superabundant 
 life. y Utem 
 
 " Ar least," thought he, "her poison has not yet 
 insinuated itself into my system. I am no flower to 
 perish in her grasp ! " 
 
 With that thought he turned his eyes on the bou- 
 quet, which he had never once laid aside from his 
 hand. A thrill of indefinable horror shot through 
 his frame, on perceiving that ihose dewy flowers 
 atere already beginning to droop ; they wore the 
 aspect of things that had been fresh and lovely, yes- 
 terday. Giovanni grew white as marble, and stood 
 motionless before the mirror, staring at his own re- 
 flection there, as at the likeness of something fright- 
 ful. He remembered Baglioni's remark about the 
 fragrance that seemed to pervade the chamber. It 
 must have been the poison in his breath ! Then he 
 shuddered shuddered at himself ! Recovering from 
 his stupor, he began to watch, with curious eye, a 
 spider that was busily at work, hanging its web from 
 the antique cornice of the apartment, crossing and 
 recrossing the artful system of interwoven lines, as 
 vigorous and active a spider as ever dangled from an 
 old ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the insect, and 
 emitted a deep, long breath. The spider suddenly 
 ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a tremor origi- 
 nating in the body of the small artisan. Again Gio- 
 vanni sent forth a breath, deeper, longer, and imbued 
 with a venomous feeling out of his heart ; he knew 
 not whether he were wicked or only desperate. The 
 spider made a c^nvmsrve gripe with his limbs, and 
 hung dead across the window. 
 
 "Accursed ! accursed ! " muttered Giovanni, address- 
 ing himself. " Hast thou grown so poisonous, that this 
 deadly insect perishes by thy breath ? " 
 
 At that moment, a rich, sweet voice came floating up 
 from the garden : 
 
 "Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why 
 tarriest thou ? Come down ! "
 
 io8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " Yes," muttered Giovanni again. " She is the. only 
 being whom my breath may not slay ! Would that it 
 might ! " 
 
 He rushed down, and in an instant was standing 
 before the bright and loving eyes of Beatrice. A 
 ,^ moment ago, his wrath and despair had been so fierce 
 ' that he could have desired nothing so much as to 
 v wither her by a glance. But, with her actual presence, 
 there came influences which had too real an existence 
 to be at once shaken off; recollections of the delicate 
 and benign power of her feminine nature, which had so 
 often enveloped him in a religious calm ; recollections 
 of many a holy and passionate outgush of her heart, 
 when the pure fountain had been unsealed from its 
 depths, and made visible in its transparency to his 
 mental eye ; recollections which, had Giovanni known 
 how to estimate them, would have assured him that 
 all this ugly mystery was but an earthly illusion, and 
 that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have gathered 
 over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel. 
 Incapable as he was of such high faith, still her pres- 
 ence had not utterly lost its magic. Giovanni's rage 
 was quelled into an aspect of sullen insensibility. 
 Beatrice, with a quick spiritual sense, immediately 
 felt that there was a gulf of blackness .between them, 
 which neither he nor she could pass. iTiey walked 
 on together, sad and silent, and came thus to the 
 marble fountain, and to its pool of water on the ground, 
 in the midst of which grew the shrub that bore gem- 
 like blossoms. Giovanni was affrighted at the eager 
 enjoyment the appetite, as it were with which he 
 found himself inhaling the fragrance of the flowers. 
 
 " Beatrice," asked he, abruptly, " whence came this 
 shrub ? " 
 
 " My father created it," answered she, with simplicity. 
 
 " Created it ! created it ! " repeated Giovanni. " What 
 mean you, Beatrice ? " 
 
 "He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets 
 of nature," replied Beatrice; "and, at the hour when 
 I first drew breath, this plant sprang from the soil,
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 109 
 
 the offspring of his science, of his intellect, while I 
 was but his earthly child. Approach it not ! " con- 
 tinued she, observing with terror that Giovanni was 
 drawing nearer to the shrub. "It has qualities that 
 you little dream of. But I, dearest Giovanni, I 
 grew up and blossomed with the plant, and was nour- 
 ished with its breath. It. was my sister, and I loved 
 it with a human affection: for alas! hast thou not 
 suspected it? there jy^s an awful doom." 
 
 Here Giovanni frowried so darkly upon her that 
 Beatrice paused and trembled. But her faith in his 
 tenderness reassured her, and made^her blush that 
 she had doubted for an instant. /^3rT'$; 
 
 " There was an awful doom," she continued, 
 " the effect of my father's fatal love of science which 
 estranged me from all society of my kind. Until 
 Heaven sent thee, dearest Giovanni, oh ! how lonely 
 was thy jpoor Beatrice ! " 
 
 " Was it a hard doom ? " asked Giovanni, fixing his 
 eyes upon her. ,<?)3\-5s'^ 
 
 "Only of late have I known how hard it was," 
 answered she, tenderly. " Oh, yes ; but my heart was 
 torpid, and therefore quiet." 
 
 Giovanni's rage broke forth from his sullen gloom 
 like a lightning-flash out of a dark cloud. 
 
 " Accursed one ! " cried he, with venomous scorn 
 and anger. " And finding thy solitude wearisome, 
 thou hast severed me, likewise, from all the warmth of 
 life, and enticed me into thy region of unspeakable 
 horror!" 
 
 " Giovanni ! " exclaimed Beatrice, turning her large 
 bright eyes upon his face. The force of his words 
 had not found its way into her mind ; she was merely 
 thunder-struck. 
 
 " Yes, poisonous thing ! " repeated Giovanni, be- 
 side himself with passion. " Thou hast done it ! 
 Thou hast blasted me ! Thou hast filled my veins 
 with poison ! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, 
 as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself, a 
 world's wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now if
 
 no MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 , our breath be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all 
 2<i?t others let us join our lips in one kiss of unutterable 
 ^^hatred, and so die ! " 
 
 " What has befallen me ? " murmured Beatrice, with a 
 low moan out of her heart. " Holy Virgin, pity me, a 
 poor heart-broken child \"s' < 
 
 " Thou ! Dost th>xfpray ? " cried Giovanni, still 
 with the same nerraish scorn. "Thy very prayers, 
 as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with 
 death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church, 
 and dip our fingers in the holy water at the portal ! 
 They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence. 
 Let us sign crosses in the air ! It will be scattering 
 curses abroad in the likeness of holy symbols ! " 
 
 "Giovanni," said Beatrice, calmly, for her grief was 
 beyond passion, "why dost thou join thyself with 
 me thus in those terrible words ? I, it is true, am 
 the horrible thing thou namest me. But thou! 
 what hast thou to do, save, with one other shudder at 
 my hideous misery, to go forth out of the garden and 
 ^ mingle with thy race, and forget that there ever 
 crawled on earth such a monster as poor Beatrice ? " 
 
 "Dost thou pretend ignorance?" asked Giovanni, 
 scowling upon her. " Behold ! This power have I 
 gained from the pure daughter of Rappaccini ! " 
 
 There was a swarm of summer-insects flitting through 
 the air, in search of the food promised by the flower- 
 odors of the fatal garden. They circled round Gio- 
 vanni's head, and were evidently attracted towards him 
 by the same influence which had drawn them, for an 
 instant, within the sphere of several of the shrubs. He 
 sent forth a breath among them, and smiled bitterly at 
 Beatrice, as at least a score of the insects fell dead upon 
 the ground. 
 
 " I see it ! I see it ! " shrieked Beatrice. " It is my 
 father's fatal science ! No, no, Giovanni ; it was not 
 I ! Never, never ! I dreamed only to love thee, and 
 be with thee a little time, and so to let thee pass away, 
 leaving but thine image in mine heart. For, Giovanni, 
 believe it though my body be nourished with
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER in 
 
 poison, my spirit is God's creature, and craves love as 
 its daily food. But my father ! he has united us in 
 this fearful sympathy. Yes ; spurn me ! tread upon 
 me ! kill me ! Oh, what is death, after such words as 
 thine ? But it was not I ! Not for a world of bliss 
 would I have done it ! " 
 
 Giovanni's passion had exhausted itself in its outburst 
 from his lips. There now came across him a sense, 
 mournful, and not without tenderness, of the intimate 
 and peculiar relationship between Beatrice and himself. 
 They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would 
 be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of 
 human life. Ought not, then, the desert of humanity 
 around them to press this insulated pair closer together ? 
 If they should be cruel to one another, who was there 
 to be kind to them ? Besides, thought Giovanni, might 
 there not still be a hope of his returning within the 
 limits of ordinary nature, and leading Beatrice the 
 redeemed Beatrice by the hand ? Oh, weak, and self- 
 ish, and unworthy spirit, that could dream of an earthly 
 union and earthly happiness as possible, after such deep 
 love had been so bitterly wronged as was Beatrice's love 
 by Giovanni's blighting words ! No, no ; there could be 
 no such hope. She must pass heavily, with that broken 
 heart, across the borders she must bathe her hurts in 
 some fount of Paradise, and forget her grief in the light 
 of immortality and there be well ! 
 
 But Giovanni did not know it. 
 
 " Dear Beatrice," said he, approaching her, while she 
 shrank away, as always at his approach, but now with 
 a different impulse " dearest Beatrice, our fate is not 
 yet so desperate. Behold ! There is a medicine, po- 
 tent, as a wise physician has assured me, and almost 
 divine in its efficacy. It is composed of ingredients the 
 most opposite to those by which thy awful father has 
 brought this calamity upon thee and me. It is dis- 
 tilled of blessed herbs. Shall we not quaff it together, 
 and thus be purified from evil ? " 
 
 " Give it me ! " said Beatrice, extending her hand to 
 receive the little silver phial which Giovanni took from
 
 ii2 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 his bosom. She added, with a peculiar emphasis, " I 
 will drink but do thou await the result." 
 
 She put Baglioni's antidote to her lips ; and, at the 
 same moment, the figure of Rappaccini emerged from 
 the portal, and came slowly towards the marble foun- 
 tain. As he drew near, the pale man of science seemed 
 to gaze with a triumphant expression at the beautiful 
 youth and maiden, as might an artist who should spend 
 his life in achieving a picture or a group of statuary, 
 and finally be satisfied with his success. He paused 
 his bent form grew erect with conscious power, he 
 spread out his hand over them, in the attitude of a 
 father imploring a blessing upon his children. But 
 those were the same hands that had thrown poison into 
 the stream of their lives ! Giovanni trembled. Beatrice 
 shuddered very nervously, and pressed her hand upon 
 her heart. .y^^c ^ 
 
 "My daughter," said Rappaccini, "thou art no 
 longer lonely in the world ! Pluck one of those precious 
 gems from thy^ sister shrub, and bid thy bridegroom 
 wear it in his bos'om. It will not harm him now ! My 
 science, and the sympathy between thee and him, have 
 ~scFwrought within his system, that he now stands apart 
 from common men, as thou dost, daughter of my pride 
 and triumph, from ordinary women. Pass on, then, 
 through the world, most dear to one another, and dread- 
 ful to all besides ! " 
 
 " My father," said Beatrice, feebly and still, as she 
 spoke, she kept her hand upon her heart " wherefore 
 didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon thy child ? " 
 
 "Miserable!" exclaimed Rappaccini. "What mean 
 you, foolish girl ? Dost thou deem it misery to be en- 
 dowed with marvellous gifts, against which no power 
 nor^strength could avail an enemy ? Misery, to be able 
 to q\iell the mightiest with a breath? Misery, to be 
 as terrible as thou art beautiful ? Wouldst thou, then, 
 have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed 
 to all evil, and capable of none ? " 
 
 " I would fain have been loved, not feared," mur- 
 mured Beatrice, sinking down upon the ground. " But
 
 RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER 113 
 
 now it matters not ; I am going, father, where the evil, 
 which thou hast striven to mingle with my /being, will 
 pass away like a dream like the fragrajtfce of these 
 poisonous flowers, which will no longer taint my breath 
 among the flowers of Eden. Farewell, Giovanni ! Thy 
 words of hatred are like lead within my heart but 
 they, too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there 
 not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in 
 mine ? " 
 
 To Beatrice so radically had her earthly part been 
 wrought upon by Rappaccini's skill as poison had 
 been life, so the powerful antidote was death. And 
 thus the poor victim of man's ingenuity and of thwarted 
 nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts 
 of perverted wisdom, perished there^/at the feet of her 
 father and Giovanni. Just at that moment, Professor 
 Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and 
 called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to 
 the thunder-stricken man of science : 
 
 " Rappaccini ! Rappaccini ! And is this the upsliot 
 of your experiment ? " 
 
 -^ 
 
 o^YY~ > v 
 
 tt^ 

 
 MRS. BULLFROG 
 
 IT makes me melancholy to see how like fools some 
 very sensible people act, in the matter of choosing 
 wives. They perplex their judgments by a most undue 
 attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits, 
 disposition, and other trifles, which concern nobody but 
 the lady herself. An unhappy gentleman, resolving to 
 wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and 
 hand till both get so old and withered, that no tolerable 
 woman will accept them. Now, this is the very height 
 of absurdity. A kind Providence has so skilfully 
 adapted sex to sex, and the mass of individuals to each 
 other, that, with certain obvious exceptions, any male 
 and female may be moderately happy in the married 
 state. The true rule is, to ascertain that the match is 
 fundamentally a good one, and then to take it for 
 granted that all minor objections, should there be such, 
 will vanish, if you let them alone. Only put yourself 
 beyond hazard, as to the real basis of matrimonial bliss, 
 and it is scarcely to be imagined what miracles, in the 
 way of reconciling smaller incongruities, connubial love 
 will effect. 
 
 For my own part, I freely confess, that, in my 
 bachelorship, I was precisely such an over-curious 
 simpleton, as I now advise the reader not to be. My 
 early habits had gifted me with a feminine sensibility, 
 and too exquisite refinement. I was the accomplished 
 graduate of a dry-goods store, where, by dint of minis- 
 tering to the whims of fine ladies, and suiting silken 
 hose to delicate limbs, and handling satins, ribbons, 
 chintzes, calicoes, tapes, gauze, and cambric needles, I 
 grew up a very ladylike sort of a gentleman. It is not 
 assuming too much to affirm, that the ladies themselves 
 were hardly so ladylike as Thomas Bullfrog. So pain- 
 114
 
 MRS. BULLFROG 115 
 
 fully acute was my sense of female imperfection, and 
 such varied excellence did I require in the woman whom 
 I could love, that there was an awful risk of my getting 
 no wife at all, or of being driven to perpetrate matri- 
 mony with my own image in the looking-glass. Besides 
 the fundamental principle, already hinted at, I de- 
 manded the fresh bloom of youth, pearly teeth, glossy 
 ringlets, and the whole list of lovely items, with the 
 utmost delicacy of habits and sentiments, a silken 
 texture of mind, and, above all, a virgin heart. In a 
 word, if a young angel, just from Paradise, yet dressed 
 in earthly fashion, had come and offered me her hand, 
 it is by no means certain that I should have taken it. 
 There was every chance of my becoming a most miser- 
 able old bachelor, when, by the best luck in the world, 
 I made a journey into another State, and was smitten 
 by, and smote again, and wooed, won, and married the 
 present Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the space of a fortnight. 
 Owing to these extempore measures, I not only gave my 
 bride credit for certain perfections, which have not as 
 yet come to light, but also overlooked a few trifling 
 defects, which, however, glimmered on my perception 
 long before the close of the honey-moon. Yet, as there 
 was no mistake about the fundamental principle afore- 
 said, I soon learned, as will be seen, to estimate Mrs. 
 Bullfrog's deficiencies and superfluities at exactly their 
 proper value. 
 
 The same morning that Mrs. Bullfrog and I came 
 together as a unit, we took two seats in the stage-coach, 
 and began our journey towards my place of business. 
 There being no other passengers, we were as much 
 alone, and as free to give vent to our raptures, as if I 
 had hired a hack for the matrimonial jaunt. My bride 
 looked charming^, in a green silk calash, and riding- 
 habit of pelisse cloth, and whenever her red lips parted 
 with a smile, each tooth appeared like an inestimable 
 pearl. Such was my passionate warmth, that we had 
 rattled out of the village, gentle reader, and were lonely 
 as Adam and Eve in Paradise I plead guilty to no less 
 freedom than a kiss ! The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog
 
 n6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened 
 by her indulgence, I threw back the calash from her 
 polished brow, and suffered my fingers, white and deli- 
 cate as her own, to stray among those dark and glossy 
 curls, which realized my day-dreams of rich hair. 
 
 "My love," said Mrs. Bullfrog, tenderly, "you will 
 disarrange my curls." 
 
 " Oh, no, my sweet Laura ! " replied I, still playing 
 with the glossy ringlet. " Even your fair hand could 
 not manage a curl more delicately than mine. I pro- 
 pose myself the pleasure of doing up your hair in papers, 
 every evening, at the same time with my own." 
 
 "Mr. Bullfrog," repeated she, "you must not dis- 
 arrange my curls." 
 
 This was spoken in a more decided tone than I had 
 happened to hear, until then, from my gentlest of all 
 gentle brides. At the same time, she put up her hand 
 and took mine prisoner, but merely drew it away from 
 the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately released it. 
 Now, I am a fidgety little man, and always love to have 
 something in my fingers ; so that, being debarred from 
 my wife's curls, I looked about me for any other play- 
 thing. On the front seat of the coach, there was one 
 of those small baskets in which travelling ladies, who 
 are too delicate to appear at a public table, generally 
 carry a supply of ginger-bread, biscuits and cheese, cold 
 ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain 
 nature to the journey's end. Such airy diet will some- 
 times keep them in pretty good flesh, for a week to- 
 gether. Laying hold of this same little basket, I thrust 
 my hand under the newspaper, with which it was care- 
 fully covered. 
 
 " What 's this, my dear ? " cried I ; for the black neck 
 of a bottle had popped out of the basket. 
 
 "A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog," said rny wife, 
 coolly taking the basket from my hands, and replacing 
 it on the front seat. 
 
 There was no possibility of doubting my wife's word ; 
 but I never knew genuine Kalydor, such as I use for 
 my own complexion, to smell so much like cherry-brandy.
 
 MRS. BULLFROG 117 
 
 I was about to express my fears that the lotion would 
 injure her skin, when an accident occurred, which 
 threatened more than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu 
 had carelessly driven over a heap of gravel, and fairly 
 capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air, and our 
 heels where our heads should have been. What became 
 of my wits, I cannot imagine ; they have always had a 
 perverse trick of deserting me, just when they were 
 most needed ; but so it chanced, that, in the confusion 
 of our overthrow, I quite forgot that there was a Mrs. 
 Bullfrog in the world. Like many men's wives, the 
 good lady served her husband as a stepping-stone. I 
 had scrambled out of the coach, and was instinctively 
 settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly by 
 me, and I heard a smart thwack upon the coach-man's 
 ear. 
 
 " Take that, you villain ! " cried a strange, hoarse 
 voice. " You have ruined me, you blackguard ! I shall 
 never be the woman I have been ! " 
 
 And then came a second thwack, aimed at the 
 driver's other ear, but which missed it, and hit him 
 on the nose, causing a terrible effusion of blood. 
 Now, who, or what fearful apparition, was inflicting 
 this punishment on the poor fellow, remained an im- 
 penetrable mystery to me. The blows were given by 
 a person of grisly aspect, with a head almost bald, 
 and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender, 
 though hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There 
 being no teeth to modulate the voice, it had a mum- 
 bled fierceness, not passionate, but stern, which abso- 
 lutely made me quiver like calves-foot jelly. Who 
 could the phantom be ? The most awful circumstance 
 of the affair is yet to be told ; for this ogre, or what- 
 ever it was, had a riding-habit like Mrs. Bullfrog's, 
 and also a green silk calash, dangling down her back 
 by the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind, 
 I could imagine nothing less, than that the Old Nick, 
 at the moment of our overturn, had annihilated my 
 wife and jumped into her petticoats. This idea 
 seemed the more probable, since I could nowhere
 
 n8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked 
 very sharp about the coach, could I detect any traces 
 of that beloved woman's dead body. There would have 
 been a comfort in giving her Christian burial ! 
 
 " Come, sir, bestir yourself ! Help this rascal to set 
 up the coach," said the hobgoblin to me ; then, with a 
 terrific screech to three countrymen, at a distance 
 " Here, you fellows, ain't you ashamed to stand off, when 
 a poor woman is in distress ? " 
 
 The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, 
 came running at full speed, and laid hold of the topsy- 
 turvy coach. I, also, though a small-sized man, went 
 to work like a son of Anak. The coachman, too, 
 with the blood still streaming from his nose, tugged 
 and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that 
 the next blow might break his head. And yet, be- 
 mauled as the poor fellow had been, he seemed to 
 glance at me with an eye of pity, as if my case were 
 more deplorable than his. But I cherished a hope 
 that all would turn out a dream, and seized the oppor- 
 tunity, as we raised the coach, to jam two of my 
 fingers under the wheel, trusting that the pain would 
 awaken me. 
 
 " Why, here we are all to rights again ! " exclaimed 
 a sweet voice, behind. " Thank you for your assist- 
 ance, gentlemen. My dear Mr. Bullfrog, how you 
 perspire ! Do let me wipe your face. Don't take this 
 little accident too much to heart, good driver. We 
 ought to be thankful that none of our necks are 
 broken ! " 
 
 " We might have spared one neck out of the three," 
 muttered the driver, rubbing his ear and pulling his 
 nose, to ascertain whether he had been cuffed or not. 
 " Why, the woman 's a witch ! " 
 
 I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is posi- 
 tively a fact, that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog, with her 
 glossy ringlets curling on her brow, and two rows of 
 orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips, which 
 wore a most angelic smile. She had regained her 
 riding-habit and calash from the grisly phantom, and
 
 MRS. BULLFROG 119 
 
 was, in all respects, the fovely woman who had been 
 sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn. How 
 she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied 
 her place, and whence she did now return, were prob- 
 lems too knotty for me to solve. There stood my wife. 
 That was the one thing certain among a heap of mys- 
 teries. Nothing remained, but to help her into the 
 coach, and plod on, through the journey of the day and 
 the journey of life, as comfortably as we could. As the 
 driver closed the door upon us, I heard him whisper to 
 the three countrymen : 
 
 " How do you suppose a fellow feels, shut up in the 
 cage with a she-tiger ? " 
 
 Of course, this query could have no reference to my 
 situation. Yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I con- 
 fess that my feelings were not altogether so ecstatic as 
 when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True, she was 
 a sweet woman, and an angel of a wife ; but what if a 
 gorgon should return, amid the transports of our con- 
 nubial bliss, and take the angel's place ! I recollected 
 the tale of a fairy, who half the time was a beautiful 
 woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I 
 taken that very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? 
 While such whims and chimeras were flitting across 
 my fancy, I began to look askance at Mrs. Bullfrog, 
 almost expecting that the transformation would be 
 wrought before my eyes. 
 
 To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which 
 had covered the little basket of refreshments, and which 
 now lay at the bottom of the coach, blushing with a 
 deep-red stain, and emitting a potent spirituous fume, 
 from the contents of the broken bottle of Kalydor. The 
 paper was two or three years old, but contained an 
 article of several columns, in which I soon grew wonder- 
 fully interested. It was the report of a trial for breach 
 of promise of marriage, giving the testimony in full, 
 with fervid extracts from both the gentleman's and 
 lady's amatory correspondence. The deserted damsel 
 had personally appeared in court, and had borne ener- 
 getic evidence to her lover's perfidy, and the strength
 
 120 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of her blighted affections. On the defendant's part, 
 there had been an attempt, though insufficiently sus- 
 tained, to blast the plaintiff's character, and a plea, in 
 mitigation of damages, on account of her unamiable 
 temper. A horrible idea was suggested by the lady's 
 name. 
 
 " Madam," said I, holding the newspaper before 
 Mrs. Bullfrog's eyes and, though a small, delicate, 
 and thin-visaged man, I feel assured that I looked very 
 terrific " Madam," repeated I, through my shut teeth, 
 " were you the plaintiff in this cause ? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog," replied my wife, 
 sweetly, " I thought all the world knew that ! " 
 
 "Horror! horror!" exclaimed I, sinking back on the 
 seat. 
 
 Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep 
 and deathlike groan, as if my tormented soul were rend- 
 ing me asunder. I, the most exquisitely fastidious of 
 men, and whose wife was to have been the most delicate 
 and refined of women, with all the fresh dew-drops glit- 
 tering on her virgin rosebud of a heart ! I thought of 
 the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth I thought of the 
 Kalydor I thought of the coachman's bruised ear and 
 bloody nose I thought of the tender love-secrets, 
 which she had whispered to the judge and jury, 
 and a thousand tittering auditors and gave another 
 groan ! 
 
 " Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife. 
 
 As I made no reply, she gently took my hands within 
 her own, removed them from my face, and fixed her eyes 
 steadfastly on mine. 
 
 " Mr. Bullfrog," said she, not unkindly, yet with all 
 the decision of her strong character, " let me advise 
 you to overcome this foolish weakness, and prove your- 
 self, to the best of your ability, as good a husband as I 
 will be a wife. You have discovered, perhaps, some 
 little imperfections in your bride. Well what did you 
 expect? Women are not angels. If they were, they 
 would go to Heaven for husbands or, at least, be more 
 difficult in their choice on earth."
 
 MRS. BULLFROG 121 
 
 " But why conceal those imperfections ? " interposed 
 I, tremulously. 
 
 " Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable 
 little man ? " said Mrs. Bullfrog, patting me on the 
 cheek. "Ought a woman to disclose her frailties 
 earlier than the wedding-day ? Few husbands, I 
 assure you, make the discovery in such good season, 
 and still fewer complain that these trifles are concealed 
 too long. Well, what a strange man you are ! Poh ! 
 you are joking." 
 
 " But the suit for breach of promise ! " groaned I. 
 
 " Ah ! and is that the rub ? " exclaimed my wife. 
 " Is it possible that you view that affair in an objection- 
 able light ? Mr. Bullfrog, I never could have dreamt 
 it ! Is it an objection, that I have triumphantly defended 
 myself against slander, and vindicated my purity in a 
 court of justice? Or, do you complain, because your 
 wife has shown the proper spirit of a woman, and 
 punished the villain who trifled with her affections ? " 
 
 " But," persisted I shrinking into a corner of the 
 coach, however ; for I did not know precisely how much 
 contradiction the proper spirit of a woman would endure 
 " but, my love, would it not have been more dignified 
 to treat the villain with the silent contempt he merited ? " 
 
 " That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife, 
 slyly ; " but, in that case, where would have been the five 
 thousand dollars, which are to stock your dry-goods store?" 
 
 " Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor," demanded I, as 
 if my life hung upon her words, " is there no mistake 
 about those five thousand dollars ? " 
 
 " Upon my word and honor, there is none," replied 
 she. "The jury gave me every cent the rascal had 
 and I have kept it all for my dear Bullfrog ! " 
 
 "Then, thou dear woman," cried I, with an over- 
 whelming gush of tenderness, " let me fold thee to my 
 heart! The basis of matrimonial bliss is secure, and 
 all thy little defects and frailties are forgiven. Nay, 
 since the result has been so fortunate, I rejoice at the 
 wrongs which drove thee to this blessed lawsuit. Happy 
 Bullfrog that I am ! "
 
 /T 
 / JL 
 
 FIRE-WORSHIP 
 
 T is a great revolution in social and domestic life 
 and no less so in the life of the secluded student 
 this almost universal exchange of the open fireplace for 
 the cheerless and ungenial stove. /On such a morning 
 as now lowers around our old gray parsonage, I miss 
 the bright face of my ancient friend, who was wont to 
 dance upon the hearth, and play the part of a more 
 familiar sunshine. It is sad to turn from the cloudy sky 
 and sombre landscape from yonder hill, with its crown 
 of rusty, black pines, the foliage of which is so dismal 
 in the absence of the sun ; that bleak pasture land, and 
 the broken surface of the potato field, with the brown 
 clods partly concealed by the snow-fall of last night ; 
 the swollen and sluggish river, with ice-encrusted bor- 
 ders, dragging its bluish gray stream along the verge 
 of our orchard, like a snake half torpid with the cold 
 it is sad to turn from an outward scene of so little com- 
 fort, and find the same sullen influences brooding within 
 the precincts of my study. Where is that brilliant guest 
 that quick and subtle spirit whom Prometheus lured 
 from Heaven to civilize mankind, and cheer them in 
 their wintry desolation that comfortable inmate, whose 
 smile, during eight months of the year, was our sufficient 
 consolation for summer's lingering advance and early 
 flight ? Alas ! blindly inhospitable, grudging the food 
 that kept him cheery and mercurial, we have thrust him 
 into an iron prison, and compel him to smoulder away 
 his life on a daily pittance which once would have been 
 too scanty for his breakfast ! Without a metaphor, we^ 
 now make our fire in an air-tight stove, and supply it 
 with some half-a-dozen sticks of wood between dawn 
 and nightfall. 
 
 I never shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly
 
 FIRE-WORSHIP 123 
 
 may it be said, that the world looks darker for it. In 
 one way or another, here and there, and all around 
 us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the 
 picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of human 
 life. The domestic fire was a type of all these attri- 
 butes, and seemed to bring might and majesty, and wild 
 Nature, and a spiritual essence, into our inmost home, 
 and yet to dwell with us in such friendliness, that its 
 mysteries and marvels excited no dismay. The same 
 mild companion, that smiled so placidly in our faces, 
 was he that comes roaring out of ^tna, and rushes 
 madly up the sky, like a fiend breaking loose from tor- 
 ment, and fighting for a place among the upper angels. 
 He it is, too, that leaps from cloud to cloud amid the 
 crashing thunder-storm. It was he whom the Gheber 
 worshipped, with no unnatural idolatry ; and it was 
 he who devoured London and Moscow, and many an- 
 other famous city, and who loves to riot through our 
 own dark forests, and sweep across our prairies, and to 
 whose ravenous maw, it is said, the universe shall one 
 day be given as a final feast. Meanwhile he is the great 
 artisan and laborer by whose aid men are enabled to build 
 a world within a world, or, at least, to smooth down the 
 rough creation which Nature flung to us. He forges the 
 mighty anchor, and every lesser instrument. He drives 
 the steamboat and drags the rail-car. And it was he 
 this creature of terrible might, and so many-sided utility, 
 and all-comprehensive destructiveness that used to be 
 the cheerful, homely friend of our wintry days, and whom 
 we have made the prisoner of this iron cage ! 
 
 How kindly he was, and, though the tremendous 
 agent of change, yet bearing himself with such gentle- 
 ness, so rendering himself a part of all lifelong and age- 
 coeval associations, that it seemed as if he were the 
 great conservative of Nature ! While a man was true ' 
 to the fireside, so long would he be true to country and 
 law to the God whom his fathers worshipped to 
 the wife of his youth and to all things else which 
 instinct or religion have taught us to consider sacred. 
 With how sweet humility did this elemental spirit per-
 
 124 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 form all needful offices for the household in which he 
 was domesticated ! He was equal to the concoction of 
 a grand dinner, yet scorned not to roast a potato, or 
 toast a bit of cheese. How humanely did he cherish 
 the schoolboy's icy fingers, and thaw the old man's 
 joints with a genial warmth, which almost equalled the 
 glow of youth ! And how carefully did he dry the cow- 
 hide boots that had trudged through mud and snow, and 
 the shaggy outside garment, stiff with frozen sleet ; tak- 
 ing heed, likewise, to the comfort of the faithful dog 
 who had followed his master through the storm ! When 
 did he refuse a coal to light a pipe, or even a part of 
 his own substance to kindle a neighbor's fire ? And 
 then, at twilight, when laborer or scholar, or mortal of 
 whatever age, sex, or degree, drew a chair beside him, 
 and looked into his glowing face, how acute, how pro- 
 found, how comprehensive, was his sympathy with the 
 mood of each and all! He pictured forth their very 
 thoughts. To the youthful he showed the scenes of 
 the adventurous life before them; to the aged, the 
 shadows of departed love and hope ; and, if all earthly 
 things had grown distasteful, he could gladden the fire- 
 side muser with golden glimpses of a better world. 
 And, amid this varied communion with the human soul, 
 how busily would the sympathizer, the deep moralist, 
 the painter of magic pictures, be causing the tea-kettle 
 to boil ! 
 
 Nor did it lessen the charm of his soft, familiar cour- 
 tesy and helpfulness, that the mighty spirit, were oppor- 
 tunity offered him, would run riot through the peaceful 
 house, wrap its inmates in his terrible embrace, and/ 
 leave nothing of them save their whitened bones. This 
 possibility of mad destruction only made his domestic 
 kindness the more beautiful and touching. It was so 
 sweet of him, being endowed with such power, to dwell, 
 day after day, and one long, lonesome night after an- 
 other, on the dusky hearth, only now and then betray- 
 ing his wild nature by thrusting his red tongue out of 
 the chimney-top ! True, he had done much mischief in 
 the world, and was pretty certain to do more; but his
 
 FIRE-WORSHIP 125 
 
 warm heart atoned for all. He was kindly to the 
 race of man ; and they pardoned his characteristic im- 
 perfections. 
 
 The good old clergyman, my predecessor in this man- 
 sion, was well acquainted with the comforts of the fire- 
 side. His yearly allowance of wood, according to the 
 terms of his settlement, was no less than sixty cords. 
 Almost an annual forest was converted from sound oak 
 logs into ashes, in the kitchen, the parlor, and this little 
 study, where now an unworthy successor not in the 
 pastoral office, but merely in his earthly abode sits 
 scribbling beside an air-tight stove. I love to fancy one 
 of those fireside days, while the good man, a contem- 
 porary of the Revolution, was in his early prime, 
 some five-and-sixty years ago. Before sunrise, doubt- 
 less, the blaze hovered upon the gray skirts of night, 
 and dissolved the frost-work that had gathered like a 
 curtain over the small window-panes. There is some- 
 thing peculiar in the aspect of the morning fireside ; a 
 fresher, brisker glare ; the absence of that mellowness, 
 which can be produced only by half-consumed logs, 
 and shapeless brands with the white ashes on them, 
 and mighty coals, the remnant of tree-trunks that the 
 hungry elements have gnawed for hours. The morning 
 hearth, too, is newly swept, and the brazen andirons 
 well brightened, so that the cheerful fire may see its 
 face in them. Surely it was happiness, when the pastor, 
 fortified with a substantial breakfast, sat down in his 
 armchair and slippers, and opened the Whole Body of 
 Divinity or the Commentary on Job, or whichever of his 
 old folios or quartos might fall within the range of his 
 weekly sermons. It must have been his own fault, if 
 the warmth and glow of this abundant hearth did not 
 permeate the discourse, and keep his audience comfort- 
 able, in spite of the bitterest northern blast that ever 
 wrestled with the church-steeple. He reads, while the 
 heat warps the stiff covers of the volume ; he writes 
 without numbness either in his heart or fingers ; and, 
 with unstinted hand, he throws fresh sticks of wood 
 upon the fire.
 
 126 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 A parishioner comes in. With what warmth of 
 benevolence how should he be otherwise than warm, 
 in any of his attributes ? does the minister bid him 
 welcome, and set a chair for him in so close proximity 
 to the hearth, that soon the guest finds it needful to 
 rub his scorched shins with his great red hands. The 
 melted snow drips from his steaming boots, and bub- 
 bles upon the hearth. His puckered forehead unravels 
 its entanglement of crisscross wrinkles. We lose much 
 of the enjoyment of fireside heat, without such an oppor- 
 tunity of marking its genial effect upon those who have 
 been looking the inclement weather in the face. In the 
 course of the day our clergyman himself strides forth, 
 perchance to pay a round of pastoral visits, or, it may 
 be, to visit his mountain of a wood-pile, and cleave the 
 monstrous logs into billets suitable for the fire. He 
 returns with fresher life to his beloved hearth. During 
 the short afternoon, the western sunshine comes into 
 the study, and strives to stare the ruddy blaze out of 
 countenance, but with only a brief triumph, soon to be 
 succeeded by brighter glories of its rival. Beautiful it 
 is to see the strengthening gleam the deepening light 
 that gradually casts distinct shadows of the human 
 figure, the table, and the high-backed chairs, upon the 
 opposite wall, and at length, as twilight comes on, re- 
 plenishes the room with living radiance, and makes life 
 all rose-color. Afar, the wayfarer discerns the flicker- 
 ing flame, as it dances upon the windows, and hails it 
 as a beacon-light of humanity, reminding him, in his 
 cold and lonely path, that the world is not all snow, 
 and solitude, and desolation. At eventide, probably, 
 the study was peopled with the clergyman's wife and 
 family ; and children tumbled themselves upon the 
 hearth-rug, and grave Puss sat with her back to the 
 fire, or gazed, with a semblance of human meditation, 
 into its fervid depths. Seasonably, the plenteous ashes 
 of the day were raked over the mouldering brands, and 
 from the heap came jets of flame, and an incense of 
 night-long smoke, creeping quietly up the chimney. 
 
 Heaven forgive the old clergyman ! In his later life,
 
 FIRE-WORSHIP 127 
 
 when, for almost ninety winters, he had been gladdened 
 by the firelight when it had gleamed upon him from 
 infancy to extreme age, and never without brightening 
 his spirits as well as his visage, and perhaps keeping 
 him alive so long he had the heart to brick up his 
 chimney-place, and bid farewell to the face of his old 
 friend forever ! Why did not he take an eternal leave 
 of the sunshine too ? His sixty cords of wood had prob- 
 ably dwindled to a far less ample supply, in modern 
 times ; and it is certain that the parsonage had grown 
 crazy with time and tempest, and pervious to the cold ; 
 but still, it was one of the saddest tokens of the decline 
 and fall of open fireplaces, that the gray patriarch should 
 have deigned to warm himself at an air-tight stove. 
 
 And I, likewise who have found a home in this 
 ancient owl's nest, since its former occupant took his 
 heavenward flight I, to my shame, have put up stoves'' 
 in kitchen, and parlor, and chamber. Wander where 
 you will about the house, not a glimpse of the earth-born, 
 heaven-aspiring fiend of ./Etna him that sports in the 
 thunder-storm the idol of the Ghebers the devourer 
 of cities, the forest-rioter, and prairie-sweeper the fu- 
 ture destroyer of our earth the old chimney-corner 
 companion, who mingled himself so sociably with house- 
 hold joys and sorrows not a glimpse of this mighty 
 and kindly one will greet your eyes. He is now an in- 
 visible presence. There is his iron cage/ Touch it, and 
 he scorches your fingers. He delights to singe a gar- 
 ment, or perpetrate any other little unworthy mischief ; 
 for his temper is ruined by the ingratitude of mankind, 
 for whom he cherished such warmth of feeling, and to 
 whom he taught all their arts, even that of making his 
 own prison-house. In his fits of rage, he puffs volumes 
 of smoke and noisome gas through the crevices of the 
 door, and shakes the iron walls of his dungeon, so as 
 to overthrow the ornamental urn upon its summit. We 
 tremble, lest he should break forth amongst us. Much 
 of his time is spent in sighs, burthened with unutterable 
 grief, and long-drawn through the funnel. He amuses 
 himself, too, with repeating all the whispers, the moans,
 
 128 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 and the louder utterances or tempestuous howls of the 
 wind; so that the stove becomes a microcosm of the 
 aerial world. Occasionally, there are strange combina- 
 tions of sounds voices, talking almost articulately within 
 the hollow chest of iron insomuch that fancy beguiles 
 me with the idea that my firewood must have grown in 
 that infernal forest of lamentable trees, which breathed 
 their complaints to Dante. When the listener is half- 
 asleep, he may readily take these voices for the conversa- 
 tion of spirits, and assign them an intelligible meaning. 
 Anon, there is a pattering noise drip, drip, drip as 
 if a summer shower were falling within the narrow cir- 
 cumference of the stove. 
 
 These barren and tedious eccentricities are all that 
 the air-tight stove can bestow, in exchange for the invalu- 
 able moral influences which we have lost by our deser- 
 tion of the open fireplace. Alas ! is this world so very 
 bright, that we can afford to choke up such a domestic 
 fountain of gladsomeness, and sit down by its darkened 
 source, without being conscious of a gloom ? 
 
 It is my belief that social intercourse cannot long con- 
 tinue what it has been, now that we have subtracted 
 from it so important and vivifying an element as fire- 
 light. The effects will be more perceptible on our chil- 
 dren, and the generations that shall succeed them, than 
 on ourselves, the mechanism of whose life may remain 
 unchanged, though its spirit be far other than it was. 
 The sacred trust of the household fire has been trans- 
 mitted in unbroken succession from the earliest ages, 
 and faithfully cherished, in spite of every discourage- 
 ment such as the Curfew law of the Norman conquerors ; 
 until in these evil days, physical science has nearly 
 succeeded in extinguishing it. \But we at least have our 
 youthful recollections tinged with the glow of the hearth, 
 and our lifelong habits and associations arranged on the 
 principle of a mutual bond in the domestic fire. There- 
 fore, though the sociable friend be forever departed, 
 yet in a degree he will be spiritually present with us ; 
 and still more will the empty forms, which were once 
 full of his rejoicing presence, continue to rule our man-
 
 . FIRE-WORSHIP 129 
 
 ners. We shall draw our chairs together, as we and 
 our forefathers have been wont, for thousands of years 
 back, and sit around some blank and empty corner of 
 the room, babbling, with unreajr cheerfulness, of topics 
 suitable to the homely fireside. / A warmth from the past 
 from the ashes of bygone years, and the raked-up 
 embers of long ago will sometimes thaw the ice about 
 our hearts/ But it must be otherwise with our successors. 
 On the most favorable supposition, they will be ac- 
 quainted with the fireside in no better shape than that 
 of the sullen stove ; and more probably, they will have 
 grown up amid furnace-heat, in houses which might be 
 fancied to have their foundation over the infernal pit, 
 whence sulphurous steams and unbreathable exhalations 
 ascend through the apertures of the floor. There will 
 be nothing to attract these poor children to one centre. 
 They will never behold one another through that peculiar 
 medium of vision the ruddy gleam of blazing wood or 
 bituminous coal which gives the human spirit so deep 
 an insight into its fellows, and melts all humanity into 
 one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life if it may 
 still be termed domestic will seek its separate corners, 
 and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip 
 the merry, yet unambitious jest the lifelike, practical 
 discussion of real matters in a casual way the soul of 
 truth, which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside 
 word will disappear from earth. Conversation will 
 contract the air of a debate, and all mortal intercourse 
 be chilled with a fatal frost. 
 
 In classic times, the exhortation to fight " pro aris et 
 focis " for the altars and the hearths was considered 
 the strongest appeal that could be made to patriotism. 
 And it seemed an immortal utterance ; for all subsequent 
 ages and people have acknowledged its force, and re- 
 sponded to it with the full portion of manhood that 
 Nature had assigned to each. Wisely were the Altar 
 and the Hearth conjoined in one mighty sentence ! For 
 the hearth, too, had its kindred sanctity. Religion sat 
 down beside it, not in the priestly robes which decorated, 
 and perhaps disguised her at the altar, but arrayed in a
 
 i 3 o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 simple matron's garb, and uttering her lessons with the 
 tenderness of a mother's voice and heart. The holy 
 Hearth ! If any earthly and material thing or rather, 
 a divine idea, embodied in brick and mortar might be 
 supposed to possess the permanence of moral truth, it 
 was this. All revered it. The man who did not put off 
 his shoes upon this holy ground would have deemed it 
 pastime to trample upon the altar. It has been our task 
 to uproot the hearth. What further reform is left for 
 our children to achieve, unless they overthrow the altar 
 too ? And by what appeal, hereafter, when the breath 
 of hostile armies may mingle with the pure, cold breezes 
 of our country, shall we attempt to rouse up native valor ? 
 Fight for your hearths ? There will be none throughout 
 the land. FIGHT FOR YOUR STOVES ! Not I, in faith. 
 If, in such a cause, I strike a blow, it shall be on the 
 invader's part; and Heaven grant that it may shatter 
 the abomination all to pieces !
 
 BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES 
 
 BALMY Spring weeks later than we expected, and 
 months later than we longed for her comes at 
 last, to revive the moss on the roof and walls of our old 
 mansion. She peeps brightly into my study-window, 
 inviting me to throw it open, and create a summer at- 
 mosphere by the intermixture of her genial breath with 
 the black and cheerless comfort of the stove. As the 
 casement ascends, forth into infinite space fly the in- 
 numerable forms of thought or fancy that have kept me 
 company in the retirement of this little chamber, during 
 the sluggish lapse of wintry weather ; visions gay, 
 grotesque, and sad ; pictures of real life, tinted with 
 nature's homely gray and russet ; scenes in dream-land, 
 bedizened with rainbow hues, which faded before they 
 were well laid on; all these may vanish now, and 
 leave me to mould a fresh existence out of sunshine. 
 Brooding meditation may flap her dusky wings, and take 
 her owl-like flight, blinking amid the cheerfulness of 
 noontide. Such companions befit the season of frosted 
 window-panes and crackling fires, when the blast howls 
 through the black ash-trees of our avenue, and the drift- 
 ing snow-storm chokes up the wood-paths, and fills the 
 highway from stone-wall to stone-wall. In the spring 
 and summer time, all sombre thoughts should follow the 
 winter northward, with the sombre and thoughtful crows. 
 N The old paradisiacal economy of life is again in force ; 
 we live, not to think, nor to labor, but for the simple 
 end of being happy ; nothing, for the present hour, is 
 worthy of man's infinite capacity, save to imbibe the 
 warm smile of heaven, and sympathize with the reviving 
 earth. 
 
 The present spring comes onward with fleeter foot- 
 steps, because winter lingered so unconscionably long, 
 131
 
 132 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 that with her best diligence she can hardly retrieve half 
 the allotted period of her reign. It is but a fortnight 
 since I stood on the brink of our swollen river, and be- 
 held the accumulated ice of four frozen months go down 
 the stream. Except in streaks here and there upon the 
 hillsides, the whole visible universe was then covered 
 with deep snow, the nethermost layer of which had been 
 deposited by an early December storm. It was a sight 
 to make the beholder torpid, in the impossibility of 
 imagining how this vast white napkin was to be re- 
 moved from the face of the corpselike world, in less 
 time than had been required to spread it there. But 
 who can estimate the power of gentle influences, whether 
 amid material desolation, or the moral winter of man's 
 heart ! There have been no tempestuous rains even 
 no sultry days but a constant breath of southern winds, 
 with now a day of kindly sunshine, and now a no less 
 kindly mist, or a soft descent of showers, in which a 
 smile and a blessing seemed to have been steeped. The 
 snow has vanished as if by magic ; whatever heaps may 
 be hidden in the woods and deep gorges of the hills, 
 only two solitary specks remain in the landscape ; and 
 those I shall almost regret to miss, when, to-morrow, I 
 look for them in vain. Never before, methinks, has 
 spring pressed so closely on the footsteps of retreating 
 winter. Along the road-side, the green blades of grass 
 have sprouted on the very edge of the snow-drifts. The 
 pastures and mowing fields have not yet assumed a 
 general aspect of verdure ; but neither have they the 
 cheerless brown tint which they wear in latter autumn, 
 when vegetation has entirely ceased; there is now a 
 faint shadow of life, gradually brightening into the warm 
 reality. Some tracts, in a happy exposure as, for 
 instance, yonder south-western slope of an orchard, in 
 front of that old red farm-house, beyond the river 
 such patches of land already wear a beautiful and tender 
 green, to which no future luxuriance can add a charm. 
 It looks unreal a prophecy a hope a transitory 
 effect of some peculiar light, which will vanish with the 
 slightest motion of the eye. But beauty is never a delu-
 
 BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES 133 
 
 sion; not these verdant tracts, but the dark and barren 
 landscape, all around them, is a shadow and a dream. 
 Each moment wins some portion of the earth from death 
 to life ; a sudden gleam of verdure brightens along the 
 sunny slope of a bank, which, an instant ago, was brown 
 and bare. You look again, and behold an apparition of 
 green grass ! 
 
 The trees, in our orchard and elsewhere, are as yet 
 naked, but already appear full of life and vegetable 
 blood. It seems as if, by one magic touch, they might 
 instantaneously burst into full foliage, and that the wind, 
 which now sighs through their naked branches, might 
 make sudden music amid innumerable leaves. The 
 moss-grown willow-tree, which for forty years past has 
 overshadowed these western windows, will be among the 
 first to put on its green attire. There are some objec- 
 tions to the willow ; it is not a dry and cleanly tree, and 
 impresses the beholder with an association of sliminess. 
 No trees, I think, are perfectly agreeable as companions, 
 unless they have glossy leaves, dry bark, and a firm and 
 hard texture of trunk and branches. But the\ willow is 
 almost the earliest to gladden us with the promise and 
 reality of beauty, in its graceful and delicate foliage, and 
 the last to scatter its yellow yet scarcely withered leaves 
 upon the ground. All through the winter, too, its yellow 
 twigs give it a sunny aspect, which is not without a 
 cheering influence, even in the grayest and gloomiest 
 day. Beneath a clouded sky, it faithfully remembers the 
 sunshine. Our old house would lose a charm, were 
 the willow to be cut down, with its golden crown over 
 the snow-covered roof, and its heap of summer verdure. 
 
 The x lilac-shrubs, under my study-windows, are like- 
 wise almost in leaf ; in two or three days more, I may 
 put forth my hand, and pluck the topmost bough in 
 its freshest green. These lilacs are very aged, and 
 have lost the luxuriant foliage of their prime. The 
 heart, or the judgment, or the moral sense, or the taste, 
 is dissatisfied with their present aspect. Old age is 
 not venerable, when it embodies itself in lilacs, rose- 
 bushes, or any other ornamental shrubs ; it seems as if
 
 134 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 such plants, as they grow only for beauty, ought to 
 flourish only in immortal youth, or, at least, to die before 
 their sad decrepitude. Trees of beauty are trees of 
 Paradise, and therefore not subject to decay, by their 
 original nature, though they have lost that precious 
 birth-right by being transplanted to an earthly soil, 
 s, There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a 
 time-stricken and grandfatherly lilac-bush. The analogy 
 holds good in human life. Persons who can only be 
 graceful and ornamental who can give the world 
 nothing but flowers should die young and never be 
 seen with gray hair and wrinkles, any more than the 
 flower-shrubs with mossy bark and blighted foliage, 
 like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is 
 worthy of less than immortality, no, the beautiful 
 should live forever, and thence perhaps the sense of 
 impropriety, when we see it triumphed over by time. 
 ^Apple-trees, on the other hand, grow old without 
 reproach. Let them live as long as they may, and 
 contort themselves into whatever perversity of shape 
 they please, and deck their withered limbs with a spring- 
 time gaudiness of pink blossoms, still they are respect- 
 able, even if they afford us only an apple or two in a 
 season. Those few apples or, at all events, the 
 remembrance of apples in bygone years are the 
 atonement which utilitarianism inexorably demands for 
 the privilege of lengthened life. Human flower-shrubs, 7 
 if they will grow old on earth, should, beside their lovely 
 blossoms, bear some kind of fruit that will satisfy earthly 
 appetites ; else neither man, nor the decorum of nature, 
 will deem it fit that the moss should gather on them. 
 
 One of the first things that strikes the attention, when 
 the white sheet of winter is withdrawn,^? the neglect 
 and disarray that lay hidden beneath it./ Nature is not 
 cleanly, according to our prejudices. The beauty of 
 preceding years, now transformed to brown and blighted 
 \i deformity, obstructs the brightening loveliness of the 
 
 present hour. Our avenue is strewn with the whole crop 
 of autumn's withered leaves. There are quantities of 
 decayed branches which one 'tempest after another has
 
 BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES 135 
 
 flung down black and rotten ; and one or two with the 
 ruin of a bird's nest clinging to them. In the garden are 
 the dried bean-vines, the brown stalks of the asparagus- 
 bed, and melancholy old cabbages which were frozen 
 into the soil before their unthrifty cultivator could find 
 time to gather them. How invariably, throughout all p^^ocMr (9 
 
 ^.*N> 
 
 of death ! On the soil of thought, and in the garden of 
 
 the forms of life, do we find these intermingled memorials 
 
 the heart, as well as in the sensual world, lie withered \' ^js- 
 
 leaves ; the ideas and feelings that we have done with. 
 There is no wind strong enough to sweep them away ; 
 infinite space will not garner them from our sight. 
 What mean they ? Why may we not be permitted to 
 live and enjoy, as if this were the first life, and our own 
 the primal enjoyment, instead of treading always on 
 these dry bones and mouldering relics, from the aged 
 accumulation of which springs all that now appears so 
 young and new ? Sweet must have been the spring- \ 
 time of Eden, when no earlier year had strewn its decay \ 
 upon the virgin turf, and no former experience had 
 ripened into summer, and faded into autumn, in the ) 
 hearts of its inhabitants ! That was a world worth 
 living in ! Oh, thou murmurer, it is out of the very 
 wantonness of such a life that thou feignest these idle ; 
 lamentations ! There is no decay. Each human soul 
 is the first created inhabitant of its own Eden. We 
 dwell in an old moss-covered mansion, and tread in the 
 worn footprints of the past, and have a gray clergy- 
 man's ghost for our daily and nightly inmate ; yet all 
 these outward circumstances are made less than vision- 
 ary, by the renewingjpower of the spirit. Should the 
 spirit ever lose this power should the withered leaves, 
 and the rotten branches, and the moss-covered house, 
 and the ghost of the gray past, ever become its reali- 
 ties, and the verdure and the freshness merely its faint 
 dream then let it pray to be released from earth. It 
 will need the air of heaven, to revive its pristine 
 energies ! 
 
 What an unlooked-for flight was this, from our shad- 
 owy avenue of black-ash and Balm of Gilead trees, into
 
 136 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the infinite ! Now we have our feet again upon the 
 turf. Nowhere does the grass spring up so industriously 
 as in this homely yard, along the base of the stone-wall, 
 and in the sheltered nooks of the buildings, and espe- 
 cially around the southern door-step ; a locality which 
 seems particularly favorable to its growth, for it is 
 already tall enough to bend over, and wave in the wind. 
 I observe, that several weeds<^ and, most frequently, a 
 plant that stains the fingers with its yellow juice have 
 survived, and retained their freshness and sap through- 
 out the winter. One knows not how they have deserved 
 such an exception from the common lot of their race. 
 They are now the patriarchs of the departed year, and 
 may preach mortality to the present generation of flowers 
 and weeds. 
 
 Among the delights of spring, how is it possible to 
 forget the birds ! Even the crows were welcome, as the 
 sable harbingers of a brighter and livelier race. They 
 visited us before the snow was off, but seem mostly 
 to have betaken themselves to remote depths of the 
 woods, which they haunt all summer long. Many a 
 time shall I disturb them there, and feel as if I had 
 intruded among a company of silent worshippers, as they 
 sit in sabbath-stillness among the tree-tops. Their 
 voices, when they speak, are in admirable accordance 
 with the tranquil solitude of a summer afternoon ; and, 
 resounding so far above the head, their loud clamor 
 increases the religious quiet of the scene, instead of 
 breaking it. A crow, however, has no real pretensions 7 
 to religion, in spite of his gravity of mien and black 
 attire ; he is certainly a thief, and probably an infidel. 
 The gulls' are far more respectable, in a moral point 
 of view. These denizens of sea-beaten rocks, and 
 haunters of the lonely beach, come up our inland river, 
 at this season, and soar high overhead, flapping their 
 broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are among 
 the most picturesque of birds, because they so float and 
 rest upon the air, as to become almost stationary parts 
 of the landscape. The imagination has time to grow 
 acquainted with them ; they have not flitted away in a
 
 BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES 137 
 
 moment. You go up among the clouds, and greet these 
 lofty-flighted gulls, and repose confidently with them 
 upon the sustaining atmosphere. Ducks have their 
 haunts along the solitary places of the river, and alight 
 in flocks upon the broad bosom of the overflowed 
 meadows. Their flight is too rapid and determined for 
 the eye to catch enjoyment from it, although it never 
 fails to stir up the heart with the sportsman's ineradi- 
 cable instinct. They have now gone further northward, 
 but will visit us again in autumn. 
 
 The smaller birds the little songsters of the woods, 
 and those that haunt man's dwellings, and claim hu- 
 man friendship by building their nests under the shelter- 
 ing eaves, or among the orchard trees these require 
 a touch more delicate, and a gentler heart than mine, 
 to do them justice. Their outburst of melody is like 
 a brook let loose from wintry chains.^/ We need not -., 
 deem it a too high and solemn word, to call it a hymn 
 of praise to the Creator; since Nature, who pictures / 
 the reviving year in so many sights of beauty, has ex- 
 pressed the sentiment of renewed life in no.other sound, 
 save the notes of these blessed birds. /Their music, 
 however, just now, seems to be incidental, and not the 
 result of a set purpose. They are discussing the econ- 
 omy of life and love, and the site and architecture of 
 their summer residences, and have no time to sit on a 
 twig, and pour forth solemn hymns, or overtures, operas, 
 symphonies, and waltzes. Anxious questions are asked; 
 grave subjects are settled in quick and animated debate; 
 and only by occasional accident, as from pure ecstasy, 
 does a rich warble roll its tiny waves of golden sound 
 through the atmosphere. Their little bodies are as 
 busy as their voices ; they are in a constant flutter and 
 restlessness. Even when two or three retreat to a tree- 
 top, to hold council, they wag their tails and heads all 
 the time, with the irrepressible activity of their nature, 
 which perhaps renders their brief span of life in reality 
 as long as the patriarchal age of sluggish man. The 
 'blackbirds, three species of which consort together, are 
 the noisiest of all our feathered citizens. Great com-
 
 138 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 panics of them more than the famous "four-and- 
 twenty " whom Mother Goose has immortalized 
 congregate in contiguous tree-tops, and vociferate with 
 all the clamor and confusion of a turbulent political 
 meeting. Politics, certainly, must be the occasion of 
 such tumultuous debates; but still unlike all other 
 politicians they instil melody into their individual 
 utterances, and produce harmony as a general effect. 
 Of all bird-voices, none are more sweet and cheerful to 
 my ear than those of swallows* in the dim, sun-streaked 
 interior of a lofty barn; they address the heart with 
 even a closer sympathy than Robin Red-breast. But, 
 indeed, all these winged people, that dwell in the vicin- 
 ity of homesteads, seem to partake of human nature, 
 and possess^ the germ, if not the development, of im- 
 mortal souls. We hear them saying their melodious 
 prayers, at morning's blush and eventide. A little 
 while ago, in the deep of night, there came the lively 
 thrill of a bird's note from a neighboring tree ; a real 
 song, such as greets the purple dawn, or mingles with 
 the yellow sunshine. What could the little bird mean, 
 by pouring it forth at midnight ? Probably the music 
 gushed out of the midst of a dream, in which he fancied 
 himself in Paradise with his mate, but suddenly awoke 
 on a cold, leafless bough, with a New England mist 
 penetrating through his feathers. That was a sad ex- 
 change of imagination for reality ! 
 
 Insect^ are among the earliest births of spring. 
 Multitudes, of I know not what species, appeared long 
 ago, on the surface of the snow. Clouds of them, 
 almost too minute for sight, hover in a beam of sun- 
 shine, and vanish, as if annihilated, when they pass 
 into the shade. A mosquito lias already been heard to 
 sound the small horror of his bugle-horn. Wasps infest 
 the sunny windows of the house. A bee entered one 
 of the chambers, with a prophecy of flowers. Rare 
 butterflies came before the snow was off, flaunting in 
 the chill breeze, and looking forlorn and all astray, in 
 spite of the magnificence of their dark velvet cloaks, 
 with golden borders.
 
 BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES 139 
 
 The fields and wood-paths have as yet few charms to 
 entice the wanderer. In a walk, the other day, I found 
 no violets, nor anemones, nor anything in the likeness 
 of a flower/ It was worth while, however, to ascend 
 our opposite hill, for the sake of gaining a general idea 
 of the advance of spring, which I had hitherto been 
 studying in its minute developments. The river lay 
 around me in a semicircle, overflowing all the meadows 
 which give it its Indian name, and offering a noble 
 breadth to sparkle in the sunbeams. Along the hither 
 shore, a row of trees stood up to their knees in water ; 
 and afar off, on the surface of the stream, tufts of 
 bushes thrust up their heads, as it were, to breathe. 
 The most striking objects were great solitary trees, here 
 and there, with a mile-wide waste of water all around 
 them. The curtailment of the trunk, by its immersion 
 in the river, quite destroys the fair proportions of the 
 tree, and thus makes us sensible of a regularity and 
 propriety in the usual forms of nature. The flood of 
 the present season though it never amounts to a 
 freshet, on our quiet stream has encroached further 
 upon the land than any previous one, for at least a 
 score of years. It has overflowed stone-fences, and even 
 rendered a portion of the highway navigable for boats. 
 The waters,' however, are now gradually subsiding; 
 islands become annexed to the mainland; and other 
 islands emerge, like new creations, from the watery 
 waste. The scene supplies an admirable image of the 
 receding of the Nile except that there is no deposit of 
 black slime; or of Noah's flood only that there is 
 a freshness and novelty in these recovered portions 
 of the continent, which give the impression of a world 
 just made, rather than of one so polluted that a deluge 
 had been requisite to purify it. These up-springing 
 islands are the greenest spots in the landscape ; the 
 first gleam of sunlight suffices to cover them with 
 verdure. 
 
 Thank Providence for Spring ! The earth and 
 man himself, by sympathy with his birth-place would 
 be far other than we find them, if life toiled wearily
 
 i 4 o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 onward, without this periodical infusion of the primal 
 spirit. Will the world ever be so decayed, that spring'' 
 may not renew its greenness ? Can man be so dismally 
 age-stricken, that no faintest sunshine of his youth may 
 revisit him once a year ? It is impossible. The moss 
 on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty ; the 
 good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his 
 prime, regained his boyhood, in the genial breezes of 
 his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, 
 if, whether in youth or age, it have outlived its privilege 
 of springtime sprightliness ! From such a soul, the 
 world must hope no reformation of its evil no sym- 
 pathy with the lofty faith and gallant struggles of those 
 who contend in its behalf. Summer works in the pres- 
 ent, and thinks not of the future ; Autumn is a rich 
 conservative; Winter has utterly lost its faith, and 
 clings tremulously to the remembrance of what has 
 been ; but Spring, with its outgushing life, is the true 
 type of the Movement!
 
 MONSIEUR DU MIROIR 
 
 THAN the gentleman above-named, there is nobody 
 in the whole circle of my acquaintance, whom I 
 have more attentively studied, yet of whom I have less 
 real knowledge, beneath the surface which it pleases 
 him to present. Being anxious to discover who and 
 what he really is, and how connected with me, and what 
 are to be the results, to him and to myself, of the joint 
 interest, which, without any choice on my part, seems to 
 be permanently established between us and incited, 
 furthermore, by the propensities of a student of human 
 nature, though doubtful whether M. du Miroir have 
 aught of humanity but the figure I have determined 
 to place a few of his remarkable points before the public, 
 hoping to be favored with some clew to the explanation 
 of his character. Nor let the reader condemn any part 
 of the narrative as frivolous, since a subject of such 
 grave reflection diffuses its importance through the 
 minutest particulars, and there is no judging, before- 
 hand, what odd little circumstance may do the office of 
 a blind man's dog, among the perplexities of this dark 
 investigation. And however extraordinary, marvellous, 
 preternatural, and utterly incredible, some of the medi- 
 tated disclosures may appear, I pledge my honor to 
 maintain as sacred a regard to fact, as if my testimony 
 were given on oath, and involved the dearest interests of 
 the personage in question. Not that there is matter for 
 a criminal accusation against M. du Miroir ; nor am I 
 the man to bring it forward, if there were. The chief 
 that I complain of is his impenetrable mystery, which is 
 no better than nonsense, if it conceal anything good, 
 and much worse in the contrary case. 
 
 But, if undue partialities could be supposed to influ- 
 ence me, M. du Miroir might hope to profit, rather than 
 141
 
 I 4 a MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 to suffer by them ; for, in the whole of our long inter- 
 course, we have seldom had the slightest disagreement ; 
 and, moreover, there are reasons for supposing him a 
 near relative of mine, and consequently entitled to the 
 best word that I can give him. He bears, indisputably, 
 a strong personal resemblance to myself, and generally 
 puts on mourning at the funerals of the family. On the 
 other hand, his name would indicate a French descent ; 
 in which case, infinitely preferring that my blood should 
 flow from a bold British and pure Puritan source, I beg 
 leave to disclaim all kindred with M. du Miroir. Some 
 genealogists trace nis origin to Spain, and dub him a 
 knight of the order of the CABALLEROS DE LOS ESPEJOS, 
 one of whom was overthrown by Don Quixote. But 
 what says M. du Miroir, himself, of his paternity and 
 his fatherland ? Not a word did he ever say about the 
 matter ; and herein, perhaps, lies one of his most espe- 
 cial reasons for maintaining such a vexatious mystery 
 that he lacks the faculty of speech to expound it. His 
 lips are sometimes seen to move ; his eyes and counte- 
 nance are alive with shifting expression, as if correspond- 
 ing by visible hieroglyphics to his modulated breath ; 
 and anon, he will seem to pause, with as satisfied an air, 
 as if he had been talking excellent sense. Good sense 
 or bad, M. du Miroir is the sole judge of his own con- 
 versational powers, never having whispered so much as 
 a syllable, that reached the ears of any other auditor. 
 Is he really dumb ? or is all the world deaf ? or is it 
 merely a piece of my friend's waggery, meant for noth- 
 ing but to make fools of us ? If so, he has the joke all 
 to himself. 
 
 This dumb devil, which possesses M. du Miroir, is, I 
 am persuaded, the sole reason that he does not make me 
 the most flattering protestations of friendship. In many 
 particulars indeed, as to all his cognizable and not 
 preternatural points, except that, once in a great while, 
 I speak a word or two there exists the greatest appar- 
 ent sympathy between us. Such is his confidence in my 
 taste, that he goes astray from the general fashion, and 
 copies all his dresses after mine. I never try on a new
 
 MONSIEUR DU MIROIR 143 
 
 garment, without expecting to meet M. du Miroir in one 
 of the same pattern. He has duplicates of all my waist- 
 coats and cravats, shirt-bosoms of precisely a similar 
 plait, and an old coat for private wear, manufactured, I 
 suspect, by a Chinese tailor, in exact imitation of a be- 
 loved old coat of mine, with a facsimile, stitch by stitch, 
 of a patch upon the elbow. In truth, the singular and 
 minute coincidences that occur, both in the accidents 
 of the passing day and the serious events of our lives 
 remind me of those doubtful legends of lovers, or twin- 
 children, twins of fate, who have lived, enjoyed, suffered, 
 and died in unison, each faithfully repeating the least 
 tremor of the other's breath, though separated by vast 
 tracts of sea and land. Strange to say, my incommodi- 
 ties belong equally to my companion, though the burthen 
 is nowise alleviated by his participation. The other 
 morning, after a night of torment from the toothache, 
 I met M. du Miroir with such a swollen anguish in his 
 cheek, that my own pangs were redoubled, as were also 
 his, if I might judge by a fresh contortion of his visage. 
 All the inequalities of my spirits are communicated to 
 him, causing the unfortunate M. du Miroir to mope and 
 scowl through a whole summer's day, or to laugh as 
 long, for no better reason than the gay or gloomy 
 crotchets of my brain. Once we were joint sufferers 
 of a three months' sickness, and met like mutual ghosts 
 in the first days of convalescence. Whenever I have 
 been in love, M. du Miroir has looked passionate and 
 tender, and never did my mistress discard me, but 
 this too susceptible gentleman grew lackadaisical. His 
 temper, also, rises to blood-heat, fever-heat, or boiling- 
 water heat, according to the measure of any wrong which 
 might seem to have fallen entirely on myself. I have 
 sometimes been calmed down, by the sight of my own 
 inordinate wrath depicted on his frowning brow. Yet, 
 however prompt in taking up my quarrels, I cannot call 
 to mind that he ever struck a downright blow in my be- 
 half ; nor, in fact, do I perceive that any real and tan- 
 gible good has resulted from his constant interference 
 in my affairs ; so that, in my distrustful moods, I am apt
 
 144 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 to suspect M. du Miroir's sympathy to be mere outward 
 show, not a whit better nor worse than other people's 
 sympathy. Nevertheless, as mortal man must have 
 something in the guise of sympathy, and whether the 
 true metal, or merely copperwashed, is of less moment, 
 I choose rather to content myself with M. du Miroir's, 
 such as it is, than to seek the sterling coin, and perhaps 
 miss even the counterfeit. 
 
 In my age of vanities, I have often seen him in the 
 ball-room, and might again, were I to seek him there. 
 We have encountered each other at the Tremont theatre, 
 where, however, he took his seat neither in the dress- 
 circle, pit, nor upper regions, nor threw a single glance 
 at the stage, though the brightest star, even Fanny 
 Kemble herself, might be culminating there. No ; this 
 whimsical friend of mine chose to linger in the saloon, 
 near one of the large looking-glasses which throw back 
 their pictures of the illuminated room. He is so full of 
 these unaccountable eccentricities, that I never like to 
 notice M. du Miroir, nor to acknowledge the slightest 
 connection with him, in places of public resort. He, 
 however, has no scruple about claiming my acquaintance, 
 even when his common sense, if he had any, might 
 teach him that I would as willingly exchange a nod with 
 the Old Nick. It was but the other day, that he got 
 into a large brass kettle, at the entrance of a hardware 
 store, and thrust his head, the moment afterwards, into 
 a bright new warming-pan, whence he gave me a most 
 merciless look of recognition. He smiled, and so did I ; 
 but these childish tricks make decent people rather shy 
 of M. du Miroir, and subject him to more dead cuts than 
 any other gentleman in town. 
 
 One of this singular person's most remarkable peculi- 
 arities is his fondness for water, wherein he excels any 
 temperance-man whatever. His pleasure, it must be 
 owned, is not so much to drink it (in which respect, a 
 very moderate quantity will answer his occasions), as to 
 souse himself over head and ears, wherever he may meet 
 with it. Perhaps he is a merman, or born of a mer- 
 maid's marriage with a mortal, and thus amphibious by
 
 MONSIEUR DU MIROIR 145 
 
 hereditary right, like the children which the old river 
 deities, or nymphs of fountains, gave to earthly love. 
 When no cleaner bathing-place happened to be at hand, 
 I have seen the foolish fellow in a horse-pond. Some- 
 times he refreshes himself in the trough of a town-pump, 
 without caring what the people think about him. Often, 
 while carefully picking my way along the street, after a 
 heavy shower, I have been scandalized to see M. du 
 Miroir, in full dress, paddling from one mud-puddle to 
 another, and plunging into the filthy depths of each. 
 Seldom have I peeped into a well, without discerning 
 this ridiculous gentleman at the bottom, whence he 
 gazes up, as through a long telescopic tube, and prob- 
 ably makes discoveries among the stars by daylight. 
 Wandering along lonesome paths, or in pathless forests, 
 when I have come to virgin fountains, of which it would 
 have been pleasant to deem myself the first discoverer, 
 I have started to find M. du Miroir there before me. 
 The solitude seemed lonelier for his presence. I have 
 leaned from a precipice that frowns over Lake George 
 which the French called Nature's font of sacramen- 
 tal water, and used it in their log-churches here, and 
 their cathedrals beyond the sea and seen him far 
 below, in that pure element. At Niagara, too, where I 
 would gladly have forgotten both myself and him, I 
 could not help observing my companion, in the smooth 
 water on the very verge of the cataract, just above the 
 Table Rock. Were I to reach the sources of the Nile, 
 I should expect to meet him there. Unless he be an- 
 other Lado, whose garments the depths of ocean 
 could not moisten, it is difficult to conceive how he keeps 
 himself in any decent pickle ; though I am bound to 
 confess, that his clothes seem always as dry and com- 
 fortable as my own. But, as a friend, I could wish that 
 he would not so often expose himself in liquor. 
 
 All that I have hitherto related may be classed among 
 those little personal oddities which agreeably diversify 
 the surface of society ; and, though they may sometimes 
 annoy us, yet keep our daily intercourse fresher and 
 livelier than if they were done away. By an occasional
 
 146 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 hint, however, I have endeavored to pave the way for 
 stranger things to come, which, had they been disclosed 
 at once, M. du Miroir might have been deemed a shadow, 
 and myself a person of no veracity, and this truthful 
 history a fabulous legend. But, now that the reader 
 knows me worthy of his confidence, I will begin to make 
 him stare. 
 
 To speak frankly, then, I could bring the most as- 
 tounding proofs that M. du Miroir is at least a conjurer, 
 if not one of that unearthly tribe with whom conjurers 
 deal. He has inscrutable methods of conveying him- 
 self from place to place, with the rapidity of the swiftest 
 steamboat or rail-car. Brick walls, and oaken doors, and 
 iron bolts are no impediment to his passage. Here in 
 my chamber, for instance, as the evening deepens into 
 night, I sit alone the key turned and withdrawn from 
 the lock the keyhole stuffed with paper, to keep out 
 a peevish little blast of wind. Yet, lonely as I seem, 
 were I to lift one of the lamps and step five paces east- 
 ward, M. du Miroir would be sure to meet me, with a 
 lamp also in his hand. And, were I to take the stage- 
 coach to-morrow, without giving him the least hint of 
 my design, and post onward till the week's end, at what- 
 ever hotel I might find myself I should expect to share 
 my private apartment with this inevitable M. du Miroir. 
 Or, out of a mere wayward fantasy, were I to go, by 
 moonlight, and stand beside the stone font of the Shaker 
 Spring at Canterbury, M. du Miroir would set forth on 
 the same fool's errand, and would not fail to meet me 
 there. Shall I heighten the reader's wonder ? While 
 writing these latter sentences, I happened to glance 
 towards the large round globe of one of the brass and- 
 irons ; and lo ! a miniature apparition of M. du Miroir, 
 with his face widened and grotesquely contorted, as if 
 he were making fun of my amazement. But he has 
 played so many of these jokes, that they begin to lose 
 their effect. Once, presumptuous that he was, he stole 
 into the heaven of a young lady's eyes, so that while I 
 gazed, and was dreaming only of herself, I found him 
 also in my dream. Years have so changed him since,
 
 MONSIEUR DU MIROIR 147 
 
 that he need never hope to enter those heavenly orbs 
 again. 
 
 From these veritable statements, it will be readily 
 concluded, that, had M. du Miroir played such pranks 
 in old witch times, matters might have gone hard with 
 him ; at least, if the constable and posse comitatus could 
 have executed a warrant, or the jailer had been cunning 
 enough to keep him. But it has often occurred to me 
 as a very singular circumstance, and as betokening either 
 a temperament morbidly suspicious, or some weighty 
 cause of apprehension, that he never trusts himself 
 within the grasp even of his most intimate friend. If 
 you step forward to meet him, he readily advances; if 
 you offer him your hand, he extends his own, with an 
 air of the utmost frankness ; but though you calculate 
 upon a hearty shake, you do not get hold of his little 
 finger. Ah, this M. du Miroir is a slippery fellow ! 
 
 These, truly, are matters of special admiration. After 
 vainly endeavoring, by the strenuous exertion of my 
 own wits, to gain a satisfactory insight into the char- 
 acter of M. du Miroir, I had recourse to certain wise 
 men, and also to books of abstruse philosophy, seeking 
 who it was that haunted me, and why. I heard long 
 lectures, and read huge volumes, with little profit be- 
 yond the knowledge that many former instances are 
 recorded, in successive ages, of similar connections 
 between ordinary mortals and beings possessing the 
 attributes of M. du Miroir. Some now alive, perhaps, 
 besides myself, have such attendants. Would that 
 M. du Miroir could be persuaded to transfer his at- 
 tachment to one of those, and allow some other of his 
 race to assume the situation that he now holds in regard 
 to me ! If I must needs have so intrusive an intimate, 
 who stares me in the face in my closest privacy, and 
 follows me even to my bedchamber, I should prefer 
 scandal apart the laughing bloom of a young girl, to 
 the dark and bearded gravity of my present companion. 
 But such desires are never to be gratified. Though the 
 members of M. du Miroir's family have been accused, 
 perhaps justly, of visiting their friends often in splendid
 
 148 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 halls and seldom in darksome dungeons, yet they ex- 
 hibit a rare constancy to the objects of their first at- 
 tachment, however unlovely in person or unamiable in 
 disposition, however unfortunate, or even infamous, and 
 deserted by all the world besides. So will it be with 
 my associate. Our fates appear inseparably blended. 
 It is my belief, as I find him mingling with my earliest 
 recollections, that we came into existence together, as 
 my shadow follows me into the sunshine, and that, here- 
 after, as heretofore, the brightness or gloom of my for- 
 tunes will shine upon, or darken, the face of M. du 
 Miroir. As we have been young together, and as it is 
 now near the summer noon with both of us, so, if long 
 life be granted, shall each count his own wrinkles on 
 the other's brow, and his white hairs on the other's 
 head. And when the coffin-lid shall have closed over 
 me, and that face and form, which, more truly than the 
 lover swears it to his beloved, are the sole light of his 
 existence, when they shall be laid in that dark chamber, 
 whither his swift and secret footsteps cannot bring him, 
 then what is to become of poor M. du Miroir! Will 
 he have the fortitude, with my other friends, to take a 
 last look at my pale countenance ? Will he walk fore- 
 most in the funeral train ? Will he come often and 
 haunt around my grave, and weed away the nettles, 
 and plant flowers amid the verdure, and scrape the moss 
 out of the letters of my burial-stone ? Will he linger 
 where I have lived, to remind the neglectful world of 
 one who staked much to win a name, but will not then 
 care whether he lost or won ? 
 
 Not thus will he prove his deep fidelity. Oh, what 
 terror, if this friend of mine, after our last farewell, 
 should step into the crowded street, or roam along our 
 old frequented path, by the still waters, or sit down in 
 the domestic circle, where our faces are most familiar 
 and beloved ! No ; but when the rays of Heaven shall 
 bless me no more, nor the thoughtful lamplight gleam 
 upon my studies, nor the cheerful fireside gladden the 
 meditative man, then, his task fulfilled, shall this mys- 
 terious being vanish from the earth forever. He will
 
 MONSIEUR DU MIROIR 149 
 
 pass to the dark realm of Nothingness, but will not find 
 me there. 
 
 There is something fearful in bearing such a relation 
 to a creature so imperfectly known, and in the idea that, 
 to a certain extent, all which concerns myself will be 
 reflected in its consequences upon him. When we feel 
 that another is to share the self-same fortune with our- 
 selves we judge more severely of our prospects, and 
 withhold our confidence from that delusive magic which 
 appears to shed an infallibility of happiness over our 
 own pathway. Of late years, indeed, there has been 
 much to sadden my intercourse with M. du Miroir. 
 Had not our union been a necessary condition of our 
 life we must have been estranged ere now. In early 
 youth, when my affections were warm and free, I loved 
 him well, and could always spend a pleasant hour in 
 his society, chiefly because it gave me an excellent 
 opinion of myself. Speechless as he was, M. du Miroir 
 had then a most agreeable way of calling me a hand- 
 some fellow ; and I, of course, returned the compli- 
 ment ; so that, the more we kept each other's company, 
 the greater coxcombs we mutually grew. But neither 
 of us need apprehend any such misfortune now. When 
 we chance to meet for it is chance oftener than de- 
 sign each glances sadly at the other's forehead, 
 dreading wrinkles there, and at our temples, whence the 
 hair is thinning away too early, and at the sunken eyes, 
 which no longer shed a gladsome light over the whole 
 face. I involuntarily peruse him as a record of my heavy 
 youth, which has been wasted in sluggishness, for lack 
 of hope and impulse, or equally thrown away in toil, 
 that had no wise motive, and has accomplished no good 
 end. I perceive that the tranquil gloom of a dis- 
 appointed soul has darkened through his countenance, 
 where the blackness of the future seems to mingle with 
 the shadows of the past, giving him the aspect of a 
 fated man. Is it too wild a thought, that my fate may 
 have assumed this image of myself, and therefore 
 haunts me with such inevitable pertinacity, originating 
 every act which it appears to imitate, while it deludes
 
 150 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 me by pretending to share the events of which it is 
 merely the emblem and the prophecy ? I must banish 
 this idea, or it will throw too deep an awe round my 
 companion. At our next meeting, especially if it be at 
 midnight or in solitude, I fear that I shall glance aside 
 and shudder ; in which case, as M. du Miroir is extremely 
 sensitive to ill-treatment, he also will avert his eyes, and 
 express horror or disgust. 
 
 But no! This is unworthy of me. As, of old, I 
 sought his society for the bewitching dreams of woman's 
 love which he inspired, and because I fancied a bright 
 fortune in his aspect, so now will I hold daily and long 
 communion with him, for the sake of the stern lessons that 
 he will teach my manhood. With folded arms, we will 
 sit face to face, and lengthen out our silent converse, 
 till a wiser cheerfulness shall have been wrought from 
 the very texture of despondency. He will say, perhaps 
 indignantly, that it befits only him to mourn for the 
 decay of outward grace, which, while he possessed it, 
 was his all. But have not you, he will ask, a treasure 
 in reserve, to which every year may add far more value 
 than age, or death itself, can snatch from that miserable 
 clay? He will tell me that though the bloom of life 
 has been nipt with a frost, yet the soul must not sit 
 shivering in its cell, but bestir itself manfully, and 
 kindle a genial warmth from its own exercise, against 
 the autumnal and the wintry atmosphere. And I, in 
 return, will bid him be of good cheer, nor take it amiss 
 that I must blanch his locks and wrinkle him up like a 
 wilted apple, since it shall be my endeavor so to beautify 
 his face with intellect and mild benevolence, that he shall 
 profit immensely by the change. But here a smile will 
 glimmer somewhat sadly over M. du Miroir's visage. 
 
 When this subject shall have been sufficiently dis- 
 cussed, we may take up others as important. Reflect- 
 ing upon his power of following me to the remotest 
 regions and into the deepest privacy, I will compare 
 the attempt to escape him to the hopeless race that 
 men sometimes run with memory, or their own hearts, 
 or their moral selves, which, though burthened with
 
 MONSIEUR DU MIROIR 151 
 
 cares enough to crush an elephant, will never be one 
 step behind. I will be self-contemplative, as nature 
 bids me, and make him the picture or visible type of 
 what I muse upon, that my mind may not wander so 
 vaguely as heretofore, chasing its own shadow through 
 a chaos, and catching only the monsters that abide 
 there. Then will we turn our thoughts to the spiritual 
 world, of the reality of which my companion shall 
 furnish me an illustration, if not an argument. For, 
 as we have only the testimony of the eye to M. du 
 Miroir's existence, while all the other senses would fail 
 to inform us that such a figure stands within arm's 
 length, wherefore should there not be beings innumer- 
 able, close beside us, and filling heaven and earth with 
 their multitude, yet of whom no corporeal perception 
 can take cognizance ? A blind man might as reason- 
 ably deny that M. du Miroir exists, as we, because the 
 Creator has hitherto withheld the spiritual perception, 
 can therefore contend that there are no spirits. Oh, 
 there are ! And at this moment, when the subject of 
 which I write has grown strong within me, and sur- 
 rounded itself with those solemn and awful associations 
 which might have seemed most alien to it/I could 
 fancy that M. du Miroir himself is a wanderer from the 
 spiritual world, with nothing human except his illusive 
 garment of visibility. / Methinks I should tremble now, 
 were his wizard power, of gliding through all impedi- 
 ments in search of me, to place him suddenly before 
 my eyes. 
 
 Ha! What is yonder? Shape of mystery, did the 
 tremor of my heart-strings vibrate to thine own, and 
 call thee from thy home, among the dancers of the 
 Northern Lights, and shadows flung from departed 
 sunshine, and giant spectres that appear on clouds at 
 daybreak, and affright the climber of the Alps ? In 
 truth, it startled me, as I threw a wary glance eastward 
 across the chamber, to discern an unbidden guest, with 
 his eyes bent on mine. The identical MONSIEUR DU 
 MIROIR! Still, there he sits, and returns my gaze with 
 as much of awe and curiosity, as if he, too, had spent a
 
 152 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 solitary evening in fantastic musings, and made me his 
 theme. So inimitably does he counterfeit, that I could 
 almost doubt which of us is the visionary form, or 
 whether each be not the other's mystery, and both twin 
 brethren of one fate, in mutually reflected spheres. Oh, 
 friend, canst thou not hear and answer me? Break 
 down the barrier between us ! Grasp my hand ! Speak ! 
 Listen ! A few words, perhaps, might satisfy the fever- 
 ish yearning of my soul for some master-thought, that 
 should guide me through this labyrinth of life, teaching 
 wherefore I was born, and how to do my task on earth, 
 and what is death. Alas ! Even that unreal image 
 should forget to ape me, and smile at these vain ques- 
 tions. Thus do mortals deify, as it were, a mere shadow 
 of themselves, a spectre of human reason, and ask of 
 that to unveil the mysteries, which Divine Intelligence 
 has revealed so far as needful to our guidance, and hid 
 the rest. 
 
 Farewell, Monsieur du Miroir. Of you, perhaps, as 
 of many men, it may be doubted whether you are the 
 wiser, though your whole business is REFLECTION.
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 
 
 IT has happened to me, on various occasions, to find 
 myself in a certain edifice, which would appear to have 
 some of the characteristics of a public Exchange. Its 
 interior is a spacious hall, with a pavement of white 
 marble. Overhead is a lofty dome, supported by long 
 rows of pillars, of fantastic architecture, the idea of 
 which was probably taken from the Moorish ruins of 
 the Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted edifice 
 in the Arabian Tales. The windows of this hall have 
 a breadth and grandeur of design, and an elaborateness 
 of workmanship, that have nowhere been equalled, except 
 in the Gothic cathedrals of the old world. Like their 
 prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven only 
 through stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall 
 with many-colored radiance, and painting its marble 
 floor with beautiful or grotesque designs ; so that its 
 inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary atmosphere, and 
 tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These pecu- 
 liarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even 
 an American architect usually recognizes as allowable 
 Grecian, Gothic, Oriental, and nondescript cause 
 the whole edifice to give the impression of a dream, 
 which might be dissipated and shattered to fragments, 
 by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement. Yet, 
 with such modifications and repairs as successive ages 
 demand, the Hall of Fantasy is likely to endure longer 
 than the most substantial structure that ever cumbered 
 the earth. 
 
 It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into 
 this edifice ; although most persons enter it at some 
 period or other of their lives if not in their waking 
 moments, then by the universal passport of a dream. 
 At my last visit, I wandered thither unawares, while my
 
 154 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 mind was busy with an idle tale, and was startled by the 
 throng of people who seemed suddenly to rise up around 
 me. 
 
 " Bless me ! Where am I ? " cried I, with but a dim 
 recognition of the place. 
 
 / " You are in a spot," said a friend, who chanced to be 
 near at hand, " which occupies, in the world of fancy, 
 the same position which the Bourse, the Rialto, and the 
 Exchange do in the commercial world. All who have 
 affairs in that mystic region, which lies above, below, or 
 beyond the Actual, may here meet, and talk over the 
 business of their dreams.'X 
 
 " It is a noble hall," observed I. 
 
 "Yes," he replied. "Yet we see but a small portion 
 of the edifice. In its upper stories are said to be apart- 
 ments, where the inhabitants of earth may hold converse 
 with those of the moon. And beneath our feet are 
 gloomy cells, which communicate with the infernal 
 regions, and where monsters and chimeras are kept 
 in confinement, and fed with all unwholesomeness." 
 
 In niches and on pedestals, around about the hall, 
 stood the statues or busts of men, who, in every age, 
 have been rulers and demi-gods in the realms of imagi- 
 nation, and its kindred regions. The grand old counte- 
 nance of Homer ; the shrunken and decrepit form, but 
 vivid face of -^Esop ; the dark presence of Dante ; the 
 wild Ariosto ; Rabelais's smile of deep-wrought mirth ; 
 the profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes ; the all- 
 glorious Shakspeare ; Spenser, meet guest for an 
 allegoric structure ; the severe divinity of Milton ; and 
 Bunyan, moulded of homeliest clay, but instinct with 
 celestial fire were those that chiefly attracted my eye. 
 Fielding, Richardson, and Scott occupied conspicuous 
 pedestals. In an obscure and shadowy niche was 
 deposited the bust of our countryman, the author of 
 Arthur Mervyn. 
 
 " Besides these indestructible memorials of real 
 genius," remarked my companion, " each century has 
 erected statues of its own ephemeral favorites, in wood." 
 
 " I observe a few crumbling relics of such," said I.
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 155 
 
 " But ever and anon, I suppose, Oblivion comes with 
 her huge broom, and sweeps them all from the marble 
 floor. But such will never be the fate of this fine statue 
 of Goethe." 
 
 " Nor of that next to it Emanuel Swedenborg," 
 said he. " Were ever two men of transcendent imagi- 
 nation more unlike ? " 
 
 In the centre of the hall springs an ornamental foun- 
 tain, the water of which continually throws itself into 
 new shapes, and snatches the most diversified hues from 
 the stained atmosphere around. It is impossible to con- 
 ceive what a strange vivacity is imparted to the scene by 
 the magic dance of this fountain, with its endless trans- 
 formations, in which the imaginative beholder may dis- 
 cern what form he will. The water is supposed by some 
 to flow from the same source as the Castalian spring, 
 and is extolled by others as uniting the virtues of the 
 Fountain of Youth with those of many other enchanted 
 wells, long celebrated in tale and song. Having never 
 tasted it, I can bear no testimony to its quality. 
 
 " Did you ever drink this water ? " I inquired of my 
 friend. 
 
 " A few sips, now and then," answered he. " But 
 there are men here who make it their constant bever- 
 age or, at least, have the credit of doing so. In some 
 instances, it is known to have intoxicating qualities." 
 
 " Pray let us look at these water-drinkers," said I. 
 
 So we passed among the fantastic pillars, till we came 
 to a spot where a number of persons were clustered 
 together, in the light of one of the great stained win- 
 dows, which seemed to glorify the whole group, as well 
 as the marble that they trod on. Most of them were 
 men of broad foreheads, meditative countenances, and 
 thoughtful, inward eyes ; yet it required but a trifle to 
 summon up mirth, peeping out from the very midst of 
 grave and lofty musings. Some strode about, or leaned 
 against the pillars of the hall, alone and in silence ; their 
 faces wore a rapt expression, as if sweet music were in 
 the air around them, or as if their inmost souls were 
 about to float away in song. One or two, perhaps, stole
 
 156 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 a glance at the bystanders, to watch if their poetic 
 absorption were observed. Others stood talking in 
 groups, with a liveliness of expression, a ready smile, 
 and a light, intellectual laughter, which showed how 
 rapidly the shafts of wit were glancing to-and-f ro among 
 them. 
 
 A few held higher converse, which caused their calm 
 and melancholy souls to beam moonlight from their 
 eyes. As I lingered near them for I felt an inward 
 attraction towards these men, as if the sympathy of feel- 
 ing, if not of genius, had united me to their order my 
 friend mentioned several of their names. The world 
 has likewise heard those names ; with some it has been 
 familiar for years; and others are daily making their 
 way deeper into the universal heart. 
 
 " Thank heaven," observed I to my companion, as 
 we passed to another part of the hall, "we have done 
 with this tetchy, wayward, shy, proud, unreasonable set 
 of laurel-gatherers. I love them in their works, but 
 have little desire to meet them elsewhere." 
 
 "You have adopted an old prejudice, I see," replied 
 my friend, who was familiar with most of these worthies, 
 being himself a student of poetry, and not without the 
 poetic flame. " But so far as my experience goes, men 
 of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities ; and 
 in this age, there appears to be a fellow-feeling among 
 them, which had not heretofore been developed. As 
 men, they ask nothing better than to be on equal terms 
 with their fellow-men ; and as authors, they have thrown 
 aside their proverbial jealousy, and acknowledge a gen- 
 erous brotherhood." 
 
 " The world does not think so," answered I. " An 
 author is received in general society pretty much as we 
 honest citizens are in the Hall of Fantasy. We gaze at 
 him as if he had no business among us, and question 
 whether he is fit for any of our pursuits." 
 
 " Then it is a very foolish question," said he. " Now, 
 here are a class of men, whom we may daily meet on 
 'Change. Yet what poet in the hall is more a fool of 
 fancy than the sagest of them?"
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 157 
 
 He pointed to a number of persons, who, manifest as 
 the fact was, would have deemed it an insult to be told 
 that they stood in the Hall of Fantasy. Their visages 
 were traced into wrinkles and furrows, each of which 
 seemed the record of some actual experience in life. 
 Their eyes had the shrewd, calculating glance, which 
 detects so quickly and so surely all that it concerns a 
 man of business to know about the characters and pur- 
 poses of his fellow-men. Judging them as they stood, 
 they might be honored and trusted members of the 
 Chamber of Commerce, who had found the genuine 
 secret of wealth, and whose sagacity gave them the com- 
 mand of fortune. There was a character of detail and 
 matter-of-fact in their talk, which concealed the extrava- 
 gance of its purport, insomuch that the wildest schemes 
 had the aspect of every-day realities. Thus the listener 
 was not startled at the idea of cities to be built, as if by 
 magic, in the heart of pathless forests ; and of streets to 
 be laid out, where now the sea was tossing; and of 
 mighty rivers to be stayed in their courses, in order 
 to turn the machinery of a cotton-mill. It was only by 
 an effort and scarcely then that the mind convinced 
 itself that such speculations were as much matter of 
 fantasy as the old dream of Eldorado, or as Mammon's 
 Cave or any other vision of gold, ever conjured up by 
 the imagination of needy poet or romantic adventurer. 
 
 " Upon my word," said I, " it is dangerous to listen to 
 such dreamers as these ! Their madness is contagious." 
 
 "Yes," said my friend, "because they mistake the 
 Hall of Fantasy for actual brick and mortar, and its 
 purple atmosphere for unsophisticated sunshine. But 
 the poet knows his whereabout, and therefore is less 
 likely to make a fool of himself in real life." 
 
 " Here again," observed I, as we advanced a little 
 further, " we see another order of dreamers peculiarly 
 characteristic, too, of the genius of our country." 
 
 These were the inventors of fantastic machines. Mod- 
 els of their contrivances were placed against some of the 
 pillars of the hall, and afforded good emblems of the 
 result generally to be anticipated from an attempt to
 
 158 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 reduce day-dreams to practice. The analogy may hold 
 in morals, as well as physics. For instance, here was 
 the model of a railroad through the air, and a tunnel 
 under the sea. Here was a machine stolen, I believe 
 for the distillation of heat from moonshine ; and 
 another for the condensation of morning-mist into 
 square blocks of granite, wherewith it was proposed to 
 rebuild the entire Hall of Fantasy. One man exhibited 
 a sort of lens, whereby he had succeeded in making sun- 
 shine out of a lady's smile; and it was his purpose 
 wholly to irradiate the earth by means of this wonder- 
 ful invention. 
 
 " It is nothing new," said I, " for most of our sun- 
 shine comes from woman's smile already." 
 
 " True," answered the inventor ; " but my machine 
 will secure a constant supply for domestic use 
 whereas, hitherto, it has been very precarious." 
 
 Another person had a scheme for fixing the reflec- 
 tions of objects in a pool of water, and thus taking the 
 most lifelike portraits imaginable ; and the same gen- 
 tleman demonstrated the practicability of giving a per- 
 manent dye to ladies' dresses, in the gorgeous clouds of 
 sunset. There were at least fifty kinds of perpetual 
 motion, one of which was applicable to the wits of news- 
 paper editors and writers of every description. Pro- 
 fessor Espy was here, with a tremendous storm in 
 a gum-elastic bag. I could enumerate many more of 
 these Utopian inventions ; but, after all, a more imagi- 
 native collection is to be found in the Patent Office at 
 Washington. 
 
 Turning from the inventors, we took a more general 
 survey of the inmates of the hall. Many persons were 
 present, whose right of entrance appeared to consist in 
 some crotchet of the brain, which, so long as it might 
 operate, produced a change in their relation to the act- 
 ual world. It is singular how very few there are, who 
 do not occasionally gain admittance on such a score, 
 either in abstracted musings, or momentary thoughts, 
 or bright anticipations, or vivid remembrances ; for 
 even the actual becomes ideal, whether in hope or
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 159 
 
 memory, and beguiles the dreamer into the Hall of 
 Fantasy. Some unfortunates make their whole abode 
 and business here, and contract habits which unfit them 
 for all the real employments of life. Others but 
 these are few possess the faculty, in their occasional 
 visits, of discovering a purer truth than the world can 
 impart, among the lights and shadows of these pictured 
 windows. 
 
 /And with all its dangerous influences, we have reason 
 to thank God, that there is such a place of, refuge from 
 the gloom and chillness of actual life/ Hither may 
 come the prisoner, escaping from his dark and narrow 
 cell, and cankerous chain, to breathe free air in this 
 enchanted atmosphere. The sick man leaves his weary 
 pillow, and finds strength to wander hither, though his 
 wasted limbs might not support him even to the thresh- 
 old of his chamber. The exile passes through the Hall 
 of Fantasy to revisit his native soil. The burthen of 
 years rolls down from the old man's shoulders, the 
 moment that the door uncloses. Mourners leave their 
 heavy sorrows at the entrance, and here rejoin the lost 
 ones, whose faces would else be seen no more, until 
 thought shall have become the only fact. It may be 
 said, in truth, that there is but half a life the meaner 
 and earthlier half for those who never find their way 
 into the hall. Nor must I fail to mention, that, in the 
 observatory of the edifice, is kept that wonderful per- 
 spective glass, through which the shepherds of the 
 Delectable Mountains showed Christian the far-off 
 gleam of the Celestial City. The eye of Faith still 
 loves to gaze through it. 
 
 " I observe some men here," said I to my friend, 
 " who might set up a strong claim to be reckoned 
 among the most real personages of the day." 
 
 "Certainly," he replied. "If a man be in advance of 
 his age, he must be content to make his abode in this 
 hall until the lingering generations of his fellow-men 
 come up with him. He can find no other shelter in the 
 universe. But the fantasies of one day are the deepest 
 realities of a future one."
 
 160 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 "It is difficult to distinguish them apart, amid the 
 gorgeous and bewildering light of this hall," rejoined I. 
 " The white sunshine of actual life is necessary in order 
 to test them. I am rather apt to doubt both men and 
 their reasonings, till I meet them in that truthful 
 medium." 
 
 " Perhaps your faith in the ideal is deeper than you 
 are aware," said my friend. "You are at least a Demo- 
 crat ; and methinks no scanty share of such faith is essen- 
 tial to the adoption of that creed." 
 
 Among the characters who had elicited these re- 
 marks, were most of the noted reformers of the day, 
 whether in physics, politics, morals, or religion. There 
 is no surer method of arriving at the Hall of Fantasy, 
 than to throw oneself into the current of a theory ; for, 
 whatever landmarks of fact may be set up along the 
 stream, there is a law of nature that impels it thither. 
 And let it be so ; for here the wise head and capacious 
 heart may do their work; and what is good and true 
 becomes gradually hardened into fact, while error melts 
 away and vanishes among the shadows of the hall. 
 Therefore may none, who believe and rejoice in the 
 progress of mankind, be angry with me because I rec- 
 ognize their apostles and leaders, amid the fantastic 
 radiance of those pictured windows. I love and honor 
 such men, as well as they. 
 
 It would be endless to describe the herd of real or 
 self-styled reformers, that peopled this place of refuge. 
 They were the representatives of an unquiet period, 
 when mankind is seeking to cast off the whole tissue of 
 ancient custom, like a tattered garment. Many of them 
 had got possession of some crystal fragment of truth, 
 the brightness of which so dazzled them, that they could 
 see nothing else in the wide universe. Here were men, 
 whose faith had embodied itself in the form of a potato ; 
 and others whose long beards had a deep spiritual sig- 
 nificance. Here was the abolitionist, brandishing his 
 one idea like an iron flail. In a word, there were a 
 thousand shapes of good and evil, faith and infidelity, 
 wisdom and nonsense, a most incongruous throng.
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 161 
 
 Yet, withal, the heart of the stanchest conservative, 
 unless he abjured his fellowship with man, could hardly 
 have helped throbbing in sympathy with the spirit that 
 pervaded these innumerable theorists. It was good for 
 the man of unquickened heart to listen even to their 
 folly. Far down, beyond the fathom of the intellect, 
 the soul acknowledged that all these varying and con- 
 flicting developments of humanity were united in one 
 sentiment. Be the individual theory as wild as fancy 
 could make it, still the wiser spirit would recognize the 
 struggle of the race after a better and purer life than 
 had yet been realized on earth. My faith revived, even 
 while I rejected all their schemes. It could not be that 
 the world should continue forever what it has been ; a 
 soil where Happiness is so rare a flower, and Virtue so 
 often a blighted fruit ; a battle-field where the good prin- 
 ciple, with its shield flung above its head, can hardly 
 save itself amid the rush of adverse influences. In the 
 enthusiasm of such thoughts, I gazed through one of 
 the pictured windows ; and, behold ! the whole external 
 world was tinged with the dimly glorious aspect that is 
 peculiar to the Hall of Fantasy ; insomuch that it seemed 
 practicable, at that very instant, to realize some plan for 
 the perfection of mankind. But, alas ! if reformers 
 would understand the sphere in which their lot is cast, 
 they must cease to look through pictured windows. 
 Yet they not only use this medium, but mistake it for 
 the whitest sunshine. 
 
 " Come," said I to my friend, starting from a deep 
 revery, " let us hasten hence, or I shall be tempted 
 to make a theory after which, there is little hope of 
 any man." 
 
 " Come hither, then," answered he. " Here is one 
 theory, that swallows up and annihilates all others." 
 
 He led me to a distant part of the hall, where a crowd 
 of deeply attentive auditors were assembled round an 
 elderly man, of plain, honest, trustworthy aspect. With 
 an earnestness that betokened the sincerest faith in his 
 own doctrine, he announced that the destruction of the 
 world was close at hand.
 
 i62 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " It is Father Miller himself ! " exclaimed I. 
 
 " No less a man," said my friend; "and observe how 
 picturesque a contrast between his dogma, and those of 
 the reformers whom we have just glanced at. They 
 look for the earthly perfection of mankind, and are 
 forming schemes which imply that the immortal spirit 
 will be connected with a physical nature, for innumer- 
 able ages of futurity. On the other hand, here comes 
 good Father Miller, and, with one puff of his relentless 
 theory, scatters all their dreams like so many withered 
 leaves upon the blast." 
 
 " It is, perhaps, the only method of getting mankind 
 out of the various perplexities into which they have 
 fallen," I replied. " Yet I could wish that the world 
 might be permitted to endure, until some great moral 
 shall have been evolved. A riddle is propounded. 
 Where is the solution ? The sphinx did not slay her- 
 self until her riddle had been guessed. Will it not be 
 so with the world ? Now, if it should be burnt to-mor- 
 row morning, I am at a loss to know what purpose will 
 have been accomplished, or how the universe will be 
 wiser or better for our existence and destruction." 
 
 " We cannot tell what mighty truths may have been 
 embodied in act, through the existence of the globe and 
 its inhabitants," rejoined my companion. " Perhaps it 
 may be revealed to us, after the fall of the curtain over 
 our catastrophe; or, not impossibly, the whole drama, 
 in which we are involuntary actors, may have been per- 
 formed for the instruction of another set of spectators. 
 I cannot perceive that our own comprehension of it is 
 at all essential to the matter. At any rate, while our 
 view is so ridiculously narrow and superficial, it would 
 be absurd to argue the continuance of the world from 
 the fact that it seems to have existed hitherto in vain." 
 
 " The poor old Earth," murmured I. " She has faults 
 enough, in all conscience; but I cannot bear to have 
 her perish." 
 
 " It is no great matter," said my friend. "The hap- 
 piest of us has been weary of her, many a time and 
 oft."
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 163 
 
 " I doubt it," answered I, pertinaciously ; " the root 
 of human nature strikes down deep into this earthly 
 soil ; and it is but reluctantly that we submit to be 
 transplanted, even for a higher cultivation in Heaven. 
 I query whether the destruction of the earth would 
 gratify any one individual ; except, perhaps, some em- 
 barrassed man of business, whose notes fall due a day 
 after the day of doom." 
 
 Then, methought, I heard the expostulating cry of a 
 multitude against the consummation prophesied by 
 Father Miller. The lover wrestled with Providence for 
 his foreshadowed bliss. Parents entreated that the 
 earth's span of endurance might be prolonged by some 
 seventy years, so that their new-born infant should not 
 be defrauded of his lifetime. A youthful poet mur- 
 mured, because there would be no posterity to recognize 
 the inspiration of his song. The reformers, one and all, 
 demanded a few thousand years to test their theories, 
 after which the universe might go to wreck. A mecha- 
 nician, who was busied with an improvement of the 
 steam-engine, asked merely time to perfect his model. 
 A miser insisted that the world's destruction would be 
 a personal wrong to himself, unless he should first be 
 permitted to add a specified sum to his enormous heap 
 of gold. A little boy made dolorous inquiry whether 
 the last day would come before Christmas, and thus 
 deprive him of his anticipated dainties. In short, no- 
 body seemed satisfied that this mortal scene of things 
 should have its close just now. Yet, it must be con- 
 fessed, the motives of the crowd for desiring its contin- 
 uance were mostly so absurd, that, unless Infinite 
 Wisdom had been aware of much better reasons, the 
 solid Earth must have melted away at once. 
 
 For my own part, not to speak of a few private and 
 personal ends, I really desired our old Mother's pro- 
 longed existence, for her own dear sake. 
 
 " The poor old Earth ! " I repeated. " What I should 
 chiefly regret in her destruction would be that very 
 earthliness, which no other sphere or state of existence 
 can renew or compensate. The fragrance of flowers, and
 
 1 64 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of new-mown hay ; the genial warmth of sunshine, 
 and the beauty of a sunset among clouds ; the comfort 
 and cheerful glow of the fireside ; the deliciousness of 
 fruits, and of all good cheer ; the magnificence of moun- 
 tains, and seas, and cataracts, and the softer charm of 
 rural scenery ; even the fast-falling snow, and the gray 
 atmosphere through which it descends all these, and 
 innumerable other enjoy able things of earth, must perish 
 with her. Then the country frolics ; the homely humor ; 
 the broad, open-mouthed roar of laughter, in which body 
 and soul conjoin so heartily ! I fear that no other world 
 can show us anything just like this. As for purely moral 
 enjoyments, the good will find them in every state of 
 being. But where the material and the moral exist 
 together, what is to happen then ? And then our mute 
 four-footed friends, and the winged songsters of our 
 woods ! Might it not be lawful to regret them, even in 
 the hallowed groves of Paradise ? " 
 
 " You speak like the very spirit of earth, imbued with 
 a scent of freshly turned soil ! " exclaimed my friend. 
 
 " It is not that I so much object to giving up these 
 enjoyments, on my own account," continued I; "but I 
 hate to think that they will have been eternally anni- 
 hilated from the list of joys." 
 
 " Nor need they be," he replied. " I see no real 
 force in what you say. Standing in this Hall of Fan- 
 tasy, we perceive what even the earth-clogged intellect 
 of man can do, in creating circumstances which, though 
 we call them shadowy and visionary, are scarcely more 
 so than those that surround us in actual life. Doubt 
 not, then, that man's disembodied spirit may recreate 
 Time and the World for itself, with all their peculiar 
 enjoyments, should there still be human yearnings amid 
 life eternal and infinite. But I doubt whether we shall 
 be inclined to play such a poor scene over again." 
 
 " Oh, you are ungrateful to our Mother Earth ! " re- 
 joined I. " Come what may, I never will forget her ! 
 Neither will it satisfy me to have her exist merely in 
 idea. I want her great, round, solid self to endure 
 interminably, and still to be peopled with the kindly
 
 THE HALL OF FANTASY 165 
 
 race of man, whom I uphold tar be much better than he , 
 thinks himself. Nevertheless; I confide the whole mat- Jl ) "J 
 ter to Providence, and shall endeavor so to live, that 
 the world may come to an end at any moment, without . 
 leaving me at a loss to find foothold somewhere else." J 
 
 " It is an excellent resolve," said my companion^, 
 looking at his watch. "But come: it is the dinner 
 hour. Will you partake of my vegetable diet ? " 
 
 A thing so matter-of-fact as an invitation to dinner, 
 even when the fare was to be nothing more substantial 
 than vegetables and fruit, compelled us forthwith to 
 remove from the Hall of Fantasy. As we passed out 
 of the portal, we met the spirits of several persons, who 
 had been sent thither in magnetic sleep. I looked back 
 among the sculptured pillars, and at the transformations 
 of the gleaming fountain, and almost desired that the 
 whole of life might be spent in that visionary scene, 
 where the actual world, with its hard angles, should never 
 rub against me, and only be viewed through the medium 
 of pictured windows. But, for those who waste all their 
 days in the Hall of Fantasy, good Father Miller's 
 prophecy is already accomplished, and the solid earth 
 has come to an untimely end. Let us be content, there- 
 fore, with merely an occasional visit, for the sake of 
 spiritualizing the grossness of this actual life, and pre- 
 figuring to ourselves a state in which the Idea shall be 
 all in all.
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 
 
 NOT a great while ago, passing through the gate of 
 dreams, I visited that region of the earth in which 
 lies the famous city of Destruction. It interested me 
 much to learn that, by the public spirit of some of the 
 inhabitants, a railroad has recently been established 
 between this populous and flourishing town and the 
 Celestial City. Having a little time upon my hands, I 
 resolved to gratify a liberal curiosity to make a trip 
 thither. Accordingly, one fine morning, after paying 
 my bill at the hotel, and directing the porter to stow my 
 luggage behind a coach, I took my seat in the vehicle 
 and set out for the Station-house. It was my good 
 fortune to enjoy the company of a gentleman one 
 Mr. Smooth-it-away who, though he had never actu- 
 ally visited the Celestial City, yet seemed as well ac- 
 quainted with its laws, customs, policy, and statistics, as 
 with those of the city of Destruction, of which he was 
 a native townsman. Being, moreover, a director of the 
 railroad corporation, and one of its largest stockholders, 
 he had it in his power to give me all desirable informa- 
 tion respecting that praiseworthy enterprise. 
 
 Our coach rattled out of the city, and, at a short dis- 
 tance from its outskirts, passed over a bridge, of elegant 
 construction, but somewhat too slight, as I imagined, to 
 sustain any considerable weight. On both sides lay an 
 extensive quagmire, which could not have been more 
 disagreeable either to sight or smell, had all the kennels 
 of the earth emptied their pollution there. 
 
 " This," remarked Mr. Smooth-it-away, " is the famous 
 Slough of Despond a disgrace to all the neighbor- 
 hood ; and the greater, that it might so easily be con- 
 verted into firm ground." 
 
 " I have understood," said I, " that efforts have been 
 1 66
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 167 
 
 made for that purpose, from time immemorial. Bunyan 
 mentions that above twenty thousand cart-loads of 
 wholesome instructions had been thrown in here, with- 
 out effect." 
 
 " Very probably ! and what effect could be antici- 
 pated from such unsubstantial stuff?" cried Mr. Smooth- 
 it-away. " You observe this convenient bridge. We 
 obtained a sufficient foundation for it by throwing into 
 the Slough some editions of books of morality, volumes 
 of French philosophy and German rationalism, tracts, 
 sermons, and essays of modern clergymen, extracts 
 from Plato, Confucius, and various Hindoo sages, to- 
 gether with a few ingenious commentaries upon texts 
 of Scripture all of which, by some scientific process, 
 have been converted into a mass like granite. The 
 whole bog might be filled up with similar matter." 
 
 It really seemed to me, however, that the bridge 
 vibrated and heaved up and down in a very formidable 
 manner ; and, spite of Mr. Smooth-it-a way's testimony 
 to the solidity of its foundation, I should be loth to 
 cross it in a crowded omnibus ; especially if each pas- 
 senger were encumbered with as heavy luggage as that 
 gentleman and myself. Nevertheless, we got over 
 without accident, and soon found ourselves at the 
 Station-house. This very neat and spacious edifice is 
 erected on the site of the little Wicket-Gate, which for- 
 merly, as all old pilgrims will recollect, stood directly 
 across the highway, and, by its inconvenient narrowness, 
 was a great obstruction to the traveller of liberal mind 
 and expansive stomach. The reader of John Bunyan 
 will be glad to know, that Christian's old friend Evan- 
 gelist, who was accustomed to supply each pilgrim with 
 a mystic roll, now presides at the ticket-office. Some 
 malicious persons, it is true, deny the identity of this 
 reputable character with the Evangelist of old times, 
 and even pretend to .bring competent evidence of an 
 imposture. Without involving myself in a dispute, I 
 shall merely observe, that so far as my experience goes, 
 the square pieces of pasteboard, now delivered to pas- 
 sengers, are much more convenient and useful, along
 
 i68 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the road, than the antique roll of parchment. Whether 
 they will be as readily received at the gate of the Celes- 
 tial City, I decline giving an opinion. 
 
 A large number of passengers were already at the 
 Station-house, awaiting the departure of the cars. By 
 the aspect and demeanor of these persons, it was easy 
 to judge that the feelings of the community had under- 
 gone a very favorable change, in reference to the 
 celestial pilgrimage. It would have done Bunyan's 
 heart good to see it. Instead of a lonely and ragged 
 man, with a huge burthen on his back, plodding along 
 sorrowfully on foot, while the whole city hooted after 
 him, here were parties of the first gentry and most 
 respectable people in the neighborhood, setting forth 
 towards the Celestial City, as cheerfully as if the pil- 
 grimage were merely a summer tour. Among the 
 gentlemen were characters of deserved eminence, mag- 
 istrates, politicians, and men of wealth, by whose ex- 
 ample religion could not but be greatly recommended 
 to their meaner brethren. In the ladies' apartment, 
 too, I rejoiced to distinguish some of those flowers 
 of fashionable society, who are so well fitted to adorn 
 the most elevated circles of the Celestial City. There 
 was much pleasant conversation about the news of 
 the day, topics of business, politics, or the lighter 
 matters of amusement ; while religion, though indubi- 
 tably the main thing at heart, was thrown tastefully 
 into the background. Even an infidel would have heard 
 little or nothing to shock his sensibility. 
 
 One great convenience of the new method of going 
 on pilgrimage, I must not forget to mention. Our 
 enormous burthens, instead of being carried on our 
 shoulders, as had been the custom of old, were all 
 snugly deposited in the baggage-car, and, as I was 
 assured, would be delivered to their respective owners 
 at the journey's end. Another thing, likewise, the 
 benevolent reader will be delighted to understand. It 
 may be remembered that there was an ancient feud 
 between Prince Beelzebub and the keeper of the 
 Wicket-Gate, and that the adherents of the former dis-
 
 \ 
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 169 
 
 tinguished personage were accustomed to shoot deadly 
 arrows at honest pilgrims, while knocking at the door. 
 This dispute, much to the credit, as well of the illus- 
 trious potentate above-mentioned, as of the worthy 
 and enlightened Directors of the railroad, has been 
 pacifically arranged, on the principle of mutual com- 
 promise. The Prince's subjects are now pretty numer- 
 ously employed about the Station-house, some in taking 
 care of the baggage, others in collecting fuel, feeding 
 the engines, and such congenial occupations ; and I can 
 conscientiously affirm, that persons more attentive to 
 their business, more willing to accommodate, or more 
 generally agreeable to the passengers, are not to be 
 found on any railroad. Every good heart must surely 
 exult at so satisfactory an arrangement of an immemorial 
 difficulty. 
 
 " Where is Mr. Great-heart ? " inquired I. " Beyond a 
 doubt, the Directors have engaged that famous old 
 champion to be chief conductor on the railroad?" 
 
 " Why, no," said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a dry 
 cough. " He was offered the situation of brakeman ; 
 but, to tell you the truth, our friend Great-heart has 
 grown preposterously stiff and narrow in his old age. 
 He has so often guided pilgrims over the road, on 
 foot, that he considers it a sin to travel in any other 
 fashion. Besides, the old fellow had entered so heartily 
 into the ancient feud with Prince Beelzebub, that he 
 would have been perpetually at blows or ill language 
 with some of the Prince's subjects, and thus have 
 embroiled us anew. So, on the whole, we were not 
 sorry when honest Great-heart went off to the Celestial 
 City in a huff, and left us at liberty to choose a more 
 suitable and accommodating man. Yonder comes the 
 conductor of the train. You will probably recognize 
 him at once." 
 
 The engine at this moment took its station in advance 
 of the cars, looking, I must confess, much more like 
 a sort of mechanical demon that would hurry us to the 
 infernal regions, than a laudable contrivance for smooth- 
 ing our way to the Celestial City. On its top sat a
 
 170 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 personage almost enveloped in smoke and flame, which 
 not to startle the reader appeared to gush from his 
 own mouth and stomach, as well as from the engine's 
 brazen abdomen. 
 
 " Do my eyes deceive me ? " cried I. " What on 
 earth is this ! A living creature ? if so, he is own 
 brother to the engine he rides upon ! " 
 
 "Poh, poh, you are obtuse! " said Mr. Smooth-it-away, 
 with a hearty laugh. " Don't you know Apollyon, Chris- 
 tian's old enemy, with whom he fought so fierce a battle 
 in the Valley of Humiliation ? He was the very fellow 
 to manage the engine ; and so we have reconciled him to 
 the custom of going on pilgrimage, and engaged him as 
 chief conductor." 
 
 " Bravo, bravo ! " exclaimed I, with irrepressible 
 enthusiasm, " this shows the liberality of the age ; this 
 proves, if anything can, that all musty prejudices are 
 in a fair way to be obliterated. And how will Chris- 
 tian rejoice to hear of this happy transformation of his 
 old antagonist ! I promise myself great pleasure 
 in informing him of it, when we reach the Celestial 
 City." 
 
 The passengers being all comfortably seated, we now 
 rattled away merrily, accomplishing a greater distance 
 in ten minutes than Christian probably trudged over in 
 a day. It was laughable while we glanced along, as it 
 were, at the tail of a thunderbolt, to observe two dusty 
 foot-travellers, in the old pilgrim-guise, with cockle-shell 
 and staff, their mystic rolls of parchment in their hands, 
 and their intolerable burthens on their backs. The 
 preposterous obstinacy of these honest people, in per- 
 sisting to groan and stumble along the difficult pathway, 
 rather than take advantage of modern improvements, 
 excited great mirth among our wiser brotherhood. We 
 greeted the two pilgrims with many pleasant gibes and 
 a roar of laughter ; whereupon, they gazed at us with 
 such woful and absurdly compassionate visages, that 
 our merriment grew tenfold more obstreperous. Apol- 
 lyon, also, entered heartily into the fun, and contrived to 
 flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 171 
 
 breath, into their faces, and envelop them in an atmos- 
 phere of scalding steam. These little practical jokes 
 amused us mightily, and doubtless afforded the pilgrims 
 the gratification of considering themselves martyrs. 
 
 At some distance from the railroad, Mr. Smooth-it- 
 away pointed to a large, antique edifice, which, he ob- 
 served, was a tavern of long standing, and had formerly 
 been a noted stopping-place for pilgrims. In Bunyan's 
 road-book it is mentioned as the Interpreter's House. 
 
 " I have long had a curiosity to visit that old man- 
 sion," remarked I. 
 
 " It is not one of our stations, as you perceive," said 
 my companion. " The keeper was violently opposed to 
 the railroad ; and well he might be, as the track left his 
 house of entertainment on one side, and thus was pretty 
 certain to deprive him of all his reputable customers. 
 But the footpath still passes his door ; and the old 
 gentleman now and then receives a call from some simple 
 traveller, and entertains him with fare as old-fashioned 
 as himself." 
 
 Before our talk on this subject came to a conclusion, 
 we were rushing by the place where Christian's burthen 
 fell from his shoulders, at the sight of the Cross. This 
 served as a theme for Mr. Smooth-it-away, Mr. Live- 
 for-the-world, Mr. Hide-sin-in-the-heart, Mr. Scaly-con- 
 science, and a knot of gentlemen from the town of 
 Shun-repentance, to descant upon the inestimable ad- 
 vantages resulting from the safety of our baggage. 
 Myself, and all the passengers indeed, joined with great 
 unanimity in this view of the matter ; for our burthens 
 were rich in many things esteemed precious through- 
 out the world ; and, especially, we each of us possessed 
 a great variety of favorite Habits, which we trusted 
 would not be out of fashion, even in the polite circles of 
 the Celestial City. It would have been a sad spectacle 
 to see such an assortment of valuable articles tumbling 
 into the sepulchre. Thus pleasantly conversing on the 
 favorable circumstances of our position, as compared 
 with those of past pilgrims, and of narrow-minded ones 
 at the present day, we soon found ourselves at the foot
 
 172 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of the Hill Difficulty. Through the very heart of this 
 rocky mountain a tunnel has been constructed, of most 
 admirable architecture, with a lofty arch and a spacious 
 double-track ; so that, unless the earth and rocks should 
 chance to crumble down, it will remain an eternal monu- 
 ment of the builder's skill and enterprise. It is a great 
 though incidental advantage, that the materials from the 
 heart of the Hill Difficulty have been employed in fill- 
 ing up the Valley of Humiliation; thus obviating the 
 necessity of descending into that disagreeable and 
 unwholesome hollow. 
 
 " This is a wonderful improvement, indeed," said I. 
 " Yet I should have been glad of an opportunity to visit 
 the Palace Beautiful, and be introduced to the charming 
 young ladies Miss Prudence, Miss Piety, Miss Charity, 
 and the rest who have the kindness to entertain pil- 
 grims there." 
 
 "Young ladies !" cried Mr. Smooth-it-away, as soon 
 as he could speak for laughing. " And charming young 
 ladies ! Why, my dear fellow, they are old maids, every 
 soul of them prim, starched, dry, and angular- and 
 not one of them, I will venture to say, has altered so 
 much as the fashion of her gown since the days of 
 Christian's pilgrimage." 
 
 "Ah, well," said I, much comforted, "then I can 
 very readily dispense with their acquaintance." 
 
 The respectable Apollyon was now putting on the 
 steam at a prodigious rate ; anxious, perhaps, to get rid 
 of the unpleasant reminiscences connected with the spot 
 where he had so disastrously encountered Christian. 
 Consulting Mr. Bunyan's road-book, I perceived that we 
 must now be within a few miles of the Valley of 
 the Shadow of Death ; into which doleful region, at our 
 present speed, we should plunge much sooner than 
 seemed at all desirable. In truth, I expected nothing 
 better than to find myself in the ditch on one side, or 
 the quag on the other. But, on communicating my 
 apprehensions to Mr. Smooth-it-away, he assured me 
 that the difficulties of this passage, even in its worst 
 condition, had been vastly exaggerated, and that, in its
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 173 
 
 present state of improvement, I might consider myself 
 as safe as on any railroad in Christendom. 
 
 Even while we were speaking, the train shot into the 
 entrance of this dreaded Valley. Though I plead 
 guilty to some foolish palpitations of the heart, during 
 our headlong rush over the causeway here constructed, 
 yet it were unjust to withhold the highest encomiums on 
 the boldness of its original conception, and the ingenuity 
 of those who executed it. It was gratifying, likewise, 
 to observe how much care had been taken to dispel the 
 everlasting gloom, and supply the defect of cheerful 
 sunshine; not a ray of which has ever penetrated 
 among these awful shadows. For this purpose, trie 
 inflammable gas, which exudes plentifully from the soil, 
 is collected by means of pipes, and thence communicated 
 to a quadruple row of lamps, along the whole extent of 
 the passage. Thus a radiance has been created, even 
 out of the fiery and sulphurous curse that rests forever 
 upon the Valley ; a radiance hurtful, however, to the 
 eyes, and somewhat bewildering, as I discovered by the 
 changes which it wrought in the visages of my com- 
 panions. In this respect, as compared with natural day- 
 light, there is the same difference as between truth and 
 falsehood ; but if the reader have ever travelled through 
 the dark Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for 
 any light that he could get ; if not from the sky above, 
 then from the blasted soil beneath. Such was the red 
 brilliancy of these lamps, that they appeared to build 
 walls of fire on both sides of the track, between which 
 we held our course at lightning speed, while a rever- 
 berating thunder filled the Valley with its echoes. Had 
 the engine run off the track a catastrophe, it is whis- 
 pered, by no means unprecedented the bottomless pit, 
 if there be any such place, would undoubtedly have 
 received us. Just as some dismal fooleries of this 
 nature had made my heart quake, there came a tremen- 
 dous shriek, careering along the Valley as if a thousand 
 devils had burst their lungs to utter it, but which proved 
 to be merely the whistle of the engine, on arriving at a 
 stopping-place.
 
 174 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 The spot where we had now paused is the same that 
 our friend Bunyan truthful man, but infected with 
 many fantastic notions has designated, in terms plainer 
 than I like to repeat, as the mouth of the infernal region. 
 This, however, must be a mistake ; inasmuch as Mr. 
 Smooth-it-away, while we remained in the smoky and 
 lurid cavern, took occasion to prove that Tophet has not 
 even a metaphorical existence. The place, he assured 
 us, is no other than the crater of a half-extinct volcano, 
 in which the Directors had caused forges to be set up, 
 for the manufacture of railroad iron. Hence, also, is 
 obtained a plentiful supply of fuel for the use of the 
 engines. Whoever had gazed into the dismal obscurity 
 of the broad cavern-mouth, whence ever and anon darted 
 huge tongues of dusky flame, and had seen the strange, 
 half-shaped monsters, and visions of faces horribly gro- 
 tesque, into which the smoke seemed to wreathe itself, 
 and had heard the awful murmurs, and shrieks, and deep 
 shuddering whispers of the blast, sometimes forming 
 themselves into words almost articulate, would have 
 seized upon Mr. Smooth-it-away's comfortable explana- 
 tion, as greedily as we did. The inhabitants of the 
 cavern, moreover, were unlovely personages, dark, 
 smoke-begrimed, generally deformed, with misshapen 
 feet, and a glow of dusky redness in their eyes ; as if 
 their hearts had caught fire, and were blazing out of the 
 upper windows. It struck me as a peculiarity, that the 
 laborers at the forge, and those who brought fuel to 
 the engine, when they began to draw short breath, posi- 
 tively emitted smoke from their mouth and nostrils. 
 
 Among the idlers about the train, most of whom were 
 puffing cigars which they had lighted at the flame of the 
 crater, I was perplexed to notice several who, to my 
 certain knowledge, had heretofore set forth by railroad 
 for the Celestial City. They looked dark, wild, and 
 smoky, with a singular resemblance, indeed, to the 
 native inhabitants ; like whom, also, they had a dis- 
 agreeable propensity to ill-natured gibes and sneers, 
 the habit of which had wrought a settled contortion of 
 their visages. Having been on speaking terms with
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 175 
 
 one of these persons an indolent, good-for-nothing 
 fellow, who went by the name of Take-it-easy I called 
 him, and inquired what was his business there. 
 
 " Did you not start," said I, " for the Celestial 
 City?" 
 
 " That 's a fact," said Mr. Take-it-easy, carelessly 
 puffing some smoke into my eyes. " But I heard such 
 bad accounts, that I never took pains to climb the hill 
 on which the city stands. No business doing no fun 
 going on nothing to drink, and no smoking allowed 
 and a thrumming of church-music from morning till 
 night ! I would not stay in such a place, if they offered 
 me house-room and living free." 
 
 " But, my good Mr. Take-it-easy," cried I, " why take 
 up your residence here, of all places in the world ? " 
 
 "Oh," said the loafer, with a grin, "it is very warm 
 hereabouts, and I meet with plenty of old acquaint- 
 ances, and altogether the place suits me. I hope to 
 see you back again, some day soon. A pleasant 
 journey to you ! " 
 
 While he was speaking, the bell of the engine rang, 
 and we dashed away, after dropping a few passengers, 
 but receiving no new ones. Rattling onward through 
 the Valley, we were dazzled with the fiercely gleaming 
 gas-lamps, as before. But sometimes, in the dark of 
 intense brightness, grim faces, that bore the aspect and 
 expression of individual sins, or evil passions, seemed 
 to thrust themselves through the veil of light, glaring 
 upon us, and stretching forth a great dusky hand, as 
 if to impede our progress. I almost thought, that they 
 were my own sins that appalled me there. These were 
 freaks of imagination nothing more, certainly, mere 
 delusions, which I ought to be heartily ashamed of but, 
 all through the Dark Valley, I was tormented, and pes- 
 tered, and dolefully bewildered, with the same kind of 
 waking dreams. The mephitic gases of that region 
 intoxicate the brain. As the light of natural day, how- 
 ever, began to struggle with the glow of the lanterns, 
 these vain imaginations lost their vividness, and finally 
 vanished with the first ray of sunshine that greeted our
 
 176 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Ere 
 we had gone a mile beyond it, I could well-nigh have 
 taken my oath, that this whole gloomy passage was a 
 dream. 
 
 At the end of the Valley, as John Bimyan mentions, 
 is a cavern, where, in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, 
 Pope and Pagan, who had strewn the ground about 
 their residence with the bones of slaughtered pilgrims. 
 These vile old troglodytes are no longer there ; but in 
 their deserted cave another terrible giant has thrust 
 himself, and makes it his business to seize upon honest 
 travellers, and fat them for his table with plentiful meals 
 of smoke, mist, moonshine, raw potatoes, and sawdust. 
 He is a German by birth, and is called Giant Transcen- 
 dentalist ; but as to his form, his features, his substance, 
 and his nature generally, it is the chief peculiarity of this 
 huge miscreant, that neither he for himself, nor anybody 
 for him, has ever been able to describe them. As we 
 rushed by the cavern's mouth, we caught a hasty glimpse 
 of him, looking somewhat like an ill-proportioned figure, 
 but considerably more like a heap of fog and duskiness. 
 He shouted after us, but in so strange a phraseology, 
 that we knew not what he meant, nor whether to be 
 encouraged or affrighted. 
 
 It was late in the day, when the train thundered into 
 the ancient city of Vanity, where Vanity Fair is still at 
 the height of prosperity, and exhibits an epitome of what- 
 ever is brilliant, gay, and fascinating, beneath the sun. 
 As I purposed to make a considerable stay here, it 
 gratified me to learn that there is no longer the want 
 of harmony between the townspeople and pilgrims, 
 which impelled the former to such lamentably mis- 
 taken measures as the persecution of Christian, and the 
 fiery martyrdom of Faithful. On the contrary, as the 
 new railroad brings with it great trade and a constant 
 influx of strangers, the lord of Vanity Fair is its chief 
 patron, and the capitalists of the city are among the 
 largest stockholders. Many passengers stop to take 
 their pleasure or make their profit in the Fair, instead 
 of going onward to the Celestial City. Indeed, such
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 177 
 
 are the charms of the place, that people often affirm it 
 to be the true and only heaven ; stoutly contending that 
 there is no other, that those who seek further are mere 
 dreamers, and that, if the fabled brightness of the Ce- 
 lestial City lay but a bare mile beyond the gates of 
 Vanity, they would not be fools enough to go thither. 
 Without subscribing to these, perhaps exaggerated en- 
 comiums, I can truly say, that my abode in the city was 
 mainly agreeable, and my intercourse with the inhabit- 
 ants productive of much amusement and instruction. 
 
 Being naturally of a serious turn, my attention was 
 directed to the solid advantages derivable from a resi- 
 dence here, rather than to the effervescent pleasures, 
 which are the grand object with too many visitants. 
 The Christian reader, if he have had no accounts of 
 the city later than Bunyan's time, will be surprised to 
 hear that almost every street has its church, and that 
 the reverend clergy are nowhere held in higher respect 
 than at Vanity Fair. And well do they deserve such 
 honorable estimation; for the maxims of wisdom and 
 virtue which fall from their lips, come from as deep a 
 spiritual source, and tend to as lofty a religious aim, as 
 those of the sagest philosophers of old. In justification 
 of this high praise, I need only mention the names of 
 the Rev. Mr. Shallow-deep ; the Rev. Mr. Stumble-at- 
 Truth; that fine old clerical character, the Rev. Mr. 
 This-to-day, who expects shortly to resign his pulpit to 
 the Rev. Mr. That-to-morrow ; together with the Rev. 
 Mr. Bewilderment ; the Rev. Mr. Clog-the-spirit ; and, 
 last and greatest, the Rev. Dr. Wind-of-doctrine. The 
 labors of these eminent divines are aided by those of 
 innumerable lecturers, who diffuse such a various pro- 
 fundity, in all subjects of human or celestial science, 
 that any man may acquire an omnigenous erudition, 
 without the trouble of even learning to read. Thus 
 literature is etherealized by assuming for its medium the 
 human voice ; and knowledge, depositing all its heavier 
 particles except, doubtless, its gold becomes exhaled 
 into a sound, which forthwith steals into the ever open 
 ear of the community. These ingenious methods con-
 
 178 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 stitute a sort of machinery, by which thought and study 
 are done to every person's hand, without his putting 
 himself to the slightest inconvenience in the matter. 
 There is another species of machine for the wholesale 
 manufacture of individual morality. This excellent 
 result is effected by societies for all manner of virtuous 
 purposes ; with which a man has merely to connect him- 
 self, throwing, as it were, his quota of virtue into the 
 common stock ; and the president and directors will 
 take care that the aggregate amount be well applied. 
 All these, and other wonderful improvements in ethics, 
 religion, and literature, being made plain to my compre- 
 hension, by the ingenious Mr. Smooth-it-away, inspired 
 me with a vast admiration of Vanity Fair. 
 
 It would fill a volume, in an age of pamphlets, were 
 I to record all my observations in this great capital of 
 human business and pleasure. There was an unlimited 
 range of society the powerful, the wise, the witty, and 
 the famous in every walk of life princes, presidents, 
 poets, generals, artists, actors, and philanthropists, all 
 making their own market at the Fair, and deeming no 
 price too exorbitant for such commodities as hit their 
 fancy. It was well worth one's while, even if he had 
 no idea of buying or selling, to loiter through the 
 bazaars, and observe the various sorts of traffic that 
 were going forward. 
 
 Some of the purchasers, I thought, made very foolish 
 bargains. For instance, a young man, having inherited 
 a splendid fortune, laid out a considerable portion of it 
 in the purchase of diseases, and finally spent all the rest 
 for a heavy lot of repentance and a suit of rags. A 
 very pretty girl bartered a heart as clear as crystal, and 
 which seemed her most valuable possession, for another 
 jewel of the same kind, but so worn and defaced as to 
 be utterly worthless. In one shop, there were a great 
 many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers, 
 authors, statesmen, and various other people pressed 
 eagerly to buy ; some purchased these paltry wreaths 
 with their lives ; others by a toilsome servitude of 
 years ; and many sacrificed whatever was most valuable,
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 179 
 
 yet finally slunk away without the crown. There was a 
 sort of stock or scrip, called Conscience, which seemed to 
 be in great demand, and would purchase almost anything. 
 Indeed, few rich commodities were to be obtained with- 
 out paying a heavy sum in this particular stock, and a 
 man's business was seldom very lucrative, unless he 
 knew precisely when and how to throw his hoard of 
 Conscience into the market. Yet, as this stock was the 
 only thing of permanent value, whoever parted with it 
 was sure to find himself a loser, in the long run. Sev- 
 eral of the speculations were of a questionable char- 
 acter. Occasionally, a member of Congress recruited 
 his pocket by the sale of his constituents ; and I was 
 assured that public officers have often sold their country 
 at very moderate prices. Thousands sold their happi- 
 ness for a whim. Gilded chains were in great demand, 
 and purchased with almost any sacrifice. In truth, 
 those who desired, according to the old adage, to sell 
 anything valuable for a song, might find customers all 
 over the Fair ; and there were innumerable messes of 
 pottage, piping hot, for such as chose to buy them with 
 their birthrights. A few articles, however, could not be 
 found genuine at Vanity Fair. . If a customer wished to 
 renew his stock of youth, the dealers offered him a set 
 of false teeth and an auburn wig ; if he demanded peace 
 of mind, they recommended opium or a brandy-bottle. 
 
 Tracts of land and golden mansions, situate in the 
 Celestial City, were often exchanged, at very disadvan- 
 tageous rates, for a few years' lease of small, dismal, in- 
 convenient tenements in Vanity Fair. Prince Beelzebub 
 himself took great interest in this sort of traffic, and 
 sometimes condescended to meddle with smaller matters. 
 I once had the pleasure to see him bargaining with a 
 miser for his soul, which, after much ingenious skirmish- 
 ing on both sides, his Highness succeeded in obtaining 
 at about the value of sixpence. The Prince remarked, 
 with a smile, that he was a loser by the transaction. 
 
 Day after day, as I walked the streets of Vanity, my 
 manners and deportment became more and more like 
 those of the inhabitants. The place began to seem like
 
 i8o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 home ; the idea of pursuing my travels to the Celestial 
 City was almost obliterated from my mind. I was 
 reminded of it, however, by the sight of the same pair 
 of simple pilgrims at whom we had laughed so heartily, 
 when Apollyon puffed smoke and steam into their faces, 
 at the commencement of our journey. There they 
 stood amid the densest bustle of Vanity the dealers 
 offering them their purple, and fine linen, and jewels; 
 the men of wit and humor gibing at them ; a pair of 
 buxom ladies ogling them askance ; while the benevo- 
 lent Mr. Smooth-it-away whispered some of his wisdom at 
 their elbows, and pointed to a newly erected temple 
 but there were these worthy simpletons, making the 
 scene look wild and monstrous, merely by their sturdy 
 repudiation of all part in its business or pleasures. 
 
 One of them his name was Stick-to-the-right per- 
 ceived in my face, I suppose, a species of sympathy and 
 almost admiration, which, to my own great surprise, I could 
 not help feeling for this pragmatic couple. It prompted 
 him to address me. 
 
 " Sir," inquired he, with a sad, yet mild and kindly 
 voice, " do you call yourself a pilgrim ? " 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "my right to that appellation is 
 indubitable. I am merely a sojourner here in Vanity 
 Fair, being bound to the Celestial City by the new rail- 
 road." 
 
 " Alas, friend," rejoined Mr. Stick-to-the-right, " I do 
 assure you, and beseech you to receive the truth of my 
 words, that that whole concern is a bubble. You may 
 travel on it all your lifetime, were you to live thousands 
 of years, and yet never get beyond the limits of Vanity 
 Fair! Yea; though you should deem yourself entering 
 the gates of the Blessed City, it will be nothing but a 
 miserable delusion." 
 
 " The Lord of the Celestial City," began the other 
 pilgrim, whose name was Mr. Foot-it-to-Heaven, " has 
 refused, and will ever refuse, to grant an act of incor- 
 poration for this railroad ; and unless that be obtained, 
 no passenger can ever hope to enter his dominions. 
 Wherefore, every man who buys a ticket must lay his
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 181 
 
 account with losing the purchase-money which is the 
 value of his own soul." 
 
 " Poh, nonsense ! " said Mr. Smooth-it-away, taking 
 my arm and leading me off, " these fellows ought to be 
 indicted for a libel. If the law stood as it once did in 
 Vanity Fair, we should see them grinning through the 
 iron bars of the prison windows." 
 
 This incident made a considerable impression on my 
 mind, and contributed with other circumstances to indis- 
 pose me to a permanent residence in the city of Vanity ; 
 although, of course, I was not simple enough to give up 
 my original plan of gliding along easily and commodi- 
 ously by railroad. Still, I grew anxious to be gone. 
 There was one strange thing that troubled me : amid 
 the occupations or amusements of the fair, nothing was 
 more common than for a person whether at a feast, 
 theatre, or church, or trafficking for wealth and honors, 
 or whatever he might be doing, and however unseason- 
 able the interruption suddenly to vanish like a soap- 
 bubble, and be never more seen of his fellows ; and so 
 accustomed were the latter to such little accidents, that 
 they went on with their business, as quietly as if nothing 
 had happened. But it was otherwise with me. 
 
 Finally, after a pretty long residence at the Fair, I 
 resumed my journey towards the Celestial City, still 
 with Mr. Smooth-it-away at my side. At a short dis- 
 tance beyond the suburbs of Vanity, we passed the 
 ancient silver mine, of which Demas was the first dis- 
 coverer, and which is now wrought to great advantage, 
 supplying nearly all the coined currency of the world. 
 A little further onward was the spot where Lot's wife 
 had stood for ages, under the semblance of a pillar of 
 salt Curious travellers have long since carried it away 
 piecemeal. Had all regrets been punished as rigorously 
 as this poor dame's were, my yearning for the relin- 
 quished delights of Vanity Fair might have produced a 
 similar change in my own corporeal substance, and left 
 me a warning to future pilgrims. 
 
 The next remarkable object was a large edifice, con- 
 structed of moss-grown stone, but in a modern and airy
 
 182 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 style of architecture. The engine came to a pause in 
 its vicinity with the usual tremendous shriek. 
 
 "This was formerly the castle of the redoubted Giant 
 Despair," observed Mr. Smooth-it-away ; " but, since 
 his death, Mr. Flimsy-faith has repaired it, and now 
 keeps an excellent house of entertainment here. It is 
 one of our stopping-places." 
 
 " It seems but slightly put together," remarked I, 
 looking at the frail, yet ponderous walls. "I do not 
 envy Mr. Flimsy-faith his habitation. Some day it will 
 thunder down upon the heads of the occupants." 
 
 " We shall escape, at all events," said Mr. Smooth-it- 
 away ; " for Apollyon is putting on the steam again." 
 
 The road now plunged into a gorge of the Delectable 
 Mountains, and traversed the field where, in former 
 ages, the blind men wandered and stumbled among the 
 tombs. One of these ancient tomb-stones had been 
 thrust across the track, by some malicious person, and 
 gave the train of cars a terrible jolt. Far up the rugged 
 side of a mountain, I perceived a rusty iron door, half 
 overgrown with bushes and creeping plants, but with 
 smoke issuing from its crevices. 
 
 " Is that," inquired I, " the very door in the hillside, 
 which the shepherds assured Christian was a byway to 
 Hell ? " 
 
 "That was a joke on the part of the shepherds," 
 said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a smile. " It is neither 
 more nor less than the door of a cavern, which they 
 use as a smoke-house for the preparation of mutton 
 hams." 
 
 My recollections of the journey are now, for a little 
 space, dim and confused, inasmuch as a singular drowsi- 
 ness here overcame me, owing to the fact that we were 
 passing over the Enchanted Ground, the air of which 
 encourages a disposition to sleep. I awoke, however, 
 as soon as we crossed the borders of the pleasant land 
 of Beulah. All the passengers were rubbing their eyes, 
 comparing watches, and congratulating one another on 
 the prospect of arriving so seasonably at the journey's 
 end. The sweet breezes of this happy clime came re-
 
 THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD 183 
 
 freshingly to our nostrils ; we beheld the glimmering 
 gush of silver fountains, overhung by trees of beautiful 
 foliage and delicious fruit, which were propagated by 
 grafts from the celestial gardens. Once, as we dashed 
 onward like a hurricane, there was a flutter of wings, 
 and the bright appearance of an angel in the air, speed- 
 ing forth on some heavenly mission. The engine now 
 announced the close vicinity of the final Station House, 
 by one last and horrible scream, in which there seemed 
 to be distinguishable every kind of wailing and woe, 
 and bitter fierceness of wrath, all mixed up with the 
 wild laughter of a devil or a madman. Throughout our 
 journey, at every stopping-place, Apollyon had exer- 
 cised his ingenuity in screwing the most abominable 
 sounds out of the whistle of the steam-engine ; but in 
 this closing effort he outdid himself, and created an 
 infernal uproar, which, besides disturbing the peaceful 
 inhabitants of Beulah, must have sent its discord even 
 through the celestial gates. 
 
 While the horrid clamor was still ringing in our ears, 
 we heard an exulting strain, as if a thousand instruments 
 of music, with height, and depth, and sweetness in their 
 tones, at once tender and triumphant, were struck in 
 unison, to greet the approach of some illustrious hero, 
 who had fought the good fight and won a glorious 
 victory, and was come to lay aside his battered arms for- 
 ever. Looking to ascertain what might be the occasion 
 of this glad harmony, I perceived, on alighting from the 
 cars, that a multitude of shining ones had assembled on 
 the other side of the river, to welcome two poor pilgrims, 
 who were just emerging from its depths. They were 
 the same whom Apollyon and ourselves had persecuted 
 with taunts and gibes, and scalding steam, at the com- 
 mencement of our journey the same whose unworldly 
 aspect and impressive words had stirred my conscience, 
 amid the wild revellers of Vanity Fair. 
 
 " How amazingly well those men have got on ! " 
 cried I to Mr. Smooth-it-away. " I wish we were 
 secure of as good a reception." 
 
 "Never fear never fear!" answered my friend.
 
 1 84 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " Come make haste ; the ferry-boat will be off di- 
 rectly ; and in three minutes you will be on the other 
 side of the river. No doubt you will find coaches to 
 carry you up to the city gates." 
 
 A steam ferry-boat, the last improvement on this 
 important route, lay at the river side, puffing, snorting, 
 and emitting all those other disagreeable utterances, 
 which betoken the departure to be immediate. I hurried 
 on board with the rest of the passengers, most of whom 
 were in great perturbation ; some bawling out for their 
 baggage; some tearing their hair and exclaiming that the 
 boat would explode or sink ; some already pale with the 
 heaving of the stream ; some gazing affrighted at the ugly 
 aspect of the steersman ; and some still dizzy with the 
 slumberous influences of the Enchanted Ground. Look- 
 ing back to the shore, I was amazed to discern Mr. 
 Smooth-it-away waving his hand in token of farewell ! 
 
 " Don't you go over to the Celestial City ? " ex- 
 claimed I. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " answered he, with a queer smile, and that 
 same disagreeable contortion of visage which I had 
 remarked in the inhabitants of the Dark Valley. " Oh, 
 no ! I have come thus far only for the sake of your 
 pleasant company. Good bye! We shall meet again." 
 
 And then did my excellent friend, Mr. Smooth-it-away, 
 laugh outright ; in the midst of which cachinnation, a 
 smoke-wreath issued from his mouth and nostrils, while 
 a twinkle of lurid flame darted out of either eye, prov- 
 ing indubitably that his heart was all of a red blaze. 
 The impudent fiend ! To deny the existence of Tophet, 
 when he felt its fiery tortures raging within his breast ! 
 I rushed to the side of the boat, intending to fling my- 
 self on shore. But the wheels, as they began their 
 revolutions, threw a dash of spray over me, so cold so 
 deadly cold, with the chill that will never leave those 
 waters, until Death be drowned in his own river that, 
 with a shiver and a heart-quake, I awoke. Thank 
 Heaven, it was a Dream !
 
 / THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 
 
 /T IFE figures itself to me as a festal or funereal pro- 
 I v cession. All of us have our places, and are to . 
 move onward under the direction of the Chief Marshal/ 
 The grand difficulty results from the invariably mistaken 
 principles on which the deputy marshals seek to arrange 
 this immense concourse of people, so much more numer- 
 ous than those that train their interminable length 
 through streets and highways in times of political excite- 
 ment. Their scheme is ancient, far beyond the memory 
 of man, or even the record of history, and has hitherto 
 been very little modified by the innate sense of some- 
 thing wrong, and the dim perception of better methods, 
 that have disquieted all the ages through which the pro- 
 cession has taken its march. Its members are classified 
 by the merest external circumstances, and thus are more 
 certain to be thrown out of their true positions than if 
 no principle of arrangement were attempted. In one 
 part of the procession we see men of landed estate or 
 monied capital, gravely keeping each other company, 
 for the preposterous reason that they chance to have a 
 similar standing in the tax-gatherer's book. Trades and 
 professions march together, with scarcely a more real 
 bond of union. In this manner, it cannot be denied, 
 people are disentangled from the mass, and separated 
 into various classes according to certain apparent rela- 
 tions ; all have some artificial badge, which the world, 
 and themselves among the first, learn to consider as a 
 genuine characteristic. Fixing our attention on such 
 outside shows of similarity or difference, we lose sight of 
 those realities by which nature, fortune, fate, or Provi- 
 dence has constituted for every man a brotherhood, 
 wherein it is one great office of human wisdom to 
 classify him. When the mind has once accustomed 
 185
 
 i86 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 itself to a proper arrangement of the Procession of Life, 
 or a true classification of society, even though merely 
 speculative, there is thenceforth a satisfaction which 
 pretty well suffices for itself, without the aid of any 
 actual reformation in the order of march. 
 
 For instance, assuming to myself the power of 
 marshalling the aforesaid procession, I direct a trum- 
 peter to send forth a blast loud enough to be heard 
 from hence to China ; and a herald with world-pervad- 
 ing voice, to make proclamation for a certain class of 
 mortals to take their places. What shall be their prin- 
 ciple of union ? After all, an external one, in compari- 
 son with many that might be found, yet far more real 
 than those which the world has selected for a similar 
 purpose. Let all who are afflicted with like physical 
 diseases form themselves into ranks ! 
 
 Our first attempt at classification is not very success- 
 ful. It may gratify the pride of aristocracy to reflect, 
 that disease, more than any other circumstance of human 
 life, pays due observance to the distinctions which rank 
 and wealth, and poverty and lowliness, have established 
 among mankind. Some maladies are rich and precious, 
 and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance, or 
 purchased with gold. Of this kind is the gout, which 
 serves as a bond of brotherhood to the purple-visaged 
 gentry, who obey the herald's voice, and painfully 
 hobble from all civilized regions of the globe to take 
 their post in the grand procession. In mercy to their 
 toes, let us hope that the march may not be long. The 
 Dyspeptics, too, are people of good standing in the 
 world. For them the earliest salmon is caught in our 
 eastern rivers, and the shy woodcock stains the dry 
 leaves with his blood, in his remotest haunts ; and the 
 turtle comes from the far Pacific islands to be gobbled 
 up in soup. They can afford to flavor all their dishes 
 with indolence, which, in spite of the general opinion, is 
 a sauce more exquisitely piquant than appetite won by 
 exercise. Apoplexy is another highly respectable disease. 
 We will rank together all who have the symptom of 
 dizziness in the brain, and, as fast as any drop by the
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 187 
 
 way, supply their places with new members of the board 
 of aldermen. 
 
 On the other hand, here come whole tribes of peo- 
 ple, whose physical lives are but a deteriorated variety 
 of life, and themselves a meaner species of mankind; 
 so sad an effect has been wrought by the tainted breath 
 of cities, scanty and unwholesome food, destructive 
 modes of labor, and the lack of those moral supports 
 that might partially have counteracted such bad influ- 
 ences. Behold here a train of house painters, all afflicted 
 with a peculiar sort of colic. Next in place we will 
 marshal those workmen in cutlery, who have breathed 
 a fatal disorder into their lungs, with the impalpable 
 dust of steel. Tailors and shoemakers, being sedentary 
 men, will chiefly congregate into one part of the pro- 
 cession, and march under similar banners of disease ; 
 but among them we may observe here and there a 
 sickly student, who has left his health between the 
 leaves of classic volumes; and clerks, likewise, who 
 have caught their deaths on high official stools ; and 
 men of genius too, who have written sheet after sheet 
 with pens dipped in their heart's blood. These are a 
 wretched, quaking, short-breathed set. But what is 
 this crowd of pale-cheeked, slender girls, who disturb 
 the ear with the multiplicity of their short, dry coughs ? 
 They are seamstresses who have plied the daily and 
 nightly needle in the service of master tailors and 
 close-fisted contractors, until now it is almost time for 
 each to hem the borders of her own shroud. Consump- 
 tion points their place in the procession. With their 
 sad sisterhood are intermingled many youthful maidens, 
 who have sickened in aristocratic mansions, and for 
 whose aid science has unavailingly searched its vol- 
 umes, and whom breathless love has watched. In our 
 ranks the rich maiden and the poor seamstress may 
 walk arm in arm. We might find innumerable other 
 instances, where the bond of mutual disease not to 
 speak of nation-sweeping pestilence embraces high 
 and low, and makes the king a brother of the clown. 
 But it is not hard to own that disease is the natural
 
 1 88 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 aristocrat. Let him keep his state, and have his estab- 
 lished orders of rank, and wear his royal mantle of the 
 color of a fever flush ; and let the noble and wealthy 
 boast their own physical infirmities, and display their 
 symptoms as the badges of high station! All things 
 considered, these are as proper subjects of human 
 pride as any relations of human rank that men can 
 fix upon. 
 
 Sound again, thou deep-breathed trumpeter! and 
 herald, with thy voice of might, shout forth another 
 summons, that shall reach the old baronial castles of 
 Europe, and the rudest cabin of our western wilder- 
 ness ! What class is next to take its place in the pro- 
 cession of mortal life ? Let it be those whom the 
 gifts of intellect have united in a noble brotherhood ! 
 
 Aye, this is a reality, before which the conventional 
 distinctions of society melt away, like a vapor when 
 we would grasp it with the hand. Were Byron now 
 alive, and Burns, the first would come from his an- 
 cestral Abbey, flinging aside, although unwillingly, the 
 inherited honors of a thousand years, to take the arm 
 of the mighty peasant, who grew immortal while he 
 stooped behind his plough. These are gone ; but the 
 hall, the farmer's fireside, the hut, perhaps the palace, 
 the counting-room, the workshop, the village, the city, 
 life's high places and low ones, may all produce their 
 poets, whom a common temperament pervades like an 
 electric sympathy. Peer or ploughman will muster 
 them, pair by pair, and shoulder to shoulder. Even 
 society, in its most artificial state, consents to this 
 arrangement. These factory girls from Lowell shall 
 mate themselves with the pride of drawing-rooms and 
 literary circles the bluebells in fashion's nosegay, 
 the Sapphos, and Montagues, and Nortons of the age. 
 Other modes of intellect bring together as strange 
 companies. Silk-gowned professor of languages, give 
 your arm to this sturdy blacksmith, and deem yourself 
 honored by the conjunction, though you behold him 
 grimy from the anvil. All varieties of human speech 
 are like his mother tongue to this rare man. Indis-
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 189 
 
 criminately let those take their places, of whatever 
 rank they come, who possess the kingly gifts to lead 
 armies, or to sway a people, Nature's generals, her 
 lawgivers, her kings, and with them, also, the deep 
 philosophers, who think the thought in one generation 
 that is to revolutionize society in the next. With the 
 hereditary legislator, in whom eloquence is a far-de- 
 scended attainment a rich echo repeated by powerful 
 voices, from Cicero downward we will match some 
 wondrous backwoodsman, who has caught a wild power 
 of language from the breeze among his native forest 
 boughs. But we may safely leave brethren and sister- 
 hood to settle their own congenialities. Our ordinary 
 distinctions become so trifling, so impalpable, so ridicu- 
 lously visionary, in comparison with a classification 
 founded on truth, that all talk about the matter is im- 
 mediately a common-place. 
 
 Yet, the longer I reflect, the less am I satisfied with 
 the idea of forming a separate class of mankind on 
 the basis of high intellectual power. At best, it is but 
 a higher development of innate gifts common to all. 
 Perhaps, moreover, he, whose genius appears deepest 
 and truest, excels his fellows in nothing save the knack 
 of expression ; he throws out, occasionally, a lucky hint 
 at truths of which every human soul is profoundly, 
 though unutterably conscious. Therefore, though we 
 suffer the brotherhood of intellect to march onward 
 together, it may be doubted whether their peculiar 
 relation will not begin to vanish as soon as the proces- 
 sion shall have passed beyond the circle of this present 
 world. But we do not classify for eternity. 
 
 And next, let the trumpet pour forth a funereal wail, 
 and the herald's voice give breath, in one vast cry, to 
 all the groans and grievous utterances that are audible 
 throughout the earth. We appeal now to the sacred 
 bond of sorrow, and summon the great multitude who 
 labor under similar afflictions, to take their places in 
 the march. 
 
 How many a heart that would have been insensible 
 to any other call has responded to the doleful accents of
 
 190 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 that voice ! It has gone far and wide, and high and low, 
 and left scarcely a mortal roof unvisited. Indeed, the 
 principle is only too universal for our purpose, and un- 
 less we limit it, will quite break up our classification of 
 mankind, and convert the whole procession into a 
 funeral train. We will therefore be at some pains to 
 discriminate. Here comes a lonely rich man ; he has 
 built a noble fabric for his dwelling-house, with a front 
 of stately architecture, and marble floors, and doors of 
 precious woods ; the whole structure is as beautiful as 
 a dream, and as substantial as the native rock. But the 
 visionary shapes of a long posterity, for whose home 
 this mansion was intended, have faded into nothingness, 
 since the death of the founder's only son. The rich 
 man gives a glance at his sable garb in one of the splen- 
 did mirrors of his drawing-room, and descending a flight 
 of lofty steps, instinctively offers his arm to yonder 
 poverty-stricken widow, in the rusty black bonnet, and 
 with a check-apron over her patched gown. The 
 sailor-boy, who was her sole earthly stay, was washed 
 overboard in a late tempest. This couple from the palace 
 and the alms-house are but the types of thousands more, 
 who represent the dark tragedy of life, and seldom quarrel 
 for the upper parts. /Grief is such a leveller, with its 
 own dignity and its own humility, that the noble and 
 the peasant, the beggar and the monarch, will waive 
 their pretensions to external rank, without the officious- 
 ness of interference on our part. If pride the influ- 
 ence of the world's false distinctions remain in the 
 heart, then sorrow lacks the earnestness which makes it 
 holy and reverend. /It loses its reality, and becomes a 
 miserable shadow. /On this ground, we have an oppor- 
 tunity to assign over multitudes who would willingly claim 
 places here, to other parts of the procession. If the 
 mourner have anything dearer than his grief, he must 
 seek his true position elsewhere. There are so many 
 unsubstantial sorrows, which the necessity of our mortal 
 state begets on idleness, that an observer, casting aside 
 sentiment, is sometimes led to question whether there 
 be any real woe, except absolute physical suffering, and
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 191 
 
 the loss of closest friends. A crowd, who exhibit what 
 they deem to be broken hearts and among them many 
 love-lorn maids and bachelors, and men of disappointed 
 ambition in arts, or politics, and the poor who were once 
 rich, or who have sought to be rich in vain the great 
 majority of these may ask admittance into some other 
 fraternity. There is no room here. Perhaps we may 
 institute a separate class, where such unfortunates will 
 naturally fall into the procession. Meanwhile let them 
 stand aside, and patiently await their time. 
 
 If our trumpeter can borrow a note from the dooms- 
 day trumpet-blast, let him sound it now! The dread 
 alarm should make the earth quake to its centre, for the 
 herald is about to address mankind with a summons, to 
 which even the purest mortal may be sensible of some 
 faint responding echo in his breast. In many bosoms 
 it will awaken a still small voice, more terrible than its 
 own reverberating uproar. 
 
 The hideous appeal has swept around the globe. 
 Come, all ye guilty ones, and rank yourselves in accord- 
 ance with the brotherhood of crime. This, indeed, is 
 an awful summons. I almost tremble to look at the 
 strange partnerships that begin to be formed, reluctantly, 
 but by the invincible necessity of like to like in this part 
 of the procession. A forger from the state prison 
 seizes the arm of a distinguished financier. How indig- 
 nantly does the latter plead his fair reputation upon 
 'Change, and insist that his operations, by their magnifi- 
 cence of scope, were removed into quite another sphere 
 of morality than those of his pitiful companion ! But 
 let him cut the connection if he can. Here comes a 
 murderer, with his clanking chains, and pairs himself 
 horrible to tell ! with as pure and upright a man, in 
 all observable respects, as ever partook of the conse- 
 crated bread and wine. He is one of those, perchance 
 the most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an 
 exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly 
 crime may be hidden from their own sight and remem- 
 brance, under this unreal frost-work. Yet he now finds 
 his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the
 
 192 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 pert, affected laugh, and the sly leer at the bystanders, 
 intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder 
 decorous matron and that somewhat prudish maiden ? 
 Surely, these poor creatures, born to vice, as their sole 
 and natural inheritance, can be no fit associates for 
 women who have been guarded round about by all the 
 proprieties of domestic life, and who could not err, 
 unless they first created the opportunity ! Oh, no ; it 
 must be merely the impertinence of those unblushing 
 hussies ; and we can only wonder how such respectable 
 ladies should have responded to a summons that was 
 not meant for them. 
 
 We shall make short work of this miserable class, 
 each member of which is entitled to grasp any other 
 member's hand, by that vile degradation wherein guilty 
 error has buried all alike. The foul fiend, to whom it 
 properly belongs, must relieve us of our loathsome task. 
 Let the bond-servants of sin pass on. But neither man 
 nor woman, in whom good predominates, will smile or 
 sneer, nor bid the Rogues' March be played, in derision 
 of their array. Feeling within their breasts a shudder- 
 ing sympathy, which at least gives token of the sin that 
 might have been, they will thank God for any place in 
 the grand procession of human existence, save among 
 those most wretched ones. Many, however, will be 
 astonished at the fatal impulse that drags them thither- 
 ward. Nothing is more remarkable than the various 
 deceptions by which guilt conceals itself from the per- 
 petrator's conscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the 
 splendor of its garments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, 
 and all men who act over an extensive sphere, are 
 most liable to be deluded in this way ; they commit 
 wrong, devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale, 
 that it impresses them as speculative rather than actual ; 
 but, in our procession, we find them linked in-detestable 
 conjunction with the meanest criminals, whose deeds 
 have the vulgarity of petty details. Here the effect of 
 circumstance and accident is done away, and a man 
 finds his rank according to the spirit of his crime, in 
 whatever shape it may have been developed.
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 193 
 
 We have called the Evil ; now let us call the Good. 
 The trumpet's brazen throat should pour heavenly 
 music over the earth, and the herald's voice go forth 
 with the sweetness of an angel's accents, as if to sum- 
 mon each upright man to his reward. But how is 
 this ? Does none answer to the call ? Not one : for 
 the just, the pure, the true, and all who might most 
 worthily obey it, shrink sadly back, as most conscious 
 of error and imperfection. Then let the summons be 
 to those whose pervading principle is Love. This 
 classification will embrace all the truly good, and none 
 in whose souls there exists not something that may 
 expand itself into a heaven, both of well-doing and 
 felicity. 
 
 The first that presents himself is a man of wealth, 
 who has bequeathed the bulk of his property to a 
 hospital ; his ghost, methinks, would have a better right 
 here than his living body. But here they come, the 
 genuine benefactors of their race. Some have wandered 
 about the earth with pictures of bliss in their imagina- 
 tion, and with hearts that shrank sensitively from the 
 idea of pain and woe, yet have studied all varieties of 
 misery that human nature can endure. The prison, the 
 insane asylum, the squalid chamber of the alms-house, 
 the manufactory where the demon of machinery annihi- 
 lates the human soul, and the cotton field where God's 
 image becomes a beast of burthen ; to these, and every 
 other scene where man wrongs or neglects his brother, 
 the apostles of humanity have penetrated. This mission- 
 ary, black with India's burning sunshine, shall give his 
 arm to a pale-faced brother who has made himself famil- 
 iar with the infected alleys and loathsome haunts of 
 vice, in one of our own cities. The generous founder 
 of a college shall be the partner of a maiden lady, of 
 narrow substance, one of whose good deeds it has been, 
 to gather a little school of orphan children. If the 
 mighty merchant, whose benefactions are reckoned by 
 thousands of dollars, deem himself worthy, let him join 
 the procession with her whose love has proved itself by 
 watchings at the sick-bed, and all those lowly offices
 
 194 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 which bring her into actual contact with disease and 
 wretchedness. And with those whose impulses have 
 guided them to benevolent actions, we will rank others, to 
 whom Providence has assigned a different tendency and 
 different powers. Men who have spent their lives in 
 generous and holy contemplation for the human race ; 
 those who, by a certain heavenliness of spirit, have 
 purified the atmosphere around them, and thus sup- 
 plied a medium in which good and high things may be 
 projected and performed, give to these a lofty place 
 among the benefactors of mankind, although no deed, 
 such as the world calls deeds, may be recorded of them. 
 There are some individuals, of whom we cannot con- 
 ceive it proper that they should apply their hands to 
 any earthly instrument, or work out any definite act ; 
 and others, perhaps not less high, to whom it is an 
 essential attribute to labor, in body as well as spirit, 
 for the welfare of their brethren. Thus, if we find a 
 spiritual sage, whose unseen, inestimable influence has 
 exalted the moral standard of mankind, we will choose 
 for his companion some poor laborer, who has wrought 
 for love in the potato field of a neighbor poorer than 
 himself. 
 
 We have summoned this various multitude and, to 
 the credit of our nature, it is a large one on the prin- 
 ciple of Love. It is singular, nevertheless, to remark 
 the shyness that exists among many members of the 
 present class, all of whom we might expect to recognize 
 one another by the free-masonry of mutual goodness, 
 and to embrace like brethren, giving God thanks for 
 such various specimens of human excellence. But it is 
 far otherwise. Each sect surrounds its own righteous- 
 ness with a hedge of thorns. It is difficult for the good 
 Christian to acknowledge the good Pagan ; almost 
 impossible for the good Orthodox to grasp the hand of 
 the good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to settle 
 the matters in dispute, and giving their mutual efforts 
 strongly and trustingly to whatever right thing is too 
 evident to be mistaken. Then again, though the heart 
 be large, yet the mind is often of such moderate dimen-
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 195 
 
 sions as to be exclusively filled up with one idea. When 
 a good man has long devoted himself to a particular 
 kind of beneficence to one species of reform he is 
 apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path 
 wherein he treads, and to fancy that there is no other 
 good to be done on earth but that self-same good to 
 which he has put his hand, and in the very mode that 
 best suits his own conceptions. All else is worthless ; 
 his scheme must be wrought out by the united strength 
 of the whole world's stock of love, or the world is no 
 longer worthy of a position in the universe. Moreover, 
 powerful Truth, being the rich grape-juice expressed 
 from the vineyard of the ages, has an intoxicating 
 quality, when imbibed by any save a powerful intellect, 
 and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel in 
 his cups. For such reasons, strange to say, it is harder 
 to contrive a friendly arrangement of these brethren of 
 love and righteousness, in the procession of life, than to 
 unite even the wicked, who, indeed, are chained together 
 by their crimes. The fact is too preposterous for tears, 
 too lugubrious for laughter. 
 
 But, let good men push and elbow one another as 
 they may, during their earthly march, all will be peace 
 among them when the honorable array of their proces- 
 sion shall tread on heavenly ground. There they will 
 doubtless find, that they have been working each for the 
 other's cause, and that every well-delivered stroke, 
 which, with an honest purpose, any mortal struck, even 
 for a narrow object, was indeed stricken for the uni- 
 versal cause of good. Their own view may be bounded 
 by country, creed, profession, the diversities of individual 
 character but above them all is the breadth of Provi- 
 dence. How many, who have deemed themselves an- 
 tagonists, will smile hereafter, when they look back 
 upon the world's wide harvest field, and perceive that, 
 in unconscious brotherhood, they were helping to bind 
 the self-same sheaf ! 
 
 But, come ! The sun is hastening westward, while 
 the march of human life, that never paused before, is 
 delayed by our attempt to rearrange its order. It is
 
 196 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 desirable to find some comprehensive principle, that 
 shall render our task easier by bringing thousands into 
 the ranks, where hitherto we have brought one. There- 
 fore let the trumpet, if possible, split its brazen throat 
 with a louder note than ever, and the herald summon all 
 mortals who, from whatever cause, have lost, or never 
 found, their proper places in the world. 
 
 Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, 
 most of them with a listless gait, betokening weariness 
 of soul, yet with a gleam of satisfaction in their faces, at 
 a prospect of at length reaching those positions which, 
 hitherto, they have vainly sought. But here will be 
 another disappointment ; for we can attempt no more 
 than merely to associate, in one fraternity, all who are 
 afflicted with the same vague trouble. Some great mis- 
 take in life is the chief condition of admittance into this 
 class. Here are members of the learned professions, 
 whom Providence endowed with special gifts for the 
 plough, the forge, and the wheel-barrow, or for the 
 routine of unintellectual business. We will assign them, 
 as partners in the march, those lowly laborers and handi- 
 craftsmen, who have pined, as with a dying thirst, after 
 the unattainable fountains of knowledge. The latter 
 have lost less than their companions ; yet more, because 
 they deem it infinite. Perchance the two species of 
 unfortunates may comfort one another. Here are 
 Quakers with the instinct of battle in them, and men 
 of war who should have worn the broad-brim. Authors 
 shall be ranked here, whom some freak of Nature, 
 making game of her poor children, had imbued with the 
 confidence of genius, and strong desire of fame, but has 
 favored with no corresponding power ; and others, whose 
 lofty gifts were unaccompanied with the faculty of ex- 
 pression, or any of that earthly machinery, by which 
 ethereal endowments must be manifested to mankind. 
 All these, therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks. 
 Next, here are honest and well-intentioned persons, who 
 by a want of tact by inaccurate perceptions by a 
 distorting imagination have been kept continually at 
 cross-purposes with the world, and bewildered upon the
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 197 
 
 path of life. Let us see, if they can confine themselves 
 within the line of our procession. In this class, like- 
 wise, we must assign places to those who have en- 
 countered that worst of ill-success, a higher fortune than 
 their abilities could vindicate : writers, actors, painters, 
 the pets of a day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed 
 amid their hoary hair ; politicians, whom some malicious 
 contingency of affairs has thrust into conspicuous station, 
 where, while the world stands gazing at them, the dreary 
 consciousness of imbecility makes them curse their birth- 
 hour. To such men, we give for a companion him 
 whose rare talents, which perhaps require a revolution 
 for their exercise, are buried in the tomb of sluggish 
 circumstances. 
 
 Not far from these, we must find room for one whose 
 success has been of the wrong kind : the man who 
 should have lingered in the cloisters of a university, 
 digging new treasures out of the Herculaneum of 
 antique lore, diffusing depth and accuracy of literature 
 throughout his country, and thus making for himself a 
 great and quiet fame. But the outward tendencies 
 around him have proved too powerful for his inward 
 nature, and have drawn him into the arena of political 
 tumult, there to contend at disadvantage, whether front 
 to front, or side by side, with the brawny giants of 
 actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name for brawl- 
 ing parties to bandy to and fro, a legislator of the 
 Union ; a governor of his native State ; an ambassador 
 to the courts of kings or queens ; and the world may 
 deem him a man of happy stars. But not so the wise ; 
 and not so himself, when he looks through his experi- 
 ence, and sighs to miss that fitness, the one invaluable 
 touch which makes all things true and real. So much 
 achieved, yet how abortive is his life ! Whom shall we 
 choose for his companion ? Some weak-framed black- 
 smith, perhaps, whose delicacy of muscles might have 
 suited a tailor's shop-board better than the anvil. 
 
 Shall we bid the trumpet sound again ? It is hardly 
 worth the while. There remain a few idle men of 
 fortune, tavern and grog-shop loungers, lazzaroni, old
 
 198 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 bachelors, decaying maidens, and people of crooked 
 intellect or temper, all of whom may find their like, or 
 some tolerable approach to it, in the plentiful diversity 
 of our latter class. There too, as his ultimate destiny, 
 must we rank the dreamer, who, all his life long, has 
 cherished the idea that he was peculiarly apt for some- 
 thing, but never could determine what it was ; and there 
 the most unfortunate of men, whose purpose it has been 
 to enjoy life's pleasures, but to avoid a manful struggle 
 with its toil and sorrow. The remainder, if any, may 
 connect themselves with .whatever rank of the procession 
 they shall find best adapted to their tastes and con- 
 sciences. The worst possible fate would be to remain 
 behind, shivering in the solitude of time, while all the 
 world is on the move toward eternity. Our attempt to 
 classify society is now complete. The result may be 
 anything but perfect; yet better to give it the very 
 lowest phrase than the antique rule of the herald's 
 office, or the modern one of the tax-gatherer, whereby 
 the accidents and superficial attributes, with which the 
 real nature of individuals has least to do, are acted upon 
 as the deepest characteristics of mankind. Our task is 
 done ! Now let the grand procession move ! 
 
 Yet pause awhile! We had forgotten the Chief- 
 Marshal. 
 
 Hark ! That world- wide swell of solemn music, with 
 the clang of a mighty bell breaking forth through its 
 regular uproar, announces his approach. He comes; 
 a severe, sedate, immovable, dark rider, waving his 
 truncheon of universal sway, as he passes along the 
 lengthened line, on the pale horse of the Revelation. 
 It is Death ! Who else could assume the guidance of a 
 procession that comprehends all humanity? And if 
 some, among these many millions, should deem them- 
 selves classed amiss, yet let them take to their hearts 
 the comfortable truth, that Death levels us all into one 
 great brotherhood, and that another state of being will 
 surely rectify the wrong of this. Then breathe thy wail 
 upon the earth's wailing wind, thou band of melancholy 
 music, made up of every sigh that the human heart,
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 199 
 
 unsatisfied, has uttered ! There is yet triumph in thy 
 tones. And now we move ! Beggars in their rags, and 
 Kings trailing the regal purple in the dust ; the War- 
 rior's gleaming helmet ; the Priest in his sable robe ; 
 the hoary grandsire, who has run life's circle and come 
 back to childhood ; the ruddy School-boy with his 
 golden curls, frisking along the march ; the Artisan's 
 stuff -jacket ; the Noble's star-decorated coat ; the 
 whole presenting a motley spectacle, yet with a dusky 
 grandeur brooding over it. Onward, onward, into that 
 dimness where the lights of Time, which have blazed 
 along the procession, are flickering in their sockets ! 
 And whither ! We know not, and Death, hitherto our 
 leader, deserts us by the wayside, as the tramp of our 
 innumerable footsteps passes beyond his sphere. He 
 knows not, more than we, our destined goal. But God, 
 who made us, knows, and will not leave us on our toil- 
 some and doubtful march, either to wander in infinite 
 uncertainty, or perish by the way !
 
 FEATHERTOP: 
 
 A MORALIZED LEGEND 
 
 DICKON," cried Mother Rigby, "a coal for my 
 pipe ! " 
 
 The pipe was in the old dame's mouth when she said 
 these words. She had thrust it there after filling it with 
 tobacco, but without stooping to light it at the hearth, 
 where indeed there was no appearance of a fire having 
 been kindled that morning. Forthwith, however, as 
 soon as the order was given, there was an intense red 
 glow out of the bowl of the pipe, and a whiff of smoke 
 from Mother Rigby's lips. Whence the coal came, and 
 how brought thither by an invisible hand, I have never 
 been able to discover. 
 
 " Good ! " quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head. 
 " Thank ye, Dickon ! And now for making this scare- 
 crow. Be within call, Dickon, in case I need you again." 
 
 The good woman had risen thus early (for as yet it 
 was scarcely sunrise) in order to set about making a 
 scarecrow, which she intended to put in the middle of 
 her corn-patch. It was now the latter week of May, 
 and the crows and blackbirds had already discovered the 
 little, green, rolled-up leaf of the Indian corn just peep- 
 ing out of the soil. She was determined, therefore, to 
 contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as ever was seen, and to 
 finish it immediately from top to toe, so that it should 
 begin its sentinel's duty that very morning. Now 
 Mother Rigby (as everybody must have heard) was one 
 of the most cunning and potent witches in New England, 
 and might, with very little trouble, have made a scare- 
 crow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself. But 
 on this occasion, as she had awakened in an uncommonly
 
 FEATHERTOP 201 
 
 pleasant humor, and was further dulcified by her pipe of 
 tobacco, she resolved to produce something fine, beauti- 
 ful, and splendid, rather than hideous and horrible. 
 
 " I don't want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn- 
 patch, and almost at my own doorstep," said Mother 
 Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of smoke ; " I could 
 do it if I pleased, but I 'm tired of doing marvellous 
 things, and so I '11 keep within the bounds of everyday 
 business, just for variety's sake. Besides, there is no 
 use in scaring the little children for a mild roundabout, 
 though 't is true I 'm a witch." 
 
 It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the 
 scarecrow should represent a fine gentleman of the 
 period, so far as the materials at hand would allow. 
 Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of the 
 articles that went to the composition of this figure. 
 
 The most important item of all, probably, although it 
 made so little show, was a certain broomstick,^ on which 
 Mother Rigby had taken many an airy gallop at mid- 
 night, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a 
 spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone^ 
 One of its arms was a disabled flaifVhich used to be 
 wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried 
 him out of this troublesome world ; the other, if I mis- 
 take not, was composed of the pudding-stick" and a 
 broken rung of a chair, tied loosely together at the 
 elbow. As for its legs, the right was a hoe-handle, and 
 the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous stick'from 
 the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of 
 that kind were nothing better than a meal-bag stuffed 
 with straw. Thus we have made out the skeleton and 
 entire corporeity of the scarecrow, with the exception of 
 its head ; and this was admirably supplied by a some- 
 what withered and shrivelled pumpkin," in which Mother 
 Rigby cut two holes for the eyes, and a slit for the mouth, 
 leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a 
 nose. It was really quite a respectable face. 
 
 " I 've seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any 
 rate," said Mother Rigby. "And many a fine gentle- 
 man has a pumpkin-head, as well as my scarecrow."
 
 202 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 But the clothespin this case, were to be the making 
 of the man. So the good old woman took down from 
 a peg an ancient plum-colored coat of London make, 
 and with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs, pocket- 
 flaps, and buttonholes, but lamentably worn and faded, 
 patched at the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and thread- 
 bare all over. On the left breast was a round hole, 
 whence either a star of nobility had been rent away, or 
 else the hot heart of some former wearer had scorched it 
 through and through. The neighbors said that this rich 
 garment belonged to the Black Man's wardrobe, and 
 that he kept it at Mother Rigby's cottage for the con- 
 venience of slipping it on whenever he wished to make 
 a grand appearance at the governor's table. To match 
 the coat there was a velvet waistcoat of very ample size 
 and formerly embroidered with foliage that had been as 
 brightly golden as the maple-leaves in October, but which 
 had now quite vanished out of the substance of the velvet. 
 Next came a pair of scarlet breeches, once worn by the 
 French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of which 
 had touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le 
 Grand. The Frenchman had given these small-clothes 
 to an Indian powwow, who parted with them to the old 
 witch for a gill of strong waters, at one of their dances 
 in the forest. Furthermore, Mother. Rigby produced a 
 pair of silk stockings and put them on the figure's legs, 
 where they showed as unsubstantial s a dream, with the 
 wooden reality of the two sticks malting itself miserably 
 apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead 
 husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and 
 surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, 
 in which was stuck the longest tail-feather of a rooster. 
 
 Then the old dame stood the figure up in a corner of 
 her cottage and chuckled to behold its yellow semblance 
 of a visage, with its nobby little nose thrust into the air. 
 It had a strangely self-satisfied aspect, and seemed to 
 say, " Come look at me ! " 
 
 " And you are well worth looking at, that 's a fact ! " 
 quoth Mother Rigby, in admiration at her own handi- 
 work. " I 've made many a puppet since I 've been a
 
 FEATHERTOP 203 
 
 witch ; but methinks this is the finest of them all. 'T is 
 almost too good for a scarecrow. And, by the bye, I '11 
 just fill a fresh pipe of tobacco, and then take him out 
 to the corn-patch." 
 
 While filling her pipe, the old woman continued to 
 gaze with almost motherly affection at the figure in the 
 corner. To say the truth, whether it were chance, or 
 skill, or downright witchcraft, there was something won- 
 derfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with 
 its tattered finery ; and as for the countenance, it ap- 
 peared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin, a 
 funny kind of expression betwixt scorn and merriment, 
 as if it understood itself to be a jest at mankind. The 
 more Mother Rigby looked the better she was pleased. 
 
 "Dickon," cried she, sharply, "another coal for my 
 pipe ! " 
 
 Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before, there was 
 a red-glowing coal on the top of the tobacco. She drew 
 in a long whiff and puffed it forth again into the bar of 
 morning sunshine which struggled through the one dusty 
 pane of her cottage-window. Mother Rigby always 
 liked to flavor her pipe with a coal of fire from the par- 
 ticular chimney-corner whence this had been brought. 
 But where that chimney-corner might be, or who brought 
 the coal from it, further than that the invisible mes- 
 senger seemed to respond to the name of Dickon, I 
 cannot tell. 
 
 " That puppet yonder," thought Mother Rigby, still 
 with her eyes fixed on the scarecrow, "is too good a 
 piece of work to stand all summer in a corn-patch, 
 frightening away the crows and blackbirds. He 's ca- 
 pable of better things. Why, I Ve danced with a worse 
 one, when partners happened to be scarce, at our witch- 
 meetings in the forest ! What if I should let him take 
 his chance among the other men of straw and empty 
 fellows who go bustling about the world ? " 
 
 The old witch took. three or four more whiffs of her 
 pipe and smiled. 
 
 " He '11 meet plenty of his brethren at every street- 
 corner ! " continued she. " Well ; I did n't mean to
 
 204 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 dabble in. witchcraft to-day, further than the lighting of 
 my pipe ; but a witch I am, and a witch I 'm likely to 
 be, and there 's no use trying to shirk it. I '11 make a 
 man of my scarecrow, were it only for the joke's sake ! '.' 
 
 While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the 
 pipe from her own mouth and thrust it into the crevice 
 which represented the same feature in the pumpkin 
 visage of the scarecrow. 
 
 " Puff, darling, puff ! " said she. " Puff away, my fine 
 fellow ! your life depends on it ! " 
 
 This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be ad- 
 dressed to a mere thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, 
 with nothing better than a shrivelled pumpkin for a 
 head ; as we know to have been the scarecrow's case. 
 Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold in remembrance, 
 Mother Rigby was a witch of singular power and dex- 
 terity ; and, keeping this fact duly before our minds, we 
 shall see nothing beyond credibility in the remarkable 
 incidents of our story. Indeed, the great difficulty will 
 be at once got over if we can only bring ourselves to 
 believe that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, 
 there came a whiff of smoke from the scarecrow's mouth. 
 It was the very feeblest of whiffs, to be sure ; but it was 
 followed by another and another, each more decided 
 than the preceding one. 
 
 " Puff away, my pet ! puff away, my pretty one ! " 
 Mother Rigby kept repeating, with her pleasantest smile. 
 " It is the breath of life to ye ; and that you may take 
 my word for." 
 
 Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched. There 
 must have been a spell either in the tobacco or in the 
 fiercely glowing coal that so mysteriously burned on top 
 of it, or in the pungently aromatic smoke which exhaled 
 from the kindled weed. The figure, after a few doubtful 
 attempts, at length blew forth a volley of smoke extend- 
 ing all the way from the obscure corner into the bar of 
 sunshine. There it eddied and melted away among the 
 motes of dust. It seemed a convulsive effort ; for the 
 two or three next whiffs were fainter, although the coal 
 still glowed and threw a gleam over the scarecrow's
 
 FEATHERTOP 205 
 
 visage. The old witch clapped her skinny hands to- 
 gether, and smiled encouragingly upon her handiwork. 
 She saw that the charm worked well. The shrivelled, 
 yellow face, which heretofore had been no face at all, 
 had already a thin, fantastic haze, as it were, of human 
 likeness, shifting to and fro across it ; sometimes vanish- 
 ing entirely, but growing more perceptible than ever 
 with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, 
 in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we 
 impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half 
 deceive ourselves with the pastime of our own fancy. 
 
 If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may 
 be doubted whether there was any real change, after all, 
 in the sordid, worn-out, worthless, and ill-jointed sub- 
 stance of the scarecrow ; but merely a spectral illusion, 
 and a cunning effect of light and shade so colored and 
 contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The 
 miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very 
 shallow subtlety ; and, at least, if the above explanation 
 do not hit the truth of the process, I can suggest no better. 
 
 "Well puffed, my pretty lad ! " still cried old Mother 
 Rigby. " Come, another good stout whiff, and let it be 
 with might and main. Puff for thy life, I tell thee ! 
 Puff out of the very bottom of thy heart ; if any heart 
 thou hast, or any bottom to it ! Well done, again ! 
 Thou didst suck in that mouthful as if for the pure love 
 of it." 
 
 And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throw- 
 ing so much magnetic potency into her gesture that it 
 seemed as if it must inevitably be obeyed, like the 
 mystic call of the loadstone when it summons the iron. 
 
 "Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?" said 
 she. " Step forth ! Thou hast the world before thee ! " 
 
 Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I 
 heard on my grandmother's knee, and which had estab- 
 lished its place among things credible before my child- 
 ish judgment could analyze its probability, I question 
 whether I should have the face to tell it now. 
 
 In obedience to Mother Rigby's word, and extending 
 its arm as if to reach her outstretched hand, the figure
 
 206 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 made a step forward, a kind of hitch and jerk, how- 
 ever, rather than a step, then tottered and almost lost 
 its balance. What could the witch expect? It was 
 nothing, after all, but a scarecrow stuck upon two sticks. 
 But the strong-willed old beldam scowled and beckoned, 
 and flung the energy of her purpose so forcibly at this 
 poor combination of rotten wood and musty straw and 
 ragged garments, that it was compelled to show itself a 
 man, in spite of the reality of things. So it stepped into 
 the bar of sunshine. There it stood, poor devil of a 
 contrivance that it was ! with only the thinnest ves- 
 ture of human similitude about it, through which was 
 evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered, 
 good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to 
 sink in a heap upon the floor, as ^MIS^IS "f its n" n"- 
 yprt-V^ripss tn h^ ^rprt Shall I confess the truth ? At 
 /its present point of vivification, the scarecrow reminds 
 Sme of some of the lukewarm and abortive characters, 
 * composed of heterogeneous materials, used for the thou- 
 sandth time, and never worth using, with which romance 
 writers (and myself, no doubt, among the rest) have so 
 overpeopled the world of fiction. 
 
 But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show 
 a glimpse of her diabolic nature (like a snake's head, 
 peeping with a hiss out of her bosom) at this pusillani- 
 mous behavior of the thing which she had taken the 
 trouble to put together. 
 
 " Puff away, wretch ! " cried she, wrathfully. " Puff, 
 puff, puff, thou thing of straw and emptiness! thou rag 
 or two ! thou meal-bag ! thou pumpkin-head ! thou noth- 
 ing ! Where shall I find a name vile enough to call thee 
 by ? Puff, I say, and suck in thy fantastic life along 
 with the smoke ; else I snatch the pipe from thy mouth 
 and hurl thee where that red coal came from." 
 
 Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing 
 for it but to puff away for dear life. As need was, there- 
 fore, it applied itself lustily to the pipe and sent forth 
 such abundant volleys of tobacco-smoke that the small 
 cottage-kitchen became all vaporous. The one sunbeam 
 struggled mistily through, and could but imperfectly de-
 
 FEATHERTOP 207 
 
 fine the image of the cracked and dusty window-pane on 
 the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one 
 brown arm akimbo and the other stretched towards the 
 figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity with such port 
 and expression as when she was wont to heave a ponder- 
 ous nightmare on her victims and stand at the bedside 
 to enjoy their agony. In fear and trembling did this 
 poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be acknowl- 
 edged, served an excellent purpose ; for, with each suc- 
 cessive whiff, the figure lost more and more^of its dizzy 
 and perplexing tenuity and seemed to take denser sub- 
 stance. Its very garments, moreover, partook of the 
 magical change, and shone with the gloss of novelty and 
 glistened with the skilfully embroidered gold that had 
 long ago been rent away. And, half revealed among the 
 smoke, a yellow visage bent its lustreless eyes on Mother 
 Rigby. 
 
 At last the old witch clinched her fist and shook it 
 at the figure. Not that she was positively angry, but 
 merely acting on the principle perhaps untrue, or not 
 the only truth, though as high a one as Mother Rigby ( 
 could be expected to attain -^mat ^ fe.e^le__jLnd_jt^rpid_ 
 natures, being incapable of better Jnspiratio^ must be 
 slirre6T~up by fear. . But here was the crisis. Should 
 she fail in what sh'e now sought to effect, it was her 
 ruthless purpose to scatter the miserable simulacre into 
 its original elements. 
 
 " Thou hast a man's aspect," said she, sternly. " Have 
 also the echo and mockery of a voice! I^bid_thee speakj ' ' 
 
 The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted 
 a murmur, which was so incorporated with its smoky 
 breath that you could scarcely tell whether it were in- 
 deed a voice or only a whiff of tobacco. Some narrators 
 of this legend hold the opinion that Mother Rigby's con- 
 jurations and the fierceness of her will had compelled a 
 familiar spirit into the figure, and that the voice was his. 
 
 " Mother," mumbled the poor stifled voice, " be not 
 so awful with me ! I would fain speak ; but being with- 
 out wits, what can I say ?" 
 
 "Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou?" cried
 
 208 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 Mother Rigby, relaxing her grim countenance into a 
 smile. "And what shalt thou say, quotha! Say, in- 
 deed ! Art thou of the brotherhood of the empty skull, 
 and demandest of me what thou shalt say? Thou shalt 
 say a thousand things, and saying them a thousand times 
 over, thou shalt still have said nothing ! Be not afraid, 
 I tell thee ! When thou comest into the world (whither 
 I purpose sending thee forthwith), thou shalt not lack 
 the wherewithal to talk. Talk ! Why, thou shalt bab- 
 ble like a mill-stream, if thou wilt. Thou hast brains 
 enough for that, I trow ! " 
 
 " At your service, mother," responded the figure. 
 
 " And that was well said, my pretty one," answered 
 Mother Rigby. " T_hen_ thou spakest like thyself, and 
 meant nothing. Thou shalt have a hundred such set 
 phrases, and five hundred to the boot of them. And 
 now, darling, I have taken so much pains with thee, 
 and thou art so beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee 
 better than any witch's puppet in the world ; and I 've 
 made them of all sorts, clay, wax, straw, sticks, night- 
 fog, morning-mist, sea-foam, and chimney-smoke. But 
 thou art the very best. So give heed to what I say." 
 
 "Yes, kind mother," said the figure, "with all my 
 heart ! " 
 
 "With all thy heart!" cried the old witch, setting 
 her hands to her sides and laughing loudly. "Thou 
 hast such a pretty way of speaking. With all thy 
 heart ! And thou didst put thy hand to the left side 
 of thy waistcoat, as if thou really hadst one ! " 
 
 So now, in high good-humor with this fantastic con- 
 trivance of hers, Mother Rigby told the scarecrow that 
 it must go and play its part in the great world, where 
 not one man in a hundred,, she affirmed, was gifted with 
 more real substance than itself. And, that he might 
 hold up his head with the best of them, she endowed 
 him, on the spot, with an unreckonable. .amount of 
 wealth. _It consisted partly of a gold mine in Eldorado, 
 ancToTTen thousand shares in a broken bubble, and of 
 half a million acres of vineyard at the North Pole, and 
 of a castle in the air, and a chateau in Spain, together
 
 FEATHERTOP 209 
 
 with all the rents and income therefrom accruing. She 
 further made over to him the cargo of a certain ship, 
 laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her nec- 
 romantic arts, had caused to founder, ten years before, 
 in the deepest part of mid-ocean. If the salt were not 
 dissolved, and could be brought to market, it would 
 fetch a pretty penny among the fishermen. That he 
 might not lack ready money, she gave him a copper far- 
 thing of Birmingham manufacture, being all the coin 
 she had about her, and likewise a great deal of brass, 
 which she applied to his forehead, thus making it yel- 
 lower than ever. 
 
 " With that brass alone," quoth Mother Rigby, " thou 
 canst pay thy way all over the earth. Kiss me, pretty 
 darling ! I have done my best for thee." 
 
 Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no pos- 
 sible advantage towards a fair start in life, this excellent 
 old dameave_him aVtok^n hy which he was to intro- 
 
 rn<arn b' ar of the 
 
 ^ 
 
 council, merchant) and elder 'of the church (the four 
 capacities constituting "but'Tmc-marr), who stood at the 
 head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The 
 token was neither more nor less than a single word which 
 Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which 
 the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant. 
 
 " Gouty as the old fellow is, he '11 run thy errands for 
 thee when once thou hast given him that word in his 
 ear," said the old witch. " Mother Rigby knows the 
 worshipful Justice Gookin f and the worshipful Justice 
 knows Mother Rigby ! " 
 
 Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to 
 the puppet's, chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all 
 through her system, with delight at the idea which she 
 meant to communicate. 
 
 "The worshipful Master Gookin," whispered she, 
 " hath a cjimelymaiden to his daughter^ And hark ye, 
 my pet ! Thou hast a iair oillside,"aiid a pretty wit 
 enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit enough ! Thou 
 wilt think better of it when thou hast seen more of other 
 people's wits. Now, with thy outside and thy inside,
 
 2io MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 thou art the very man to win a young girl's heart. Never 
 doubt it ! I tell thee it shall be so. Put but a bold face 
 on the matter, sigh, smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth 
 thy leg like a dancing-master, put thy right hand to the 
 left side of thy waistcoat, and pretty Polly Gookin is 
 thine own ! " 
 
 All this while the new creature had been sucking in 
 and exhaling the^vajp^iy_fragjance of his pipe, and 
 seemed now to continue this occupation as much for the 
 enjoyment it afforded as because it was an essential con- 
 dition of his existence. It was wonderful to see how" 
 exceedingly like a human being it behaved. Its eyes 
 (for it appeared to possess a pair) were bent on Mother 
 Rigby, and at suitable junctures it nodded or shook its 
 head. Neither did it lack words proper for the occa- 
 sion : " Really ! Indeed ! Pray tell me ! Is it possible ! 
 Upon my word ! By no means ! Oh ! Ah ! Hem ! " 
 and other such weighty utterances as imply attention, 
 inquiry, acquiescence, or dissent on the part of the audi- 
 tor. Even had you stood by and seen the scarecrow 
 made, you could scarcely have resisted the conviction 
 that it perfectly understood the cunning counsels which 
 the old witch poured into its counterfeit of an ear. The 
 more earnestly it applied its lips to the pipe the more 
 distinctly was its human likeness stamped among visible 
 realities, the more sagacious grew its expression, the 
 more lifelike its gestures and movements, and the more 
 intelligibly audible its voice. Its garments, too, glistened 
 so much the brighter with an illusory magnificence. The 
 very pipe, in which burned the spell of all this wonder- 
 work, ceased to appear as a smoke-blackened earthen 
 stump, and became a meerschaum, with painted bowl 
 and amber mouthpiece. 
 
 It might be apprehended, however, that as . the life of 
 tJiedllusioii-seemed-identicaJi with the vapor of the pipe, it 
 would terminate simultaneously with the reduction of the 
 tobacco to ashes. Bui-ihe beldam foresaw the difficulty. 
 
 " Hold thou the pipe, my precious one," said she, 
 "while I fill it for thee again." 
 
 It was sorrowful to behold how the fine gentleman
 
 FEATHERTOP 211 
 
 began to fade. back into .a -scarecrow while Mother 
 Rigby shook the ashes out of the pipe and proceeded 
 to replenish it from her tobacco-box. 
 
 " Dickon," cried she, in her high, sharp tone, " another 
 coal for this pipe ! " 
 
 No sooner said than the intensely red speck of fire 
 was glowing within the pipe-bowl ; and the scarecrow, 
 without waiting for the witch's bidding, applied the tube 
 to his lips and drew in a few short, convulsive whiffs, 
 which soon, however, became regular and equable. 
 
 " Now, mine own heart's darling," quoth Mother 
 Rigby, "whatever may happen to thee, thou must 
 stick to thy pipe. Thy life isjnjit ; and that, at least, 
 thou knowest well, if Thou knowest naught besides. 
 Stick to thy pipe, I say ! Smoke, puff, blow thy cloud ; 
 and tell the people, if any question be made, that it is 
 for thy health, and that so the physician orders thee to 
 do. And, sweet one, when thou shalt find thy pipe get- 
 ting low, go apart into some corner and (first filling thy- 
 self with smoke) cry sharply, ' Dickon, a fresh pipe of 
 tobacco ! ' and, ' Dickon, another coal for my pipe ! ' 
 and have it into thy pretty mouth as speedily as may 
 be. Else, instead of a gallant gentleman in a gold-laced 
 coat, thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered 
 clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin ! 
 Now depart, my treasure, and good luck go with thee ! " 
 
 " Never fear, mother ! " said the figure, in a stout 
 
 voice, and sending forth a courageous whiff of smoke. 
 
 \ " I will thrive, if an honest man and a gentleman may ! " 
 
 " Oh, thou wilt be the death of me ! " cried the old 
 witch, convulsed with laughter. " That was well said. 
 If an honest man and a gentleman may ! Thou playest 
 thy part to perfection. Get along with thee for a smart 
 fellow ; and I will wager on thy head, as a man of pith 
 and substance, with a brain, and what they call a heart, 
 and all else that a man should have, against any other 
 thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch than 
 yesterday, for thy sake. Did not I make thee ? And I 
 defy any witch in New England to make such another ! 
 Here ; take my staff along with thee ! "
 
 212 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 The staff, though it was but a plain oaken stick, 
 immediately took the aspect of a gold-headed cane. 
 
 "That gold head has as much sense in it as thine 
 own," said Mother Rigby, " and it will guide thee 
 straight to worshipful Master Gookin's door. Get thee 
 gone, my pretty pet, my darling, my precious one, my 
 treasure ; and if any ask thy_ name, it is Feathertop. 
 For thou hast a feather in thy hat, and I have thrust a 
 handful of feathers into the hollow of thy head, and thy 
 wig too is of the fashion they call Feathertop, so be 
 Feathertop thy name ! ** 
 
 And, issuing from the cottage, Feathertop strode 
 manfully towards town. Mother Rigby stood at the 
 threshold, well pleased to see how the sunbeams glis- 
 tened on him, as if all his magnificence were real, and 
 how diligently and lovingly he smoked his pipe, and 
 how handsomely he walked, in spite of a little stiffness 
 of his legs. She watched him until out of sight, and 
 threw a witch benediction after her darling, when a 
 turn of the road snatched him from her view. 
 
 Betimes in the forenoon, when the principal street 
 of the neighboring town was just at its acme of life 
 and bustle, a stranger of very distinguished figure was 
 seen on the sidewalk. His port as well as his garments 
 betokened nothing short of nobility. He wore a richly 
 embroidered plum-colored coat, a waistcoat of costly vel- 
 vet magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of 
 splendid scarlet breeches, and the finest and glossiest of 
 white silk stockings. His head was covered with a per- 
 uke, so daintily powdered and adjusted that it would 
 have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which, 
 therefore (and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a 
 snowy feather), he carried beneath his arm. On the 
 breast of his coat glistened a star. He managed his 
 gold-headed cane with an airy grace peculiar to the 
 fine gentlemen of the period ; and, to give the highest 
 possible finish to his equipment, he had lace ruffles at 
 his wrist, of a most ethereal delicacy, sufficiently avouch- 
 ing how idle and aristocratic must be the hands which 
 they half concealed.
 
 FEATHERTOP 213 
 
 It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this 
 brilliant personage, that he held in his left hand a fan- 
 tastic kind of a pipe, with an exquisitely painted bowl 
 and an amber mouthpiece. This he applied to his lips 
 as often as every five or six paces, and inhaled a deep 
 whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a moment 
 in his lungs, might be seen to eddy gracefully from his 
 mouth and nostrils. 
 
 As may well be supposed, the street was all astir to 
 find out the stranger's name. 
 
 " It is some great nobleman, beyond question," said 
 one of the townspeople. " Do you see the star at his 
 breast ? " 
 
 " Nay ; it is too bright to be seen," said another. 
 " Yes ; he must needs be a nobleman, as you say. But 
 by what conveyance, think you, can his lordship have 
 voyaged or travelled hither ? There has been no vessel 
 from the old country for a month past ; and if he have 
 arrived overland, from the southward, pray where are 
 his attendants and equipage ? " 
 
 " He needs no equipage to set off his rank," remarked 
 a third. " If he came among us in rags, nobility would 
 shine through a hole in his elbow. I never saw such 
 dignity of aspect. He has the old Norman blood in his 
 veins, I warrant him." 
 
 " I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of your 
 high Germans," said another citizen. "The men of 
 those countries have always the pipe at their mouths." 
 
 "And so has a Turk," answered his companion. 
 " But, in my judgment, this stranger hath been bred 
 at the French court, and hath there learned politeness 
 and grace of manner, which none understand so well as 
 the nobility of France. JQhatgait, now ! A vulgar spec- 
 tator might deem it stiff, he~mighf ~caTTTt aTiitch and 
 jerk, but, to my eye, it hath an unspeakable maj- 
 esty, and must have been acquired by constant observa- 
 tion of the deportment of the Grand Monarque. The 
 stranger's character and office are evident enough. He 
 is a French ambassador, come to treat with our rulers 
 about the cession of Canada."
 
 214 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 "More probably a Spaniard," said another, "and 
 hence his yellow complexion ; or, most likely, he is 
 from the Havana, or from some port on the Spanish 
 main, and comes to make investigation about the pira- 
 cies which our governor is thought to connive at. Those 
 settlers in Peru and Mexico have skins as yellow as the 
 gold which they dig out of their mines." 
 
 "Yellow or not," cried a lady, "he is a beautiful 
 man ! so tall, so slender ! such a fine, noble face, 
 with so well-shaped a nose, and all that delicacy of 
 expression about the mouth ! And, bless me, how 
 bright his star is! It positively shoots out flames!" 
 
 "So do your eyes, fair lady," said the stranger, with 
 a bow and a flourish of his pipe ; for he was just passing 
 at the instant. " Upon my honor, they have quite daz- 
 zled me." 
 
 " Was ever so original and exquisite a compliment ? " 
 murmured the lady, in an ecstasy of delight. 
 
 Amid the general admiration excited by the stranger's 
 appearance, there were only two dissenting voices. One 
 was that of an impertinent cury'which, after snuffing at 
 the heels of the glistening figure, put its tail between its 
 legs and skulked into its master's back-yard, vociferating 
 an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a. young 
 child 1 'who_^qualle_d at the fullest stretch of his lungs; and 
 babbled some unintelligible nonsense about a pumpkin. 
 
 Feathertop, meanwhile, pursued his way along the 
 street. Except for the few complimentary words to the 
 lady, and now and then a slight inclination of the head 
 in requital of the profound reverences of the by-standers, 
 he seemed wholly absorbed in his pipe. There needed 
 no other proof of his rank and consequence than the 
 perfect equanimity with which he comported himself, 
 while the curiosity and admiration of the town swelled 
 almost into clamor around him. With a crowd gather- 
 ing behind his footsteps, he finally reached the mansion- 
 house of the worshipful Justice Gookin, entered the 
 gate, ascended the steps of the front door, and knocked. 
 In the interim, before his summons was answered, the 
 stranger was observed to shake the ashes out of his pipe.
 
 FEATHERTOP 215 
 
 " What did he say in that sharp voice ? " inquired one 
 of the spectators. 
 
 " Nay, I know not," answered his friend. " But the 
 sun dazzles my eyes strangely. How dim and faded his 
 lordship looks all of a sudden ! Bless my wits, what is 
 the matter with me ? " 
 
 "The wonder is," said the other, "that his pipe, 
 which was out only an instant ago, should be all alight 
 again, and with the reddest coal I ever saw. There is 
 something mysterious about this stranger. What a whiff 
 of smoke was that ! Dim and faded did you call him ? 
 Why, as he turns about, the star on his breast is all 
 ablaze." 
 
 " It is, indeed," said his companion ; " and it will go 
 near to dazzle pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping 
 at it out of the chamber-window." 
 
 The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the 
 crowd, made a stately bend of his body like a great man 
 acknowledging the reverence of the meaner sort, and 
 vanished into the house. There was a mysterious kind 
 of a smile, if it might not better be called a grin or 
 grimace, upon his visage ; but, of all the throng that 
 beheld him, not an individual appears to have possessed 
 insight enough to detect the illusive character of the 
 stranger except a little child and a cur dog. 
 
 Our legend here loses somewhat of its continuity, 
 and, passing over the preliminary explanation between 
 Feathertop and the merchant, goes in quest of the pretty 
 Polly Gookin. She was a damsel of a soft, round figure, 
 with light hair and blue eyes, and a fair, rosy face, 
 which seemed neither very shrewd nor very simple. 
 This young lady had caught a glimpse of the glistening 
 stranger while standing at the threshold, and had forth- 
 with put on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest 
 kerchief, and her stiffest damask petticoat, in prepara- 
 tion for the interview. Hurrying from her chamber to 
 the parlor, she had ever since been viewing herself in 
 the large looking-glass and practising pretty airs, now 
 a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now 
 a softer smile than the former, kissing her hand likewise,
 
 2i6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 tossing her head, and managing her fan ; while within 
 the mirror an unsubstantial little maid repeated every 
 gesture and did all the foolish things that Polly did, but 
 without making her ashamed of them. In short, it was / 
 the fault of pretty Polly's ability rather than her will if 
 she failed to be as complete an artifice as the illustrious 
 Feathertop himself ; and, when she thus tampered with 
 her own simplicity, the witch's phantom might well hope 
 to win her. 
 
 No sooner did Polly hear her father's gouty footsteps 
 approaching the parlor-door, accompanied with the stiff 
 clatter of Feathertop's high-heeled shoes, than she seated 
 herself bolt upright and innocently began warbling a 
 song. 
 
 " Polly ! daughter Polly ! " cried the old merchant. 
 " Come hither, child." 
 
 Master Gookin's aspect, as he opened the door, was 
 doubtful and troubled. 
 
 " This gentleman," continued he, presenting the stran- 
 ger, " is the Chevalier Feathertop, nay, I beg his 
 pardon, my Lord Feathertop, who hath brought me 
 a token of remembrance from an ancient friend of mine. 
 Pay your duty to his lordship, child, and honor him as 
 his quality deserves." 
 
 After these few words of introduction, the worshipful 
 magistrate immediately quitted the room. But, even 
 in that brief moment, had the fair Polly glanced aside 
 at her father instead of devoting herself wholly to the 
 brilliant guest, she might have taken warning of some 
 mischief nigh at hand. X.hejDld man was nervous, 
 fidgety, and very pale. Purposing a smile of courtesy, 
 he had deformed his face with a sort of galvanic grin, 
 which, when Feathertop's back was turned, he ex- 
 changed for a scowl, at the same time shaking his fist 
 and stamping his gouty foot, an incivility which 
 brought its retribution along with it. The truth ap- 
 pears to have been, that Mother Rigby's word of intro- 
 duction, whatever it might be, had operated far more 
 on the rich merchant's fears than on his good-will. 
 Moreover, being a man of wonderfully acute observa-
 
 FEATHERTOP 217 
 
 tion, he had noticed that .the painted figures on the bowl 
 
 Of FeathertOp> pipe W*rvT in rmpf-j^n T .nn'lHngr Tr.r>r> 
 
 closely, he became convinced that these figures were a 
 party of little d pmnn<; , ^ ar h^jduly provlcted"'with' "iidt'liis 
 <UU|_a* tail, ajxd^dRncingJba^d^Ealid,^ wllli geatuiLs-ef 
 diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the 
 pipe-bowl. As if to confirm his suspicions, while Mas- 
 ter Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky passage 
 from his private room to the parlor, th^-etais-en.^Feath- 
 ertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw 
 a flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and the 
 floor. 
 
 With such sinister prognostics manifesting themselves 
 on all hands, it is not to be marvelled at that the mer- 
 chant should have felt that he was committing his daugh- 
 ter to a very questionable acquaintance. He cursed, in 
 his secret soul, the insinuating elegance of Feathertop's 
 manners, as this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put 
 his hand on his heart, inhaled a long whiff from his 
 pipe, and enriched the atmosphere with the smoky vapor 
 of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor Master 
 Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the street ; 
 but there was a constraint and terror within him. This 
 respectable old gentleman, we fear, at an earlier period 
 of life, had given some pledge or other to the evil- 
 principle, and perhaps was now to redeem it by the 
 sacrifice of his daughter. 
 
 It so happened that the parlor-door was partly of 
 glass, shaded by a silken curtain, the folds of which 
 hung a little awry. So strong was the merchant's in- 
 terest in witnessing what was to ensue between the fair 
 Polly and the gallant Feathertop, that after quitting the 
 room he could by no means refrain from peeping through 
 the crevice of the curtain. 
 
 But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen ; 
 nothing except the trifles previously noticed to con- 
 firm the idea of a supernatural peril environing the pretty 
 Polly. The stranger, it is true, was evidently a thorough 
 and practised man of the world, systematic and self- 
 possessed, and therefore the sort of a person to whom
 
 2i 8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 a parent ought not to confide a simple, young girl, with- 
 out due watchfulness for the result. The worthy magis- 
 trate, who had been conversant with all degrees and 
 qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every motion 
 and gesture of the distinguished Feathertop came in its 
 proper place ; nothing had been left rude or native in 
 him ; a well-digested conventionalism had incorporated 
 itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him 
 into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that 
 invested him with a species of ghastliness and awe. It 
 is the effect of anything completely and consuirimately 
 artificial, in human shape, that the person impresses us 
 as an unreality and as having hardly pith enough to 
 cast a shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, 
 all this resulted in a wild, extravagant, and fantastical 
 impression, as if his life and being were akin to the 
 smoke that curled upward from his pipe. 
 
 But pretty Polly Gookin felt not tl^is- The pair were 
 now promenading the room ; Feathertop with his dainty 
 stride and no less dainty grimace ; the girl with a native 
 maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a slightly 
 affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect 
 artifice of her companion. The longer the interview 
 continued, the more charmed was pretty Polly, until, 
 within the first quarter of an hour (as the old magistrate 
 noted by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be 
 in love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued 
 her in such a hurry; the poor child's heart, it may be,, 
 was so very fervent that it melted her with its own 
 warmth as reflected from the hollow semblance of a 
 lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words found 
 depth and reverberation in her ear ; no matter what he 
 did, his action was heroic to her eye. And by this time 
 it is to be supposed there was a blush on Polly's cheek, 
 a tender smile about her mouth, and a liquid softness in 
 her glance ; while the star kept coruscating on Feather- 
 top's breast, and the little demons careered with more 
 frantic merriment than ever about the circumference of 
 his pipe-bowl. O pretty Polly Gookin, why should these 
 imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden's heart was
 
 
 FEATHERTOP 219 
 
 about to be given to a shadow ! Is it so unusual a mis- 
 fortune, so rare a triumph ? 
 
 By and by Feathertop paused, and, throwing himself 
 into an imposing attitude, seemed to summon the fair 
 girl to survey his figure and resist him longer if she 
 could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles, glowed at 
 that instant with unutterable splendor ; the picturesque 
 hues of his attire took a richer depth of coloring ; there 
 was a gleam and polish over his whole presence betoken- 
 ing the perfect witchery of well-ordered manners. The 
 maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to linger upon 
 her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, 
 as if desirous of judging-what-value her own simple come- 
 liness might have side by side with so much brilliancy, 
 she cast a glance towards the full-length looking-glass' in 
 front of which they happened to be standing. It was 
 one of the truest plates in the world, and incapable, of i 
 flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected 
 meet Polly's eye than she shrieked, shrank from the 
 stranger's side, gazed at him for a moment in the wildest 
 dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor. Feathertop 
 likewise had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld, 
 not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a 
 picture of the sordid patchwork of his real composition, " 
 stripped of all witchcraft. 
 
 The wretched simulacrum ! We almost pity him. He 
 threw up his arms with an expression of despair that 
 went further than any of his previous manifestations 
 towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human S 
 for, perchance the only time since this so often empty 
 and deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illu- 
 sion had seen and fully recognized itself. 
 
 Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in 
 the twilight of this eventful day, and had just shaken 
 the ashes out of a new pipe, when she heard a hurried 
 tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the 
 tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the 
 rattling of dry bones. 
 
 "Ha!" thought the old witch, "what step is that? 
 Whose skeleton is out of its grave now, I wonder ? "
 
 g 
 /p 
 
 220 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 A figure burst headlong into the cottage-door. It 
 was Feathertop ! His pipe was still alight ; the star still 
 flamed upon his breast ; the embroidery still glowed 
 upon his garments ; nor had he lost, in any degree or 
 manner that could be estimated, the aspect that assimi- 
 lated him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in 
 some indescribable way (as is the case with all that has 
 deluded us when once found out), the poor reality was 
 felt beneath the cunning artifice. 
 
 "What has gone wrong?" demanded the witch. 
 " Did yonder smiling hypocrite thrust my darling from 
 his door ? The villain ! I '11 set twenty fiends to tor- 
 ment him till he offer thee his daughter on his bended 
 knees ! " 
 
 " No, mother," said Feathertop, despondingly ; " it 
 was not that." 
 
 " Did the girl scorn my precious one ? " asked Mother 
 Rigby, her fierce eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. 
 " I '11 cover her face with pimples ! Her nose shall be 
 as red as the coal in thy pipe ! Her front teeth shall 
 drop out ! In a week hence she shall not be worth thy 
 having ! " 
 
 " Let her alone, mother," answered poor Feathertop ; 
 " the girl was half won ; and methinks a kiss from her 
 sweet lips might have made me altogether human. 
 But," he added, after a brief pause and then a howl 
 of self-contempt, " I 've seen myself, mother ]/\ 've seen 
 myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am ! I '11 
 exist no longer ! " 
 
 Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with 
 all his might against the chimney, and at the same 
 instant sank upon the floor a medley of straw and tat- 
 tered garments, with some sticks protruding from the 
 heap and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eye- 
 holes were now lustreless ; but the rudely carved gap, 
 that just before had been a mouth, still seemed to twist 
 itself into a despairing grin, and was so far human. 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful 
 lance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance. " My 
 poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands
 
 FEATHERTOP 221 
 
 upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the 
 world, made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, for- 
 gotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was ! Yet they 
 live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what 
 they are. /\.nd why should my poor puppet be the 
 only one to know himself and perish for it ? " 
 
 While thus muttering, the witch had filled a fresh 
 pipe of tobacco, and held the stem between her fingers, 
 as doubtful whether to thrust it into her own mouth or 
 Feathertop's. 
 
 " Poor Feathertop ! " she continued. " I could easily 
 give him another chance and send him forth again to- 
 morrow. But no ; his feelings are too tender, his sen- 
 sibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart 
 to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and 
 heartless world. Well! well! I'll make a scarecrow - 
 of him after all. 'T is an innocent and a useful voca- 
 tion, and will suit my darling well ; and if each of his 
 human brethren had as fit a one, 't would be the better 
 for mankind ; and as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it 
 more than he." 
 
 So saying Mother Rigby put the stem between her 
 lips. " Dickon ! " cried she, in her high, sharp tone, 
 " another coal for my pipe ! "
 
 MOSSES FROM AN 
 
 OLD MANSE 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900 AND 1902, 
 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE ........ r 
 
 EGOTISM ; OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT . . . . .21 
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET ........ 36 
 
 DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE ....... 57 
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE ....... 71 
 
 ER MALVIN'S BURIAL ....... 86 
 
 P.'s CORRESPONDENCE \ ....... 108 
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST " . . . . . . . .127 
 
 PASSAGES FROM A RELINQUISHED WORK . . . .149 
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY ....... 165 
 
 THE OLD APPLE-DEALER ........ 181 
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL ...... 189 
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION . .216

 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 
 
 / TXT'E* who are born into the world's artificial system, 
 VV can never adequately know how little in our 
 present state and circumstances is natural, and how 
 much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind 
 and heart of man/ Art has become a second and stronger 
 Nature ; she is a step-mother, whose crafty tenderness 
 has taught us to despise the bountiful and wholesome 
 ministrations of our true parent. It is only through 
 the medium of the imagination that we can lessen those 
 iron fetters, which we call truth and reality, and make 
 ourselves even partially sensible what prisoners we are. 
 For instance, let us conceive good Father Miller's inter- 
 pretation of the prophecies to have proved true. The 
 Day of Doom has burst upon the globe, and swept 
 away the whole race of men. From cities and fields, 
 sea-shore, and mid-land mountain region, vast conti- 
 nents, and even the remotest islands of the ocean 
 each living thing is gone. No breath of a created 
 being disturbs this earthly atmosphere. But the abodes 
 of man, and all that he has accomplished, the footprints 
 of his wanderings, and the results of his toil, the visible 
 symbols of his intellectual cultivation and moral progress 
 in short, everything physical that can give evidence 
 of his present position shall remain untouched by the 
 hand of destiny. Then, to inherit and repeople this 
 waste and deserted earth, we will suppose a new Adam 
 and a new Eve to have been created, in the full develop- 
 ment of mind and heart, but with no knowledge of 
 their predecessors, nor of the diseased circumstances 
 that had become encrusted around them. Such a pair 
 would at once distinguish between art and nature. 
 Their instincts and intuitions would immediately recog- 
 nize the wisdom and simplicity of the latter, while the
 
 2 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 former, with its elaborate perversities, would offer them 
 a continual succession of puzzles. 
 
 Let us attempt, in a mood half-sportive and half- 
 thoughtful, to track these imaginary heirs of our mor- 
 tality through their first day's experience. No longer 
 ago than yesterday, the flame of human life was ex- 
 tinguished ; there has been a breathless night ; and 
 now another morn approaches, expecting to find the 
 earth no less desolate than at eventide. 
 
 It is dawn. The east puts on its immemorial blush 
 although no human eye is gazing at it ; for all the 
 phenomena of the natural world renew themselves, in 
 spite of the solitude that now broods around the globe. 
 There is still beauty of earth, sea, and sky, for beauty's 
 sake. But soon there are to be spectators. Just when 
 the earliest sunshine gilds earth's mountain tops, two 
 beings have come into life, not in such an Eden as 
 bloomed to welcome our first parents, but in the heart 
 of a modern city. They find themselves in existence, 
 and gazing into one another's eyes. Their emotion is 
 not astonishment ; nor do they perplex themselves with 
 efforts to discover what, and whence, and why they 
 are. Each is satisfied to be, because the other exists 
 likewise ; and their first consciousness is of calm and 
 mutual enjoyment, which seems not to have been the 
 birth of that very moment, but prolonged from a past 
 eternity. Thus content with an inner sphere which 
 they inhabit together, it is not immediately that the 
 outward world can obtrude itself upon their notice. 
 
 Soon, however, they feel the invincible necessity of 
 this earthly life, and begin to make acquaintance with 
 the objects and circumstances that surround them. 
 Perhaps no other stride so vast remains to be taken, 
 as when they first turn from the reality of their mutual 
 glance, to the dreams and shadows that perplex them 
 everywhere else. 
 
 " Sweetest Eve, where are we ? " exclaims the new 
 Adam, for speech, or some equivalent mode of ex- 
 pression, is born with them, and comes just as natural 
 as breath ; " Methinks I do not recognize this place."
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 3 
 
 " Nor I, dear Adam," replies the new Eve. " And 
 what a strange place too ! Let me come closer to thy 
 side, and behold thee only ; for all other sights trouble 
 and perplex my spirit." 
 
 " Nay, Eve," replies Adam, who appears to have 
 the stronger tendency towards the material world ; 
 " it were well that we gain some insight into these 
 matters. We are in an odd situation here ! Let us 
 look about us." 
 
 Assuredly, there are sights enough to throw the new 
 inheritors of earth into a state of hopeless perplexity. 
 The long lines of edifices, their windows glittering in 
 the yellow sunrise, and the narrow street between, 
 with its barren pavement, tracked and battered by 
 wheels that have now rattled into an irrevocable past ! 
 The signs, with their unintelligible hieroglyphics ! The 
 squareness and ugliness, and regular or irregular de- 
 formity, of everything that meets the eye ! The marks 
 of wear and tear, and unrenewed decay, which dis- 
 tinguish the works of man from the growth of nature ! 
 What is there in all this, capable of the slightest sig- 
 nificance to minds that know nothing of the artificial 
 system which is implied in every lamp-post and each 
 brick of the houses? Moreover, the utter loneliness 
 and silence, in a scene that originally grew out of noise 
 and bustle, must needs impress a feeling of desolation 
 even upon Adam and Eve, unsuspicious as they are of 
 the recent extinction of human existence. In a forest, 
 solitude would be life; in the city, it is death. 
 
 The new Eve looks round with a sensation of doubt 
 and distrust, such as a city dame, the daughter of 
 numberless generations of citizens, might experience, 
 if suddenly transported to the garden of Eden. At 
 length, her downcast eye discovers a small tuft of 
 grass, just beginning to sprout among the stones of 
 the pavement; she eagerly grasps it, and is sensible 
 that this little herb awakens some response within her 
 heart. Nature finds nothing else to offer her. Adam, 
 after staring up and down the street, without detecting 
 a single object that his comprehension can lay hold of,
 
 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 finally turns his forehead to the sky. There, indeed, 
 is something which the soul within him recognizes. 
 
 " Look up yonder, mine own Eve ! " he cries ; "surely 
 we ought to dwell among those gold-tinged clouds, or 
 in the blue depth beyond them. I know not how nor 
 when, but evidently we have strayed away from our 
 home; for I see nothing hereabouts that seems to be- 
 long to us." 
 
 " Can we not ascend thither ? " inquires Eve. 
 
 "Why not?" answers Adam, hopefully. "But no! 
 Something drags us down in spite of our best efforts. 
 Perchance we may find a path hereafter." 
 
 In the energy of new life, it appears no such imprac- 
 ticable feat to climb into the sky! But they have 
 already received a woful lesson, which may finally go 
 far towards reducing them to the level of the departed 
 race, when they acknowledge the necessity of keeping 
 the beaten track of earth. They now set forth on a 
 ramble through the city, in the hope of making their 
 escape from this uncongenial sphere. Already, in 
 the fresh elasticity of their spirits, they have found 
 the idea of weariness. We will watch them as they 
 enter some of the shops, and public or private edifices ; 
 for every door, whether of alderman or beggar, church 
 or hall of state, has been flung wide open by the same 
 agency that swept away the inmates. 
 
 It so happens and not unluckily for an Adam 
 and Eve who are still in the costume that might better 
 have befitted Eden it so happens, that their first 
 visit is to a fashionable dry-goods store. No courte- 
 ous and importunate attendants hasten to receive their 
 orders ; no throng of ladies are tossing over the rich 
 Parisian fabrics. All is deserted ; trade is at a stand- 
 still ; and not even an echo of the national watchword 
 " Go ahead ! " disturbs the quiet of the new customers. 
 But specimens of the latest earthly fashions, silks of 
 every shade, and whatever is most delicate or splendid 
 for the decoration of the human form, lie scattered 
 around, profusely as bright autumnal leaves in a forest. 
 Adam looks at a few of the articles, but throws them 

 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 5 
 
 carelessly aside, with whatever exclamation may cor- 
 respond to " Pish ! " or " Pshaw ! " in the new vocabulary 
 of nature. Eve, however, be it said without offence 
 to her native modesty, examines these treasures of 
 her sex with somewhat livelier interest. A pair of 
 corsets chance to lie upon the counter; she inspects 
 them curiously, but knows not what to make of them. 
 Then she handles a fashionable silk with dim yearnings 
 thoughts that wander hither and thither instincts 
 groping in the dark. 
 
 " On the whole, I do not like it," she observes, laying 
 the glossy fabric upon the counter. " But, Adam, it is 
 very strange ! What can these things mean ? Surely 
 I ought to know yet they put me in a perfect maze ! " 
 
 " Pooh ! my dear Eve, why trouble thy little head 
 about such nonsense ? " cries Adam, in a fit of impa- 
 tience. " Let us go somewhere else. But stay ! How 
 very beautiful ! My loveliest Eve, what a charm you 
 have imparted to that robe, by merely throwing it over 
 your shoulders ! " 
 
 For Eve, with the taste that nature moulded into her 
 composition, has taken a remnant of exquisite silver 
 gauze and drawn it around her form, with an effect 
 that gives Adam his first idea of the witchery of dress. 
 He beholds his spouse in a new light and with renewed 
 admiration, yet is hardly reconciled to any other attire 
 than her own golden locks. However, emulating Eve's 
 example, he makes free with a mantle of blue velvet, 
 and puts it on so picturesquely, that it might seem to 
 have fallen from Heaven upon his stately figure. Thus 
 garbed, they go in search of new discoveries. 
 
 They next wander into a Church, not to make a dis- 
 play of their_fine clothes, but attracted by its spire, point- 
 ing upwards to the sky, whither they have already 
 yearned to climb. As they enter the portal, a clock, 
 which it was the last earthly act of the sexton to wind 
 up, repeats the hour in deep and reverberating tones; 
 for Time has survived his former progeny, and, with the 
 iron tongue that man gave him, is now speaking to his 
 two grandchildren. They listen, but understand him
 
 6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 ^ not./ Nature would measure time by the succession of 
 thoughts and acts which constitute real life, and not by 
 hours of emptiness. /They pass up the church aisle, 
 and raise their ey^s to the ceiling. Had our Adam 
 and Eve become mortal in some European city, and 
 strayed into the vastness and sublimity of an old cathe- 
 dral, they might have recognized the purpose for which 
 the deep-souled founders reared it. Like the dim 
 awfulness of an ancient forest, its very atmosphere 
 would have incited them to prayer. Within the snug walls 
 of a metropolitan church there can be no such influence. 
 
 Yet some odor of religion is still lingering here, the 
 bequest of pious souls, who had grace to enjoy a fore- 
 taste of immortal life. Perchance, they breathe a 
 prophecy of a better world to their successors, who 
 have become obnoxious to all their own cares and ca- 
 lamities in the present one. 
 
 "Eve, something impels me to look upward," says 
 Adam. " But it troubles me to see this roof between 
 us and the sky. Let us go forth, and perhaps we 
 shall discern a Great Face looking down upon us." 
 
 " Yes ; a Great Face, with a beam of love brighten- 
 ing over it, like sunshine," responds Eve. " Surely we 
 have seen such a countenance somewhere ! " 
 
 They go out of the church, and kneeling at its 
 threshold give way to the spirit's natural instinct of 
 adoration to a beneficent Father. But, in truth, their 
 life thus far has been a continual prayer. Purity and 
 simplicity hold converse, at every moment, with their 
 Creator. 
 
 We now observe them entering a Court of Justice. 
 But what remotest conception can they attain of the 
 purposes of such an edifice ? How should the idea 
 occur to them, that human brethren, of like nature 
 with themselves, and originally included in the same 
 law of love which is their only rule of life, should ever 
 need an outward enforcement of the true voice within 
 their souls ? And what, save a woful experience, the 
 dark result of many centuries, could teach them the 
 sad mysteries of crime ? O Judgment Seat, not by
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 7 
 
 the pure in heart wast thou established, nor in the 
 simplicity of nature; but by hard and wrinkled men, 
 and upon the accumulated heap of earthly wrong ! 
 Thou art the very symbol of man's perverted state. 
 
 On as fruitless an errand our wanderers next visit a 
 Hall of Legislature, where Adam places Eve in the 
 Speaker's chair, unconscious of the moral which he 
 thus exemplifies. Man's intellect, moderated by Woman's 
 tenderness and moral sense ! Were such the legisla- 
 tion of the world, there would be no need of State 
 Houses, Capitols, Halls of Parliament, nor even of those 
 little assemblages of patriarchs beneath the shadowy 
 trees, by whom freedom was first interpreted to man- 
 kind on our native shores. 
 
 Whither go they next ? A perverse destiny seems to 
 perplex them with one after another of the riddles 
 which mankind put forth to the wandering universe 
 and left unsolved in their own destruction. They 
 enter an edifice of stern gray stone, standing insulated 
 in the midst of others, and gloomy even in the sunshine, 
 which it barely suffers to penetrate through its iron- 
 grated windows. It is a Prison. The jailer has left 
 his post at the summons of a stronger authority 
 than the sheriff's. But the prisoners ? Did the mes- 
 senger of fate, when he shook open all the doors, 
 respect the magistrate's warrant and the judge's sen- 
 tence, and leave the inmates of the dungeons to be 
 delivered by due course of earthly law? No; a new 
 trial has been granted, in a higher court, which may 
 set judge, jury, and prisoner at its bar all in a row, 
 and perhaps find one no less guilty than another. 
 The jail, like the whole earth, is now a solitude, and 
 has thereby lost something of its dismal gloom. But 
 here are the narrow cells, like tombs, only drearier 
 and deadlier, because in these the immortal spirit was 
 buried with the body. Inscriptions appear on the 
 walls, scribbled with a pencil, or scratched with a rusty 
 nail ; brief words of agony, perhaps, or guilt's desperate 
 defiance to the world, or merely a record of a date, by 
 which the writer strove to keep up with the march of
 
 8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 life. There is not a living eye that could now decipher 
 these memorials. 
 
 Nor is it while so fresh from their Creator's hands, 
 that the new denizens of earth no, nor their descend- 
 ants for a thousand years could discover that this 
 edifice was a hospital for the direst disease which could 
 afflict their predecessors. Its patients bore the out- 
 ward marks of that leprosy with which all were more 
 or less infected. They were sick and so were the 
 purest of their brethren with the plague of sin. 
 
 A deadly sickness, indeed ! Feeling its symptoms 
 within the breast, men concealed it with fear and 
 shame, and were only the more cruel to those unfor- 
 tunates, whose pestiferous sores were flagrant to the 
 common eye. Nothing, save a rich garment, could 
 ever hide the plague-spot. In the course of the world's 
 lifetime, every remedy was tried for its cure and extir- 
 pation, except the single one, the flower that grew in 
 Heaven, and was sovereign for all the miseries of earth. 
 Man never had attempted to cure sin by LOVE ! Had 
 he but once made the effort, it might well have happened, 
 that there would have been no more need of the dark 
 lazar-house into which Adam and Eve had wandered. 
 Hasten forth, with your native innocence, lest the 
 damps of these still conscious walls infect you likewise, 
 and thus another fallen race be propagated ! 
 
 Passing from the interior of the prison into the space 
 within its outward wall, Adam pauses beneath a struc- 
 ture of the simplest contrivance, yet altogether un- 
 accountable to him. It consists merely of two upright 
 posts, supporting a transverse beam, from which dangles 
 a cord. 
 
 " Eve, Eve ! " cries Adam, shuddering with a name- 
 less horror. " What can this thing be ? " 
 
 "I know not," answers Eve; "but, Adam, my heart 
 is sick ! There seems to be no more sky ! no more 
 sunshine ! " 
 
 Well might Adam shudder, and poor Eve be sick at 
 heart ; for this mysterious object was the type of man- 
 kind's whole system, in regard to the great difficulties
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 9 
 
 which God had given to be solved a system of fear 
 and vengeance, never successful, yet followed to the 
 last. Here, on the morning when the final summons 
 came, a criminal one criminal, where none were guilt- 
 less had died upon the gallows. Had the world heard 
 the footfall of its own approaching doom, it would have 
 been no inappropriate act, thus to close the record of its 
 deeds by one so characteristic. 
 
 The two pilgrims now hurry from the prison. Had 
 they known how the former inhabitants of earth were 
 shut up in artificial error, and cramped and chained by 
 their perversions, they might have compared the whole 
 moral world to a prison-house, and have deemed the 
 removal of the race a general jail-delivery. 
 
 They next enter, unannounced but they might have 
 rung at the door in vain a private mansion, one of the 
 stateliest in Beacon street. A wild and plaintive strain 
 of music is quivering through the house, now rising like 
 a solemn organ peal, and now dying into the faintest 
 murmur ; as if some spirit, that had felt an interest in 
 the departed family, were bemoaning itself in the soli- 
 tude of hall and chamber. Perhaps, a virgin, the purest 
 of mortal race, has been left behind, to perform a requiem 
 for the whole kindred of humanity ? Not so ! These 
 are the tones of an v^Eolian harp, through which Nature 
 pours the harmony that lies concealed in her every 
 breath, whether of summer breeze or tempest. Adam 
 and Eve are lost in rapture, unmingled with surprise. 
 The passing wind, that stirred the harp-strings, has 
 been hushed, before they can think of examining the 
 splendid furniture, the gorgeous carpets, and the 
 architecture of the rooms. These things amuse their 
 unpractised eyes, but appeal to nothing within their 
 hearts. Even the pictures upon the walls scarcely 
 excite a deeper interest ; for there is something radi- 
 cally artificial and deceptive in painting, with which 
 minds in the primal simplicity cannot sympathize. The 
 unbidden guests examine a row of family portraits, but 
 are too dull to recognize them as men and women, 
 beneath the disguise of a preposterous garb, and with
 
 10 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 features and expression debased, because inherited 
 through ages of moral and physical decay. 
 
 Chance, however, presents them with pictures of 
 human beauty, fresh from the hand of Nature. As 
 they enter a magnificent apartment, they are astonished, 
 but not affrighted, to perceive two figures advancing to 
 meet them. Is it not awful to imagine that any life, 
 save their own, should remain in the wide world? 
 
 " How is this ? " exclaims Adam. " My beautiful 
 Eve, are you in two places at once ? " 
 
 " And you, Adam ! " answers Eve, doubtful, yet 
 delighted. " Surely that noble and lovely form is 
 yours. Yet here you are by my side ! I am content 
 with one methmks there should not be two ! " 
 
 This miracle is wrought by a tall looking-glass, the 
 mystery of which they soon fathom, because Nature 
 creates a mirror for the human face in every pool of 
 water, and for her own great features in waveless lakes. 
 Pleased and satisfied with gazing at themselves, they 
 now discover the marble statue of a child in a corner of 
 the room, so exquisitely idealized, that it is almost worthy 
 to be the prophetic likeness of their first-born. Sculp- 
 ture, in its highest excellence, is more genuine than 
 painting, and might seem to be evolved from a natural 
 germ, by the same law as a leaf or flower. The statue 
 of the child impresses the solitary pair as if it were a 
 companion ; it likewise hints at secrets both of the past 
 and future. 
 
 " My husband ! " whispers Eve. 
 
 " What would you say, dearest Eve ? " inquires 
 Adam. 
 
 " I wonder if we are alone in the world," she con- 
 tinues, with a sense of something like fear at the 
 thought of other inhabitants. " This lovely little form ! 
 Did it ever breathe ? Or is it only the shadow of some- 
 thing real, like our pictures in the mirror ? " 
 
 " It is strange ! " replies Adam, pressing his hand to 
 his brow. "There are mysteries all around us. An 
 idea flits continually before me would that I could 
 seize it ! Eve, Eve, are we treading in the footsteps of
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE n 
 
 beings that bore a likeness to ourselves ? If so, whither 
 are they gone ? and why is their world so unfit for 
 our dwelling-place ? " 
 
 " Our great Father only knows," answers Eve. " But 
 something tells me that we shall not always be alone. 
 And how sweet if other beings were to visit us in the 
 shape of this fair image ! " 
 
 Then they wander through the house, and everywhere 
 find tokens of human life, which now, with the idea 
 recently suggested, excite a deeper curiosity in their 
 bosoms. Woman has here left traces of her delicacy 
 and refinement, and of her gentle labors. Eve ran- 
 sacks a work-basket, and instinctively thrusts the rosy 
 tip of her finger into a thimble. She takes up a piece 
 of embroidery, glowing with mimic flowers, in one of 
 which a fair damsel of the departed race has left her 
 needle. Pity that the Day of Doom should have antici- 
 pated the completion of such a useful task ! Eve feels 
 almost conscious of the skill to finish it. A piano-forte 
 has been left open. She flings her hand carelessly over 
 the keys, and strikes out a sudden melody, no less 
 natural than the strains of the yEolian harp, but joyous 
 with the dance of her yet unburthened life. Passing 
 through a dark entry, they find a broom behind the 
 door; and Eve, who comprises the whole nature of 
 womanhood, has a dim idea that it is an instrument 
 proper for her hand. In another apartment they be- 
 hold a canopied bed, and all the appliances of luxurious 
 repose. A heap of forest leaves would be more to the 
 purpose. They enter the nursery, and are perplexed 
 with the sight of little gowns and caps, tiny shoes, and 
 a cradle ; amid the drapery of which is still to be seen 
 the impress of a baby's form. Adam slightly notices 
 these trifles, but Eve becomes involved in a fit of mute 
 reflection from which it is hardly possible to rouse 
 her. 
 
 By a most unlucky arrangement, there was to have 
 been a grand dinner-party in this mansion on the very 
 day when the whole human family, including the in- 
 vited guests, were summoned to the unknown regions
 
 12 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of illimitable space. At the moment of fate, the table 
 was actually spread, and the company on the point of 
 sitting down. Adam and Eve came unbidden to the 
 banquet ; it has now been some time cold, but otherwise 
 furnishes them with highly favorable specimens of the 
 gastronomy of their predecessors. But it is difficult to 
 imagine the perplexity of the unperverted couple, in 
 endeavoring to find proper food for their first meal, 
 at a table where the cultivated appetites of a fashion- 
 able party were to have been gratified. Will Nature 
 teach them the mystery of a plate of turtle soup ? Will 
 she embolden them to attack a haunch of venison ? Will 
 she initiate them into the merits of a Parisian pasty, im- 
 ported by the last steamer that ever crossed the Atlantic ? 
 Will she not, rather, bid them turn with disgust from 
 fish, fowl, and flesh, which, to their pure nostrils, steam 
 with a loathsome odor of death and corruption ? 
 Food ? The bill of fare contains nothing which they 
 recognize as such. 
 
 Fortunately, however, the dessert is ready upon a 
 neighboring table. Adam, whose appetite and animal 
 instincts are quicker than those of Eve, discovers this 
 fitting banquet. 
 
 " Here, dearest Eve," he exclaims, " here is food." 
 
 "Well," answers she, with the germ of a housewife 
 stirring within her, " we have been so busy to-day, that 
 a picked-up dinner must serve." 
 
 So Eve comes to the table, and receives a red-cheeked 
 apple from her husband's hand, in requital of her prede- 
 cessor's fatal gift to our common grandfather. She eats 
 it without sin, and, let us hope, with no disastrous con- 
 sequences to her future progeny. They make a plenti- 
 ful, yet temperate, meal of fruit, which, though not 
 gathered in Paradise, is legitimately derived from the 
 seeds that were planted there. Their primal appetite 
 is satisfied. 
 
 " What shall we drink, Eve ? " inquires Adam. 
 
 Eve peeps among some bottles and decanters, which, 
 as they contain fluids, she naturally conceives must be 
 proper to quench thirst. But never before did claret, 

 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 13 
 
 hock, and madeira, of rich and rare perfume, excite 
 such disgust as now. 
 
 " Pah ! " she exclaims, after smelling at various wines. 
 " What stuff is here ? The beings who have gone be- 
 fore us could not have possessed the same nature that 
 we do ; for neither their hunger nor thirst were like our 
 own ! " 
 
 " Pray hand me yonder bottle," says Adam. " If it 
 be drinkable by any manner of mortal, I must moisten 
 my throat with it." 
 
 After some remonstrances, she takes up a cham- 
 pagne bottle, but is frightened by the sudden explosion 
 of the cork, and drops it upon the floor. There the un- 
 tasted liquor effervesces. Had they quaffed it, they 
 would have experienced that brief delirium, whereby, 
 whether excited by moral or physical causes, man 
 sought to recompense himself for the calm, life-long 
 joys which he had lost by his revolt from nature. At 
 length, in a refrigerator, Eve finds a glass pitcher of 
 water, pure, cold, and bright, as ever gushed from a 
 fountain among the hills. Both drink ; and such re- 
 freshment does it bestow, that they question one another 
 if this precious liquid be not identical with the stream 
 of life within them. 
 
 "And now," observes Adam, "we must again try to 
 discover what sort of a world this is, and why we have 
 been sent hither." 
 
 " Why ? To love one another ! " cries Eve. " Is not 
 that employment enough ? " 
 
 "Truly is it," answers Adam, kissing her; "but still 
 I know not something tells us there is labor to be 
 done. Perhaps our alloted task is no other than to 
 climb into the sky, which is so much more beautiful 
 than earth." 
 
 " Then would we were there now," murmurs Eve, 
 " that no task or duty might come between us ! " 
 
 They leave the hospitable mansion ; and we next see 
 them passing down State street. The clock on the old 
 State House points to high noon, when the Exchange 
 should be in its glory, and present the liveliest emblem
 
 i 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of what was the sole business of life, as regarded a 
 multitude of the foregone worldlings. It is over now. 
 The Sabbath of eternity has shed its stillness along the 
 street. Not even a news-boy assails the two solitary 
 passers-by, with an extra penny paper from the office of 
 the Times or Mail, containing a full account of yester- 
 day's terrible catastrophe. Of all the dull times that 
 merchants and speculators have known, this is the very 
 worst ; for, so far as they were concerned, creation it- 
 self has taken the benefit of the bankrupt-act. After 
 all, it is a pity. Those mighty capitalists, who had just 
 attained the wished-for wealth ! Those shrewd men of 
 traffic, who had devoted so many years to the most in- 
 tricate and artificial sciences, and had barely mastered 
 it, when the universal bankruptcy was announced by 
 peal of trumpet ! Can they have been so incautious as 
 to provide no currency of the country whither they have 
 gone, nor any bills of exchange, or letters of credit, 
 from the needy on earth to the cash-keepers of 
 Heaven ? 
 
 Adam and Eve enter a Bank. Start not, ye whose 
 funds are treasured there ! You will never need them 
 now. Call not for the police! The stones of the 
 street and the coin of the vaults are of equal value to 
 this simple pair. Strange sight! They take up the 
 bright gold in handfuls, and throw it sportively into 
 the air, for the sake of seeing the glittering worth- 
 lessness descend again in a shower. They know not 
 that each of those small yellow circles was once a 
 magic spell, potent to sway men's hearts, and mystify 
 their moral sense. Here let them pause in the in- 
 vestigation of the past. They have discovered the 
 mainspring, the life, the very essence, of the system 
 that had wrought itself into the vitals of mankind, 
 and choked their original nature in its deadly gripe. 
 Yet how powerless over these young inheritors of 
 earth's hoarded wealth ! And here, too, are huge 
 packages of bank-notes, those talismanic slips of 
 paper, which once had the efficacy to build up en- 
 chanted palaces, like exhalations, and work all kinds
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 15 
 
 of perilous wonders, yet were themselves but the ghosts 
 of money, the shadows of a shade. How like is this 
 vault to a magician's cave, when the all-powerful wand 
 is broken, and the visionary splendor vanished, and the 
 floor strewn with fragments of shattered spells, and 
 lifeless shapes once animated by demons ! 
 
 " Everywhere, my dear Eve," observes Adam, " we 
 find heaps of rubbish of one kind or another. Some- 
 body, I am convinced, has taken pains to collect them 
 but for what purpose ? Perhaps, hereafter, we shall 
 be moved to do the like. Can that be our business in 
 the world ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, Adam ! " answers Eve. " It would be 
 better to sit down quietly and look upward to the 
 sky." 
 
 They leave the Bank, and in good time ; for had they 
 tarried later, they would probably have encountered 
 some gouty old goblin of a capitalist, whose soul could 
 not long be anywhere, save in the vault with his 
 treasure. 
 
 Next, they drop into a jeweller's shop. They are 
 pleased with the glow of gems ; and Adam twines a 
 string of beautiful pearls around the head of Eve, and 
 fastens his own mantle with a magnificent diamond 
 brooch. Eve thanks him and views herself with 
 delight in the nearest looking-glass. Shortly after- 
 ward, observing a bouquet of roses and other brilliant 
 flowers in a vase of water, she flings away the inesti- 
 mable pearls, and adorns herself with these lovelier 
 gems of nature. They charm her with sentiment as 
 well as beauty. 
 
 " Surely they are living beings," she remarks to 
 Adam. 
 
 " I think so," replies Adam, " and they seem to be as 
 little at home in the world as ourselves." 
 
 We must not attempt to follow every footstep of 
 these investigators whom their Creator has commis- 
 sioned to pass unconscious judgment upon the works 
 and ways of the vanished race. By this time, being 
 endowed with quick and accurate perceptions, they
 
 16 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 begin to understand the purpose of the many things 
 around them. They conjecture, for instance, that the 
 edifices of the city were erected, not by the immediate 
 hand that made the world, but by beings somewhat 
 similar to themselves, for shelter and convenience. 
 But how will they explain the magnificence of one 
 habitation, as compared with the squalid misery of 
 another? Through what medium can the idea of 
 servitude enter their minds ? When will they compre- 
 hend the great and miserable fact, the evidences 
 of which appeal to their senses everywhere, that 
 one portion of earth's lost inhabitants was rolling in 
 luxury, while the multitude was toiling for scanty food ? 
 A wretched change, indeed, must be wrought in their 
 own hearts, ere they can conceive the primal decree of 
 Love to have been so completely abrogated, that a 
 brother should ever want what his brother had. When 
 their intelligence shall have reached so far, Earth's 
 new progeny will have little reason to exult over her 
 old rejected one. 
 
 Their wanderings have now brought them into the 
 suburbs of the city. They stand on a grassy brow of 
 a hill at the foot of a granite obelisk, which points 
 its great finger upwards, as if the human family had 
 agreed, by a visible symbol of age-long endurance, to 
 offer some high sacrifice of thanksgiving or supplication. 
 The solemn height of the monument, its deep simplicity, 
 and the absence of any vulgar and practical use, all 
 strengthen its effect upon Adam and Eve, and lead 
 them to interpret it by a purer sentiment than the 
 builders thought of expressing. 
 
 " Eve, it is a visible prayer," observed Adam. 
 
 " And we will pray, too," she replies. 
 
 Let us pardon these poor children of neither father 
 nor mother, for so absurdly mistaking the purport of 
 the memorial, which man founded and woman finished, 
 on far-famed Bunker Hill. The idea of war is not 
 native to their souls. Nor have they sympathies for 
 the brave defenders of liberty, since oppression is one 
 of their unconjectural mysteries. Could they guess that
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 17 
 
 the green sward on which they stand so peacefully, 
 was once strewn with human corpses and purple with 
 their blood, it would equally amaze them, that one gen- 
 eration of men should perpetrate such carnage, and 
 that a subsequent generation should triumphantly com- 
 memorate it. 
 
 With a sense of delight, they now stroll across green 
 fields and along the margin of a quiet river. Not to 
 track them too closely, we next find the wanderers 
 entering a Gothic edifice of gray stone, where the by- 
 gone world has left whatever it deemed worthy of 
 record, in the rich library of Harvard University. 
 
 No student ever yet enjoyed such solitude and silence 
 as now broods within its deep alcoves. Little do the 
 present visitors understand what opportunities are 
 thrown away upon them. Yet Adam looks anxiously 
 at the long rows of volumes, those storied heights of 
 human lore, ascending one above another from floor to 
 ceiling. He takes up a bulky folio. It opens in his 
 hands, as if spontaneously to impart the spirit of its 
 author to the yet unworn and untainted intellect of the 
 fresh-created mortal. He stands poring over the regu- 
 lar columns of mystic characters, seemingly in studious 
 mood ; for the unintelligible thought upon the page has 
 a mysterious relation to his mind, and makes itself felt, 
 as it were a burthen flung upon him. He is even 
 painfully perplexed, and grasps vainly at he knows not 
 what. Oh, Adam, it is too soon, too soon by at least 
 five thousand years, to put on spectacles, and busy 
 yourself in the alcoves of a library! 
 
 " What can this be ? " he murmurs at last. " Eve, 
 methinks nothing is so desirable as to find out the mys- 
 tery of this big and heavy object with its thousand thin 
 divisions. See ! it stares me in the face, as if it were 
 about to speak ! " 
 
 Eve, by a feminine instinct, is dipping into a volume 
 of fashionable poetry, the production of certainly the 
 most fortunate of earthly bards, since his lay continues 
 in vogue when all the great masters of the lyre have 
 passed into oblivion. But let not his ghost be too ex-
 
 18 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 ultant ! The world's one lady tosses the book upon the 
 floor, and laughs merrily at her husband's abstracted 
 mien. 
 
 "My dear Adam," cries she, "you look pensive and 
 dismal ! Do fling down that stupid thing ; for even if it 
 should speak, it would not be worth attending to. Let 
 us talk with one another, and with the sky, and the green 
 earth, and its trees and flowers. They will teach us better 
 knowledge than we can find here." 
 
 " Well, Eve, perhaps you are right," replies Adam, 
 with a sort of sigh. " Still, I cannot help thinking that 
 the interpretation of the riddles amid which we have 
 been wandering all day long might here be discovered." 
 
 " It may be better not to seek the interpretation," 
 persists Eve. " For my part, the air of this place does 
 not suit me. If you love me, come away ! " 
 
 She prevails, and rescues him from the mysterious 
 perils of the library. Happy influence of woman ! Had 
 he lingered there long enough to obtain a clew to its 
 treasures, as was not impossible, his intellect being of 
 human structure, indeed, but with an untransmitted 
 vigor and acuteness, had he then and there become a 
 student, the annalist of our poor world would soon have 
 recorded the downfall of a second Adam. The fatal 
 apple of another Tree of Knowledge would have been 
 eaten. All the perversions and sophistries, and false 
 wisdom so aptly mimicking the true; all the narrow truth, 
 so partial that it becomes more deceptive than falsehood ; 
 all the wrong principles and worse practice, the perni- 
 cious examples and mistaken rules of life ; all the spe- 
 cious theories, which turn earth into cloud-land, and 
 men into shadows ; all the sad experience, which it took 
 mankind so many ages to accumulate, and from which 
 they never drew a moral for their future guidance 
 the whole heap of this disastrous lore would have tum- 
 bled at once upon Adam's head. There would have 
 been nothing left for him, but to take up the already 
 abortive experiment of life, where we had dropped it, 
 and toil onward with it a little further. 
 
 But, blessed in his ignorance, he may still enjoy a new
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE 19 
 
 world in our worn-out one. Should he fall short of good, 
 even as far as we did, he has at least the freedom no 
 worthless one to make errors for himself. And his 
 literature, when the progress of centuries shall create it, 
 will be no interminably repeated echo of our own poetry, 
 and reproduction of the images that were moulded by 
 our great fathers of song and fiction, but a melody never 
 yet heard on earth, and intellectual forms unbreathed 
 upon by our conceptions. Therefore let the dust of ages 
 gather upon the volumes of the library, and, in due season, 
 the roof of the edifice crumble down upon the whole. 
 When the second Adam's descendants shall have col- 
 lected as much rubbish of their own, it will be time 
 enough to dig into our ruins, and compare the literary 
 advancement of two independent races. 
 
 But we are looking forward too far. It seems to be 
 the vice of those who have a long past behind them. 
 We will return to the new Adam and Eve, who, hav- 
 ing no reminiscences, save dim and fleeting visions of a 
 pre-existence, are content to live and be happy in the 
 present. 
 
 The day is near its close, when these pilgrims, who 
 derive their being from no dead progenitors, reach the 
 cemetery of Mount Auburn. With light hearts for 
 earth and sky now gladden each other with beauty 
 they tread along the winding paths, among marble pillars, 
 mimic temples, urns, obelisks, and sarcophagi, sometimes 
 pausing to contemplate these fantasies of human growth, 
 and sometimes to admire the flowers wherewith kind 
 Nature converts decay to loveliness. Can Death, in the 
 midst of his old triumphs, make them sensible that they 
 have taken up the heavy burden of mortality, which a 
 whole species had thrown down ? Dust kindred to their 
 own has never lain in the grave. Will they then recog- 
 nize, and so soon, that Time and the elements have an 
 indefeasible claim upon their bodies ? Not improbably, 
 they may. There must have been shadpws enough, even 
 amid the primal sunshine of their existence, to suggest 
 the thought of the soul's incongruity with its circum- 
 stances. They have already learned that something is
 
 20 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 to be thrown aside. The idea of Death is in them, or 
 not far off. But were they to choose a symbol for him, 
 it would be the Butterfly soaring upward, or the bright 
 Angel beckoning them aloft, or the Child asleep, with 
 soft dreams visible through her transparent purity. 
 
 Such a Child, in whitest marble, they have found 
 among the monuments of Mount Auburn. 
 
 " Sweetest Eve," observes Adam, while hand in hand 
 they contemplate this beautiful object, "yonder sun has 
 left us, and the whole world is fading from our sight. 
 Let us sleep, as this lovely little figure is sleeping. Our 
 Father only knows, whether what outward things we 
 have possessed to-day are to be snatched from us for- 
 ever. But should our earthly life be leaving us with the 
 departing light, we need not doubt that another morn 
 will find us somewhere beneath the smile of God. I feel 
 that he has imparted the boon of existence, never to be 
 resumed." 
 
 " And no matter where we exist," replies Eve, " for 
 we shall always be together."
 
 EGOTISM; 1 OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT 
 
 FROM THE UNPUBLISHED "ALLEGORIES OF THE HEART" 
 
 " TTERE he comes ! " shouted the boys along the 
 
 JL J. street. " Here comes the man with a snake in 
 his bosom ! " 
 
 This outcry, saluting Herkimer's ears, as he was about 
 to enter the iron gate of the Elliston mansion, made him 
 pause. It was not without a shudder that he found 
 himself on the point of meeting his former acquaintance, 
 whom he had known in the glory of youth, and whom 
 now, after an interval of five years, he was to find the 
 victim either of a diseased fancy, or a horrible physical 
 misfortune. 
 
 " A snake in his bosom ! " repeated the young sculptor 
 to himself. " It must be he. No second man on earth 
 has such a bosom friend ! And now, my poor Rosina, 
 Heaven grant me wisdom to discharge my errand aright ! 
 Woman's faith must be strong indeed, since thine has 
 not yet failed." 
 
 Thus musing, he took his stand at the entrance of the 
 gate, and waited until the personage, so singularly an- 
 nounced, should make his appearance. After an instant 
 or two, he beheld the figure of a lean man, of unwhole- 
 some look, with glittering eyes and long black hair, who 
 seemed to imitate the motion of a snake ; for, instead of 
 walking straight forward with open front, he undulated 
 along the pavement in a curved line. (It may be too 
 fanciful to say, that something, either in his mpraLor 
 material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had 
 been wrought, by transforming a serpent into a man ; 
 but so imperfectly, that the snaky nature was yet hidden, 
 
 1 The physical fact, to which it is here attempted to give a moral signi- 
 fication, has been known to occur in more than one instance. 
 21
 
 22 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward guise of 
 humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion 
 had a greenish tinge over its sickly white, reminding 
 him of a species of marble out of which he had once 
 wrought a head of Envy, with her snaky locks. 
 
 The wretched being approached the gate, but, instead 
 of entering, stopt short, and fixed the glitter of his eye 
 full upon the compassionate, yet steady countenance of 
 the sculptor. 
 
 " It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 And then there was an audible hiss, but whether it 
 came from the apparent lunatic's own lips or was the 
 real hiss of a serpent might admit of discussion. At all 
 events, it made Herkimer shudder to his heart's core. 
 
 " Do you know me, George Herkimer ? " asked the 
 snake-possessed. 
 
 Herkimer did know him. But it demanded all the 
 intimate and practical acquaintance with the human face, 
 acquired by modelling actual likenesses in clay, to recog- 
 nize the features of Roderick Elliston in the visage that 
 now met the sculptor's gaze. Yet it was he. It added 
 nothing to the wonder, to reflect that the once brilliant 
 young man had undergone this odious and fearful change, 
 during the no more than five brief years of Herkimer's 
 abode at Florence. The possibility of such a transforma- 
 tion being granted, it was as easy to conceive it affected 
 in a moment as in an age. Inexpressibly shocked and 
 startled, it was still the keenest pang, when Herkimer 
 remembered that the fate of his cousin Rosina, the ideal 
 of gentle womanhood, was indissolubly interwoven with 
 that of a being whom Providence seemed to have unhti- 
 manized. 
 
 " Elliston ! Roderick ! " cried he, " I had heard of 
 this ; but my conception came far short of the truth. 
 What has befallen you ? Why do I find you thus ? " 
 
 "Oh, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! 
 The commonest thing in the world. A snake in the 
 bosom that 's all," answered Roderick Elliston. " But 
 how is your own breast ? " continued he, looking the 
 sculptor in the eye, with the most acute and penetrating
 
 EGOTISM 23 
 
 glance that it had ever been his fortune to encounter. 
 " All pure and wholesome ? No reptile there ? By my 
 faith and conscience, and by the devil within me, here is 
 a wonder ! A man without a serpent in his bosom ! " x 
 
 " Be calm, Elliston," whispered George Herkimer, 
 laying his hand upon the shoulder of the snake-possessed. 
 " I have crossed the ocean to meet you. Listen ! let 
 us be private I bring a message from Rosina from 
 your wife ! " 
 
 " It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! " muttered Roderick. 
 
 With this exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, 
 the unfortunate man clutched both hands upon .his 
 breast, as if an intolerable sting or torture impelled him 
 to rend it open, and let out the living mischief, even 
 where it intertwined with his own life. He then freed 
 himself from Herkimer's grasp, by a subtle motion, and, 
 gliding through the gate, took refuge in his antiquated 
 family residence. The sculptor did not pursue him. 
 He saw that no available intercourse could be expected 
 at such a moment, and was desirous, before another 
 meeting, to inquire closely into the nature of Roderick's 
 disease, and the circumstances that had reduced him to 
 so lamentable a condition. He succeeded in obtaining 
 the necessary information from an eminent medical 
 gentleman. 
 
 Shortly after Elliston's separation from his wife 
 now nearly four years ago his associates had observed 
 a singular gloom spreading over his daily life, like those 
 chill, gray mists that sometimes steal away the sunshine 
 from a summer's morning. The symptoms caused them 
 endless perplexity. They knew not whether ill health A 
 were robbing his spirits of elasticity ; or whether a 
 canker of the mind was gradually eating, as such 
 cankers do, from his moral system into the physical 
 frame, which is but the shadow of the former. They 
 looked for the root of this trouble in his /shattered 
 schemes of domestic bliss wilfully shattered by him- 
 self but could not be satisfied of its existence there. 
 Some thought that their once brilliant friend was in an 
 incipient stage of insanity, of which his passionate
 
 24 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 impulses had perhaps been the forerunners ; others 
 prognosticated a general blight and gradual decline. 
 From Roderick's own lips, they could learn nothing. 
 More than once, it is true, he had been heard to say, 
 clutching his hands convulsively upon his breast " It 
 gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! " but, by different auditors, 
 a great diversity of explanation was assigned to this 
 ominous expression. What could it be, that gnawed the 
 breast of Roderick Elliston ? Was it sorrow ? Was it 
 merely the tooth of physical disease ? Or, in his reckless 
 course, often verging upon profligacy, if not plunging into 
 its depths, had he been guilty of some deed, which made 
 his bosom a prey to the deadlier pangs of remorse ? 
 There was plausible ground for each of these conjec- 
 tures ; but it must not be concealed that more than one 
 elderly gentleman, the victim of good cheer and slothful 
 habits, magisterially pronounced the secret of the whole 
 matter to be Dyspepsia ! 
 
 Meanwhile, Roderick seemed aware how generally 
 he had become the subject of curiosity and conjecture, 
 and, with a morbid repugnance to such notice, or to 
 any notice whatsoever, estranged himself from all com- 
 panionship. Not merely the eye of man was a horror 
 to him ; not merely the light of a friend's countenance ; 
 but even the blessed sunshine, likewise, which, in its 
 universal beneficence, typifies the radiance of the 
 Creator's face, expressing his love for all the creatures 
 of his hand. The dusky twilight was now too trans- 
 parent for Roderick Elliston ; the blackest midnight was 
 his chosen hour to steal abroad; and if ever he were 
 seen, it was when the watchman's lantern gleamed upon 
 his figure, gliding along the street, with his hands 
 clutched upon his bosom, still muttering : "It gnaws 
 me ! It gnaws me ! " What could it be that gnawed 
 him? 
 
 After a time, it became known that Elliston was in 
 the habit of resorting to all the noted quacks that in- 
 fested the city, or whom money would tempt to journey 
 thither from a distance. By one of these persons, in the 
 exultation of a supposed cure, it was proclaimed far and
 
 EGOTISM 25 
 
 wide, by dint of hand-bills and little pamphlets on dingy 
 paper, that a distinguished gentleman, Roderick Elliston, 
 Esq., had been relieved of a SNAKE in his stomach ! So 
 here was the monstrous secret, ejected from its lurking- 
 place into public view, in all its horrible deformity. The 
 mystery was out ; but not so the bosom serpent. He, if 
 it were anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his 
 living den. The empiric's cure had been a sham, the 
 effect, it was supposed, of some stupefying drug, which 
 more nearly caused the death of the patient than of the 
 odious reptile that possessed him. When Roderick 
 Elliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his 
 misfortune the town talk the more than nine days' 
 wonder and horror while, at his bosom, he felt the 
 sickening motion of a thing alive, and the gnawing of 
 that restless fang, which seemed to gratify at once a 
 physical appetite and a fiendish spite. 
 
 He summoned the old black servant, who had been 
 bred up in his father's house, and was a middle-aged 
 man while Roderick lay in his cradle. 
 
 " Scipio ! " he began ; and then paused, with his arms 
 folded over his heart. "What do people say of me, 
 Scipio ? " 
 
 " Sir ! my poor master ! that you had a serpent in 
 your bosom," answered the servant, with hesitation. 
 
 "And what else?" asked Roderick, with a ghastly 
 look at the man. 
 
 " Nothing else, dear master," replied Scipio ; " only 
 that the Doctor gave you a powder, and that the snake 
 leapt out upon the floor." 
 
 " No, no ! " muttered Roderick to himself, as he shook 
 his head, and pressed his hands with a more convulsive 
 force upon his breast, "I feel him still. It gnaws 
 me ! It gnaws me ! " 
 
 From this time, the miserable sufferer ceased to shun 
 the world, but rather solicited and forced himself upon 
 the notice of acquaintances and strangers. It was 
 partly the result of desperation, on finding that the 
 cavern of his own bosom had not proved deep and dark 
 enough to hide the secret, even while it was so secure a
 
 26 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 fortress for the loathsome fiend that had crept into it. 
 But still more, this craving for notoriety was a symptom 
 of the iptense morbidness which now pervaded his 
 nature/7 All persons chronically diseased are egotists, 
 whether nre^disease be of the mind or body ; whether 
 sin, sorrow, or merely the more tolerable calamity of 
 some endless pain, or mischief among the cords of mor- 
 tal life. /Such individuals are made acutely conscious of 
 a self, #y the torture in which it dwells. Self, therefore, 
 grows to be so prominent an object with them, that they 
 cannot but present it to the face of every casual 
 passer-by. There is a pleasure perhaps the greatest 
 of which the sufferer is susceptible in displaying the 
 wasted or ulcerated limb, or the cancer in the breast ; 
 and the fouler the crime, with so much the more diffi- 
 culty does the perpetrator prevent it from thrusting up 
 its snakelike head to frighten the world ; for it is that 
 cancer, or that crime, which constitutes their respective 
 individuality// Roderick Elliston, who, a little while 
 before, had held himself so scornfully above the common 
 lot of men, now paid full allegiance to this humiliating 
 law. [ The snake in his bosom seemed the symbol of a 
 monstrous egotism, to which everything was referred, 
 and which he pampered, night and dav^with a continual 
 and exclusive sacrifice of devil-worshipT] 
 
 He soon exhibited what most people considered 
 indubitable tokens of insanity. In some of his moods, 
 strange to say, he prided and gloried himself on being 
 marked out from the ordinary experience of mankind, by 
 the possession of a double nature, and a life within a 
 life. He appeared to imagine that the snake was a 
 divinity not celestial, it is true, but darkly infernal 
 and that he thence derived an eminence and a sanctity, 
 horrid, indeed, yet more desirable than whatever ambi- 
 tion aims at. Thus he drew his misery around him like 
 a regal mantle, and looked down triumphantly upon 
 those whose vitals nourished no deadly monster. 
 Oftener, however, his human nature asserted its empire 
 over him, in the shape of a yearning for fellowship. 
 It grew to be his custom to spend the whole day in
 
 EGOTISM 27 
 
 wandering about the streets, aimlessly, unless it might 
 be called an aim to establish a species of brotherhood 
 between himself and the world. With cankered inge- 
 nuity, he sought out his own disease in every breast. 
 Whether insane or not, he showed so keen a perception 
 of frailty, error, and vice, that many persons gave him 
 credit for being possessed not merely with a serpent, but 
 with an actual fiend, who imparted this evil faculty of 
 recognizing whatever was ugliest in man's heart. 
 
 For instance, he met an individual, who, for thirty 
 years, had cherished a hatred against his own brother. 
 Roderick, amidst the throng of the street, laid his hand 
 on this man's chest, and looking full into his forbidding 
 face, 
 
 " How is the snake to-day ? " he inquired, with a 
 mock expression of sympathy. 
 
 "The snake!" exclaimed the brother-hater "what 
 do you mean ? " 
 
 "The snake! The snake! Does he gnaw you?" 
 persisted Roderick. " Did you take counsel with him 
 this morning, when you should have been saying your 
 prayers? Did he sting, when you thought of your 
 brother's health, wealth, and good repute ? Did he 
 caper for joy, when you remembered the profligacy of 
 his only son ? . And whether he stung or whether he 
 frolicked, did you feel his poison throughout your body 
 and soul, converting everything to sourness and bitter- 
 ness ? That is the way of such serpents. I have 
 learned the whole nature of them from my own ! " 
 
 " Where is the police ? " roared the object of Roder- 
 ick's persecution, at the same time giving an instinctive 
 clutch to his breast. " Why is this lunatic allowed to go 
 at large ? " 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " chuckled Roderick, releasing his grasp of 
 the man. " His bosom serpent has stung him, then ! " 
 
 Often, it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex 
 people with a lighter satire, yet still characterized by 
 somewhat of snakelike virulence. One day he encoun- 
 tered an ambitious statesman, and gravely inquired after 
 the welfare of his boa-constrictor ; for of that species,
 
 28 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 Roderick affirmed, this gentleman's serpent must needs 
 be, since its appetite was enormous enough to devour 
 the whole country and constitution. At another time, 
 he stopped a close-fisted old fellow, of great wealth, but 
 who skulked about the city in the guise of a scare-crow, 
 with a patched blue surtout, brown hat, and mouldy 
 boots, scraping pence together, and picking up rusty 
 nails. Pretending to look earnestly at this respectable 
 person's stomach, Roderick assured him that his snake 
 was a copperhead, and had been generated by the im- 
 mense quantities of that base metal, with which he daily 
 defiled his fingers. Again, he assaulted a man of rubi- 
 cund visage, and told him that few bosom serpents had 
 more of the devil in them, than those that breed in the 
 vats of a distillery. The next whom Roderick honored 
 with his attention was a distinguished clergyman, who 
 happened just then to be engaged in a theological con- 
 troversy, where human wrath was more perceptible than 
 divine inspiration. 
 
 " You have swallowed a snake, in a cup of sacramen- 
 tal wine," quoth he. 
 
 " Profane wretch ! " exclaimed the Divine ; but, never- 
 theless, his hand stole to his breast. 
 
 He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on some 
 early disappointment, had retired frpm the world, and 
 thereafter held no intercourse with his fellow-men, but 
 brooded sullenly or passionately over the irrevocable 
 past. This man's very heart, if Roderick might be be- 
 lieved, had been changed into a serpent, which would 
 finally torment both him and itself to death. Observing 
 a married couple, whose domestic troubles were matter 
 of notoriety, he condoled with both on having mutually 
 taken a house-adder to their bosoms. To an envious 
 author, who deprecated works which he could never 
 equal, he said that his snake was the slimiest and filthiest 
 of all the reptile tribe, but was fortunately without a 
 sting. A man of impure life, and a brazen face, asking 
 Roderick if there were any serpent in his breast, he told 
 him that there was, and of the same species that once 
 tortured Don Rodrigo, the Goth. He took a fair young
 
 EGOTISM 29 
 
 girl by the hand, and, gazing sadly into her eyes, warned 
 her that she cherished a serpent of the deadliest kind 
 within her gentle breast ; and the world found the truth 
 of those ominous words, when, a few months afterwards, 
 the poor girl died of love and shame. Two ladies, 
 rivals in fashionable life, who tormented one another 
 with a thousand little stings of womanish spite, were 
 given to understand, that each of their hearts was a nest 
 of diminutive snakes, which did quite as much mischief 
 as one great one. 
 
 v But nothing seemed to please Roderick better than to 
 lay hold of a person infected with jealousy, which he 
 represented as an enormous green reptile, with an ice- 
 cold length of body, and the sharpest sting of any snake 
 save one. 
 
 "And what one is that?" asked a bystander, over- 
 hearing him. 
 
 It was a dark-browed man, who put the question ; he 
 had an evasive eye, which, in the course of a dozen 
 years, had looked no mortal directly in the face. There 
 was an ambiguity about this person's character a stain 
 upon his reputation yet none could tell precisely of 
 what nature ; although the city-gossips, male and female, 
 whispered the most atrocious surmises. Until a recent 
 period he had followed the sea, and was, in fact, the 
 very shipmaster whom George Herkimer had encoun- 
 tered, under such singular circumstances, in the Grecian 
 Archipelago. 
 
 "What bosom serpent has the sharpest sting?" re- 
 peated this man ; but he put the question as if by a 
 reluctant necessity, and grew pale while he was uttering 
 it. 
 
 "Why need you ask?" replied Roderick, with a look 
 of dark intelligence. " Look into your own breast ! 
 Hark, my serpent bestirs himself. He acknowledges 
 the presence of a master fiend ! " 
 
 And then, as the bystanders afterwards affirmed, a 
 hissing sound was heard, apparently in Roderick Ellis- 
 ton's breast. It was said, too, that an answering hiss 
 came from the vitals of the shipmaster, as if a snake
 
 30 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 were actually lurking there, and had been aroused by 
 the call of its brother-reptile. If there were in fact any 
 such sound, it might have been caused by a malicious 
 exercise of ventriloquism on the part of Roderick. 
 
 Thus, making his own actual serpent if a serpent 
 there actually was in his bosom the type of each man's 
 fatal error, or hoarded sin, or unquiet conscience, and 
 striking his sting so unremorsefully into the sorest spot, 
 we may well imagine that Roderick became the pest of 
 the city. Nobody could elude him ; none could with- 
 stand him. He grappled with the ugliest truth that he 
 could lay his h|md on, and compelled his adversary to 
 do the same. Strange spectacle in human life, where 
 it is the instinctive effort of one and all to hide those sad 
 realities, and leave them undisturbed beneath a heap of 
 superficial topics, which constitute the materials of inter- 
 course between man and manj/ It was not to be toler- 
 ated that Roderick Elliston should break through the 
 tacit compact, by which the world has done its best to 
 secure repose, 'without relinquishing evil. The victims 
 of his malicious remarks, it is true, had brothers enough 
 to keep them in countenance ; for, by Roderick's theory, 
 every mortal bosom harbored either a brood of small 
 serpents, or one overgrown monster, that had devoured 
 all the rest. Still, the city could not bear this new 
 apostle. It was demanded by nearly all, and particu- 
 larly by the most respectable inhabitants, that Roderick 
 should no longer be permitted to violate the received 
 rules of decorum, by obtruding his own bosom serpent 
 to the public gaze, and dragging those of decent people 
 from their lurking-places. 
 
 Accordingly, his relatives interfered, and placed him 
 in a private asylum for the insane. When the news 
 was noised abroad, it was observed that many persons 
 walked the streets with freer countenances, and covered 
 their breasts less carefully with their hands. 
 
 His confinement, however, although it contributed 
 not a little to the peace of the town, operated unfavor- 
 ably upon Roderick himself. In solitude, his melan- 
 choly grew more black and sullen. He spent whole
 
 EGOTISM 31 
 
 days indeed, it was his sole occupation in com- 
 muning with the serpent. A conversation was sustained, 
 in which, as it seemed, the hidden monster bore a part, 
 though unintelligibly to the listeners, and inaudible, 
 except in a hiss. Singular as it may appear, the 
 sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection for his 
 tormentor ; mingled, however, with the intensest loath- 
 ing and horror. Nor were such discordant emotions 
 incompatible ; each, on the contrary, imparted strength 
 and poignancy to its opposite. Horrible love horrible 
 antipathy embracing one another in his bosom, and 
 both concentrating themselves upon a being that had 
 crept into his vitals, or been engendered there, and 
 which was nourished with his food, and lived upon his 
 life, and was as intimate with him as his own heart, and 
 yet was the foulest of all created things ! But not the 
 less was it the true type of a morbid nature. 
 
 Sometimes, in his moments of rage and bitter hatred 
 against the snake and himself, Roderick determined to 
 be the death of him, even at the expense of his own life. 
 Once he attempted it by starvation. But, while the 
 wretched man was on the point of famishing, the 
 monster seemed to feed upon his heart, and to thrive 
 and wax gamesome, as if it were his sweetest and most 
 congenial diet. Then he privily took a dose of active 
 poison, imagining that it would not fail to kill either 
 himself, or the devil that possessed him, or both together. 
 Another mistake ; for if Roderick had not yet been 
 destroyed by his own poisoned heart, nor the snake by 
 gnawing it, they had little to fear from arsenic or 
 corrosive sublimate. Indeed, the venomous pest ap- 
 peared to operate as an antidote against all other 
 poisons. The physicians tried to suffocate the fiend 
 with tobacco-smoke. He breathed it as freely as if it 
 were his native atmosphere. Again, they drugged their 
 patient with opium, and drenched him with intoxicating 
 liquors, hoping that the snake might thus be reduced to 
 stupor, and perhaps be ejected from the stomach. They 
 succeeded in rendering Roderick insensible; but, plac- 
 ing their hands upon his breast, they were inexpressibly
 
 32 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 horror-stricken to feel the monster wriggling, twining, 
 and darting to and fro, within his narrow limits, evi- 
 dently enlivened by the opium or alcohol, and incited to 
 unusual feats of activity. Thenceforth, they gave up 
 all attempts at cure or palliation. The doomed sufferer 
 submitted to his fate, resumed his former loathsome 
 affection for the bosom fiend, and spent whole miser- 
 able days before a looking-glass, with his mouth wide 
 open, watching, in hope and horror, to catch a glimpse 
 of the snake's head, far down within his throat. It is 
 supposed that he succeeded ; for the attendants once 
 heard a frenzied shout, and, rushing into the room, 
 found Roderick lifeless upon the floor. 
 
 He was kept but little longer under restraint. After 
 minute investigation, the medical directors of the asylum 
 decided that his mental disease did not amount to insan- 
 ity, nor would warrant his confinement ; especially as 
 its influence upon his spirits was unfavorable, and might 
 produce the evil which it was meant to remedy. His 
 eccentricities were doubtless great he had habitually 
 violated many of the customs and prejudices of society ; 
 but the world was not, without surer ground, entitled to 
 treat him as a madman. On this decision of such 
 competent authority, Roderick was released, and had 
 returned to his native city, the very day before his 
 encounter with George Herkimer. 
 
 As soon as possible after learning these particulars, 
 the sculptor, together with a sad and tremulous com- 
 panion, sought Elliston at his own house. It was a 
 large, sombre edifice of wood, with pilasters and a 
 balcony, and was divided from one of the principal 
 streets by a terrace of three elevations, which was 
 ascended by successive flights of stone steps. Some 
 immense old elms almost concealed the front of the 
 mansion. This spacious and once magnificent family- 
 residence was built by a grandee of the race, early in 
 the past century ; at which epoch, land being of small 
 comparative value, the garden and other grounds had 
 formed quite an extensive domain. Although a portion 
 of the ancestral heritage had been alienated, there was
 
 "YOU ARE COME! I HAVE EXPECTED YOU," SAID ELLISTON.
 
 EGOTISM 33 
 
 still a shadowy enclosure in the rear of the mansion, 
 where a student, or a dreamer, or a man of stricken 
 heart, might lie all day upon the grass, amid the soli- 
 tude of murmuring boughs, and forget that a city had 
 grown up around him. 
 
 Into this retirement, the sculptor and his companion 
 were ushered by Scipio, the old black servant, whose 
 wrinkled visage grew almost sunny with intelligence 
 and joy, as he paid his humble greetings to one of the 
 two visitors. 
 
 " Remain in the arbor," whispered the sculptor to the 
 figure that leaned upon his arm ; " you will know whether, 
 and when, to make your appearance." 
 
 " God will teach me," was the reply. " May he sup- 
 port me, too ! " 
 
 Roderick was reclining on the margin of a fountain, 
 which gushed into the fleckered sunshine with the same 
 clear sparkle, and the same voice of airy quietude, as 
 when trees of primeval growth flung their shadows 
 across its bosom. How strange is the life of a fountain, 
 born at every moment, yet of an age coeval with the 
 rocks, and far surpassing the venerable antiquity of a 
 forest ! 
 
 " You are come ! I have expected you," said Ellis- 
 ton, when he became aware of the sculptor's presence. 
 
 His manner was very different from that of the pre- 
 ceding day quiet, courteous, and, as Herkimer thought, 
 watchful both over his guest and himself. This un- 
 natural restraint was almost the only trait that betokened 
 anything amiss. He had just thrown a book upon the 
 grass, where it lay half-opened, thus disclosing itself to 
 be a natural history of the serpent tribe, illustrated by 
 lifelike plates. Near it lay that bulky volume, the 
 Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, full of cases of 
 conscience, and in which most men, possessed of a con- 
 science, may find something applicable to their purpose. 
 
 " You see," observed Elliston, pointing to the book 
 of serpents, while a smile gleamed upon his lips, " I 
 am making an effort to become better acquainted 
 with my bosom friend. But I find nothing satisfactory
 
 34 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 in this volume. If I mistake not, he will prove to be 
 sui generis, and akin to no other reptile in creation." 
 
 "Whence came this strange calamity?" inquired the 
 sculptor. 
 
 " My sable friend, Scipio, has a story," replied Rod- 
 erick, " of a snake that had lurked in this fountain 
 pure and innocent as it looks ever since it was known 
 to the first settlers. This insinuating personage once 
 crept into the vitals of my great-grandfather and dwelt 
 there many years, tormenting the old gentleman beyond 
 mortal endurance. In short, it is a family peculiarity. 
 But, to tell you the truth, I have no faith in this idea of 
 the snake's being an heirloom. He is my own snake, 
 and no man's else." 
 
 " But what was his origin ? " demanded Herkimer. 
 
 '* Qh ! there is poisonous stuff in any man's heart, 
 sufficient to generate a brood of serpents/*) said Ellis- 
 ton, with a hollow laugh. "You shoula have heard 
 my homilies to the good townspeople. Positively, I 
 deem myself fortunate in having bred but a single ser- 
 pent. You, however, have none in your bosom, and 
 therefore cannot sympathize with the rest of the world. 
 It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! " 
 
 With this exclamation, Roderick lost his self-control 
 and threw himself upon the grass, testifying his agony 
 by intricate writhings, in which Herkimer could not but 
 fancy a resemblance to the motions of a snake. Then, 
 likewise, was heard that frightful hiss, which often ran 
 through the sufferer's speech, and crept between the 
 words and syllables, without interrupting their succession. 
 
 " This is awful indeed ! " exclaimed the sculptor 
 " an awful infliction, whether it be actual or imaginary ! 
 Tell me, Roderick Elliston, is there any remedy for this 
 loathsome evil ? " 
 
 " Yes, but an impossible one," muttered Roderick, 
 as he lay wallowing with his face in the grass. " Could 
 I, for one instant, forget myself, the serpent might not 
 abide within me. It is my diseased self-contemplation 
 that has engendered and nourished him ! " 
 
 "Then forget yourself, my husband," said a gentle
 
 EGOTISM 35 
 
 voice above him " forget yourself in the idea of 
 another ! " 
 
 Rosina had emerged from the arbor, and was bend- 
 ing over him, with the shadow of his anguish reflected 
 in her countenance, yet so mingled with hope and un- 
 selfish love, that all anguish seemed but an earthly 
 shadow and a dream. She touched Roderick with 
 her hand. A tremor shivered through his frame. At 
 that moment, if report be trustworthy, the sculptor 
 beheld a waving motion through the grass, and heard 
 a tinkling sound, as if something had plunged into 
 the fountain. Be the truth as it might, it is certain 
 that Roderick Elliston sat up, like a man renewed, 
 restored to his right mind, and rescued from the fiend 
 which had so miserably overcome him in the battle-field 
 of his own breast. 
 
 " Rosina ! " cried he, in broken and passionate tones, 
 but with nothing of the wild wail that had haunted his 
 voice so long. " Forgive ! Forgive ! " 
 
 Her happy tears bedewed his face. 
 
 " The punishment has been severe," observed the 
 sculptor. " Even Justice might now forgive how 
 much more a woman's tenderness ! Roderick Elliston, 
 whether the serpent was a physical reptile, or whether 
 the morbidness of your nature suggested that symbol to 
 your fancy,Qhe moral of the story is not the less true 
 and strong. A tremendous Egotism manifesting it- 
 self, in your case, in the form of jealousy is as fearful 
 a fiend as ever stole into the human heart. Can a 
 breast, where it has dwelt so long, be purified ? " 
 
 " Oh, yesj ' ;- said Rosina, with a heavenly smile. 
 " The serpent was but a dark fantasy, and what it 
 typified was as shadowy as itself. The past, dismal 
 as it seems, shall fling no gloom upon the future. To 
 give it its due importance, we must think of it but as an 
 anecdote in our Eternity ! "
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 
 
 PROM THE UNPUBLISHED "ALLEGORIES OF THE HEART" 
 
 " T HAVE here attempted," said Roderick, unfolding 
 A a few sheets of manuscript, as he sat with Rosina 
 and the sculptor in the summer-house "I have at- 
 tempted to seize hold of a personage who glides past 
 me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My former 
 sad experience, as you know, has gifted me with some 
 degree of insight into the gloomy mysteries of the 
 human heart, through which I have wandered like 
 one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast flicker- 
 ing to extinction. But this man this class of men 
 is a hopeless puzzle." 
 
 " Well, but propound him," said the sculptor. " Let 
 us have an idea of him, to begin with." 
 
 "Why, indeed," replied Roderick, " he is such a being 
 as I could conceive you to carve out of marble, and 
 some yet unrealized perfection of human science to 
 endow with an exquisite mockery of intellect ; but still 
 there lacks the last inestimable touch of a divine Creator. 
 He looks like a man, and, perchance, like a better speci- 
 men of man than you ordinarily meet. You might 
 esteem him wise he is capable of cultivation and re- 
 finement, and has at least an external conscience but 
 the demands that spirit makes upon spirit are precisely 
 those to which he cannot respond. When, at last, you 
 come close to him, you find him chill and unsubstantial 
 a mere vapor." 
 
 " I believe," said Rosina, " I have a glimmering idea 
 of what you mean." 
 
 " Then be thankful," answered her husband, smiling ; 
 "but do not anticipate any further illumination from 
 what I am about to read. I have here imagined such 
 36
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 37 
 
 a man to be what, probably, he never is conscious 
 of the deficiency in his spiritual organization. Methinks 
 the result would be a sense of cold unreality, wherewith 
 he would go shivering through the world, longing to 
 exchange his load of ice for any burthen of real grief 
 that fate could fling upon a human being." 
 
 Contenting himself with this preface, Roderick began 
 to read. 
 
 In a certain old gentleman's last will and testament, 
 there appeared a bequest, which, as his final thought 
 and deed, was singularly in keeping with a long life of 
 melancholy eccentricity. He devised a considerable 
 sum for establishing a fund, the interest of which was 
 to be expended, annually forever, in preparing a Christ- 
 mas Banquet for ten of the most miserable persons that 
 could be found. It seemed not to be the testator's pur- 
 pose to make these half-a score of sad hearts merry, but 
 to provide that the stern or fierce expression of human 
 discontent should not be drowned, even for that one 
 holy and joyful day, amid the acclamations of festal 
 gratitude which all Christendom sends up. And he 
 desired, likewise, to perpetuate his own remonstrance 
 against the earthly course of Providence, and his sad 
 and sour dissent from those systems of religion or phi- 
 losophy which either find sunshine in the world, or draw 
 it down from heaven. 
 
 The task of inviting the guests, or of selecting among 
 such as might advance their claims to partake of this 
 dismal hospitality, was confided to the two trustees or 
 stewards of the fund. These gentlemen, like their 
 deceased friend, were sombre humorists, who made it 
 their principal occupation to number the sable threads 
 in the web of human life, and drop all the golden ones 
 out of the reckoning. They performed their present 
 office with integrity and judgment. The aspect of the 
 assembled company, on the day of the first festival, 
 might not, it is true, have satisfied every beholder that 
 these were especially the individuals, chosen forth from 
 all the world, whose griefs were worthy to stand as
 
 38 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 indicators of the mass of human suffering. Yet, after 
 due consideration, it could not be disputed that here 
 was a variety of hopeless discomfort, which, if it some- 
 times arose from causes apparently inadequate, was 
 thereby only the shrewder imputation against the nature 
 and mechanism of life. 
 
 The arrangements and decorations of the banquet 
 were probably intended to signify that death-in-life 
 which had been the testator's definition of existence. 
 The hall, illuminated by torches, was hung round with 
 curtains of deep and dusky purple, and adorned with 
 branches of cypress and wreaths of artificial flowers, 
 imitative of such as used to be strewn over the dead. 
 A sprig of parsley was laid by every plate. The main 
 reservoir of wine was a sepulchral urn of silver, whence 
 the liquor was distributed around the table in small vases, 
 accurately copied from those that held the tears of 
 ancient mourners. Neither had the stewards if it 
 were their taste that arranged these details forgotten 
 the fantasy of the old Egyptians, who seated a skeleton 
 at every festive board,, and mocked their own merri- 
 ment with the imperturbable grin of a death's-head. 
 Such a fearful guest, shrouded in a black mantle, sat 
 now at the head of the table. It was whispered, I know 
 not with what truth, that the testator himself had once 
 walked the visible world with the machinery of that 
 same skeleton, and that it was one of the stipulations 
 of his will, that he should thus be permitted to sit, from 
 year to year, at the banquet which he had instituted. 
 If so, it was perhaps covertly implied that he had 
 cherished no hopes of bliss beyond the grave, to com- 
 pensate for the evils which he felt or imagined here. 
 And if, in their bewildered conjectures as to the pur- 
 pose of earthly existence, the banqueters should throw 
 aside the veil, and cast an inquiring glance at this fig- 
 ure of death, as seeking thence the solution otherwise 
 unattainable, the only reply would be a stare of the 
 vacant eye-caverns, and a grin of the skeleton-jaws. 
 Such was the response that the dead man had fancied 
 himself to receive, when he asked of Death to solve the
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 39 
 
 riddle of his life ; and it was his desire to repeat it, 
 when the guests of his dismal hospitality should find 
 themselves perplexed with the same question. 
 
 "What means that wreath?" asked several of the 
 company, while viewing the decorations of the table. 
 
 They alluded to a wreath of cypress, which was held 
 on high by a skeleton-arm, protruding from within the 
 black mantle. 
 
 "It is a crown," said one of the stewards, "not for 
 the worthiest, but for the wofullest, when he shall prove 
 his claim to it." 
 
 The guest earliest bidden to the festival, was a man 
 of soft and gentle character, who had not energy to 
 struggle against the heavy despondency to which his 
 temperament rendered him liable ; and therefore, with 
 nothing outwardly to excuse him from happiness, he 
 had spent a life of quiet misery, that made his blood 
 torpid, and weighed upon his breath, and sat like a 
 ponderous night-fiend upon every throb of his unre- 
 sisting heart. His wretchedness seemed as deep as 
 his original nature, if not identical with it. It was the 
 misfortune of a second guest to cherish within his 
 bosom a diseased heart, which had become so wretch- 
 edly sore, that the continual and unavoidable rubs of 
 the world, the blow of an enemy, the careless jostle of 
 a stranger, and even the faithful and loving touch of a 
 friend, alike made ulcers in it. As is the habit of peo- 
 ple thus afflicted, he found his chief employment in ex- 
 hibiting these miserable sores to any who would give 
 themselves the pain of viewing them. A third guest 
 was a hypochondriac, whose imagination wrought nec- 
 romancy in his outward and inward world, and caused 
 him to see monstrous faces in the household fire, and 
 dragons in the clouds of sunset, and fiends in the guise 
 of beautiful women, and something ugly or wicked be- 
 neath all the pleasant surfaces of nature. His neighbor 
 at table was one who, in his early youth, had trusted 
 mankind too much, and hoped too highly in their be- 
 half, and, meeting with many disappointments, had 
 become desperately soured. For several years back.
 
 40 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 this misanthrope had employed himself in accumulating 
 motives for hating and despising his race such as 
 murder, lust, treachery, ingratitude, faithlessness of 
 trusted friends, instinctive vices of children, impurity 
 of women, hidden guilt in men of saintlike aspect 
 and, in short, all manner of black realities that sought 
 to decorate themselves with outward grace or glory. 
 But at every atrocious fact that was added to his cata- 
 logue at every increase of the sad knowledge which 
 he spent his life to collect the native impulses of the 
 poor man's loving and confiding heart made him groan 
 with anguish. Next, with his heavy brow bent down- 
 ward, there stole into the hall a man naturally earnest 
 and impassioned, who, from his immemorial infancy, 
 had felt the consciousness of a high message to the 
 world, but, essaying to deliver it, had found either no 
 voice or form of speech, or else no ears to listen. 
 Therefore his whole life was a bitter questioning of 
 himself " Why have not men acknowledged my mis- 
 sion ? Am I not a self-deluding fool ? What business 
 have I on earth ? Where is my grave ? " Throughout 
 the festival, he quaffed frequent draughts from the 
 sepulchral urn of wine, hoping thus to quench the celes- 
 tial fire that tortured his own breast, and could not 
 benefit his race. 
 
 Then there entered having flung away a ticket for 
 a ball a gay gallant of yesterday, who had found 
 four or five wrinkles in his brow, and more gray hairs 
 than he could well number, on his head. Endowed 
 with sense and feeling, he had nevertheless spent his 
 youth in folly, but had reached at last that dreary point 
 in life, where Folly quits us of her own accord, leaving us 
 to make friends with Wisdom if we can. Thus, cold 
 and desolate, he had come to seek Wisdom at the ban- 
 quet, and wondered if the skeleton were she. To eke 
 out the company, the stewards had invited a distressed 
 poet from his home in the almshouse, and a melancholy 
 idiot from the street corner. The latter had just the 
 glimmering of sense that was sufficient to make him 
 conscious of a vacancy, which the poor fellow, all his
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 41 
 
 life long, had mistily sought to fill up with intelligence, 
 wandering up and down the streets, and groaning miser- 
 ably, because his attempts were ineffectual. The only 
 lady in the hall was one who had fallen short of abso- 
 lute and perfect beauty, merely by the trifling defect 
 of a slight cast in her left eye. But this blemish, minute 
 as it was, so shocked the pure ideal of her soul, rather 
 than her vanity, that she passed her life in solitude, and 
 veiled her countenance even from her own gaze. So the 
 skeleton sat shrouded at one end of the table, and this 
 poor lady at the other. 
 
 One other guest remains to be described. He was a 
 young man of smooth brow, fair cheek, and fashionable 
 mien. So far as his exterior developed him, he might 
 much more suitably have found a place at some merry 
 Christmas table, than have been numbered among the 
 blighted, fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set of ill-starred 
 banqueters. Murmurs arose among the guests, as they 
 noted the glance of general scrutiny which the intruder 
 threw over his companions. What had he to do among 
 them ? Why did not the skeleton of the dead founder 
 of the feast unbend its rattling joints, arise, and motion 
 the unwelcome stranger from the board ? 
 
 " Shameful ! " said the morbid man, while a new ulcer 
 broke out in his heart. " He comes to mock us ! we 
 shall be the jest of his tavern friends! he will make 
 a farce of our miseries, and bring it out upon the 
 stage ! " 
 
 " Oh, never mind him ! " said the hypochondriac, 
 smiling sourly. "He shall feast from yonder tureen 
 of viper soup ; and if there is a fricassee of scorpions 
 on the table, pray let him have his share of it. For the 
 dessert, he shall taste the apples of Sodom. Then, if he 
 like our Christmas fare, let him return again next year ! " 
 
 "Trouble him not," murmured the melancholy man, 
 with gentleness. "What matters it whether the con- 
 sciousness of misery come a few years sooner or later ? 
 If this youth deem himself happy now, yet let him sit 
 with us, for the sake of the wretchedness to come." 
 
 The poor idiot approached the young man, with that
 
 42 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 mournful aspect of vacant inquiry which his face con- 
 tinually wore, and which caused people to say that he 
 was always in search of his missing wits. After no 
 little examination, he touched the stranger's hand, but 
 immediately drew back his own, shaking his head and 
 shivering. 
 
 " Cold, cold, cold ! " muttered the idiot. 
 
 The young man shivered too and smiled. 
 
 "Gentlemen and you, madam," said one of the 
 stewards of the festival, " do not conceive so ill, either 
 of our caution or judgment, as to imagine that we have 
 admitted this young stranger Gervayse Hastings by 
 name without a full investigation and thoughtful 
 balance of his claims. Trust me, not a guest at the 
 table is better entitled to his seat." 
 
 The steward's guarantee was perforce satisfactory. 
 The company, therefore, took their places, and ad- 
 dressed themselves to the serious business of the feast, 
 but were soon disturbed by the hypochondriac, who 
 thrust back his chair, complaining that a dish of stewed 
 toads and vipers was set before him, and that there was 
 green ditch-water in his cup of wine. This mistake 
 being amended, he quietly resumed his seat. The wine, 
 as it flowed freely from the sepulchral urn, seemed to 
 come imbued with all gloomy inspirations ; so that its 
 influence was not to cheer, but either to sink the revel- 
 lers into a deeper melancholy, or elevate their spirits to 
 an enthusiasm of wretchedness. The conversation was 
 various. They told sad stories about people who might 
 have been worthy guests at such a festival as the pres- 
 ent. They talked of grisly incidents in human history ; 
 of strange crimes, which, if truly considered, were but 
 convulsions of agony ; of some lives that had been alto- 
 gether wretched, and of others, which, wearing a gen- 
 eral semblance of happiness, had yet been deformed, 
 sooner or later, by misfortune, as by the intrusion of a 
 grim face at a banquet ; of death-bed scenes, and what 
 dark intimations might be gathered from the words of 
 dying men ; of suicide, and whether the more eligible 
 mode were by halter, knife, poison, drowning, gradual
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 43 
 
 starvation, or the fumes of charcoal. The majority of 
 the guests, as is the custom with people thoroughly and 
 profoundly sick at heart, were anxious to make their 
 own woes the theme of discussion, and prove themselves 
 most excellent in anguish. The misanthropist went 
 deep into the philosophy of evil, and wandered about 
 in the darkness, with now and then a gleam of dis- 
 colored light hovering on ghastly shapes and horrid 
 scenery. Many a miserable thought, such as men have 
 stumbled upon from age to age, did he now rake up 
 again, and gloat over it as an inestimable gem, a dia- 
 mond, a treasure far preferable to those bright, spiritual 
 revelations of a better world, which are like precious 
 stones from heaven's pavement. And then, amid his 
 lore of wretchedness, he hid his face and wept. 
 
 It was a festival at which the woful man of Uz might 
 suitably have been a guest, together with all, in each 
 succeeding age, who have tasted deepest of the bitter- 
 ness of life. And be it said, too, that every son or 
 daughter of woman, however favored with happy for- 
 tune, might, at one sad moment or another, have claimed 
 the privilege of a stricken heart, to sit down at this 
 table. But, throughout the feast, it was remarked that 
 the young stranger, Gervayse Hastings, was unsuccess- 
 ful in his attempts to catch its pervading spirit. At any 
 deep, strong thought that found utterance, and which 
 was torn out, as it were, from the saddest recesses of 
 human consciousness, he looked mystified and bewil- 
 dered ; even more than the poor idiot, who seemed to 
 grasp at such things with his earnest heart, and thus 
 occasionally to comprehend them. The young man's 
 conversation was of a colder and lighter kind, often 
 brilliant, but lacking the powerful characteristics of a 
 nature that had been developed by suffering. 
 
 " Sir," said the misanthropist, bluntly, in reply to 
 some observation by Gervayse Hastings, "pray do not 
 address me again. We have no right to talk together. 
 Our minds have nothing in common. By what claim 
 you appear at this banquet, I cannot guess; but me- 
 thinks, to a man who could say what you have just now
 
 44 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 said, my companions and myself must seem no more 
 than shadows, flickering on the wall. And precisely 
 such a shadow are you to us ! " 
 
 The young man smiled and bowed, but drawing him- 
 self back in his chair, he buttoned his coat over his 
 breast, as if the banquet-hall were growing chill. Again 
 the idiot fixed his melancholy stare upon the youth, and 
 murmured " Cold, cold, cold ! " 
 
 The banquet drew to its conclusion, and the guests 
 departed. Scarcely had they stepped across the thresh- 
 old of the hall, when the scene that had there passed 
 seemed like the vision of a sick fancy, or an exhalation 
 from a stagnant heart. Now and then, however, during 
 the year that ensued, these melancholy people caught 
 glimpses of one another, transient, indeed, but enough 
 to prove that they walked the earth with the ordinary 
 allotment of reality. Sometimes, a pair of them came 
 face to face, while stealing through the evening twilight, 
 enveloped in their sable cloaks. Sometimes, they casu- 
 ally met in churchyards. Once, also, it happened, that 
 two of the dismal banqueters mutually started, at recog- 
 nizing each other in the noon-day sunshine of a crowded 
 street, stalking there like ghosts astray. Doubtless, 
 they wondered why the skeleton did not come abroad 
 at noon-day, too ! 
 
 But, whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled 
 these Christmas guests into the bustling world, they 
 were sure to encounter the young man, who had so un- 
 accountably been admitted to the festival. They saw 
 him among the gay and fortunate ; they caught the 
 sunny sparkle of his eye ; they heard the light and 
 careless tones of his voice and muttered to them- 
 selves, with such indignation as only the aristocracy of 
 wretchedness could kindle : " The traitor ! The vile 
 impostor ! Providence, in its own good time, may give 
 him a right to feast among us ! " But the young man's 
 unabashed eye dwelt upon their gloomy figures, as they 
 passed him, seeming to say, perchance with somewhat 
 of a sneer " First, know my secret ! then, measure 
 your claims with mine ! " 

 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 45 
 
 The step of Time stole onward, and soon brought 
 merry Christmas round again, with glad and solemn 
 worship in the churches, and sports, games, festivals, 
 and everywhere the bright face of Joy beside the house- 
 hold fire. Again, likewise, the hall, with its curtains of 
 dusky purple, was illuminated by the death-torches, 
 gleaming on the sepulchral decorations of the banquet. 
 The veiled skeleton sat in state, lifting the cypress- 
 wreath above its head, as the guerdon of some guest, 
 illustrious in the qualifications which there claimed pre- 
 cedence. As the stewards deemed the world inexhaust- 
 ible in misery, and were desirous of recognizing it in all 
 its forms, they had not seen fit to reassemble the com- 
 pany of the former year. New faces now threw their 
 gloom across the table. 
 
 There was a man of nice conscience, who bore a 
 blood-stain in his heart the death of a fellow-creature 
 which, for his more exquisite torture, had chanced 
 with such a peculiarity of circumstances, that he could 
 not absolutely determine whether his will had entered 
 into the deed or not. Therefore, his whole life was 
 spent in the agony of an inward trial for murder, with 
 a continual sifting of the details of his terrible calamity, 
 until his mind had no longer any thought, nor his soul 
 any emotion, disconnected with it. There was a mother, 
 too, a mother once, but a desolation now, who, many 
 years before, had gone out on a pleasure-party, and, 
 returning, found her infant smothered in its little bed. 
 And ever since she had been tortured with the fantasy, 
 that her buried baby lay smothering in its coffin. Then 
 there was an aged lady, who had lived from time im- 
 memorial with a constant tremor quivering through her 
 frame. It was terrible to discern her dark shadow trem- 
 ulous upon the wall ; her lips, likewise, were tremulous ; 
 and the expression of her eye seemed to indicate that 
 her soul was trembling too. Owing to the bewilder- 
 ment and confusion which made almost a chaos of her 
 intellect, it was impossible to discover what dire misfor- 
 tune had thus shaken her nature to its depths ; so that 
 the stewards had admitted her to the table, not from
 
 46 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 any acquaintance with her history, but on the safe testi- 
 mony of her miserable aspect. Some surprise was ex- 
 pressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced gentleman, 
 a certain Mr. Smith, who had evidently the fat of many 
 a rich feast within him, and the habitual twinkle of 
 whose eye betrayed a disposition to break forth into 
 uproarious laughter, for little cause or none. It turned 
 out, however, that, with the best possible flow of spirits, 
 our poor friend was afflicted with a physical disease of 
 the heart, which threatened instant death on the slight- 
 est cachinnatory indulgence, or even that titillation of 
 the bodily frame, produced by merry thoughts. In this 
 dilemma, he had sought admittance to the banquet, on 
 the ostensible plea of his irksome and miserable state, 
 but, in reality, with the hope of imbibing a life-preserv- 
 ing melancholy. 
 
 A married couple had been invited, from a motive of 
 bitter humor; it being well understood, that they ren- 
 dered each other unutterably miserable whenever they 
 chanced to meet, and therefore must necessarily be fit 
 associates at the festival. In contrast with these, was 
 another couple, still unmarried, who had interchanged 
 their hearts in early life, but had been divided by cir- 
 cumstances as impalpable as morning mist, and kept 
 apart so long, that their spirits now found it impossible 
 to meet. Therefore, yearning for communion, yet 
 shrinking from one another, and choosing none beside, 
 they felt themselves companionless in life, and looked 
 upon eternity as a boundless desert. Next to the skele- 
 ton sat a mere son of earth a hunter of the Exchange 
 a gatherer of shining dust a man whose life's rec- 
 ord was in his ledger, and whose soul's prison-house, 
 the vaults of the bank where he kept his deposits. 
 This person had been greatly perplexed at his invita- 
 tion, deeming himself one of the most fortunate men in 
 the city; but the stewards persisted in demanding his 
 presence, assuring him that he had no conception how 
 miserable he was. 
 
 And now appeared a figure, which we must acknowledge 
 as our acquaintance of the former festival. It was Ger-
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 47 
 
 vayse Hastings, whose presence had then caused so much 
 question and criticism, and who now took his place with 
 the composure of one whose claims were satisfactory to 
 himself, and must needs be allowed by others. Yet his 
 easy and unruffled face betrayed no sorrow. The well- 
 skilled beholders gazed a moment into his eyes, and 
 shook their heads, to miss the unuttered sympathy 
 the countersign, never to be falsified of those whose 
 hearts are cavern-mouths, through which they descend 
 into a region of illimitable woe, and recognize other 
 wanderers there. 
 
 "Who is this youth?" asked the man with a blood- 
 stain on his conscience. " Surely he has never gone 
 down into the depths ! I know all the aspects of those 
 who have passed through the dark valley. By what 
 right is he among us ? " 
 
 " Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither without a 
 sorrow," murmured the aged lady, in accents that par- 
 took of the eternal tremor which pervaded her whole 
 being. " Depart, young man ! Your soul has never 
 been shaken ; and therefore I tremble so much the 
 more to look at you." 
 
 "His soul shaken! No; I'll answer for it," said 
 bluff Mr. Smith, pressing his hand upon his heart, and 
 making himself as melancholy as he could, for fear of a 
 fatal explosion of laughter. " I know the lad well ; he 
 has as fair prospects as any young man about town, 
 and has no more right among us, miserable creatures, 
 than the child unborn. He never was miserable, and 
 probably never will be ! " 
 
 " Our honored guests," interposed the stewards, 
 " pray have patience with us, and believe, at least, that 
 our deep veneration for the sacredness of this solemnity 
 would preclude any wilful violation of it. Receive this 
 young man to your table. It may not be too much to 
 say, that no guest here would exchange his own heart 
 for the one that beats within that youthful bosom ! " 
 
 " I 'd call it a bargain, and gladly too," muttered Mr. 
 Smith, with a perplexing mixture of sadness and mirth- 
 ful conceit. " A plague upon their nonsense ! My own
 
 48 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 heart is the only really miserable one in the company 
 it will certainly be the death of me at last ! " 
 
 Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the judgment 
 of the stewards being without appeal, the company sat 
 down. The obnoxious guest made no more attempt to 
 obtrude his conversation on those about him, but ap- 
 peared to listen to the table-talk with peculiar assiduity, 
 as if some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his 
 reach, might be conveyed in a casual word. And in 
 truth, to those who could understand and value it, there 
 was rich matter in the upgushings and outpourings of 
 these initiated souls, to whom sorrow had been a talis- 
 man, admitting them into spiritual depths which no 
 other spell can open. Sometimes, out of the midst of 
 densest gloom, there flashed a momentary radiance, pure 
 as crystal, bright as the flame of stars, and shedding 
 such a glow upon the mysteries of life, that the guests 
 were ready to exclaim: "Surely the riddle is on the 
 point of being solved ! " At such illuminated intervals, 
 the saddest mourners felt it to be revealed, that mortal 
 griefs are but shadowy and external ; no more than the 
 sable robes, voluminously shrouding a certain divine 
 reality, and thus indicating what might otherwise be 
 altogether invisible to mortal eye. 
 
 "Just now," remarked the trembling old woman, "I 
 seemed to see beyond the outside. And then my ever- 
 lasting tremor passed away ! " 
 
 " Would that I could dwell always in these momen- 
 tary gleams of light ! " said the man of stricken con- 
 science. " Then the blood-stain in my heart would be 
 washed clean away." 
 
 This strain of conversation appeared so unintelligibly 
 absurd to good Mr. Smith, that he burst into precisely 
 the fit of laughter which his physicians had warned him 
 against, as likely to prove instantaneously fatal. In 
 effect, he fell back in his chair, a corpse, with a broad 
 grin upon his face ; while his ghost, perchance, remained 
 beside it bewildered at its unpremeditated exit. This 
 catastrophe, of course, broke up the festival. 
 
 " How is this ? You do not tremble ? " observed the
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 49 
 
 tremulous old woman to Gervayse Hastings, who was 
 gazing at the dead man with singular intentness. " Is 
 it not awful to see him so suddenly vanish out of the 
 midst of life this man of flesh and blood, whose earthly 
 nature was so warm and strong ? There is a never ending 
 tremor in my soul ; but it trembles afresh at this ! And 
 you are calm ! " 
 
 " Would that he could teach me somewhat ! " said 
 Gervayse Hastings, drawing a long breath. " Men pass 
 before me like shadows on the wall their actions, pas- 
 sions, feelings, are flickerings of the light and then 
 they vanish ! Neither the corpse, nor yonder skeleton, 
 nor this old woman's everlasting tremor, can give me 
 what I seek." 
 
 And then the company departed. 
 
 We cannot linger to narrate, in such detail, more cir- 
 cumstances of these singular festivals, which, in accord- 
 ance with the founder's will, continued to be kept with 
 the regularity of an established institution. In process 
 of time, the stewards adopted the custom of inviting, 
 from far and near, those individuals whose misfortunes 
 were prominent above other men's, and whose mental 
 and moral development might, therefore, be supposed 
 to possess a corresponding interest. The exiled noble 
 of the French Revolution, and the broken soldier of the 
 Empire, were alike represented at the table. Fallen 
 monarchs, wandering about the earth, have found places 
 at that forlorn and miserable feast. The statesman, when 
 his party flung him off, might, if he chose it, be once 
 more a great man for the space of a single banquet. 
 Aaron Burr's name appears on the record, at a period 
 when his ruin the profoundest and most striking, 
 with more of moral circumstance in it than that of 
 almost any other man was complete, in his lonely 
 age. Stephen Girard, when his wealth weighed upon 
 him like a mountain, once sought admittance of his own 
 accord. It is not probable, however, that these men 
 had any lesson to teach in the lore of discontent and 
 misery, which might not equally well have been studied 
 in the common walks of life. Illustrious unfortunates
 
 50 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 attract a wider sympathy, not because their griefs are 
 more intense, but because, being set on lofty pedestals, 
 they the better serve mankind as instances and by-words 
 of calamity. 
 
 It concerns our present purpose to say that, at each 
 successive festival, Gervayse Hastings showed his face, 
 gradually changing from the smooth beauty of his youth 
 to the thoughtful comeliness of manhood, and thence to 
 the bald, impressive dignity of age. He was the only 
 individual invariaWy present. Yet, on every occasion, 
 there were murmurs, both from those who knew his 
 character and position, and from them whose hearts 
 shrank back, as denying his companionship in their 
 mystic fraternity. 
 
 " Who is this impassive man ? " had been asked a 
 hundred times. " Has he suffered ? Has he sinned ? 
 There are no traces of either. Then wherefore is he 
 here ? " 
 
 " You must inquire of the stewards, or of himself," 
 was the constant reply. " We seem to know him well, 
 here in our city, and know nothing of him but what is 
 creditable and fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year 
 after year, to this gloomy banquet, and sits among the 
 guests like a marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton 
 perhaps that may solve the riddle ! " 
 
 It was, in truth, a wonder. The life of Gervayse 
 Hastings was not merely a prosperous, but a brilliant 
 one. Everything had gone well with him. He was 
 wealthy, far beyond the expenditure that was required 
 by habits of magnificence, a taste of rare purity and 
 cultivation, a love of travel, a scholar's instinct to collect 
 a splendid library, and, moreover, what seemed a munifi- 
 cent liberality to the distressed. He had sought do- 
 mestic happiness, and not vainly, if a lovely and tender 
 wife, and children of fair promise, could insure it. He 
 had, besides, ascended above the limit which separates 
 the obscure from the distinguished, and had won a stain- 
 less reputation in affairs of the widest public importance. 
 Not that he was a popular character, or had within him 
 the mysterious attributes which are essential to that 

 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 51 
 
 species of success. To the public, he was a cold ab- 
 straction, wholly destitute of those rich hues of personal- 
 ity, that living warmth, and the peculiar faculty of 
 stamping his own heart's impression on a multitude of 
 hearts, by which the people recognize their favorites. 
 And it must be owned that, after his most intimate as- 
 sociates had done their best to know him thoroughly, 
 and love him warmly, they were startled to find how 
 little hold he had upon their affections. They approved 
 they admired but still, in those moments when the 
 human spirit most craves reality, they shrank back from 
 Gervayse Hastings, as powerless to give them what 
 they sought. It was the feeling of distrustful regret, 
 with which we should draw back the hand, after extend- 
 ing it, in an illusive twilight, to grasp the hand of a 
 shadow upon the wall. 
 
 As the superficial fervency of youth decayed, this 
 peculiar effect of Gervayse Hastings' character grew 
 more perceptible. His children, when he extended his 
 arms, came coldly to his knees, but never climbed them 
 of their own accord. His wife wept secretly, and al- 
 most adjudged herself a criminal, because she shivered 
 in the chill of his bosom. He, too, occasionally ap- 
 peared not unconscious of the chillness of his moral 
 atmosphere, and willing, if it might be so, to warm 
 himself at a kindly fire. But age stole onward, and 
 benumbed him more and more. As the hoar-frost 
 began to gather on him, his wife went to her grave, 
 and was doubtless warmer there ; his children either 
 died, or were scattered to different homes of their own ; 
 and old Gervayse Hastings, unscathed by grief alone, 
 but needing no companionship continued his steady 
 walk through life, and still, on every Christmas-day, 
 attended at the dismal banquet. His privilege as a 
 guest had become prescriptive now. Had he claimed 
 the head of the table, even the skeleton would have 
 been ejected from its seat. 
 
 Finally, at the merry Christmas-tide, when he had 
 numbered four-score years complete, this pale, high- 
 browed, marble-featured old man once more entered the
 
 52 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 long-frequented hall, with the same impassive aspect 
 that had called forth so much dissatisfied remark at his 
 first attendance. Time, except in matters merely ex- 
 ternal, had done nothing for him, either of good or evil. 
 As he took his place he threw a calm, inquiring glance 
 around the table, as if to ascertain whether any guest 
 had yet appeared, after so many unsuccessful banquets, 
 who might impart to him the mystery the deep, warm 
 secret the life within the life which, whether mani- 
 fested in joy or sorrow, is what gives substance to a 
 world of shadows. 
 
 " My friends," said Gervayse Hastings, assuming a 
 position which his long conversance with the festival 
 caused to appear natural, " you are welcome ! I drink 
 to you all in this cup of sepulchral wine." 
 
 The guests replied courteously, but still in a manner 
 that proved them unable to receive the old man as a 
 member of their sad fraternity. It may be well to 
 give the reader an idea of the present company at the 
 banquet. 
 
 One was formerly a clergyman, enthusiastic in his 
 profession, and apparently of the genuine dynasty of 
 those old puritan divines, whose faith in their calling, 
 and stern exercise of it, had placed them among the 
 mighty of the earth. But, yielding to the speculative 
 tendency of the age, he had gone astray from the firm 
 foundation of an ancient faith, and wandered into a 
 cloud region, where everything was misty and deceptive, 
 ever mocking him with a semblance of reality, but still 
 dissolving when he flung himself upon it for support 
 and rest. His instinct and early training demanded 
 something steadfast ; but, looking forward, he beheld 
 vapors piled on vapors, and behind him, an impassable 
 gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day ; on the 
 borders of which he paced to and fro, sometimes wring- 
 ing his hands in agony, and often making his own woe 
 a theme of scornful merriment. This surely was a 
 miserable man. Next, there was a theorist one of a 
 numerous tribe, although he deemed himself unique 
 since the creation a theorist, who had conceived a plan
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 53 
 
 by which all the wretchedness of earth, moral and physi- 
 cal, might be done away, and the bliss of the millennium 
 at once accomplished. But, the incredulity of mankind 
 debarring him from action, he was smitten with as 
 much grief as if the whole mass of woe which he was 
 denied the opportunity to remedy, were crowded into 
 his own bosom. A plain old man in black attracted 
 much of the company's notice, on the supposition that 
 he was no other than Father Miller, who, it seemed, had 
 
 fiven himself up to despair at the tedious delay of the 
 nal conflagration. Then there was a man distinguished 
 for native pride and obstinacy, who, a little while before, 
 had possessed immense wealth, and held the control of 
 a vast monied interest, which he had wielded in the 
 same spirit as a despotic monarch would wield the 
 power of his empire, carrying on a tremendous moral 
 warfare, the roar and tremor of which was felt at every 
 fireside in the land. At length came a crushing ruin 
 a total overthrow of fortune, power, and character the 
 effect of which on his imperious, and, in many respects, 
 noble and lofty nature, might have entitled him to a 
 place, not merely at our festival, but among the peers 
 of Pandemonium. 
 
 There was a modern philanthropist, who had become 
 so deeply sensible of the calamities of thousands and 
 millions of his fellow-creatures, and of the impracti- 
 cableness of any general measures for their relief, that 
 he had no heart to do what little good lay immediately 
 within his power, but contented himself with being 
 miserable for sympathy. Near him sat a gentleman 
 in a predicament hitherto unprecedented, but of which 
 the present epoch, probably, affords numerous examples. 
 Ever since he was of capacity to read a newspaper, this 
 person had prided himself on his consistent adherence 
 to one political party, but, in the confusion of these 
 latter days, had got bewildered, and knew not where- 
 abouts his party was. This wretched condition, so 
 morally desolate and disheartening to a man who has 
 long accustomed himself to merge his individuality in 
 the mass of a great body, can only be conceived by
 
 54 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 such as have experienced it. His next companion was 
 a popular orator who had lost his voice, and as it was 
 pretty much all that he had to lose had fallen into 
 a state of hopeless melancholy. The table was like- 
 wise graced by two of the gentler sex one, a half- 
 starved, consumptive seamstress, the representative of 
 thousands just as wretched; the other, a woman of 
 unemployed energy, who found herself in the world 
 with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing 
 even to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to 
 the verge of madness by dark broodings over the 
 wrongs of her sex, and its exclusion from a proper field 
 of action. The roll of guests being thus complete, a 
 side-table had been set for three or four disappointed 
 office-seekers, with hearts as sick as death, whom the 
 stewards had admitted, partly because their calamities 
 really entitled them to entrance here, and partly that 
 they were in especial need of a good dinner. There 
 was likewise a homeless dog, with his tail between his 
 legs, licking up the crumbs and gnawing the fragments 
 of the feast such a melancholy cur as one sometimes 
 sees about the streets, without a master and willing to 
 follow the first that will accept his service. 
 
 In their own way, these were as wretched a set of 
 people as ever had assembled at the festival. There 
 they sat, with the veiled skeleton of the founder, hold- 
 ing aloft the cypress wreath, at one end of the table ; 
 and at the other, wrapt in furs, the withered figure of 
 Gervayse Hastings, stately, calm, and cold, impressing 
 the company with awe, yet so little interesting their 
 sympathy, that he might have vanished into thin 
 air, without their once exclaiming "Whither is he 
 gone ? " 
 
 " Sir," said the philanthropist, addressing the old 
 man, "you have been so long a guest at this annual 
 festival, and have thus been conversant with so many 
 varieties of human affliction, that, not improbably, you 
 have thence derived some great and important lessons. 
 How blessed were your lot, could you reveal a secret by 
 which all this mass of woe might be removed ! "
 
 THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET 55 
 
 " I know of but one misfortune," answered Gervayse 
 Hastings, quietly, " and that is my own." 
 
 "Your own!" rejoined the philanthropist. "And, 
 looking back on your serene and prosperous life, how 
 can you claim to be the sole unfortunate of the human 
 race?" 
 
 " You will not understand it," replied Gervayse Has- 
 tings, feebly, and with a singular inefficiency of pronun- 
 ciation, and sometimes putting one word for another. 
 " None have understood it not even those who experi- 
 ence the like. It is a chilliness a want of earnestness 
 a feeling as if what should be my heart were a thing 
 of vapor a haunting perception of unreality ! Thus 
 seeming to possess all that other men have all that 
 men aim at I have really possessed nothing, neither 
 joy nor griefs. All things all persons as was truly 
 said to me at this table long and long ago have been 
 like shadows flickering on the wall. It was so with my 
 wife and children with those who seemed my friends ; 
 it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before me. 
 Neither have I myself any real existence, but am a 
 shadow like the rest ! " 
 
 " And how is it with your views of a future life ? " 
 inquired the speculative clergyman. 
 
 " Worse than with you," said the old man, in a hollow 
 and feeble tone ; " for I cannot conceive it earnestly 
 enough to feel either hope or fear. Mine mine is the 
 wretchedness ! This cold heart this unreal life ! Ah ! 
 it grows colder still." 
 
 It so chanced, that at this juncture the decayed liga- 
 ments of the skeleton gave way, and the dry bones fell 
 together in a heap, thus causing the dusty wreath of 
 cypress to drop upon the table. The attention of the 
 company being thus diverted, for a single instant, from 
 Gervayse Hastings, they perceived, on turning again 
 towards him, that the old man had undergone a change. 
 His shadow had ceased to flicker on the wall. 
 
 " Well, Rosina, what is your criticism ? " asked Rod- 
 erick, as he rolled up the manuscript.
 
 A 
 
 5 6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " Frankly, your success is by no means complete," 
 replied she. " It is true, I have an idea of the charac- 
 ter you endeavor to describe ; but it is rather by dint 
 of my own thought than your expression." 
 
 "That is unavoidable," observed the sculptor, "be- 
 cause the characteristics are all negative. If Gervayse 
 Hastings could have imbibed one human grief at the 
 gloomy banquet, the tasjc of describing him would have 
 been infinitely easier/ Of such persons and we do 
 meet with these moral monsters now and then it is 
 difficult to conceive how they came to exist here, or 
 what there is in them capable of existence hereafter. 
 They seem to be on the outside of everything ; and 
 nothing wearies the soul more than an attempt to com- 
 prehend them within its grasp."/
 
 BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 
 
 ONE sunshiny morning, in the good old times of the 
 town of Boston, a young carver in wood, well 
 known by the name of Drowne, stood contemplating a 
 large oaken log, which it was his purpose to convert 
 into the figure-head of a vessel. And while he dis- 
 cussed within his own mind what sort of shape or simil- 
 itude it were well to bestow upon this excellent piece 
 of timber, there came into Browne's workshop a certain 
 Captain Hunnewell, owner and commander of the good 
 brig called the Cynosure, which had just returned from 
 her first voyage to Fayal. 
 
 " Ah ! that will do, Browne, that will do ! " cried the 
 jolly captain, tapping the log with his rattan. " I 
 bespeak this very piece of oak for the figure-head of 
 the Cynosure. She has shown herself the sweetest 
 craft that ever floated, and I mean to decorate her prow 
 with the handsomest image that the skill of man can 
 cut out of timber. And, Browne, you are the fellow 
 to execute it." 
 
 " You give me more credit than I deserve, Captain 
 Hunnewell," said the carver, modestly, yet as one con- 
 scious of eminence in his art. " But, for the sake of 
 the good brig, I stand ready to do my best. And 
 which of these designs do you prefer ? Here " point- 
 ing to a staring half-length figure, in a white wig and 
 scarlet coat here is an excellent model, the likeness 
 of our gracious king. Here is the valiant Admiral Ver- 
 non. Or, if you prefer a female figure, what say you 
 to Britannia with the trident ? " 
 
 " All very fine, Browne ; all very fine," answered 
 
 the mariner. " But as nothing like the brig ever swam 
 
 the ocean, so I am determined she shall have such a 
 
 figure-head as old Neptune never saw in his life. And 
 
 57
 
 58 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 what is. more, as there is a secret in the matter, you 
 must pledge your credit not to betray it." 
 
 " Certainly," said Drowne, marvelling, however, what 
 possible mystery there could be in reference to an affair 
 so open, of necessity, to the inspection of all the world, 
 as the figure-head of a vessel. "You may depend, 
 captain, on my being as secret as the nature of the case 
 will permit." 
 
 Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the button, 
 and communicated his wishes in so low a tone, that it 
 would be unmannerly to repeat what was evidently 
 intended for the carver's private ear. We shall, there- 
 fore, take the opportunity to give the reader a few 
 desirable particulars about Drowne himself. 
 
 He was the first American who is known to have 
 attempted, in a very humble line, it is true, that 
 art in which we can now reckon so many names already 
 distinguished, or rising to distinction. From his earliest 
 boyhood, he had exhibited a knack for it would be 
 too proud a word to call it genius a knack, therefore, 
 for the imitation of the human figure, in whatever ma- 
 terial came most readily to hand. The snows of a New 
 England winter had often supplied him with a species 
 of marble as dazzlingly white, at least, as the Parian or 
 the Carrara, and if less durable, yet sufficiently so to 
 correspond with any claims to permanent existence 
 possessed by the boy's frozen statues. .Yet they won 
 admiration from maturer judges than his schoolfellows, 
 and were, indeed, remarkably clever, though destitute 
 of the native warmth that might have made the snow 
 melt beneath his hand. As he advanced in life, the 
 young man adopted pine and oak as eligible materials 
 for the display of his skill, which now began to bring 
 him a return of solid silver, as well as the empty praise 
 that had been an apt reward enough for his productions 
 of evanescent snow. He became noted for carving 
 ornamental pump-heads, and wooden urns for gate- 
 posts, and decorations, more grotesque than fanciful, 
 for mantel-pieces. No apothecary would have deemed 
 himself in the way of obtaining custom, without setting
 
 BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 59 
 
 up a gilded mortar, if not a head of Galen or Hippocra- 
 tes, from the skilful hand of Drowne. But the great 
 scope of his business lay in the manufacture of figure- 
 heads for vessels. Whether it were the monarch him- 
 self, or some famous British admiral or general, or the 
 governor of the province, or perchance the favorite 
 daughter of the ship-owner, there the image stood above 
 the prow, decked out in gorgeous colors, magnificently 
 gilded, and staring the whole world out of countenance, 
 as if from an innate consciousness of its own superiority. 
 These specimens of native sculpture had crossed the 
 sea in all directions, and been not ignobly noticed 
 among the crowded shipping of the Thames, and 
 wherever else the hardy mariners of New England had 
 pushed their adventures. It must be confessed, that a 
 family likeness pervaded these respectable progeny of 
 Browne's skill that the benign countenance of the 
 king resembled those of his subjects, and that Miss 
 Peggy Hobart, the merchant's daughter, bore a re- 
 markable similitude to Britannia, Victory, and other 
 ladies of the allegoric sisterhood ; and, finally, that they 
 all had a kind of wooden aspect, which proved an inti- 
 mate relationship with the unshaped blocks of timber 
 in the carver's workshop. But, at least, there was no 
 inconsiderable skill of hand, nor a deficiency of any 
 attribute to render them really works of art, except 
 that deep quality, be it of soul or intellect, which be- 
 stows life upon the lifeless, and warmth upon the cold, 
 and which, had it been present, would have made 
 Browne's wooden image instinct with spirit. 
 
 The captain of the Cynosure had now finished his 
 instructions. 
 
 " And, Browne," said he, impressively, " you must 
 lay aside all other business, and set about this forth- 
 with. And as to the price, only do the job in first-rate 
 style, and you shall settle that point yourself." 
 
 "Very well, captain," answered the carver, who 
 looked grave and somewhat perplexed, yet had a sort of 
 smile upon his visage. " Bepend upon it, I '11 do my 
 utmost to satisfy you."
 
 60 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 From that moment the men of taste about Long 
 Wharf and the Town Dock, who were wont to show 
 their love for the arts by frequent visits to Browne's 
 workshop, and admiration of his wooden images, began 
 to be sensible of a mystery in the carver's conduct. 
 Often he was absent in the daytime. Sometimes, as 
 might be judged by gleams of light from the shop 
 windows, he was at work until a late hour of the even- 
 ing ; although neither knock nor voice, on such occa- 
 sions, could gain admittance for a visitor or elicit any 
 word of response. Nothing remarkable, however, was 
 observed in the shop at those hours when it was thrown 
 open. A fine piece of timber, indeed, which Drowne 
 was known to have reserved for some work of especial 
 dignity, was seen to be gradually assuming shape. What 
 shape it was destined ultimately to take, was a problem 
 to his friends, and a point on which the carver himself 
 preserved a rigid silence. But day after day, though 
 Drowne was seldom noticed in the act of working upon 
 it, this rude form began to be developed, until it be- 
 came evident to all observers that a female figure was 
 growing into mimic life. At each new visit they beheld 
 a larger pile of wooden chips, and a nearer approxima- 
 tion to something beautiful. It seemed as if the hama- 
 dryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the 
 unimaginative world within the heart of her native tree, 
 and that it was only necessary to remove the strange 
 shapelessness that had incrusted her, and reveal the 
 grace and loveliness of a divinity. Imperfect as the de- 
 sign, the attitude, the costume, and especially the face 
 of the image still remained, there was already an effect 
 that drew the eye from the wooden cleverness of 
 Drowne's earlier productions, and fixed it upon the tan- 
 talizing mystery of this new project. 
 
 Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young man, 
 and a resident of Boston, came one day to visit Drowne ; 
 for he had recognized so much of moderate ability in 
 the carver, as to induce him, in the dearth of any pro- 
 fessional sympathy, to cultivate his acquaintance. On 
 entering the shop, the artist glanced at the inflexible
 
 BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 61 
 
 image of king, commander, dame, and allegory, that 
 stood around ; on the best of which might have been 
 bestowed the questionable praise, that it looked as if a 
 living man had here been changed to wood, and that 
 not only the physical, but the intellectual and spiritual 
 part, partook of the stolid transformation. But in not 
 a single instance did it seem as if the wood were imbib- 
 ing the ethereal essence of humanity. What a wide 
 distinction is here, and how far would the slightest 
 portion of the latter merit have outvalued the utmost 
 degree of the former ! 
 
 " My friend Drowne," said Copley, smiling to him- 
 self, but alluding to the mechanical and wooden clever- 
 ness that so invariably distinguished the images, " you 
 are really a remarkable person ! I have seldom met 
 with a man, in your line of business, that could do so 
 much, for one other touch might make this figure of 
 General Wolfe, for instance, a breathing and intelligent 
 human creature." 
 
 " You would have me think that you are praising me 
 highly, Mr. Copley," answered Drowne, turning his 
 back upon Wolfe's image in apparent disgust. " But 
 there has come a light into my mind. I know, what 
 you know as well, that the one touch, which you speak 
 of as deficient, is the only one that would be truly 
 valuable, and that, without it, these works of mine are 
 no better than worthless abortions. There is the same 
 difference between them and the works of an inspired 
 artist, as between a sign-post daub and one of your best 
 pictures." 
 
 " This is strange ! " cried Copley, looking him in the 
 face, which now, as the painter fancied, had a singular 
 depth of intelligence, though, hitherto, it had not given 
 him greatly the advantage over his own family of 
 wooden images. " What has come over you ? How is 
 it that, possessing the idea which you have now uttered, 
 you should produce only such works as these ? " 
 
 The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley 
 turned again to the images, conceiving that the sense of 
 deficiency, so rare in a merely mechanical character,
 
 62 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 must surely imply a genius, the tokens of which had 
 been overlooked. But no ; there was not a trace of it. 
 He was about to withdraw, when his eyes chanced to 
 fall upon a half-developed figure which lay in a corner 
 of the workshop, surrounded by scattered chips of oak. 
 It arrested him at once. 
 
 " What is here ? Who has done this ? " he broke out, 
 after contemplating it in speechless astonishment for an 
 instant. " Here is the divine, the life-giving touch ! 
 What inspired hand is beckoning this wood to arise and 
 live ? Whose work is this ? " 
 
 " No man's work," replied Drowne. " The figure 
 lies within that block of oak, and it is my business to 
 find it." 
 
 " Drowne," said the true artist, grasping the carver 
 fervently by the hand, " you are a man of genius ! " 
 
 As Copley departed, happening to glance backward 
 from the threshold, he beheld Drowne bending over the 
 half -created shape, and stretching forth his arms as if 
 he would have embraced and drawn it to his heart; 
 while, had such a miracle been possible, his countenance 
 expressed passion enough to communicate warmth and 
 sensibility to the lifeless oak. 
 
 " Strange enough ! " said the artist to himself. " Who 
 would have looked for a modern Pygmalion in the 
 person of a Yankee mechanic ! " 
 
 As yet, the image was but vague in its outward 
 presentment ; so that, as in the cloud-shapes around 
 the western sun, the observer rather felt, or was led to 
 imagine, than really saw what was intended by it. Day 
 by day, however, the work assumed greater precision, 
 and settled its irregular and misty outline into distincter 
 grace and beauty. The general design was now obvious 
 to the common eye. It was a female figure, in what 
 appeared to be a foreign dress ; the gown being laced 
 over the bosom, and opening in front, so as to disclose 
 a skirt or petticoat, the folds and inequalities of which 
 were admirably represented in the oaken substance. 
 She wore a hat of singular gracefulness, and abun- 
 dantly laden with flowers, such as never grew in the
 
 DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 63 
 
 rude soil of New England, but which, with all their 
 fanciful luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed 
 impossible for the most fertile imagination to have 
 attained without copying from real prototypes. There 
 were several little appendages to this dress, such as a 
 fan, a pair of ear-rings, a chain about the neck, a watch 
 in the bosom, and a ring upon the finger, all of which 
 would have been deemed beneath the dignity of sculp- 
 ture. They were put on, however, with as much taste 
 as a lovely woman might have shown in her attire, and 
 could therefore have shocked none but a judgment 
 spoiled by artistic rules. 
 
 The face was still imperfect; but, gradually, by a 
 magic touch, intelligence and sensibility brightened 
 through the features, with all the effect of light gleam- 
 ing forth from within the solid oak. The face became 
 alive. It was a beautiful, though not precisely regu- 
 lar, and somewhat haughty aspect, but with a certain 
 piquancy about the eyes and mouth which, of all ex- 
 pressions, would have seemed the most impossible to 
 throw over a wooden countenance. And now, so far as 
 carving went, this wonderful production was complete. 
 
 " Drowne," said Copley, who had hardly missed a 
 single day in his visits to the carver's workshop, " if 
 this work were in marble, it would make you famous at 
 once ; nay, I would almost affirm that it would make an 
 era in the art. It is as ideal as an antique statue, yet 
 as real as any lovely woman whom one meets at a fire- 
 side or in the street. But I trust you do not mean to 
 desecrate this exquisite creature with paint, like those 
 staring kings and admirals yonder ? " 
 
 " Not paint her ? " exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, who 
 stood by ; " not paint the figure-head of the Cynosure ! 
 And what sort of a figure should I cut in a foreign port, 
 with such an unpainted oaken stick as this over my prow ? 
 She must, and she shall, be painted to the life, from the 
 topmost flower in her hat down to the silver spangles on 
 her slippers." 
 
 " Mr. Copley," said Drowne, quietly, " I know nothing 
 of marble statuary, and nothing of the sculptor's rules
 
 64 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of art. But of this wooden image this work of my 
 hands this creature of my heart," and here his 
 voice faltered and choked, in a very singular manner, 
 " of this of her I may say that I know something. 
 A well-spring of inward wisdom gushed within me, as I 
 wrought upon the oak with my whole strength, and soul, 
 and faith. Let others do what they may with marble, 
 and adopt what rules they choose. If I can produce my 
 desired effect by painted wood, those rules are not for 
 me, and I have a right to disregard them." 
 
 " The very spirit of genius ! " muttered Copley to him- 
 self. " How otherwise should this carver feel himself 
 entitled to transcend all rules, and make me ashamed of 
 quoting them ! " 
 
 He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw that 
 expression of human love which, in a spiritual sense, 
 as the artist could not help imagining, was the secret of 
 the life that had been breathed into this block of wood. 
 
 The carver, still in the same secrecy that marked all 
 his operations upon this mysterious image, proceeded to 
 paint the habiliments in their proper colors, and the 
 countenance with nature's red and white. When all was 
 finished, he threw open his workshop, and admitted the 
 townspeople to behold what he had done. Most per- 
 sons, at their first entrance, felt impelled to remove their 
 hats, and pay such reverence as was due to the richly 
 dressed and beautiful young lady, who seemed to stand 
 in a corner of the room, with oaken chips and shavings 
 scattered at her feet. Then came a sensation of fear ; 
 as if, not being actually human, yet so like humanity, 
 she must therefore be something preternatural. There 
 was, in truth, an indefinable air and expression that 
 might reasonably induce the query who and from 
 what sphere this daughter of the oak should be. The 
 strange rich flowers of Eden on her head ; the complex- 
 ion, so much deeper and more brilliant than those of our 
 native beauties ; the foreign, as it seemed, and fantastic 
 garb, yet not too fantastic to be worn decorously in the 
 street; the delicately wrought embroidery of the skirt; 
 the broad gold chain about her neck ; the curious ring
 
 BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 65 
 
 upon her finger; the fan, so exquisitely sculptured in 
 open work, and painted to resemble pearl and ebony ; 
 where could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, have be- 
 held the vision here so matchlessly embodied ! And 
 then her face ! In the dark eyes and around the volup- 
 tuous mouth, there played a look made up of pride, 
 coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness, which impressed 
 Copley with the idea that the image was secretly enjoy- 
 ing the perplexing admiration of himself and other be- 
 holders. 
 
 "And will you," said he to the carver, "permit this 
 master-piece to become the figure-head of a vessel ? 
 Give the honest captain yonder figure of Britannia, it 
 will answer his purpose far better, and send this fairy 
 queen to England, where, for aught I know, it may bring 
 you a thousand pounds." 
 
 "I have not wrought it for money," said Drowne. 
 
 " What sort of a fellow is this ! " thought Copley. 
 " A Yankee, and throw away the chance of making his 
 fortune ! He has gone mad ; and thence has come this 
 gleam of genius." 
 
 There was still further proof of Drowne's lunacy, if 
 credit were due to the rumor that he had been seen 
 kneeling at the feet of the oaken lady, and gazing with 
 a lover's passionate ardor into the face that his own 
 hands had created. The bigots of the day hinted that 
 it would be no matter of surprise if an evil spirit were 
 allowed to enter this beautiful form, and seduce the 
 carver to destruction. 
 
 The fame of the image spread far and wide. The 
 inhabitants visited it so universally, that, after a few 
 days of exhibition, there was hardly an old man or a 
 child who had not become minutely familiar with its 
 aspect. Had the story of Drowne's wooden image 
 ended here, its celebrity might have been prolonged for 
 many years, by the reminiscences of those who looked 
 upon it in their childhood, and saw nothing else so beau- 
 tiful in after life. But the town was now astounded by 
 an event, the narrative of which has formed itself into 
 one of the most singular legends that are yet to be met
 
 66 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 with in the traditionary chimney-corners of the New 
 England metropolis, where old men and women sit 
 dreaming of the past, and wag their heads at the 
 dreamers of the present and the future. 
 
 One fine morning, just before the departure of the 
 Cynosure on her second voyage to Fayal, the com- 
 mander of that gallant vessel was seen to issue from his 
 residence in Hanover street He was stylishly dressed 
 in a blue broadcloth coat, with gold lace at the seams 
 and button-holes, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, a 
 triangular hat with a loop and broad binding of gold, 
 and wore a silver-hilted hanger at his side. But the 
 good captain might have been arrayed in the robes of a 
 prince or the rags of a beggar, without in either case 
 attracting notice, while obscured by such a companion 
 as now leaned on his arm. The people in the street 
 started, rubbed their eyes, and either leaped aside from 
 their path, or stood as if transfixed to wood or marble in 
 astonishment. 
 
 "Do you see it? do you see it?" cried one, with 
 tremulous eagerness. " It is the very same ! " 
 
 " The same ? " answered another, who had arrived in 
 town only the night before. " Who do you mean ? I 
 see only a sea-captain in his shore-going clothes, and a 
 young lady in a foreign habit, with a bunch of beautiful 
 flowers in her hat. On my word, she is as fair and 
 bright a damsel as my eyes have looked on this many a 
 day ! " 
 
 "Yes; the same! the very same!" repeated the 
 other. " Browne's wooden image has come to life ! " 
 
 Here was a miracle indeed ! Yet, illuminated by 
 the sunshine, or darkened by the alternate shade of 
 the houses, and with its garments fluttering lightly in the 
 morning breeze, there passed the image along the street. 
 It was exactly and minutely the shape, the garb, and 
 the face, which the townspeople had so recently thronged 
 to see and admire. Not a rich flower upon her head, 
 not a single leaf, but had had its prototype in Browne's 
 wooden workmanship, although now their fragile grace 
 had become flexible, and was shaken by every footstep
 
 BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 67 
 
 that the wearer made. The broad gold chain upon the 
 neck was identical with the one represented on the 
 image, and glistened with the motion imparted by 
 the rise and fall of the bosom which it decorated. A 
 real diamond sparkled on her finger. In her right hand 
 she bore a pearl and ebony fan, which she nourished 
 with a fantastic and bewitching coquetry, that was like- 
 wise expressed in all her movements, as well as in the 
 style of her beauty and the attire that so well harmonized 
 with it. The face, with its brilliant depth of complexion, 
 had the same piquancy of mirthful mischief that was 
 fixed upon the countenance of the image, but which was 
 here varied, and continually shifting, yet always essen- 
 tially the same, like the sunny gleam upon a bubbling 
 fountain. On the whole, there was something so airy 
 and yet so real in the figure, and withal so perfectly did 
 it represent Drowne's image, that people knew not 
 whether to suppose the magic wood etherealized into a 
 spirit, or warmed and softened into an actual woman. 
 
 " One thing is certain," muttered a Puritan of the old 
 stamp. " Drowne has sold himself to the devil ; and 
 doubtless this gay Captain Hunnewell is a party to the 
 bargain." 
 
 " And I," said a young man who overheard him, 
 " would almost consent to be the third victim, for the 
 liberty of saluting those lovely lips." 
 
 "And so would I," said Copley the painter, "for the 
 privilege of taking her picture." " 
 
 The image, or the apparition, whichever it might 
 be, still escorted by the bold captain, proceeded from 
 Hanover street through some of the cross-lanes that 
 make this portion of the town so intricate, to Ann 
 street, thence into Dock-square, and so downward to 
 Drowne's shop, which stood just on the water's edge. 
 The crowd still followed, gathering volume as it rolled 
 along. Never had a modern miracle occurred in such 
 broad daylight, nor in the presence of such a multitude 
 of witnesses. The airy image, as if conscious that she 
 was the object of the murmurs and disturbance that 
 swelled behind her, appeared slightly vexed and flus-
 
 68 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 tered, yet still in a manner consistent with the light 
 vivacity and sportive mischief that were written in her 
 countenance. She was observed to flutter her fan with 
 such vehement rapidity, that the elaborate delicacy of 
 its workmanship gave way, and it remained broken in 
 her hand. 
 
 Arriving at Browne's door, while the captain threw it 
 open, the marvellous apparition paused an instant on the 
 threshold, assuming the very attitude of the image, and 
 casting over the crowd that glance of sunny coquetry 
 which all remembered on the face of the oaken lady. 
 She and her cavalier then disappeared. 
 
 " Ah ! " murmured the crowd, drawing a deep breath, 
 as with one vast pair of lungs. 
 
 " The world looks darker, now that she has vanished," 
 said some of the young men. 
 
 But the aged, whose recollections dated as far back as 
 witch times, shook their heads, and hinted that our fore- 
 fathers would have thought it a pious deed to burn the 
 daughter of the oak with fire. 
 
 " If she be other than a bubble of the elements," ex- 
 claimed Copley, " I must look upon her face again ! " 
 
 He accordingly entered the shop ; and there, in her 
 usual corner, stood the image, gazing at him, as it might 
 seem, with the very same expression of mirthful mis- 
 chief that had been the farewell look of the appari- 
 tion when, but a moment before, she turned her face 
 towards the crowd. The carver stood beside his crea- 
 tion, mending the beautiful fan, which by some acci- 
 dent was broken in her hand. But there was no longer 
 any motion in the lifelike image, nor any real woman 
 in the workshop, nor even the witchcraft of a sunny 
 shadow, that might have deluded people's eyes as it 
 flitted along the street. Captain Hunnewell, too, had 
 vanished. His hoarse, sea-breezy tones, however, were 
 audible on the other side of a door that opened upon 
 the water. 
 
 " Sit down in the stern sheets, my lady," said the 
 gallant captain. " Come, bear a hand, you lubbers, and 
 set us on board in the turning of a minute-glass."
 
 BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 69 
 
 And then was heard the stroke of oars. 
 
 " Drowne," said Copley, with a smile of intelligence, 
 " you have been a truly fortunate man. What painter 
 or statuary ever had such a subject! No wonder that 
 she inspired a genius into you, and first created the artist 
 who afterwards created her image." 
 
 Drowne looked at him with a visage that bore the 
 traces of tears, but from which the light of imagination 
 and sensibility, so recently illuminating it, had departed. 
 He was again the mechanical carver that he had been 
 known to be all his lifetime. 
 
 " I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Copley," 
 said he, putting his hand to his brow. " This image ! 
 Can it have been my work? Well I have wrought 
 it in a kind of a dream ; and now that I am broad 
 awake, I must set about finishing yonder figure of 
 Admiral Vernon." 
 
 And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid 
 countenance of one of his wooden progeny, and com- 
 pleted it in his own mechanical style, from which he was 
 never known afterwards to deviate. He followed his 
 business industriously for many years, acquired a com- 
 petence, and, in the latter part of his life, attained to a 
 dignified station in the church, being remembered in 
 records and traditions as Deacon Drowne, the carver. 
 One of his productions, an Indian chief, gilded all 
 over, stood during the better part of a century on the 
 cupola of the Province House, bedazzling the eyes of 
 those who looked upward, like an angel of the sun. 
 Another work of the good deacon's hand a reduced 
 likeness of friend Captain Hunnewell, holding a tele- 
 scope and quadrant may be seen, to this day, at the 
 corner of Broad and State streets, serving in the useful 
 capacity of sign to the shop of a nautical instrument 
 maker. We know not how to account for the inferiority 
 of this quaint old figure, as compared with the recorded 
 excellence of the Oaken Lady, unless on the supposi- 
 tion, that in every human spirit there is imagination, 
 sensibility, creative power, genius, which, according to 
 circumstances, may either be developed in this world,
 
 7 o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 or shrouded in a mask of dulness until another state of 
 being. To our friend Drowne, there came a brief sea- 
 son of excitement, kindled by love. It rendered him a 
 genius for that one occasion, but, quenched in disap- 
 pointment, left him again the mechanical carver in 
 wood, without the power even of appreciating the work 
 that his own hands had wrought. Yet who can doubt, 
 that the very highest state to which a human spirit can 
 attain, in its loftiest aspirations, is its truest and most 
 natural state, and that Drowne was more consistent 
 with himself when he wrought the admirable figure of 
 the mysterious lady, than when he perpetrated a whole 
 progeny of blockheads ? 
 
 There was a rumor in Boston, about this period, that 
 a young Portuguese lady of rank, on some occasion of 
 political or domestic disquietude, had fled from her home 
 in Fayal, and put herself under the protection of Cap- 
 tain Hunnewell, on board of whose vessel, and at whose 
 residence, she was sheltered until a change of affairs. 
 This fair stranger must have been the original of Drowne's 
 Wooden Image.
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 
 
 A GRAVE figure, with a pair of mysterious spectacles 
 on his nose and a pen behind his ear, was seated 
 at a desk, in the corner of a metropolitan office. The 
 apartment was fitted up with a counter, and furnished 
 with an oaken cabinet and a chair or two, in simple and 
 businesslike style. Around the walls were stuck ad- 
 vertisements of articles lost, or articles wanted, or articles 
 to be disposed of ; in one or another of which classes 
 were comprehended nearly all the conveniences, or other- 
 wise, that the imagination of man has contrived. The 
 interior of the room was thrown into shadow, partly by 
 the tall edifices that rose on the opposite side of the 
 street, and partly by the immense show-bills of blue and 
 crimson paper, that were expanded over each of the three 
 windows. Undisturbed by the tramp of feet, the rattle 
 of wheels, the hum of voices, the shout of the city-crier, 
 the scream of the news-boys, and other tokens of the 
 multitudinous life that surged along in front of the office, 
 the figure at the desk pored diligently over a folio vol- 
 ume, of ledgerlike size and aspect. He looked like the 
 spirit of a record the soul of his own great volume 
 made visible in mortal shape. 
 
 But scarcely an instant elapsed without the appear- 
 ance at the door of some individual from the busy popu- 
 lation whose vicinity was manifested by so much buzz, 
 and clatter, and outcry. Now, it was a thriving me- 
 chanic, in quest of a tenement that should come within 
 his moderate means of rent; now a ruddy Irish girl 
 from the banks of Killarney wandering from kitchen to 
 kitchen of our land, while her heart still hung in the 
 peat-smoke of her native cottage ; now, a single gentle- 
 man, looking out for economical board ; and now for
 
 72 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 this establishment offered an epitome of worldly pur- 
 suits it was a faded beauty inquiring for her lost 
 bloom ; or Peter Schlemihl for his lost shadow ; or an 
 author, of ten years' standing, for his vanished reputa- 
 tion ; or a moody man for yesterday's sunshine. 
 
 At the next lifting of the latch there entered a person 
 with his hat awry upon his head, his clothes perversely 
 ill-suited to his form, his eyes staring in directions oppo- 
 site to their intelligence, and a certain odd unsuitable- 
 ness pervading his whole figure. Wherever he might 
 chance to be, whether in palace, or cottage, church or 
 market, on land or sea, or even at his own fireside, he 
 must have worn the characteristic expression of a man 
 out of his right place. 
 
 " This," inquired he, putting his question in the form 
 of an assertion, " this is the Central Intelligence Office ? " 
 
 " Even so," answered the figure at the desk, turning 
 another leaf of his volume; he then looked the appli- 
 cant in the face, and said briefly, "Your business? " 
 
 " I want," said the latter, with tremulous earnestness, 
 " a place ! " 
 
 "A place ! and of what nature?" asked the Intel- 
 ligencer. " There are many vacant, or soon to be so, 
 some of which will probably suit, since they range from 
 that of a footman up to a seat at the council-board or 
 in the cabinet, or a throne, or a presidential chair." 
 
 The stranger stood pondering before the desk, with 
 an unquiet, dissatisfied air a dull, vague pain of heart, 
 expressed by a slight contortion of the brow an ear- 
 nestness of glance, that asked and expected yet continu- 
 ally wavered, as if distrusting. In short, he evidently 
 wanted, not in a physical or intellectual sense, but with 
 an urgent moral necessity that is the hardest of all 
 things to satisfy, since it knows not its own object. 
 
 " Ah, you mistake me ! " said he at length, with a 
 gesture of nervous impatience. " Either of the places 
 you mention, indeed, might answer my purpose or, 
 more probably, none of them. I want my place! my 
 own place ! my true place in the world ! my proper 
 sphere ! my thing to do, which Nature intended me
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 73 
 
 to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which 
 I have vainly sought, all my lifetime ! Whether it be 
 a footman's duty, or a king's, is of little consequence, 
 so it be naturally mine. Can you help me here ? " 
 
 " I will enter your application," answered the Intelli- 
 gencer, at the same time writing a few lines in his 
 volume. " But to undertake such a business, I tell you 
 frankly, is quite apart from the ground covered by my 
 official duties. Ask for something specific, and it may 
 doubtless be negotiated for you, on your compliance with 
 the conditions. But were I to go further, I should have 
 the whole population of the city upon my shoulders ; since 
 far the greater proportion of them are, more or less, in 
 your predicament." 
 
 The applicant sank into a fit of despondency, and 
 passed out of the door without again lifting his eyes ; 
 and, if he died of the disappointment, he was probably 
 buried in the wrong tomb ; inasmuch as the fatality of 
 such people never deserts them, and, whether alive or 
 dead, they are invariably out of place. 
 
 Almost immediately, another foot was heard on the 
 threshold. A youth entered hastily, and threw a glance 
 around the office to ascertain whether the man of intelli- 
 gence was alone. He then approached close to the desk, 
 blushed like a maiden, and seemed at a loss how to 
 broach his business. 
 
 "You come upon an affair of the heart," said the 
 official personage, looking into him through his mysteri- 
 ous spectacles. " State it in as few words as may be." 
 
 "You are right," replied the youth. " I have a heart 
 to dispose of." 
 
 " You seek an exchange ? " said the Intelligencer. 
 " Foolish youth, why not be contented with your own ? " 
 
 " Because," exclaimed the young man, losing his em- 
 barrassment in a passionate glow, " because my heart 
 burns me with an intolerable fire ; it tortures me all day 
 long with yearnings for I know not what, and feverish 
 throbbings, and the pangs of a vague sorrow ; and it 
 awakens me in the night-time with a quake, when there 
 is nothing to be feared ! I cannot endure it any longer.
 
 74 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 It were wiser to throw away such a heart, even if it 
 brings me nothing in return ! " 
 
 " Oh, very well," said the man of office, making an 
 entry in his volume. " Your affair will be easily trans- 
 acted. This species of brokerage makes no inconsider- 
 able part of my business ; and there is always a large 
 assortment of the article to select from. Here, if I mis- 
 take not, comes a pretty fair sample." 
 
 Even as he spoke, the door was gently and slowly 
 thrust ajar, affording a glimpse of the slender figure of a 
 young girl, who, as she timidly entered, seemed to bring 
 the light and cheerfulness of the outer atmosphere into 
 the somewhat gloomy apartment. We know not her 
 errand there ; nor can we reveal whether the young man 
 gave up his heart into her custody. If so, the arrange- 
 ment was neither better nor worse than in ninety-nine 
 cases out of a hundred, where the parallel sensibilities 
 of a similar age, importunate affections, and the easy 
 satisfaction of characters not deeply conscious of 
 themselves, supply the place of any profounder 
 sympathy. 
 
 Not always, however, was the agency of the passions 
 and affections an office of so little trouble. It happened 
 rarely, indeed, in proportion to the cases that came 
 under an ordinary rule, but still it did happen that a 
 heart was occasionally brought hither, of such exquisite 
 material, so delicately attempered, and so curiously 
 wrought, that no other heart could be found to match it. 
 It might almost be considered a misfortune, in a worldly 
 point of view, to be the possessor of such a diamond of the 
 purest water ; since in any reasonable probability, it could 
 only be exchanged for an ordinary pebble, or a bit of cun- 
 ningly manufactured glass, or, at least, for a jewel of 
 native richness, but ill-set, or with some fatal flaw, or an 
 earthy vein running through its central lustre. To choose 
 another figure, it is sad that hearts which have their well- 
 spring in the infinite, and contain inexhaustible sympa- 
 thies, should ever be doomed to pour themselves into 
 shallow vessels, and thus lavish their rich affections on 
 the ground. Strange, that the finer and deeper nature,
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 75 
 
 whether in man or woman, while possessed of every 
 other delicate instinct, should so often lack that most 
 invaluable one, of preserving itself from contamination 
 with what is of a baser kind ! Sometimes, it is true, the 
 spiritual fountain is kept pure by a wisdom within itself, 
 and sparkles into the light of heaven, without a stain 
 from the earthy strata through which it had gushed 
 upward. And sometimes, even here on earth, the pure 
 mingles with the pure, and the inexhaustible is recom- 
 pensed with the infinite. But these miracles, though he 
 should claim the credit of them, are far beyond the scope 
 of such a superficial agent in human affairs, as the figure 
 in the mysterious spectacles. 
 
 Again the door was open, admitting the bustle of the 
 city with a fresher reverberation into the Intelligence 
 Office. Now entered a man of woe-begone and down- 
 cast look , it was such an aspect as if he had lost the 
 very soul out of his body, and had traversed all the world 
 over, searching in the dust of the highways, and along 
 the shady footpaths, and beneath the leaves of the 
 forest, and among the sands of the seashore, in hopes 
 to recover it again. He had bent an anxious glance 
 along the pavement of the street, as he came hither- 
 ward ; he looked, also, in the angle of the door-step, and 
 upon the floor of the room ; and, finally, coming up to 
 the Man of Intelligence, he gazed through the inscruta- 
 ble spectacles which the latter wore, as if the lost treasure 
 might be hidden within his eyes. 
 
 "I have lost " he began; and then he paused. 
 
 " Yes," said the Intelligencer, " I see that you have 
 lost .but what?" 
 
 " I have lost a precious jewel ! " replied the unfortu- 
 nate person, " the like of which is not to be found among 
 any prince's treasures. While I possessed it, the con- 
 templation of it was my sole and sufficient happiness. 
 No price should have purchased it of me ; but it has 
 fallen from my bosom, where I wore it, in my careless 
 wanderings about the city." 
 
 After causing the stranger to describe the marks of 
 his lost jewel, the Intelligencer opened a drawer of the
 
 76 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 oaken cabinet, which has been mentioned as forming a 
 part of the furniture of the room. Here were deposited 
 whatever articles had been picked up in the streets, 
 until the right owners should claim them. It was a 
 strange and heterogeneous collection. Not the least 
 remarkable part of it was a great number of wedding- 
 rings, each one of which had been riveted upon the finger 
 with holy vows, and all the mystic potency that the most 
 solemn rites could attain, but had, nevertheless, proved 
 too slippery for the wearer's vigilance. The gold of 
 some was worn thin, betokening the attrition of years 
 of wedlock : others, glittering from the jeweller's shop, 
 must have been lost within the honey-moon. There were 
 ivory tablets, the leaves scribbled over with sentiments 
 that had been the deepest truths of the writer's earlier 
 years, but which were now quite obliterated from his 
 memory. So scrupulously were articles preserved in this 
 depository, that not even withered flowers were rejected ; 
 white roses, and blush roses, and moss-roses, fit emblems 
 of virgin purity and shamefacedness, which had been 
 lost or flung away, and trampled into the pollution of 
 the streets; locks of hair the golden, and the glossy 
 dark the long tresses of woman and the crisp curls of 
 man signified that lovers were now and then so heed- 
 less of the faith intrusted to them, as to drop its symbol 
 from the treasure-place of the bosom. Many of these 
 things were imbued with perfumes ; and perhaps a sweet 
 scent had departed from the lives of their former pos- 
 sessors, ever since they had so wilfully or negligently lost 
 them. Here were gold pencil-cases, little ruby hearts 
 with golden arrows through them, bosom-pins, pieces of 
 coin, and small articles of every description, comprising 
 nearly all that have been lost, since a long while ago. 
 Most of them, doubtless, had a history and a meaning, 
 if there were time to search it out and room to tell it. 
 Whoever has missed anything valuable, whether out of 
 his heart, mind, or pocket, would do well to make inquiry 
 at the Central Intelligence Office. 
 
 And, in the corner of one of the drawers of the oaken 
 cabinet, after considerable research, was found a great
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 77 
 
 pearl, looking like the soul of celestial purity, congealed 
 and polished. 
 
 "There is my jewel! my very pearl!" cried the 
 stranger, almost beside himself with rapture. " It is 
 mine ! Give it me this moment! or I shall perish ! " 
 
 " I perceive," said the Man of Intelligence, examin- 
 ing it more closely, "that this is the Pearl of Great 
 Price." 
 
 " The very same," answered the stranger. " Judge, 
 then, of my misery at losing it out of my bosom ! 
 Restore it to me ! I must not live without it an instant 
 longer." 
 
 " Pardon me," rejoined the Intelligencer, calmly. 
 "You ask what is beyond my duty. This pearl, as 
 you well know, is held upon a peculiar tenure ; and 
 having once let it escape from your keeping, you have 
 no greater claim to it nay, not so great as any other 
 person. I cannot give it back." 
 
 Nor could the entreaties of the miserable man who 
 saw before his eyes the jewel of his life, without the 
 power to reclaim it soften the heart of this stern 
 being, impassive to human sympathy, though exercis- 
 ing such an apparent influence over human fortunes. 
 Finally the loser of the inestimable pearl clutched his 
 hands among his hair, and ran madly forth into the 
 world, which was affrighted at his desperate looks. 
 There passed him on the door-step a fashionable young 
 gentleman, whose business was to inquire for a damask 
 rosebud, the gift of his lady love, which he had lost out 
 of his buttonhole within an hour after receiving it. So 
 various were the errands of those who visited this Cen- 
 tral Office, where all human wishes seemed to be made 
 known, and, so far as destiny would allow, negotiated 
 to their fulfilment. 
 
 The next that entered was a man beyond the middle 
 age, bearing the look of one who knew the world and 
 his own course in it. He had just alighted from a hand- 
 some private carriage, which had orders to wait in the 
 street while its owner transacted his business. This 
 person came up to the desk with a quick, determined
 
 78 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 step, and looked the Intelligencer in the face with a 
 resolute eye; though, at the same time, some secret 
 trouble gleamed from it in red and dusky light. 
 
 " I have an estate to dispose of," said he, with a 
 brevity that seemed characteristic. 
 
 " Describe it," said the Intelligencer. 
 
 The applicant proceeded to give the boundaries of his 
 property, its nature, comprising tillage, pasture, wood- 
 land, and pleasure-grounds, in ample circuit; together 
 with a mansion-house, in the construction of which it 
 had been his object to realize a castle in the air, harden- 
 ing its shadowy walls into granite, and rendering its 
 visionary splendor perceptible to the awakened eye. 
 Judging from his description, it was beautiful enough 
 to vanish like a dream, yet substantial enough to endure 
 for centuries. He spoke, too, of the gorgeous furniture, 
 the refinements of upholstery, and all the luxurious arti- 
 fices that combined to render this a residence where life 
 might flow onward in a stream of golden days, undis- 
 turbed by the ruggedness which fate loves to fling 
 into it. 
 
 "I am a man of strong will," said he, in conclusion ; 
 " and at my first setting out in life, as a poor, un- 
 friended youth, I resolved to make myself the possessor 
 of such a mansion and estate as this, together with the 
 abundant revenue necessary to uphold it. I have suc- 
 ceeded to the extent of my utmost wish. And this is 
 the estate which I have now concluded to dispose of." 
 
 " And your terms ? " asked the Intelligencer, after 
 taking down the particulars with which the stranger 
 had supplied him. 
 
 "Easy abundantly easy!" answered the success- 
 ful man, smiling, but with a stern and almost frightful 
 contraction of the brow, as if to quell an inward pang. 
 "I have been engaged in various sorts of business 
 a distiller, a trader to Africa, an East India merchant, 
 a speculator in the stocks and, in the course of these 
 affairs, have contracted an incumbrance of a certain 
 nature. The purchaser of the estate shall merely be 
 required to assume this burden to himself."
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 79 
 
 "I understand you," said the Man of Intelligence, 
 putting his pen behind his ear. " I fear that no bar- 
 gain can be negotiated on these conditions. Very 
 probably, the next possessor may acquire the estate 
 with a similar incumbrance, but it will be of his own 
 contracting, and will not lighten your burden in the 
 least." 
 
 " And am I to live on," fiercely exclaimed the stranger, 
 " with the dirt of these accursed acres, and the granite 
 of this infernal mansion, crushing down my soul ? How, 
 if I should turn the edifice into an almshouse or a hospi- 
 tal, or tear it down and build a church ? " 
 
 " You can at least make the experiment," said the 
 Intelligencer ; " but the whole matter is one which you 
 must settle for yourself." 
 
 The man of deplorable success withdrew, and got 
 into his coach, which rattled off lightly over the wooden 
 pavements, though laden with the weight of much land, 
 a stately house, and ponderous heaps of gold, all com- 
 pressed into an evil conscience. 
 
 There now appeared many applicants for places; 
 among the most noteworthy of whom was a small, 
 smoke-dried figure, who gave himself out to be one of 
 the bad spirits that had waited upon Doctor Faustus 
 in his laboratory. He pretended to show a certificate 
 of character, which, he averred, had been given him 
 by that famous necromancer, and countersigned by 
 several masters whom he had subsequently served. 
 
 " I am afraid, my good friend," observed the Intel- 
 ligencer, "that your chance of getting a service is but 
 poor. Nowadays, men act the evil spirit for them- 
 selves and for their neighbors, and play the part more 
 effectually than ninety-nine out of a hundred of your 
 fraternity." 
 
 But, just as the poor fiend was assuming a vaporous 
 consistency, being about to vanish through the floor 
 in sad disappointment and chagrin, the editor of a 
 political newspaper chanced to enter the office, in 
 quest of a scribbler of party paragraphs. The former 
 servant of Doctor Faustus, with some misgivings as
 
 8o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 to his sufficiency of venom, was allowed to try his hand 
 in this capacity. Next appeared, likewise seeking a 
 service, the mysterious Man in Red, who had aided 
 Buonaparte in his ascent to imperial power. He was 
 examined as to his qualifications by an aspiring poli- 
 tician, but finally rejected, as lacking familiarity with 
 the cunning tactics of the present day. 
 
 People continued to succeed each other, with as much 
 briskness as if everybody turned aside, out of the roar 
 and tumult of the city, to record here some want, or 
 superfluity, or desire. Some had goods or possessions, 
 of which they wished to negotiate the sale. A China 
 merchant had lost his health by a long residence in that 
 wasting climate ; he very liberally offered his disease, 
 and his wealth along with it, to any physician who would 
 rid him of both together. A soldier offered his wreath 
 of laurels for as good a leg as that which it had cost 
 him, on the battle-field. One poor weary wretch desired 
 nothing but to be accommodated with any creditable 
 method of laying down his life ; for misfortune and 
 pecuniary troubles had so subdued his spirits, that he 
 could no longer conceive the possibility of happiness, 
 nor had the heart to try for it. Nevertheless, happen- 
 ing to overhear some conversation in the Intelligence 
 Office, respecting wealth to be rapidly accumulated by 
 a certain mode of speculation, he resolved to live out 
 this one other experiment of better fortune. Many per- 
 sons desired to exchange their youthful vices for others 
 better suited to the gravity of advancing age ; a few, we 
 are glad to say, made earnest efforts to exchange vice 
 for virtue, and, hard as the bargain was, succeeded in 
 effecting it. But it was remarkable, that what all were 
 the least willing to give up, even on the most advan- 
 tageous terms, were the habits, the oddities, the charac- 
 teristic traits, the little ridiculous indulgences, somewhere 
 between faults and follies, of which nobody but them- 
 selves could understand the fascination. 
 
 The great folio, in which the Man of Intelligence re- 
 corded all these freaks of idle hearts, and aspirations of 
 deep hearts, and desperate longings of miserable hearts,
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 81 
 
 and evil prayers of perverted hearts, would be curious 
 reading, were it possible to obtain it for publication. 
 Human character in its individual developments 
 human nature in the mass may best be studied in its 
 wishes ; and this was the record of them all. There 
 was an endless diversity of mode and circumstance, yet 
 withal such a similarity in the real ground-work, that 
 any one page of the volume whether written in the 
 days before the Flood, or the yesterday that is just gone 
 by, or to be written on the morrow that is close at hand, 
 or a thousand ages hence might serve as a specimen 
 of the whole. Not but that there were wild sallies of 
 fantasy that could scarcely occur to more than one man's 
 brain, whether reasonable or lunatic. The strangest 
 wishes yet most incident to men who had gone deep 
 into scientific pursuits, and attained a high intellectual 
 stage, though not the loftiest were, to contend with 
 Nature, and wrest from her some secret, or some power, 
 which she had seen fit to withhold from mortal grasp. 
 She loves to delude her aspiring students, and mock 
 them with mysteries that seem but just beyond their 
 utmost reach. To concoct new minerals to produce 
 new forms of vegetable life to create an insect, if 
 nothing higher in the living scale is a sort of wish 
 that has often revelled in the breast of a man of science. 
 An astronomer, who lived far more among the distant 
 worlds of space than in this lower sphere, recorded a 
 wish to behold the opposite side of the moon, which, 
 unless the system of the firmament be reversed, she can 
 never turn towards the earth. On the same page of the 
 volume was written the wish of a little child, to have the 
 stars for playthings. 
 
 The most ordinary wish, that was written down with 
 wearisome recurrence, was, of course, for wealth, wealth, 
 wealth, in sums from a few shillings up to unreckonable 
 thousands. But, in reality, this often repeated expres- 
 sion covered as many different desires. Wealth is the 
 golden essence of the outward world, embodying almost 
 everything that exists beyond the limits of the soul ; 
 and therefore it is the natural yearning for the life in
 
 82 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the midst of which we find ourselves, and of which gold 
 is the condition of enjoyment, that men abridge into this 
 general wish. Here and there, it is true, the volume 
 testified to some heart so perverted as to desire gold for 
 its own sake. Many wished for power ; a strange desire, 
 indeed, since it is but another form of slavery. Old 
 people wished for the delights of youth ; a fop, for a 
 fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a 
 versifier, for a rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, 
 for Titian's secret of coloring ; a prince, for a cottage ; 
 a republican, for a kingdom and a palace ; a libertine, 
 for his neighbor's wife; a man of palate, for green peas ; 
 and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The ambitious 
 desires of public men, elsewhere so craftily concealed, 
 were here expressed openly and boldly, side by side with 
 the unselfish wishes of the philanthropist for the wel- 
 fare of the race, so beautiful, so comforting, in contrast 
 with the egotism that continually weighed self against 
 the world. Into the darker secrets of the Book of 
 Wishes, we will not penetrate. 
 
 It would be an instructive employment for a student 
 of mankind, perusing this volume carefully, and com- 
 paring its records with men's perfected designs, as 
 expressed in their deeds and daily life, to ascertain how 
 far the one accorded with the other. Undoubtedly, in 
 .most cases, the correspondence would be found remote. 
 / The holy and generous wish, that rises like incense from 
 a pure heart towards heaven, oftep lavishes its sweet per- 
 fume on the blast of evil timesy The foul, selfish, mur- 
 derous wish, that steams forth* from a corrupted heart, 
 often passes into the spiritual atmosphere, without being 
 concreted into an earthly deed. Yet this volume is prob- 
 ably truer, as a representation of the human heart, than 
 is the living drama of action, as it evolves around us. 
 There is more of good and more of evil in it; more 
 redeeming points of the bad, and more errors of the 
 virtuous ; higher upsoarings, and baser degradation of 
 the soul ; in short, a more perplexing amalgamation of vice 
 and virtue, than we witness in the outward world. De- 
 cency, and external conscience, often produce a far fairer
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 83 
 
 outside, than is warranted by the stains within. And 
 be it owned, on the other hand, that a man seldom 
 repeats to his nearest friend, any more than he realizes 
 in act, the purest wishes, which, at some blessed time or 
 other, have arisen from the depths of his nature, and 
 witnessed for him in this volume. Yet there is enough, 
 on every leaf, to make the good man shudder for his 
 own wild and idle wishes, as well as for the sinner, whose 
 whole life is the incarnation of a wicked desire. 
 
 But again the door is opened and we hear the tumul- 
 tuous stir of the world a deep and awful sound, 
 expressing in another form some portion of what is 
 written in the volume that lies before the Man of Intel- 
 ligence. A grandfatherly personage tottered hastily 
 into the office, with such an earnestness in his infirm 
 alacrity that his white hair floated backward, as he 
 hurried up to the desk ; while his dim eyes caught a 
 momentary lustre from his vehemence of purpose. This 
 venerable figure explained that he was in search of 
 To-morrow. 
 
 " I have spent all my life in pursuit of it," added the 
 sage old gentleman, "being assured that To-morrow 
 has some vast benefit or other in store for me. But I 
 am now getting a little in years, and must make haste ; 
 for unless I overtake To-morrow soon, I begin to be 
 afraid it will finally escape me." 
 
 " This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable friend," 
 said the Man of Intelligence, " is a stray child of Time, 
 and is flying from his father into the region of the 
 infinite. Continue your pursuit, and you will doubtless 
 come up with him ; but as to the earthly gifts which you 
 expect, he has scattered them all among a throng of 
 Yesterdays." 
 
 Obliged to content himself with this enigmatical 
 response, the grandsire hastened forth, with a quick 
 clatter of his staff upon the floor ; and, as he disappeared, 
 a little boy scampered through the door in chase of a 
 butterfly, which had got astray amid the barren sun- 
 shine of the city. Had the old gentleman been shrewder, 
 he might have detected To-morrow under the semblance
 
 84 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of that gaudy insect. The golden butterfly glistened 
 through the shadowy apartment, and brushed its wings 
 against the Book of Wishes, and fluttered forth again, 
 with the child still in pursuit. 
 
 A man now entered, in neglected attire, with the 
 aspect of a thinker, but somewhat too rough-hewn and 
 brawny for a scholar. His face was full of sturdy vigor, 
 with some finer and keener attribute beneath ; though 
 harsh at first, it was tempered with the glow of a large, 
 warm heart, which had force enough to heat his power- 
 ful intellect through and through. He advanced to the 
 Intelligencer, and looked at him with a glance of such 
 stern sincerity, that perhaps few secrets were beyond its 
 scope. 
 
 " I seek for Truth," said he. 
 
 " It is precisely the most rare pursuit that has ever 
 come under my cognizance," replied the Intelligencer, 
 as he made the new inscription in his volume. " Most 
 men seek to impose some cunning falsehood upon them- 
 selves for truth. But I can lend no help to your 
 researches. You must achieve the miracle for yourself. 
 At some fortunate moment, you may find Truth at your 
 side or, perhaps, she may be mistily discerned, far in 
 advance or, possibly behind you." 
 
 " Not behind me," said the seeker, " for I have left 
 nothing on my track without a thorough investigation. 
 She flits before me, passing now through a naked soli- 
 tude, and now mingling with the throng of a popular 
 assembly, and now writing with the pen of a French 
 philosopher, and now standing at the altar of an old 
 cathedral, in the guise of a Catholic priest, performing 
 the high mass. Oh, weary search! But I must not 
 falter; and surely my heart-deep quest of Truth shall 
 avail at last" 
 
 He paused, and fixed his eyes upon the Intelligencer, 
 with a depth of investigation that seemed to hold com- 
 merce with the inner nature of this being, wholly 
 regardless of his external development. 
 
 " And what are you ? " said he. " It will not satisfy 
 me to point to this fantastic show of an Intelligence
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE 85 
 
 Office, and this mockery of business. Tell me what is 
 beneath it, and what your real agency in life, and your 
 influence upon mankind ? " 
 
 " Yours is a mind," answered the Man of Intelligence, 
 "before which the forms and fantasies that conceal the 
 inner idea from the multitude, vanish at once, and leave 
 the naked reality beneath. Know, then, the secret. 
 My agency in worldly action my connection with the 
 press, and tumult, and intermingling, and development 
 of human affairs is merely delusive. The desire of 
 man's heart does for him whatever I seem to do. I am 
 no minister of action, but the Recording Spirit ! " 
 
 What further secrets were then spoken, remains a 
 mystery ; inasmuch as the roar of the city, the bustle 
 of human business, the outcry of the jostling masses, 
 the rush and tumult of man's life, in its noisy and brief 
 career, arose so high that it drowned the words of these 
 two talkers. And whether they stood talking in the 
 Moon or in Vanity Fair, or in a city of this actual 
 world, is more than I can say.
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 
 
 ONE of the few incidents of Indian warfare, natu- 
 rally susceptible of the moonlight of romance, was 
 that expedition, undertaken for the defence of the 
 frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in the well- 
 remembered " Lovell's Fight." Imagination, by casting 
 certain circumstances judiciously into the shade, may 
 see much to admire in the heroism of a little band, who 
 gave battle to twice their number in the heart of the 
 
 enemy's country. The open hra.ye.ry displayed by 
 
 both parties was in accordance with civilized ideas _of 
 valor t aiid^chivalry itself mignt fljofr blush_to r^cnrd frer^ 
 deeds aTone or two individuals/ The battle; though sdT 
 fatal to those wlio fought, was not unfortunate in its 
 consequences to the country ; for it broke the strength 
 of a tribe, and conduced to the peace which subsisted 
 during several ensuing years. History and tradition 
 are unusually minute in their memorials of this affair ; 
 and the captain of a scouting party of frontiermen has 
 acquired as actual a military renown, as many a victori- 
 ous leader of thousands. Some of the incidents con- 
 tained in the following pages will be recognized, 
 notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by 
 such as have heard, from old men's lips, the fate of the 
 few combatants who were in a condition to retreat after 
 " Lovell's Fight" 
 
 ****** 
 
 The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree- 
 tops, beneath which two weary and wounded men had 
 stretched their limbs the night before. Their bed of 
 withered oak-leaves was strewn upon the small level 
 space, at the foot of a rock, situated near the summit of 
 one of the gentle swells by which the face of the country 
 36
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 87 
 
 is there diversified. The mass of granite, rearing its 
 smooth, flat surface fifteen or twenty feet above their 
 heads, was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, upon which 
 the veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten 
 characters. On a tract of several acres around this 
 rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees had supplied the 
 place of the pines which were the usual growth of the 
 land ; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close 
 beside the travellers. 
 
 The severe wound of the elder man had probably 
 deprived him of sleep ; for, so soon as the first ray of 
 sunshine rested on the top of the highest tree, he reared 
 himself painfully from his recumbent posture and sat 
 erect. The deep lines of his countenance, and the scat- 
 tered gray of his hair, marked him as past the middle 
 age ; but his muscular frame would, but for the effects 
 of his wound, have been as capable of sustaining fatigue, 
 as in the early vigor of life. Languor and exhaustion 
 now sat upon his haggard features, and the despairing 
 glance which he sent forward through the depths of the 
 forest, proved his own conviction that his pilgrimage 
 was at an end. He next turned his eyes to the com- 
 panion who reclined by his side. The youth, for he had 
 scarcely attained the years of manhood, lay, with his 
 head upon his arm, in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, 
 which a thrill of pain from his wounds seemed each 
 moment on the point of breaking. His right hand 
 grasped a musket, and to judge from the violent action 
 of his features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision 
 of the conflict, of which he was one of the few survivors. 
 A shout deep and loud in his dreaming fancy found 
 its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips, and, starting 
 even at the slight sound of his own voice, he suddenly 
 awoke. The first act of reviving recollection was to 
 make anxious inquiries respecting the condition of his 
 wounded fellow-traveller. The latter shook his head. 
 
 " Reuben, my boy," said he, " this rock, beneath which 
 we sit, will serve for an old hunter's gravestone. There 
 is many and many a long mile of howling wilderness 
 before us yet : nor would it avail me anything, if the
 
 88 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 smoke of my own chimney were but on the other side 
 of that swell of land. The Indian bullet was deadlier 
 than I thought." 
 
 " You are weary with our three days' travel," replied 
 the youth, " and a little longer rest will recruit you. 
 Sit you here, while I search the woods for the herbs 
 and roots that must be our sustenance ; and having 
 eaten, you shall lean on me, and we will turn our faces 
 homeward. I doubt not, that, with my help, you can 
 attain to some one of the frontier garrisons." 
 
 " There is not two days' life in me, Reuben," said 
 the other, calmly, " and I will no longer burthen you 
 with my useless body, when you can scarcely support 
 your own. Your wounds are deep, and your strength 
 is failing fast ; yet, if you hasten onward alone, you may 
 be preserved. For me there is no hope ; and I will 
 await death here." 
 
 " If it must be so, I will remain and watch by you," 
 said Reuben, resolutely. 
 
 "No, my son, no," rejoined his companion. "Let 
 the wish of a dying man have weight with you ; give 
 me one grasp of your hand, and get you hence. Think 
 you that my last moments will be eased by the thought, 
 that I leave you to die a more lingering death ? I have 
 loved you like a father, Reuben, and at a time like this, 
 I should have something of a father's authority. I 
 charge you to be gone, that I may die in peace." 
 
 " And because you have been a father to me, should 
 I therefore leave you to perish, and to lie unburied in 
 the wilderness ? " exclaimed the youth. " No ; if your 
 end be in truth approaching, I will watch by you, and 
 receive your parting words. I will dig a grave here by 
 the rock, in which, if my weakness overcome me, we 
 will rest together ; or, if Heaven gives me strength, I 
 will seek my way home." 
 
 " In the cities, and wherever men dwell," replied the 
 other, " they bury their dead in the earth ; they hide 
 them from the sight of the living ; but here, where no 
 step may pass, perhaps for a hundred years, wherefore 
 should I not rest beneath the open sky, covered only by
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 89 
 
 the oak-leaves, when the autumn winds shall strew them ? 
 And for a monument, here is this gray rock, on which 
 my dying hand shall carve the name of Roger Malvin ; 
 and the traveller in days to come will know, that here 
 sleeps a hunter and a warrior. Tarry not, then, for a 
 folly like this, but hasten away, if not for your own 
 sake, for hers who will else be desolate." 
 
 Malvin spoke the last few words in a faltering voice, 
 and their effect upon his companion was strongly visible. 
 They reminded him that there were other, and less 
 questionable, duties, than that of sharing the fate of a 
 man whom his death could not benefit. Nor can it be 
 affirmed that no selfish feeling strove to enter Reuben's 
 heart, though the consciousness made him more ear- 
 nestly resist his companion's entreaties. 
 
 " How terrible, to await the slow approach of death 
 in this solitude!" exclaimed he. " A brave man does 
 not shrink in battle, and, when friends stand round the 
 bed, even women may die composedly ; but here " 
 
 " I shall not shrink, even here, Reuben Bourne," 
 interrupted Malvin ; " I am a man of no weak heart ; 
 and, if I were, there is a surer support than that of 
 earthly friends. You are young, and life is dear to you. 
 Your last moments will need comfort far more than 
 mine ; and when you have laid me in the earth, and are 
 alone, and night is settling on the forest, you will feel 
 all the bitterness of the death that may now be escaped. 
 But I will urge no selfish motive to your generous nature. 
 Leave me for my sake ; that, having said a prayer for 
 your safety, I may have space to settle my account, 
 undisturbed by worldly sorrows." 
 
 " And your daughter ! How shall I dare to meet her 
 eye ! " exclaimed Reuben. " She will ask the fate of 
 her father, whose life I vowed to defend with my own. 
 Must I tell her that he travelled three days' march with 
 me from the field of battle, and that then I left him to 
 perish in the wilderness ? Were it not better to lie down 
 and die by your side, than to return safe, and say this 
 to Dorcas ? " 
 
 " Tell my daughter," said Roger Malvin, "that, though
 
 9 o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 yourself sore wounded, and weak, and weary, you led 
 my tottering footsteps many a mile, and left me only at 
 my earnest entreaty, because I would not have your 
 blood upon my soul. Tell her, that through pain and 
 danger you were faithful, and that, if your life-blood 
 could have saved me, it would have flowed to its last 
 drop. And tell her, that you will be something dearer 
 than a father, and that my blessing is with you both, 
 and that my dying eyes can see a long and pleasant 
 path, in which you will journey together." 
 
 As Malvin spoke, he almost raised himself from the 
 ground, and the energy of his concluding words seemed 
 to fill the wild and lonely forest with a vision of happi- 
 ness. But when he sank exhausted upon his bed of 
 oak-leaves, the light, which had kindled in Reuben's eye, 
 was quenched. He felt as if it were both sin and folly 
 to think of happiness at such a moment. His companion 
 watched his changing countenance, and sought, with 
 generous art, to wile him to his own good. 
 
 " Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I 
 have to live," he resumed. " It may be, that, with 
 speedy assistance, I might recover of my wound. The 
 former fugitives must, ere this, have carried tidings of 
 our fatal battle to the frontiers, and parties will be out 
 to succor those in like condition with ourselves. Should 
 you meet one of these, and guide them hither, who can 
 tell but that I may sit by my own fireside again ? " 
 
 A mournful smile strayed across the features of the 
 dying man, as he insinuated that unfounded hope ; 
 which, however, was not without its effect on Reuben. 
 No merely selfish motive, nor even the desolate con- 
 dition of Dorcas, could have induced him to desert 
 his companion, at such a moment. But his wishes 
 seized upon the thought, that Malvin's life might be 
 preserved, and his sanguine nature heightened, almost to 
 certainty, the remote possibility of procuring human aid. 
 
 " Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to hope 
 that friends are not far distant," he said, half aloud. 
 " There fled one coward, unwounded, in the beginning 
 of the fight, and most probably he made good speed.
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 91 
 
 Every true man on the frontier would shoulder his 
 musket, at the news; and though no party may range 
 so far into the woods as this T J shall perhaps encounter 
 them in one day's march. Counsel me faithfully," he 
 added, turning to Malvin, in distrust of his own motives. 
 "Were your situation mine, would you desert jn^_whiie 
 lif eT remained / " ^ i,fcs ***tA"*Vic/I 
 
 "TTls now twenty years," replied Roger Malvin, 
 sighing, however, as he secretly acknowledged the 
 wide dissimilarity between the two cases, " it is now 
 twenty years, since I escaped, with one dear friend, 
 from Indian captivity, near Montreal. We journeyed 
 many days through the woods, till at length, overcome 
 with hunger and weariness, my friend lay down, and 
 besought me to leave him ; for he knew that, if I re- 
 mained, we both must perish. And, with but little 
 hope of obtaining succor, I heaped a pillow of dry 
 leaves beneath his head, and hastened on." 
 
 " And did you return in time to save him ? " asked 
 Reuben, hanging on Malvin's words, as if they were to 
 be prophetic of his own success. 
 
 " I did," answered the other. " I came upon the 
 camp of a hunting-party, before sunset of the same 
 day. I guided them to the spot where my comrade 
 was expecting death ; and he is now a hale and hearty 
 man, upon his own farm, far within the frontiers, while 
 I lie wounded here, in the depths of the wilderness." 
 
 This example, powerful in affecting Reuben's deci- 
 sion, was aided, unconsciously to himself, by the hidden 
 strength of many another motive. Roger Malvin per- 
 ceived that the victory was nearly won. 
 
 " Now go, rn^tm, and Heaven prosper you ! " he said. 
 " Turn not back with your friends, when you meet them, 
 lest your wounds and weariness overcome you ; but send 
 hitherward two or three, that may be spared, to search 
 for me. And believe me, Reuben, my heart will be 
 lighter with every step you take towards home." Yet 
 there was perhaps a change, both in his countenance 
 and voice, as he spoke thus; for, after all, it was a 
 ghastly fate, to be left expiring in the wilderness.
 
 92 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he was acting 
 rightly, at length raised himself from the ground, and 
 prepared for his departure. And first, though contrary 
 to Malvin's wishes, he collected a stock of roots and 
 herbs, which had been their only food during the last 
 two days. This useless supply he placed within reach 
 of the dying man, for whom, also, he swept together a 
 fresh bed of dry oak-leaves. Then climbing to the 
 summit of the rock, which on one side was rough and 
 broken, he bent the oak-sapling downward, and bound 
 his handkerchief to the topmost branch. This precau- 
 tion was not unnecessary, to direct any who might come 
 in search of Malvin ; for every part of the rock, except 
 its broad smooth front, was concealed, at a little distance, 
 by the dense undergrowth of the forest. The handker- 
 chief had been the bandage of a wound upon Reuben's 
 arm ; and, as he bound it to the tree, he vowed, by the 
 blood that stained it, that he would return, either to save 
 his companion's life, or to lay his body in the grave. 
 He then descended, and stood, with downcast eyes, to 
 receive Roger Malvin's parting words. 
 
 The experience of the latter suggested much and 
 minute advice, respecting the youth's journey through 
 the trackless forest. Upon this subject he spoke with 
 calm earnestness, as if he were sending Reuben to the 
 battle or the chase, while he himself remained secure at 
 home ; and not as if the human countenance that was 
 about to leave him, were the last he would ever behold. 
 But his firmness was shaken before he concluded. 
 
 " Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that my last 
 prayer shall be for her and you. Bid her to have no 
 hard thoughts because you left me here " Reuben's 
 heart smote him " for that your life would not have 
 weighed with you, if its sacrifice could have done me 
 good. She will marry you, after she has mourned a 
 little while for her father ; and Heaven grant you long 
 and happy days! and may your children's children 
 stand round your death-bed! And, Reuben," added 
 he, as the weakness of mortality made its way at last, 
 " return, when your wounds are healed and your weari-
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 93 
 
 ness refreshed, return to this wild rock, and lay my 
 bones in the grave, and say a prayer over them." 
 
 An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps from 
 the customs of the Indians, whose war was with the 
 dead, as well as the living, was paid by the frontier 
 inhabitants to the rites of sepulture; and there are 
 many instances of the sacrifice of life, in the attempt 
 to bury those who had fallen by the " sword of the 
 wilderness." Reuben, therefore, felt the full impor- 
 tance of the promise, which he most solemnly made, 
 to return, and perform Roger Malvin's obsequies. It 
 was remarkable, that the latter, speaking his whole 
 heart in his parting words, no longer endeavored to 
 persuade the youth, that even the speediest succor 
 might avail to the preservation of his life. Reuben was 
 internally convinced that he should see Malvin's living 
 face no more. His generous nature would fain have 
 delayed him, at whatever risk, till the dying scene were 
 past ; but the desire of existence and the hope of happi- 
 ness had strengthened in his heart, and he was unable 
 to resist them. 
 
 "It is enough," said Roger Malvin, having listened 
 to Reuben's promise. " Go, and God speed you ! " 
 
 The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, and 
 was departing. His slow and faltering steps, however, 
 had borne him but a little way, before Malvin's voice 
 recalled him. 
 
 " Reuben, Reuben," said he, faintly ; and Reuben 
 returned and knelt down by the dying man. 
 
 " Raise me, and let me lean against the rock," was 
 his last request. " My face will be turned towards 
 home, and I shall see you a moment longer, as you 
 pass among the trees." 
 
 Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his 
 companion's posture, again began his solitary pilgrim- 
 age. He walked more hastily at first than was con- 
 sistent with his strength ; for a sort of guilty feeling, 
 which sometimes torments men in their most justifiable 
 acts, caused him to seek concealment from Malvin's 
 eyes. But, after he had trodden far upon the rustling
 
 94 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 forest-leaves, he crept back, impelled by a wild and pain- 
 ful curiosity, and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an 
 uptorn tree, gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The 
 morning sun was unclouded, and the trees and shrubs 
 imbibed the sweet air of the month of May ; yet there 
 seemed a gloom on Nature's face, as if she sympathized 
 with mortal pain and sorrow. Roger Malvin's hands 
 were uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words 
 of which stole through the stillness of the woods, and 
 entered Reuben's heart, torturing it with an unutterable 
 pang. They were the broken accents of a petition 
 for his own happiness and that of Dorcas ; and, as the 
 youth listened, conscience, or something in its similitude, 
 pleaded strongly with him to return, and lie down 
 again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom of 
 the kind and generous being whom he had deserted 
 in his extremity. Death would come, like the slow 
 approach of a corpse stealing gradually towards him 
 through the forest, and showing its ghastly and motion- 
 less features from behind a nearer, and yet a nearer 
 tree. But such must have been Reuben's own fate, 
 had he tarried another sunset; and who shall impute 
 blame to him, if he shrink f rom, so useless a sacrifice! 
 ~As lie gave a parting look, a breeze waved the little 
 banner upon the sapling-oak, and reminded Reuben of 
 
 his vow. 
 
 **#*#* 
 
 Many circumstances contributed to retard the wounded 
 traveller in his way to the frontiers. On the second day, 
 the clouds, gathering densely over the sky, precluded 
 the possibility of regulating his course by the position 
 of the sun ; and he knew not but that every effort of his 
 almost exhausted strength was removing him farther 
 from the home he sought. His scanty sustenance was 
 supplied by the berries, and other spontaneous products 
 of the forest. Herds of deer, it is true, sometimes 
 bounded past him, and partridges frequently whirred 
 up before his footsteps ; but his ammunition had been 
 expended in the fight, and he had no means of slaying 
 them. His wounds, irritated by the constant exertion
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 95 
 
 in which lay the only hope of life, wore away his 
 strength, and at intervals confused his reason. But, 
 even in the wanderings of intellect, Reuben's young 
 heart clung strongly to existence, and it was only 
 through absolute incapacity of motion, that he at last 
 sank down beneath a tree, compelled there to await 
 death. 
 
 In this situation he was discovered by a party, who, 
 upon the first intelligence of the fight, had been de- 
 spatched to the relief of the survivors. They conveyed 
 him to the nearest settlement, which chanced to be that 
 of his own residence. 
 
 Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched 
 by the bedside of her wounded lover, and administered 
 all those comforts that are in the sole gift of woman's 
 heart and hand. During several days, Reuben's recol- 
 lection strayed drowsily among the perils and hardships 
 through which he had passed, and he was incapable of 
 returning definite answers to the inquiries, with which 
 many were eager to harass him. No authentic particu- 
 lars of the battle had yet been circulated; nor could 
 mothers, wives, and children tell, whether their loved 
 ones were detained by captivity, or by the stronger 
 chain of death. Dorcas nourished her apprehensions 
 in silence, till one afternoon, when Reuben awoke from 
 an unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more 
 perfectly than at any previous time. She saw that 
 his intellect had become composed, and she could no 
 longer restrain her filial anxiety. 
 
 " My father, Reuben ? " she began ; but the change 
 in her lover's countenance made her pause. 
 
 The youth shrank, as if with a bitter pain, and the 
 blood gushed vividly into his wan and hollow cheeks. 
 His first impulse was to cover his face ; but, apparently 
 with a desperate effort, he half raised himself, and 
 spoke vehemently defending' himself 3-fffiirist. j\ri imagi- 
 nary accusation. 
 
 " Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas, 
 and he bade me not burthen myself with him, but only 
 to lead him to the lake-side, that he might quench his
 
 96 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 thirst and die. But I would not desert the old man in 
 his extremity, and, though bleeding myself, I supported 
 him ; I gave him half my strength, and led him away 
 with me. For three days we journeyed on together, and 
 your father was sustained beyond my hopes ; but, awak- 
 ing at sunrise on the fourth day, I found him faint and 
 exhausted, he was unable to proceed, his life had 
 ebbed away fast, and " 
 
 " He died ! " exclaimed Dorcas, faintly. 
 
 Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his 
 selfish love of life had hurried him away, before her 
 father's fate was decided. He spoke not; he only 
 bowed his head ; and between shame and exhaustion, 
 sank back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept, 
 when her fears were thus confirmed ; but the shock, as 
 it had been long anticipated, was on that account the 
 less violent. 
 
 "You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilder- 
 ness, Reuben?" was the question by which her filial 
 piety manifested itself. 
 
 " My hands were weak, but I did what I could," re- 
 plied the youth, in a smothered tone. " There stands a 
 noble tombstone above his head, and I would to Heaven 
 I slept as soundly as he ! " 
 
 Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, 
 inquired no farther at that time ; but her heart found 
 ease in the thought, that Roger Malvin had not lacked 
 such funeral rites as it was possible to bestow. The 
 tale of Reuben's courage and fidelity lost nothing when 
 she communicated it to her friends ; and the poor youth, 
 tottering from his sick chamber to breathe the sunny air, 
 experienced from every tongue the miserable and humili- 
 ating torture of unmerited praise. All acknowledged 
 that he might worthily demand the hand of the fair 
 maiden, to whose father he had been "faithful unto 
 death " ; and as my tale is not of love, it shall suffice to 
 say, that, in the space of two years, Reuben became the 
 husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage cere- 
 mony, the bride was covered with blushes, but the 
 bridegroom's face was pale.
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 97 
 
 There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an 
 incommunicable thought ; something which he was to 
 conceal most heedfully from her whom he most loved 
 and trusted. He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the 
 moral cowardice that had restrained his words, when 
 he was about to disclose the truth to Dorcas ; but pride, 
 the fear of losing her affection, the dread of universal 
 scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood. He felt 
 that, for leaving Roger Malvin, he deserved no censure. 
 His presence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own life, 
 would have added only another, and a needless agony, 
 to the last moments of the dying man. But conceal- 
 ment had imparted to a justifiable act, much of the 
 secret effect of guilt ; and Reuben, while reason told 
 him that he had done right, experienced, in no small 
 degree, the mental horrors, which punish the perpe- 
 trator of undiscovered crime. By a certain association 
 of ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a murderer. 
 For years, also, a thought would occasionally recur, 
 which, though he perceived all its folly and extrava- 
 gance, he had not power to banish from his mind ; it 
 was a haunting and torturing fancy, that his father-in-law 
 was yet sitting at the foot of the rock, on the withered 
 forest-leaves, alive, and awaiting his pledged assistance. 
 These mental deceptions, however, came and went, nor 
 did he ever mistake them for realities ; but in the calm- 
 est and clearest moods of his mind, he was conscious 
 that he had a deep vow unredeemed, and that an un- 
 buried corpse was calling to him out of the wilderness. 
 Yet such was the consequence of his prevarication that 
 he could not obey the call. It was now too late to 
 require the assistance of Roger Malvin's friends, in per- 
 forming his long-deferred sepulture; and superstitious 
 fears, of which none were more susceptible than the 
 people of the outward settlements, forbade Reuben to 
 go alone. Neither did he know where, in the pathless 
 and illimitable forest, to seek that smooth and lettered 
 rock, at the base of which the body lay ; his remem- 
 brance of every portion of his travel thence was indis- 
 tinct, and the latter part had left no impression upon
 
 98 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 his mind. There was, however, a continual impulse, a 
 voice audible only to himself, commanding him to go 
 forth and redeem his vow; and he had a strange im- 
 pression that, were he to make the trial, he would be 
 led straight to Malvin's bones. But, year after year, 
 that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His 
 one secret thought became like a chain, binding down 
 his spirit, and, like a serpent, gnawing into his heart ; 
 and he was transformed into a sad and downcast, yet 
 irritable man. 
 
 In the course of a few years after their marriage, 
 changes began to be- visible in the external prosperity 
 of Reuben and Dorcas. The only riches of the former 
 had been his stout heart and strong arm ; but the latter, 
 her father's sole heiress, had made her husband master 
 of a farm, under older cultivation, larger, and better 
 stocked than most of the frontier establishments. Reu- 
 ben Bourne, however, was a neglectful husbandman ; 
 and while the lands of the other settlers became annu- 
 ally more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same propor- 
 tion. The discouragements to agriculture were greatly 
 lessened by the cessation of Indian war, during which 
 men held the plough in one hand, and the musket in 
 the other ; and were fortunate if the products of their 
 dangerous labor were not destroyed, either in the field 
 or in the barn, by the savage enemy. But Reuben did 
 not profit by the altered condition of the country ; nor 
 can it be denied, that his intervals of industrious atten- 
 tion to his affairs were but scantily rewarded with suc- 
 cess. The irritability, by which he had recently become 
 distinguished, was another cause of his declining pros- 
 perity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels, in his un- 
 avoidable intercourse with the neighboring settlers. 
 The results of these were innumerable law-suits; for 
 the people of New England, in the earliest stages and 
 wildest circumstances of the country, adopted, whenever 
 attainable, the legal mode of deciding their differences. 
 To be brief, the world did not go well with Reuben 
 Bourne, and, though not till many years after his mar- 
 riage, he was finally a ruined man, with but one remaining
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 99 
 
 expedient against the evil fate that had pursued him. 
 It was to throw sunlight into some deep recess of the 
 forest, and seek subsistence from the virgin bosom of 
 the wilderness. 
 
 The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, 
 now arrived at the age of fifteen years, beautiful in 
 youth, and giving promise of a glorious manhood. 
 He was peculiarly qualified for, and already began 
 to excel in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life. 
 His foot was fleet, his aim true, his apprehension quick, 
 his heart glad and high ; and all, who anticipated the 
 return of Indian war, spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future 
 leader in the land. The boy was loved by his father 
 with a deep and silent strength, as if whatever wag 
 good and najjpvin his_Qwn nature 
 ferred_to his childT~carrvine: his a: 
 
 carrying his affections with it. 
 
 Even Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less 
 dear to him ; for Reuben's secret thoughts and insu- 
 lated emotions had gradually made him a selfish man ; 
 and he could no longer love deeply, except where he 
 saw, or imagined, some rejection or>.Hkeness of his 
 own.^Birid. In Cyrus he recognized whaF lre~irad hinT- 
 self been in other days; and at intervals he seemed 
 to partake of the boy's spirit, and to be revived with 
 a fresh and happy life. Reuben was accompanied by 
 his son in the expedition, for the purpose of selecting 
 a tract of land, and felling and burning the timber, 
 which necessarily preceded the removal of the house- 
 hold gods. Two months of Autumn were thus occu- 
 pied ; after which Reuben Bourne and his young hunter 
 returned, to spend their last winter in the settlements. 
 
 It was early in the month of May, that the little 
 family snapped asunder whatever tendrils of affections 
 had clung to inanimate objects, and bade farewell to 
 the few, who, in the blight of fortune, called themselves 
 their friends. The sadness of the parting moment 
 had, to each of the pilgrims, its peculiar alleviations. 
 Reuben, a moody man, and misanthropic because un-
 
 ioo MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 happy, strode onward, with his usual stern brow, and 
 downcast eye, feeling few regrets, and disdaining to 
 acknowledge any. Dorcas, while she wept abundantly 
 over the broken ties by which her simple and affection- 
 ate nature had bound itself to everything, felt that the 
 inhabitants of her inmost heart moved on with her, 
 and that all else would be supplied wherever she might 
 go. And the boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, 
 and thought of the adventurous pleasures of the un- 
 trodden forest. Oh ! who, in the enthusiasm of a day- 
 dream, has not wished that he were a wanderer in a 
 world of summer wilderness with one fair and gentle 
 being hanging lightly on his arm ? In youth, his free 
 and exulting step would know no barrier but the roll- 
 ing ocean or the snow-topt mountains ; calmer man- 
 hood would choose a home, where Nature had strewn 
 a double wealth, in the vale of some transparent stream ; 
 and when hoary age, after long, long years of that 
 pure life, stole on and found him there, it would find 
 him the father of a race, the patriarch of a people, the 
 founder of a mighty nation yet to be. When /death. 
 like the sweet sleep which wewelcome after a day of 
 happiness, came over him, tiisTaT'ttescendants would 
 mourn over the venerateddusi,/ Enveloped . by tradi- 
 tion in mysterious attributes, th men of future genera- 
 tions would call him godlike ; and remote posterity 
 would see him standing, dimly glorious, far up the valley 
 of a hundred centuries ! 
 
 The tangled and gloomy forest, through which the 
 personages of my tale were wandering, differed widely 
 from the dreamer's Land of Fantasie; yet there was 
 something in their way of life that Nature asserted as 
 her own ; and the gnawing cares, which went with 
 them from the world, were all that now obstructed 
 their happiness. One stout and shaggy steed, the 
 bearer of all their wealth, did not shrink from the 
 added weight of Dorcas; although her hardy breed- 
 ing sustained her, during the larger part of each day's 
 journey, by her husband's side. Reuben and his son, 
 their muskets on their shoulders, and their axes slung
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 101 
 
 behind them, kept an unwearied pace, each watching 
 with a hunter's eye for the game that supplied their 
 food. When hunger bade, they halted and prepared 
 their meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest- 
 brook, which, as they knelt down with thirsty lips to 
 drink, murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a maiden 
 at love's first kiss. They slept beneath a hut of 
 branches, and awoke at peep of light, refreshed for 
 the toils of another day. Dorcas and the boy went on 
 joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at intervals 
 with an outward gladness; but inwardly there was a 
 cold, cold sorrow, which he compared to the snow-drifts, 
 lying deep in the glens and hollows of the rivulets, while 
 the leaves were brightly green above. 
 
 Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the travel 
 of the woods, to observe that his father did not adhere 
 to the course they had pursued in their expedition of 
 the preceding autumn. They were now keeping farther 
 to the north, striking out more directly from the settle- 
 ments, and into a region, of which savage beasts and 
 savage men were as yet the sole possessors. The boy 
 sometimes hinted his opinions upon the subject, and 
 Reuben listened attentively, and once or twice altered 
 the direction of their march in accordance with his 
 son's counsel. But having so done, he seemed ill at 
 ease. His quick and wandering glances were sent 
 forward, apparently in search of enemies lurking be- 
 hind the tree-trunks; and seeing nothing there, he 
 would cast his eyes backwards, as if in fear of some 
 pursuer. Cyrus, perceiving that his father gradually 
 resumed the old direction, forbore to interfere ; nor, 
 though something began to weigh upon his heart, did 
 his adventurous nature permit him to regret the increased 
 length and the mystery of their way. 
 
 On the afternoon of the fifth day, they halted and 
 made their simple encampment nearly an hour before 
 sunset. The face of the country, for the last few miles, 
 had been diversified by swells of land, resembling huge 
 waves of a petrified sea ; and in one of the correspond- 
 ing hollows, a wild and romantic spot, had the family
 
 102 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 reared their hut, and kindled their fire. There is some- 
 thing chilling, and yet heart-warming, in the thought of 
 three, united by strong bands of love, and insulated from 
 all that breathe beside. The dark and gloomy pines 
 looked down upon them, and, as the wind swept 
 through their tops, a pitying sound was heard in the 
 forest; or did those old trees groan, in fear that men 
 were come to lay the axe to their roots at last ? Reuben 
 and his son, while Dorcas made ready their meal, pro- 
 posed to wander out in search of game, of which that 
 day's march had afforded no supply. The_ boy, promis- 
 ing not to quit the vicinity of the encampment, bounded 
 ofT~wlth a step as light and elastic as that of the deer 
 he hoped to slay ; while his father, feeling a transient 
 happiness as he gazed after him, was about to pursue 
 an opposite direction. Dorcas, in the meanwhile, had 
 seated herself near their fire of fallen branches, upon 
 the moss-grown and mouldering trunk of a tree, up- 
 rooted years before. Her employment, diversified by 
 an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to sim- 
 mer over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year's 
 Massachusetts Almanac, which, with the exception of 
 an old black-letter Bible, comprised all the literary 
 wealth of the family. None pay a greater regard to 
 arbitrary divisions of time, than those who are excluded 
 from society ; and Dorcas mentioned, as if the informa- 
 tion were of importance, that it was now the twelfth of 
 May. Her husband started. 
 
 " The twelfth of May ! I should remember it well," 
 muttered he, while many thoughts occasioned a momen- 
 tary confusion in his mind. " Where am I ? Whither 
 am I wandering ? Where did I leave him ? " 
 
 Dorcas, too well accustomed to her husband's way- 
 ward moods to note any peculiarity of demeanor, now 
 laid aside the Almanac, and addressed him in that 
 mournful tone, which the tender-hearted appropriate 
 to griefs long cold and dead. 
 
 " It was near this time of the month, eighteen years 
 ago, that my poor father left this world for a better. 
 He had a kind arm to hold his head, and a kind voice
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 103 
 
 to cheer him, Reuben, in his last moments; and the 
 thought of the faithful care you took of him, has com- 
 forted me many a time since. Oh ! death would have 
 been awful to a solitary man, in a wild place like this ! " 
 
 "Pray Heaven, Dorcas," said Reuben, in a broken 
 voice, " pray Heaven, that neither of us three dies soli- 
 tary, and lies unburied, in this howling wilderness ! " 
 And he hastened away, leaving her to watch the fire, 
 beneath the gloomy pines. 
 
 Reuben Bourne's rapid pace gradually slackened, as , 
 
 the pang, unintentionally inflicted by the words of Dor- i *&* /*-T l 
 caSi became less acute. Many strange reflections,' how- 
 ever, thronged upon him ; and, straying onward, rather 
 like a sleep-walker than a hunter, it was attributable to 
 no care of his own, that his devious course kepJLJumJn. 
 > theAdcinity of the encampment. His steps were imper- 
 ceptibly led almost in a circle, nor did he observe that 
 he was on the verge of a tract of land heavily timbered, 
 but not with pine trees. The place of the latter was 
 here supplied by oaks, and other of the harder woods ; 
 and around their roots clustered a dense and bushy 
 undergrowth, leaving, however, barren spaces between 
 the trees, thick-strewn with withered leaves. Whenever 
 the rustling of the branches, or the creaking of the 
 trunks, made a sound, as if the forest were waking 
 from slumber, Reuben instinctively raised the musket 
 that rested on his arm, and cast a quick, sharp glance 
 on every side ; but, convinced by a partial observation 
 that no animal was near, he would again give himself 
 up to his thoughts. He was musing on the strange 
 influence that had led him away from his premeditated 
 course, and so far into the depths of the wilderness. 
 Unable to penetrate iQ_the.-^cre.L^lace..Qf_hJs_^Qul T - 
 where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a super- 
 natural voice had called him onward, and that a super- 
 natural power had obstructed his retreat. He trusted 
 that it was Heaven's intent to afford him an opportu- 
 nity of expiating his sin ; he hoped that he might find 
 the bones, so long unburied ; and that, having laid the 
 earth over them, peace would throw its sunlight into the
 
 io 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 sepulchre of his heart. From these thoughts he was 
 aroused by a rustling in the forest, at some distance 
 from the spot to which he had wandered. Perceiving 
 the motion of some object behind a thick veil of under- 
 growth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter and the 
 aim of a practised marksman. A low moan, which told 
 his success, and by which even animals can express 
 their dying agony, was unheeded by Reuben Bourne. 
 What were the recollections now breaking upon him ? 
 
 The thicket into which Reuben had fired was near 
 the summit of a swell of land, and was clustered around 
 the base of a rock, which, in the shape and smoothness 
 of one of its surfaces, was not unlike a gigantic grave- 
 stone. As if reflected in a mirror, its likeness was in 
 Reuben's memory. He even recognized the veins 
 which seemed to form an inscription in forgotten char- 
 acters ; everything remained the same, except that a 
 thick covert of bushes shrouded the lower part of the 
 rock, and would have hidden Roger Malvin, had he 
 still been sitting there. Yet, in the next moment, Reu- 
 ben's eye was caught by another change, that time had 
 effected, since he last stood, where he was now standing 
 again, behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The 
 sapling, to which he had bound the blood-stained sym- 
 bol of his vow, had increased and strengthened into an 
 oak, far indeed from its maturity, but with no mean 
 spread of shadowy branches. There was one singular- 
 ity observable in this tree, which made Reuben tremble. 
 The middle and lower branches were in luxuriant life, 
 and an excess of vegetation had fringed the trunk, 
 almost to the ground ; but a blight had apparently 
 stricken the upper part of the oak, and the very top- 
 most bough was withered, sapless, and utterly dead. 
 Reuben remembered how the little banner had fluttered 
 on that topmost bough, when it was green and lovely, 
 eighteen years before. Whose guilt had blasted it? 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, con- 
 tinued her preparations for their evening repast. Her 
 sylvan table was the moss-covered trunk of a large
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 105 
 
 fallen tree, on the broadest part of which she had 
 spread a snow-white cloth, and arranged what were left 
 of the bright pewter vessels that had been her pride 
 in the settlements. It had a strange aspect that one 
 little spot of homely comfort, in the desolate heart of 
 Nature. The sunshine yet lingered upon the higher 
 branches of the trees that grew on rising ground ; but 
 the shadows of evening had deepened into the hollow, 
 where the encampment was made; and the firelight 
 began to redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of the 
 pines, or hovered on the dense and obscure mass of 
 foliage that circled round the spot. The heart of Dor- 
 cas was not sad ; for she felt it was better to journey in 
 the wilderness, with two whom she loved, than to be a 
 lonely woman in a crowd that cared not for her. As 
 she busied herself in arranging seats of mouldering 
 wood, covered with leaves, for Reuben and her son, her 
 voice danced through the gloomy forest, in the measure 
 of a song that she had learned in youth. The rude 
 melody, the production of a bard who won no name, 
 was descriptive of a winter evening in a frontier cottage, 
 when, secured from savage inroad by the high-piled 
 snow-drifts, the family rejoiced by their own fireside. 
 The whole song possessed that nameless charm, pecul- 
 iar to unborrowed thought ; but four continually recur- 
 ring lines shone out from the rest, like the blaze of the 
 hearth whose joys they celebrated. Into them, work- 
 ing magic with a few simple words, the poet had in- 
 stilled the very essence of domestic love and household 
 happiness, and they were poetry and picture joined in 
 one. As Dorcas sang, the walls of her forsaken home 
 seemed to encircle her ; she no longer saw the gloomy 
 pines ; nor heard the wind, which still, as she began 
 each verse, sent a heavy breath through the branches, 
 and died away in a hollow moan, from the burthen of 
 the song. She was aroused by the report of a gun, in 
 the vicinity of the encampment ; and either the sudden 
 sound, or her loneliness by the glowing fire, caused her 
 to tremble violently. The next moment, she laughed in 
 the pride of a mother's heart.
 
 io6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " My beautiful young hunter ! my boy has slain a 
 deer ! " she exclaimed, recollecting that, in the direc- 
 tion whence the shot proceeded, Cyrus had gone to 
 the chase. 
 
 She waited a reasonable time, to hear her son's light 
 step bounding over the rustling leaves, to tell of his 
 success. But he did not immediately appear, and she 
 sent her cheerful voice among the trees in search of 
 him. 
 
 " Cyrus ! Cyrus ! " 
 
 His coming was still delayed, and she determined, 
 as the report of the gun had apparently been very 
 near, to seek for him in person. Her assistance, also, 
 might be necessary in bringing home the venison, 
 which she flattered herself he had obtained. She there- 
 fore set forward, directing her steps by the long-past 
 sound, and singing as she went, in order that the boy 
 might be aware of her approach, and run to meet her. 
 From behind the trunk of every tree, and from every 
 hiding place in the thick foliage of the undergrowth, 
 she hoped to discover the countenance of her son, 
 laughing with the sportive mischief that is born of 
 affection. The sun was now beneath the horizon, and 
 the light that came down among the trees was suffi- 
 ciently dim to create many illusions in her expecting 
 fancy. Several times she seemed indistinctly to see 
 his face gazing out from among the leaves ; and once 
 she imagined that he stood beckoning to her, at the 
 base of a craggy rock. Keeping her eyes on this 
 object, however, it proved to be no more than the 
 trunk of an oak, fringed to the very ground with little 
 branches, one of which, thrust out farther than the rest, 
 was shaken by the breeze. Making her way round the 
 foot of the rock, she suddenly found herself close to 
 her husband, who had approached in another direction. 
 Leaning upon the butt of his gun, the muzzle of which 
 rested upon the withered leaves, he was apparently ab- 
 sorbed in the contemplation of some object at his feet. 
 
 " How is this, Reuben ? Have you slain the deer, 
 and fallen asleep over him ? " exclaimed Dorcas, laugh-
 
 ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL 107 
 
 ing cheerfully, on her first slight observation of his 
 posture and appearance. 
 
 He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes towards 
 her ; and a cold, shuddering fear, indefinite in its source 
 and object, began to creep into her blood. She now 
 perceived that her husband's face was ghastly pale, and 
 his features were rigid, as if incapable of assuming any 
 other expression than the strong despair which had hard- 
 ened upon them. He gave not the slightest evidence 
 that he was aware of her approach. 
 
 " For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to me ! " 
 cried Dorcas, and the strange sound of her own voice 
 affrighted her even more than the dead silence. 
 
 Her husband started, stared into her face ; drew her 
 to the front of the rock, and pointed with his finger. 
 
 Oh ! there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless upon 
 the fallen forest-leaves ! his cheek rested upon his arm, 
 his curled locks were thrown back from his brow, his 
 limbs were slightly relaxed. Had a sudden weariness 
 overcome the youthful hunter ? Would his mother's 
 voice arouse him ? She knew that it was death. 
 
 "This broad rock is the gravestone of your near 
 kindred, Dorcas," said her husband. " Your tears will 
 fall at once over your father and your son." 
 
 She heard him not. With one wild shriek that 
 seemed to force its way from the sufferer's inmost 
 soul, she sank insensible by the side of her dead boy. 
 At that moment the withered topmost bough of the oak 
 loosened itself in the stilly air, and fell in soft, light 
 fragments upon the rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben, 
 upon his wife and child, and upon Roger Marvin's 
 bones. Then Reuben's heart was strickery and the 
 tears gushed out like water from a rock. The vow 
 that the wounded youth had made, the blighted man 
 had come to redeem. , His sin was expiated, the curse &" 
 was gone from him :/and in the hour when he had shed 
 blood dearer to hinf than his own, a prayer, the first for 
 years, went up to Heaven from the lips of Reuben 
 Bourne.
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 MY unfortunate friend P. has lost the thread of his 
 life by the interposition of long intervals of par- 
 tially disordered reason. The past and present are 
 jumbled together in his mind, in a manner often produc- 
 tive of curious results ; and which will be better under- 
 stood after the perusal of the following letter, than from 
 any description that I could give. The poor fellow, 
 without once stirring from the little white-washed, iron- 
 grated room, to which he alludes in his first paragraph, 
 is nevertheless a great traveller, and meets, in his wan- 
 derings, a variety of personages, who have long ceased 
 to be visible to any eye save his own. In my opinion all 
 this is not so much a delusion as a partly wilful and 
 partly involuntary sport of the imagination, to which his 
 disease has imparted such morbid energy that he be- 
 holds these spectral scenes and characters with no less 
 distinctness than a play upon the stage, and with some- 
 what more of illusive credence. Many of his letters are 
 in my possession, some based upon the same vagary as 
 the present one, and others upon hypotheses not a whit 
 short of it in absurdity. The whole form a series of 
 correspondence, which, should fate seasonably remove 
 my poor friend from what is to him the world of moon- 
 shine, I promise myself a pious pleasure in editing for 
 the public eye. P. had always a hankering after liter- 
 ary reputation, and has made more than one unsuccess- 
 ful effort to achieve it. It would not be a little odd, if, 
 after missing his object while seeking it by the light of 
 reason, he should prove to have stumbled upon it in his 
 misty excursions beyond the limits of sanity. 
 
 LONDON, February 25, 1845. 
 MY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 Old associations cling to the mind with astonishing 
 tenacity. Daily custom grows up about us like a stone 
 1 08
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 109 
 
 wall, and consolidates itself into almost as material an 
 entity as mankind's strongest architecture. It is some- 
 times a serious question with me, whether ideas be not 
 really visible and tangible, and endowed with all the 
 other qualities of matter. Sitting as I do, at this 
 moment, in my hired apartment, writing beside the 
 hearth, over which hangs a print of Queen Victoria 
 listening to the muffled roar of the world's metropolis, 
 and with a window at but five paces distant, through 
 which, whenever I please, I can gaze out on actual 
 London with all this positive certainty as to my 
 whereabouts, what kind of notion, do you think, is just 
 now perplexing my brain ? Why would you believe 
 it ? that, all this time, I am still an inhabitant of that 
 wearisome little chamber, that white-washed little 
 chamber, that little chamber with its one small win- 
 dow, across which, from some inscrutable reason of 
 taste or convenience, my landlord had placed a row of 
 iron bars that same little chamber, in short, whither 
 your kindness has so often brought you to visit me ! 
 Will no length of time, or breadth of space, enfranchise 
 me from that unlovely abode ? I travel, but it seems to 
 be like the snail, with my house upon my head. Ah, 
 well ! I am verging, I suppose, on that period of life 
 when present scenes and events make but feeble impres- 
 sions, in comparison with those of yore ; so that I must 
 reconcile myself to be more and more the prisoner of 
 Memory, who merely lets me hop about a little, with her 
 chain around my leg. 
 
 My letters of introduction have been of the utmost 
 service, enabling me to make the acquaintance of sev- 
 eral distinguished characters, who, until now, have 
 seemed as remote from the sphere of my personal inter- 
 course as the wits of Queen Anne's time, or Ben Jon- 
 son's compotators at the Mermaid. One of the first of 
 which I availed myself, was the letter to Lord Byron. 
 I found his lordship looking much older than I had 
 anticipated ; although considering his former irregu- 
 larities of life, and the various wear and tear of his con- 
 stitution not older than a man on the verge of sixty
 
 no MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 reasonably may look. But I had invested his earthly 
 frame, in my imagination, with the poet's spiritual im- 
 mortality. He wears a brown wig, very luxuriantly 
 curled, and extending down over his forehead. The 
 expression of his eyes is concealed by spectacles. His 
 early tendency to obesity having increased, Lord Byron 
 is now enormously fat ; so fat as to give the impression 
 of a person quite overladen with his own flesh, and with- 
 out sufficient vigor to diffuse his personal life through 
 the great mass of corporeal substance, which weighs 
 upon him so cruelly. You gaze at the mortal heap; 
 and, while it fills your eye with what purports to be 
 Byron, you murmur within yourself "For Heaven's 
 sake, w~here is he ? " Were I disposed to be caustic, I 
 might consider this mass of earthly matter as the symbol, 
 in a material shape, of those evil habits and carnal vices 
 which unspiritualize man's nature, and clog up his 
 avenues of communication with the better life. But 
 this would be too harsh ; and besides, Lord Byron's 
 morals have been improving, while his outward man 
 has swollen to such unconscionable circumference. 
 Would that he were leaner ; for, though he did me the 
 honor to present his hand, yet it was so puffed out with 
 alien substance, that I could not feel as if I had touched 
 the hand that wrote Childe Harold. 
 
 On my entrance his lordship had apologized for not 
 rising to receive me, on the sufficient plea that the gout, 
 for several years past, had taken up its constant resi- 
 dence in his right foot ; which, accordingly, was swathed 
 in many rolls of flannel, and deposited upon a cushion. 
 The other foot was hidden in the drapery of his chair. 
 Do you recollect whether Byron's right or left foot was 
 the deformed one ? 
 
 The noble poet's reconciliation with Lady Byron is 
 now, as you are aware, of ten years' standing ; nor does 
 it exhibit, I am assured, any symptom of breach or frac- 
 ture. They are said to be, if not a happy, at least a 
 contented, or, at all events, a quiet couple, descending 
 the slope of life with that tolerable degree of mutual 
 support, which will enable them to come easily and com-
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE in 
 
 fortably to the bottom. It is pleasant to reflect how 
 entirely the poet has redeemed his youthful errors, in 
 this particular. Her ladyship's influence, it rejoices me 
 to add, has been productive of the happiest results upon 
 Lord Byron in a religious point of view. He now com- 
 bines the most rigid tenets of Methodism with the ultra 
 doctrines of the Puseyites : the former being perhaps 
 due to the convictions wrought upon his mind by his 
 noble consort ; while the latter are the embroidery and 
 picturesque illumination, demanded by his imaginative 
 character. Much of whatever expenditure his increas- 
 ing habits of thrift continue to allow him, is bestowed in 
 the reparation or beautifying of places of worship ; and 
 this nobleman, whose name was once considered a syno- 
 nym of the foul fiend, is now all but canonized as a 
 saint in many pulpits of the metropolis and elsewhere. 
 In politics, Lord Byron is an uncompromising conservative, 
 and loses no opportunity, whether in the House of Lords 
 or in private circles, of denouncing and repudiating the 
 mischievous and anarchical notions of his earlier day. 
 Nor does he fail to visit similar sins, in other people, 
 with the sincerest vengeance which his somewhat 
 blunted pen is capable of inflicting. Southey and he are 
 on the most intimate terms. You are aware that some 
 little time before the death of Moore, Byron caused that 
 brilliant but reprehensible man to be ejected from his 
 house. Moore took the insult so much to heart, that it is 
 said to have been one great cause of the fit of illness 
 which brought him to the grave. Others pretend that the 
 Lyrist died in a very happy state of mind, singing one of 
 his own sacred melodies, and expressing his belief that it 
 would be heard within the gate of paradise, and gain 
 him instant and honorable admittance. I wish he may 
 have found it so. 
 
 I failed not, as you may suppose, in the course of 
 conversation with Lord Byron, to pay the meed of hom- 
 age due to a mighty poet, by allusions to passages in 
 Childe Harold, and Manfred, and Don Juan, which 
 have made so large a portion of the music of my life. 
 My words, whether apt or otherwise, were at least
 
 ii2 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 warm with the enthusiasm of one worthy to discourse 
 of immortal poesy. It was evident, however, that they 
 did not go precisely to the right spot. I could perceive 
 that there was some mistake or other, and was not a 
 little angry with myself, and ashamed of my abortive 
 attempt to throw back, from my own heart to the gifted 
 author's ear, the echo of those strains that have re- 
 sounded throughout the world. But, by and by, the 
 secret peeped quietly out. Byron I have the infor- 
 mation from his own lips, so that you need not hesitate 
 to repeat it in literary circles Byron is preparing a 
 new edition of his complete works, carefully corrected, 
 expurgated, and amended, in accordance with his pres- 
 ent creed of taste, morals, politics, and religion. It so 
 happened, that the very passages of highest inspiration, 
 to which I had alluded, were among the condemned 
 and rejected rubbish, which it is his purpose to cast 
 into the gulf of oblivion. To whisper you the truth, it 
 appears to me that his passions having burnt out, the 
 extinction of their vivid and riotous flame has deprived 
 Lord Byron of the illumination by which he not merely 
 wrote, but was enabled to feel and comprehend what he 
 had written. Positively, he no longer understands his 
 own poetry. 
 
 This became very apparent on his favoring me so far 
 as to read a few specimens of Don Juan in the moralized 
 version. Whatever is licentious whatever disrespect- 
 ful to the sacred mysteries of our faith whatever 
 morbidly melancholic, or splenetically sportive what- 
 ever assails settled constitutions of government, or sys- 
 tems of society whatever could wound the sensibility 
 of any mortal, except a pagan, a republican, or a dis- 
 senter has been unrelentingly blotted out, and its 
 place supplied by unexceptionable verses, in his lord- 
 ship's later style. You may judge how much of the 
 poem remains as hitherto published. The result is not 
 so good as might be wished ; in plain terms, it is a very 
 sad affair indeed; for though the torches kindled in 
 Tophet have been extinguished, they leave an abomi- 
 nably ill odor, and are succeeded by no glimpses of haL
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 113 
 
 lowed fire. It is to be hoped, nevertheless, that this 
 attempt, on Lord Byron's part, to atone for his youthful 
 errors, will at length induce the Dean of Westminster 
 or whatever churchman is concerned, to allow Thor- 
 waldsen's statue of the poet its due niche in the grand 
 old Abbey. His bones, you know, when brought from 
 Greece, were denied sepulture among those of his tune- 
 ful brethren there. 
 
 What a vile slip of the pen was that! How absurd 
 in me to talk about burying the bones of Byron, whom I 
 have just seen alive, and encased in a big, round bulk 
 of flesh ! But, to say the truth, a prodigiously fat man 
 always impresses me as a kind of hobgoblin ; in the 
 very extravagance of his mortal system, I find some- 
 thing akin to the immateriality of a ghost. And then 
 that ridiculous old story darted into my mind, how that 
 Byron died of fever at Missolonghi, above twenty years 
 ago. More and more I recognize that we dwell in a 
 world of shadows ; and, for my part, I hold it hardly 
 worth the trouble to attempt a distinction between 
 shadows in the mind and shadows out of it. If there 
 be any difference, the former are rather the more sub- 
 stantial. 
 
 Only think of my good fortune! The venerable 
 Robert Burns now, if I mistake not, in his eighty- 
 seventh year happens to be making a visit to Lon- 
 don, as if on purpose to afford me an opportunity of 
 grasping him by the hand. For upwards of twenty 
 years past he has hardly left his quiet cottage in Ayr- 
 shire for a single night, and has only been drawn hither 
 now by the irresistible persuasions of all the distin- 
 guished men in England. They wish to celebrate the 
 patriarch's birthday by a festival. It will be the great- 
 est literary triumph on record. Pray Heaven the little 
 spirit of life within the aged bard's bosom may not be 
 extinguished in the lustre of that hour! I have already 
 had the honor of an introduction to him, at the British 
 Museum, where he was examining a collection of his 
 own unpublished letters, interspersed with songs, which 
 have escaped the notice of all his biographers.
 
 ii4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 Poh ! Nonsense ! What am I thinking of ! How 
 should Burns have been embalmed in biography when 
 he is still a hearty old man ! 
 
 The figure of the bard is tall, and in the highest 
 degree reverend ; nor the less so, that it is much bent 
 by the burthen of time. His white hair floats like a 
 snow-drift around his face, in which are seen the fur- 
 rows of intellect and passion, like the channels of head- 
 long torrents that have foamed themselves away. The 
 old gentleman is in excellent preservation, considering 
 his time of life. He has that crickety sort of liveliness 
 I mean the cricket's humor of chirping for any cause 
 or none which is perhaps the most favorable mood 
 that can befall extreme old age. Our pride forbids us 
 to desire it for ourselves, although we perceive it to be 
 a beneficence of nature in the case of others. I was 
 surprised to find it in Burns. It seems as if his ardent 
 heart and brilliant imagination had both burnt down to 
 the last embers, leaving only a little flickering flame 
 in one corner, which keeps dancing upward and laugh- 
 ing all by itself. He is no longer capable of pathos. 
 At the request of Allan Cunningham, he attempted to 
 sing his own song to Mary in Heaven ; but it was evi- 
 dent that the feeling of those verses, so profoundly true, 
 and so simply expressed, was entirely beyond the scope 
 of his present sensibilities ; and when a touch of it did 
 partially awaken him, the tears immediately gushed 
 into his eyes, and his voice broke into a tremulous 
 cackle. And yet he but indistinctly knew wherefore 
 he was weeping. Ah ! he must not think again of Mary 
 in Heaven, until he shake off the dull impediment of 
 time, and ascend to meet her there. 
 
 Burns then began to repeat Tam O'Shanter, but was 
 so tickled with its wit and humor of which, however, 
 I did suspect he had but a traditionary sense that he 
 soon burst into a fit of chirruping laughter, succeeded 
 by a cough, which brought this not very agreeable 
 exhibition to a close. On the whole, I would rather not 
 have witnessed it. It is a satisfactory idea, however, 
 that the last forty years of the peasant-poet's life have
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 115 
 
 been passed in competence and perfect comfort. Hav- 
 ing been cured of his bardic improvidence for many a 
 day past, and grown as attentive to the main chance as 
 a canny Scotsman should be, he is now considered to be 
 quite well off, as to pecuniary circumstances. This, I 
 suppose, is worth having lived so long for. 
 
 I took occasion to inquire of some of the country- 
 men of Burns in regard to the health of Sir Walter 
 Scott. His condition, I am sorry to say, remains the 
 same as for ten years past ; it is that of a hopeless 
 paralytic, palsied not more in body than in those nobler 
 attributes of which the body is the instrument. And 
 thus he vegetates from day to day, and from year to 
 year, at that splendid fantasy of Abbotsford, which 
 grew out of his brain, and became a symbol of the 
 great romancer's tastes, feelings, studies, prejudices, 
 and modes of intellect. Whether in verse, prose, or 
 architecture, he could achieve but one thing, although 
 that one in infinite variety. There he reclines, on a 
 couch in his library, and is said to spend whole hours 
 of every day in dictating tales to an amanuensis. To 
 an imaginary amanuensis ; for it is not deemed worth 
 any one's trouble, now, to take down what flows from 
 that once brilliant fancy, every image of which was 
 formerly worth gold, and capable of being coined. Yet, 
 Cunningham, who has lately seen him, assures me that 
 there is now and then a touch of the genius ; a striking 
 combination of incident, or a picturesque trait of char- 
 acter, such as no other man alive could have hit off ; a 
 glimmer from that ruined mind, as if the sun had sud- 
 denly flashed on a half-rusted helmet in the gloom of an 
 ancient hall. But the plots of these romances become 
 inextricably confused ; the characters melt into one an- 
 other; and the tale loses itself like the course of a 
 stream flowing through muddy and marshy ground. 
 
 For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter 
 Scott had lost his consciousness of outward things, be- 
 fore his works went out of vogue. It was good that he 
 should forget his fame, rather than that fame should 
 first have forgotten him. Were he still a writer, and
 
 n6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 as brilliant a one as ever, he could no longer maintain 
 anything like the same position in literature. The 
 world, nowadays, requires a more earnest purpose, a 
 deeper moral, and a closer and homelier truth, than he 
 was qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be, to the 
 present generation, even what Scott has been to the 
 past ? Bulwer nauseates me ; he is the very pimple of 
 the age's humbug. There is no hope of the public, so 
 long as he retains an admirer, a reader, or a publisher. 
 I had expectations from a young man one Dickens 
 who published a few magazine articles, very rich in 
 humor, and not without symptoms of genuine pathos ; 
 but the poor fellow died, shortly after commencing an 
 odd series of sketches, entitled, I think, the Pickwick 
 Papers. Not impossibly, the world has lost more than 
 it dreams of, by the untimely death of this Mr. Dickens. 
 Whom do you think I met in Pall Mall, the other day ? 
 You would not hit it in ten guesses. Why, no less a 
 man than Napoleon Bonaparte ! or all that is now left 
 of him that is to say, the skin, bones, and corporeal 
 substance, little cocked hat, green coat, white breeches, 
 and small sword, which are still known by his redoubt- 
 able name. He was attended only by two policemen, 
 who walked quietly behind the phantasm of the old ex- 
 Emperor, appearing to have no duty in regard to him, 
 except to see that none of the light-fingered gentry 
 should possess themselves of the star of the Legion of 
 Honor. Nobody, save myself, so much as turned to 
 look after him ; nor, it grieves me to confess, could even 
 I contrive to muster up any tolerable interest, even by 
 all that the warlike spirit, formerly manifested within 
 that now decrepit shape, had wrought upon our globe. 
 There is no surer method of annihilating the magic in- 
 fluence of a great renown, than by exhibiting the pos- 
 sessor of it in the decline, the overthrow, the utter 
 degradation of his powers buried beneath his own 
 mortality and lacking even the qualities of sense, that 
 enable the most ordinary men to bear themselves 
 decently in the eye of the world. This is the state 
 to which disease, aggravated by long endurance of a
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 117 
 
 tropical climate, and assisted by old age for he is now 
 above seventy has reduced Bonaparte. The British 
 government has acted shrewdly, in re-transporting him 
 from St. Helena to England. They should now restore 
 him to Paris, and there let him once again review the 
 relics of his armies. His eye is dull and rheumy ; his 
 nether lip hung down upon his chin. While I was 
 observing him, there chanced to be a little extra bustle 
 in the street; and he, the brother of Caesar and Han- 
 nibal the Great Captain, who had veiled the world in 
 battle smoke, and tracked it round with bloody foot- 
 steps was seized with a nervous trembling, and 
 claimed the protection of the two policemen by a 
 cracked and dolorous cry. The fellows winked at one 
 another, laughed aside, and patting Napoleon on the 
 back, took each an arm and led him away. 
 
 Death and fury ! Ha, villain, how came you hither ? 
 Avaunt ! or I fling my inkstand at your head. Tush, 
 tush ; it is all a mistake. Pray, my dear friend, pardon 
 this little outbreak. The fact is, the mention of those 
 two policemen, and their custody of Bonaparte, had 
 called up the idea of that odious wretch you remem- 
 ber him well who was pleased to take such gratuitous 
 and impertinent care of my person, before I quitted 
 New England. Forthwith, uprose before my mind's 
 eye that same little white-washed room, with the iron- 
 grated window strange, that it should have been iron- 
 grated where, in too easy compliance with the absurd 
 wishes of my relatives, I have wasted several good years 
 of my life. Positively, it seemed to me that I was still 
 sitting there, and that the keeper not that he ever 
 was my keeper neither, but only a kind of intrusive 
 devil of a body-servant had just peeped in at the 
 door. The rascal ! I owe him an old grudge, and will 
 find a time to pay it yet ! Fie, fie ! the mere thought of 
 him has exceedingly discomposed me. Even now, that 
 hateful chamber that iron-grated window, which 
 blasted the blessed sunshine as it fell through the 
 dusty panes, and made it poison to my soul looks 
 more distinct to my view than does this, my comfortable
 
 ii8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 apartment in the heart of London. The reality that 
 which I know to be such hangs like remnants of tat- 
 tered scenery over the intolerably prominent illusion. 
 Let us think of it no more. 
 
 You will be anxious to hear of Shelley. I need not 
 say, what is known to all the world, that this celebrated 
 poet has, for many years past, been reconciled to the 
 Church of England. In his more recent works, he has 
 applied his fine powers to the vindication of the Chris- 
 tian faith, with an especial view to that particular devel- 
 opment. Latterly as you may not have heard he 
 has taken orders, and been inducted to a small country 
 living, in the gift of the Lord Chancellor. Just now, 
 luckily for me, he has come to the metropolis to super- 
 intend the publication of a volume of discourses, treat- 
 ing of the poetico-philosophical proofs of Christianity, 
 on the basis of the Thirty-nine Articles. On my first 
 introduction, I felt no little embarrassment as to the 
 mode of combining what I had to say to the author of 
 Queen Mab, the Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Un- 
 bound, with such acknowledgments as might be accept- 
 able to a Christian minister, and zealous upholder of 
 the Established Church. But Shelley soon placed me 
 at my ease. Standing where he now does, and review- 
 ing all his successive productions from a higher point, 
 he assures me that there is a harmony, an order, a regu- 
 lar procession, which enables him to lay his hand upon 
 any one of the earlier poems, and say, " This is my 
 work ! " with precisely the same complacency of con- 
 science wherewithal he contemplates the volume of dis- 
 courses above-mentioned. They are like the successive 
 steps of a staircase, the lowest of which, in the depth 
 of chaos, is as essential to the support of the whole, 
 as the highest and final one, resting upon the thresh- 
 old of the heavens. I felt half inclined to ask him, 
 what would have been his fate, had he perished on the 
 lower steps of his staircase, instead of building his way 
 aloft into the celestial brightness. 
 
 How all this may be, I neither pretend to understand 
 nor greatly care, so long as Shelley has really climbed,
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 119 
 
 as it seems he has, from a lower region to a loftier one. 
 Without touching upon their religious merits, I consider 
 the productions of his maturity superior, as poems, to 
 those of his youth. They are warmer with human love, 
 which has served as an interpreter between his mind 
 and the multitude. The author has learned to dip his 
 pen oftener into his heart, and has thereby avoided the 
 faults into which a too exclusive use of fancy and intel- 
 lect are wont to betray him. Formerly his page was 
 often little other than a concrete arrangement of crystal- 
 lizations, or even of icicles, as cold as they were brilliant. 
 Now, you take it to your heart, and are conscious of a 
 heart-warmth responsive to your own. In his private 
 character, Shelley can hardly have grown more gentle, 
 kind, and affectionate than his friends always repre- 
 sented him to be, up to that disastrous night when he 
 was drowned in the Mediterranean. Nonsense, again ! 
 sheer nonsense ! What am I babbling about ? I 
 was thinking of that old figment of his being lost in the 
 Bay of Spezia, and washed ashore near Via Reggio, and 
 burned to ashes on a funeral pyre, with wine and spices 
 and frankincense ; while Byron stood on the beach, and 
 beheld a flame of marvellous beauty rise heavenward 
 from the dead poet's heart ; and that his fire-purified 
 relics were finally buried near his child, in Roman earth. 
 If all this happened three-and-twenty years ago, how 
 could I have met the drowned, and burned, and buried 
 man, here in London, only yesterday ? 
 
 Before quitting the subject, I may mention that Dr. 
 Reginald Heber, heretofore Bishop of Calcutta, but re- 
 cently translated to a see in England, called on Shelley 
 while I was with him. They appeared to be on terms 
 of very cordial intimacy, and are said to have a joint 
 poem in contemplation. What a strange, incongruous 
 dream is the life of man ! 
 
 Coleridge has at last finished his poem of Christabel ; 
 it will be issued entire by old John Murray, in the course 
 of the present publishing season. The poet, I hear, is 
 visited with a troublesome affection of the tongue, which 
 has put a period, or some lesser stop, to the life-long
 
 120 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 discourse that has hitherto been flowing from his lips. 
 He will not survive it above a month, unless his accumu- 
 lation of ideas be sluiced off in some other way. Words- 
 worth died only a week or two ago. Heaven rest his 
 soul, and grant that he may not have completed the 
 Excursion ! Methinks I am sick of everything he wrote, 
 except his Laodamia. It is very sad this inconstancy 
 of the mind to the poets whom it once worshipped. 
 Southey is as hale as ever, and writes with his usual 
 diligence. Old Gifford is still alive, in the extremity of 
 age, and with most pitiable decay of what little sharp 
 and narrow intellect the devil had gifted him withal. 
 One hates to allow such a man the privilege of growing 
 old and infirm. It takes away our speculative license 
 of kicking him. 
 
 Keats ? No ; I have not seen him, except across a 
 crowded street, with coaches, drays, horsemen, cabs, 
 omnibuses, foot-passengers, and divers other sensual 
 obstructions, intervening betwixt his small and slender 
 figure and my eager glance. I would fain have met him 
 on the sea-shore or beneath a natural arch of forest 
 trees or the Gothic arch of an old cathedral or 
 among Grecian ruins or at a glimmering fireside on 
 the verge of evening or at the twilight entrance of a 
 cave, into the dreamy depths of which he would have 
 led me by the hand ; anywhere, in short, save at Temple 
 Bar, where his presence was blotted out by the porter- 
 swollen bulks of these gross Englishmen. I stood and 
 watched him, fading away, fading away, along the pave- 
 ment, and could hardly tell whether he were an actual 
 man, or a thought that had slipped out of my own mind, 
 and clothed itself in human form and habiliments, 
 merely to beguile me. At one moment he put his hand- 
 kerchief to his lips, and withdrew it, I am almost certain, 
 stained with blood. You never saw anything so fragile 
 as his person. The truth is, Keats has all his life felt 
 the effects of that terrible bleeding at the lungs, caused 
 by the article on his Endymion, in the Quarterly Review, 
 and which so nearly brought him to the grave. Ever 
 since, he has glided about the world like a ghost, sigh-
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 121 
 
 ing a melancholy tone in the ear of here and there a 
 friend, but never sending forth his voice to greet the 
 multitude. I can hardly think him a great poet. The 
 burthen of a mighty genius would not have been im- 
 posed upon shoulders so physically frail, and a spirit so 
 infirmly sensitive. Great poets should have iron sinews. 
 Yet Keats, though for so many years he has given 
 nothing to the world, is understood to have devoted him- 
 self to the composition of an epic poem. Some passages 
 of it have been communicated to the inner circle of his 
 admirers, and impressed them as the loftiest strains that 
 have been audible on earth since Milton's days. If I 
 can obtain copies of these specimens, I will ask you to 
 present them to James Russell Lowell, who seems to be 
 one of the poet's most fervent and worthiest worship- 
 pers. The information took me by surprise. I had 
 supposed that all Keats's poetic incense, without being 
 embodied in human language, floated up to heaven, and 
 mingled with the songs of the immortal choristers, who 
 perhaps were conscious of an unknown voice among 
 them, and thought their melody the sweeter for it. But 
 it is not so ; he has positively written a poem on the 
 subject of Paradise Regained, though in another sense 
 than that which presented itself to the mind of Milton. 
 In compliance, it may be imagined, with the dogma 
 of those who pretend that all epic possibilities, in the past 
 history of the world, are exhausted, Keats has thrown 
 his poem forward into an indefinitely remote futurity. 
 He pictures mankind amid the closing circumstances of 
 the time-long warfare between Good and Evil. Our 
 race is on the eve of its final triumph. Man is within 
 the last stride of perfection; Woman, redeemed from 
 the thraldom against which our Sibyl uplifts so power- 
 ful and so sad a remonstrance, stands equal by his side, 
 or communes for herself with angels ; the Earth, sym- 
 pathizing with her children's happier state, has clothed 
 herself in such luxuriant and loving beauty as no eye 
 ever witnessed since our first parents saw the sunrise 
 over dewy Eden. Nor then, indeed ; for this is the ful- 
 filment of what was then but a golden promise. But
 
 122 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the picture has its shadows. There remains to mankind 
 another peril ; a last encounter with the Evil Principle. 
 Should the battle go against us, we sink back into the 
 slime and misery of ages. If we triumph ! but it de- 
 mands a poet's eye to contemplate the splendor of such 
 a consummation, and not to be dazzled. 
 
 To this great work Keats is said to have brought so 
 deep and tender a spirit of humanity, that the poem has 
 all the sweet and warm interest of a village tale, no less 
 than the grandeur which befits so high a theme. Such, 
 at least, is the perhaps partial representation of his 
 friends ; for I have not read or heard even a single line 
 of the performance in question. Keats, I am told, with- 
 holds it from the press, under an idea that the age ha-s 
 not enough of spiritual insight to receive it worthily. I 
 do not like this distrust ; it makes me distrust the poet. 
 The Universe is waiting to respond to the highest word 
 that the best child of time and immortality can utter. 
 If it refuse to listen, it is because he mumbles and stam- 
 mers, or discourses things unseasonable and foreign to 
 the purpose. 
 
 I visited the House of Lords, the other day, to hear 
 Canning, who, you know, is now a peer, with I forget 
 what title. He disappointed me. Time blunts both 
 point and edge, and does great mischief to men of his 
 order of intellect. Then I stept into the Lower House, 
 and listened to a few words from Cobbett, who looked as 
 earthy as a real clodhopper, or rather, as if he had lain 
 a dozen years beneath the clods. The men, whom I meet 
 nowadays, often impress me thus ; probably because my 
 spirits are not very good, and lead me to think much 
 about graves, with the long grass upon them, and 
 weather-worn epitaphs, and dry bones of people who 
 made noise enough in their day, but now can only clat- 
 ter, clatter, clatter, when the sexton's spade disturbs 
 them. Were it only possible to find out who are alive, 
 and who dead, it would contribute infinitely to my peace 
 of mind. Every day of my life, somebody comes and 
 stares me in the face, whom I had quietly blotted out of 
 the tablet of living men, and trusted never more to be
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 123 
 
 pestered with the sight or sound of him. For instance, 
 going to Drury-Lane Theatre, a few evenings since, up 
 rose before me, in the ghost of Hamlet's father, the 
 bodily presence of the elder Kean, who did die or ought 
 to have died, in some drunken fit or other, so long ago 
 that his fame is scarcely traditionary now. His powers 
 are quite gone ; he was rather the ghost of himself than 
 the ghost of the Danish king. 
 
 In the stage box sat several elderly and decrepit 
 people, and among them a stately ruin of a woman on a 
 very large scale, with a profile for I did not see her 
 front face that stamped itself into my brain, as a seal 
 impresses hot wax. By the tragic gesture with which 
 she took a pinch of snuff, I was sure it must be Mrs. 
 Siddons. Her brother, John Kemble, sat behind, a 
 broken-down figure, but still with a kingly majesty about 
 him. In lieu of all former achievements, nature enables 
 him to look the part of Lear far better than in the 
 meridian of his genius. Charles Matthews was likewise 
 there ; but a paralytic affection has distorted his once 
 mobile countenance into a most disagreeable one-sided- 
 ness, from which he could no more wrench it into proper 
 form than he could rearrange the face of the great globe 
 itself. It looks as if, for the joke's sake, the poor man 
 had twisted his features into an expression at once the 
 most ludicrous and horrible that he could contrive ; and 
 at that very moment, as a judgment for making him- 
 self so hideous, an avenging providence had seen fit to 
 petrify him. Since it is out of his own power, I would 
 gladly assist him to change countenance ; for his ugly 
 visage haunts me both at noontide and night-time. Some 
 other players of the past generation were present, but 
 none that greatly interested me. It behooves actors, 
 more than all other men of publicity, to vanish from the 
 scene betimes. Being, at best, but painted shadows 
 flickering on the wall, and empty sounds that echo 
 another's thought, it is a sad disenchantment when the 
 colors begin to fade, and the voice to croak with age. 
 
 What is there new, in the literary way, on your side 
 of the water ? Nothing of the kind has come under my
 
 i2 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 inspection, except a volume of poems, published above 
 a year ago, by Dr. Channing. I did not before know 
 that this eminent writer is a poet ; nor does the volume 
 alluded to exhibit any of the characteristics of the 
 author's mind, as displayed in his prose works ; although 
 some of the poems have a richness that is not merely of 
 the surface, but glows still the brighter, the deeper and 
 more faithfully you look into them. They seem care- 
 lessly wrought, however, like those rings and ornaments 
 of the very purest gold, but of rude, native manufacture, 
 which are found among the gold dust from Africa. I 
 doubt whether the American public will accept them ; 
 it looks less to the assay of metal than to the neat and 
 cunning manufacture. How slowly our literature grows 
 up ! Most of our writers of promise have come to 
 untimely ends. There was that wild fellow, John Neal, 
 who almost turned my boyish brain with his romances ; 
 he surely has long been dead, else he never could keep 
 himself so quiet. Bryant has gone to his last sleep, with 
 the Thanatopsis gleaming over him like a sculptured 
 marble sepulchre by moonlight. Halleck, who used to 
 write queer verses in the newspapers, and published a 
 Don Juanic poem called Fanny, is defunct as a poet, 
 though averred to be exemplifying the metempsychosis 
 as a man of business. Somewhat later there was Whit- 
 tier, a fiery Quaker youth, to whom the muse had per- 
 versely assigned a battle-trumpet, and who got himself 
 lynched, ten years agone, in South Carolina. I remem- 
 ber, too, a lad just from college, Longfellow by name, 
 who scattered some delicate verses to the winds, and 
 went to Germany, and perished, I think, of intense 
 application, at the University of Gottingen. Willis 
 what a pity! was lost, if I recollect rightly, in 1833, 
 on his voyage to Europe, whither he was going, to give 
 us sketches of the world's sunny face. If these had 
 lived, they might, one or all of them, have grown to be 
 famous men. 
 
 And yet there is no telling it may be as well that 
 they have died. I was myself a young man of promise. 
 Oh, shattered brain ! oh, broken spirit ! where is
 
 P.'S CORRESPONDENCE 125 
 
 the fulfilment of that promise ? The sad truth is, that 
 when fate would gently disappoint the world, it takes 
 away the hopefullest mortals in their youth ; when 
 it would laugh the world's hopes to scorn, it lets them 
 live. Let me die upon this apophthegm, for I shall 
 never make a truer one ! 
 
 What a strange substance is the human brain ! Or 
 rather for there is no need of generalizing the remark 
 what an odd brain is mine! Would you believe it? 
 Daily and nightly there come scraps of poetry humming 
 in my intellectual ear some as airy as bird-notes, and 
 some as delicately neat as parlor-music, and a few as 
 grand as organ-peals that seem just such verses as those 
 departed poets would have written, had not an inexora- 
 ble destiny snatched them from their inkstands. They 
 visit me in spirit, perhaps desiring to engage my services 
 as the amanuensis of their posthumous productions, and 
 thus secure the endless renown that they have forfeited 
 by going hence too early. But I have my own business 
 to attend to ; and besides, a medical gentleman, who 
 interests himself in some little ailments of mine, advises 
 me not to make too free use of pen and ink. There are 
 clerks enough out of employment who would be glad of 
 such a job. 
 
 Good bye ! are you alive or dead ? And what are 
 you about ? Still scribbling for the Democratic ? And 
 do those infernal compositors and proof-readers mis- 
 print your unfortunate productions as vilely as ever? 
 It is too bad. Let every man manufacture his own non- 
 sense, say I ! Expect me home soon, and to whisper 
 you a secret in company with the poet Campbell, who 
 purposes to visit Wyoming, and enjoy the shadow of 
 the laurels that he planted there. Campbell is now an 
 old man. He calls himself well, better than ever in his 
 life, but looks strangely pale, and so shadow-like, that 
 one might almost poke a finger through his densest 
 material. I tell him, by way of joke, that he is as dim 
 and forlorn as Memory, though as unsubstantial as 
 Hope. 
 
 Your true friend, P.
 
 126 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 P.S. Pray present my most respectful regards to our 
 venerable and revered friend, Mr. Brockden Brown. It 
 gratifies me to learn that a complete edition of his works, 
 in a double-columned octavo volume, is shortly to issue 
 from the press, at Philadelphia. Tell him that no Ameri- 
 can writer enjoys a more classic reputation on this side 
 of the water. Is old Joel Barlow yet alive? Uncon- 
 scionable man ! Why, he must have nearly fulfilled 
 his century ! And does he meditate an epic on the war 
 between Mexico ard Texas, with machinery contrived 
 on the principle of the steam-engine, as being the nearest 
 to celestial agency that our epoch can boast ? How can 
 he expect ever to rise again, if, while just sinking into 
 his grave, he persists in burthening himself with such a 
 ponderosity of leaden verses ?
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 
 
 ONCE upon a time but whether in the time past 
 or time to come, is a matter of little or no moment 
 this wide world had become so overburthened with 
 an accumulation of worn-out trumpery, that the inhab- 
 itants determined to rid themselves of it by a general 
 bonfire. The site fixed upon, at the representation of 
 the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot 
 as any other on the globe, was one of the broadest 
 prairies of the West, where no human habitation would 
 be endangered by the flames, and where a vast assem- 
 blage of spectators might commodiously admire the 
 show. Having a taste for sights of this kind, and 
 imagining, likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire 
 might reveal some profundity or moral truth, heretofore 
 hidden in mist or darkness, I made it convenient to 
 journey thither and be present. At my arrival, although 
 the heap of condemned rubbish was as yet compara- 
 tively small, the torch had already been applied. Amid 
 that boundless plain, in the dusk of the evening, like a 
 far-off star alone in the firmament, there was merely 
 visible one tremulous gleam, whence none could have 
 anticipated so fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue. 
 With every moment, however, there came foot-travellers, 
 women holding up their aprons, men on horseback, 
 wheel-barrows, lumbering baggage wagons, and other 
 vehicles, great and small, and from far and near, laden 
 with articles that were judged fit for nothing but to be 
 burnt. 
 
 " What materials have been used to kindle the flame?" 
 inquired I of a bystander, for I was desirous of know- 
 ing the whole process of the affair from beginning to 
 end,
 
 128 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 The person whom I addressed was a grave man, fifty 
 years old, or thereabout, who had evidently come thither 
 as a looker-on ; he struck me immediately as having 
 weighed for himself the true value of life and its cir- 
 cumstances, and therefore as feeling little personal in- 
 terest in whatever judgment the world might form of 
 them. Before answering my question, he looked me in 
 the face, by the kindling light of the fire. 
 
 "Oh, some very dry combustibles," replied he, "and 
 extremely suitable to the purpose no other, in fact, 
 than yesterday's newspapers, last month's magazines, and 
 last year's withered leaves. Here, now, comes some 
 antiquated trash, that will take fire like a handful of 
 shavings." 
 
 As he spoke, some rough-looking men advanced to 
 the verge of the bonfire, and threw in, as it appeared, 
 all the rubbish of the Herald's office ; the blazonry of 
 coat-armor, the crests and devices of illustrious families ; 
 pedigrees that extended back, like lines of light, into the 
 mist of the dark ages, together with stars, garters, and 
 embroidered collars, each of which, as paltry a bauble as it 
 might appear to the uninstructed eye, had once possessed 
 vast significance, and was still, in truth, reckoned among 
 the most precious of moral or material facts, by the wor- 
 shippers of the gorgeous past. Mingled with this con- 
 fused heap, which was tossed into the flames by armfuls 
 at once, were innumerable badges of knighthood, com- 
 prising those of all the European sovereignties, and 
 Napoleon's decoration of the Legion of Honor, the 
 ribands of which were entangled with those of the an- 
 cient order of St. Louis. There, too, were the medals 
 of our own society of Cincinnati, by means of which, 
 as history tells us, an order of hereditary knights came 
 near being constituted out of the king-quellers of the 
 Revolution. And besides, there were the patents of 
 nobility of German counts and barons, Spanish gran- 
 dees, and English peers, from the worm-eaten instru- 
 ments signed by William the Conqueror, down to the 
 bran-new parchment of the latest lord who has received 
 his honors from the fair hand of Victoria.
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 129 
 
 At sight of these dense volumes of smoke, mingled 
 with vivid jets of flame that gushed and eddied forth 
 from this immense pile of earthly distinctions, the multi- 
 tude of plebeian spectators set up a joyous shout, and 
 clapt their hands with an emphasis that made the welkin 
 echo. That was their moment of triumph, achieved, after 
 long ages, over creatures of the same clay and the same 
 spiritual infirmities, who had dared to assume the privi- 
 leges due only to Heaven's better workmanship. But 
 now there rushed towards the blazing heap a gray-haired 
 man, of stately presence, wearing a coat from the breast 
 of which a star, or other badge of rank, seemed to have 
 been forcibly wrenched away. He had not the tokens 
 of intellectual power in his face ; but still there was the 
 demeanor the habitual and almost native dignity 
 of one who had been born to the idea of his own social 
 superiority, and had never felt it questioned till that 
 moment. 
 
 " People," cried he, gazing at the ruin of what was 
 dearest to his eyes with grief and wonder, but, never- 
 theless, with a degree of stateliness ; " people, what have 
 you done ! This fire is consuming all that marked your 
 advance from barbarism, or that could have prevented 
 your relapse thither. We the men of the privileged 
 orders were those who kept alive, from age to age, 
 the old chivalrous spirit; the gentle and generous 
 thought; the higher, the purer, the more refined and 
 delicate life ! With the nobles, too, you cast off the 
 poet, the painter, the sculptor all the beautiful arts ; 
 for we were their patrons, and created the atmosphere 
 in which they flourish. In abolishing the majestic dis- 
 tinctions of rank, society loses not only its grace but its 
 steadfastness 
 
 More he would doubtless have spoken, but here there 
 arose an outcry, sportive, contemptuous, and indignant, 
 that altogether drowned the appeal of the fallen noble- 
 man, insomuch that, casting one look of despair at his 
 own half-burnt pedigree, he shrunk back into the crowd, 
 glad to shelter himself under his new-found insignifi- 
 cance.
 
 130 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " Let him thank his stars that we have not flung him 
 into the same fire ! " shouted a rude figure, spurning 
 the embers with his foot. " And, henceforth, let no 
 man dare to show a piece of musty parchment as his 
 warrant for lording it over his fellows ! If he have 
 strength of arm, well and good ; it is one species of 
 superiority. If he have wit, wisdom, courage, force of 
 character, let these attributes do for him what they 
 may^/But, from this day forward, no mortal must hope 
 'V) for place and consideration by reckoning up the mouldy/ 
 bone.s of his ancestors ! That nonsense is done away./ 
 
 'fAnd in good time," remarked the grave observer 
 by 4ny side, in a low voice, however "if no worse 
 nonsense comes in its place. But, at all events, this 
 species of nonsense has fairly lived out its life^) 
 
 There was little space to muse or moralize over the 
 embers of this time-honored rubbish ; for, before it was 
 half burnt out, there came another multitude from be- 
 yond the sea, bearing the purple robes of royalty, and 
 the crowns, globes, and sceptres of emperors and kings. 
 All these had been condemned as useless baubles, play- 
 things, at best, fit only for the infancy of the world, or 
 rods to govern and chastise it in its nonage ; but with 
 which universal manhood, at its full-grown stature, could 
 no longer brook to be insulted. Into such contempt 
 had these regal insignia now fallen, that the gilded 
 crown and tinselled robes of the player-king, from Drury- 
 Lane Theatre, had been thrown in among the rest, 
 doubtless as a mockery of his brother-monarchs on the 
 great stage of the world. It was a strange sight to 
 discern the crown-jewels of England, glowing and flash- 
 ing in the midst of the fire. Some of them had been 
 delivered down from the time of the Saxon princes ; 
 others were purchased with vast revenues, or, perchance, 
 ravished from the dead brows of the native potentates 
 of Hindostan ; and the whole now blazed with a daz- 
 zling lustre, as if a star had fallen in that spot, and been 
 shattered into fragments. The splendor of the ruined 
 monarchy had no reflection, save in those inestimable 
 precious stones. But enough on this subject. It were
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 131 
 
 but tedious to describe how the Emperor of Austria's 
 mantle was converted to tinder, and how the posts and 
 pillars of the French throne became a heap of coals, 
 which it was impossible to distinguish from those of any 
 other wood. Let me add, however, that I noticed one 
 of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar 
 of Russia's sceptre, which he afterwards flung into the 
 flames. 
 
 " The smell of singed garments is quite intolerable 
 here," observed my new acquaintance, as the breeze 
 enveloped us in the smoke of a royal wardrobe. " Let 
 us get to windward, and see what they are doing on 
 the other side of the bonfire." 
 
 We accordingly passed around, and were just in 
 time to witness the arrival of a vast procession of 
 Washingtonians as the votaries of temperance call 
 themselves nowadays accompanied by thousands of 
 the Irish disciples of Father Mathew, with that great 
 apostle at their head. They brought a rich contribu- 
 tion to the bonfire ; being nothing less than all the 
 hogsheads and barrels of liquor in the world, which 
 they rolled before them across the prairie. 
 
 " Now, my children," cried Father Mathew, when 
 they reached the verge of the fire " one shove more, 
 and the work is done ! And now let us stand off and 
 see Satan deal with his own liquor ! " 
 
 Accordingly, having placed their wooden vessels 
 within reach of the flames, the procession stood off 
 at a safe distance, and soon beheld them burst into a 
 blaze that reached the clouds, and threatened to set 
 the sky itself on fire. And well it might. ^JFor here 
 was the whole world's stock of spirituous liquors, which, 
 instead of kindling a frenzied light in the eyes of indi- 
 vidual topers, as of yore, soared upwards with a be- 
 wildering gleam that startled all mankind. It was the 
 aggregate of that fierce fire which would otherwise 
 have scorched the hearts of millions?) Meantime, 
 numberless bottles of precious wine were flung into 
 the blaze, which lapped up the contents as if it loved 
 them, and grew, like other drunkards, the merrier and
 
 ij2 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 fiercer for what it quaffed. Never again will the in- 
 satiable thirst of the fire-fiend be so pampered ! Here 
 were the treasures of famous bon-vivants liquors that 
 had been tossed on ocean, and mellowed in the sun, 
 and hoarded long in the recesses of the earth the 
 pale, the gold, the ruddy juice of whatever vineyards 
 were most delicate the entire vintage of Tokay 
 all mingling in one stream with the vile fluids of the 
 common pot-house, and contributing to heighten the 
 self-same blaze. And while it rose in a gigantic spire, 
 that seemed to wave against the arch of the firmament, 
 and combine itself with the light of stars, the multitude 
 
 fave a shout, as if the broad earth were exulting in its 
 eliverance from the curse of ages. 
 QBut the joy was not universal. Many deemed that 
 human life would be gloomier than ever, when that 
 brief illumination should sink down. While the re- 
 formers were at work, I overheard muttered expostu- 
 lations from several respectable gentlemen with red 
 noses, and wearing gouty shoes ; and a ragged worthy, 
 whose face looked like a hearth where the fire is burnt 
 out, now expressed his discontent more openly and boldlyV 
 
 "What is this world good for," said the last toper, 
 "now that we can never be jolly any more? What 
 is to comfort the poor man in sorrow and perplexity ? 
 how is he to keep his heart warm against the cold 
 winds of this cheerless earth ? and what do you pro- 
 pose to give him in exchange for the solace that you 
 take away ? How are old friends to sit together by 
 the fireside, without a cheerful glass between them ? 
 A plague upon your reformation ! It is a sad world, 
 a cold world, a selfish world, a low world, not worth 
 an honest fellow's living in, now that good fellowship 
 is gone forever ! " 
 
 This harangue excited great mirth among the by- 
 standers. But, preposterous as was the sentiment, I 
 could not help commiserating the forlorn condition of 
 the last toper, whose boon-companions had dwindled 
 away from his side, leaving the poor fellow without 
 a soul to countenance him in sipping his liquor, nor
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 133 
 
 indeed any liquor to sip. Not that this was quite the 
 true state of the case; for I had observed him, at a 
 critical moment, filch a bottle of fourth-proof brandy 
 that fell beside the bonfire, and hide it in his pocket. 
 
 The spirituous and fermented liquors being thus dis- 
 posed of, the zeal of the reformers next induced them 
 to replenish the fire with ajl the boxes of tea and bags 
 of coffee in the world. ifAnd now came the planters 
 of Virginia, bringing the'?? crops of tobacco. These, 
 being cast upon the heap of inutility, aggregated it to 
 the size of a mountain, and incensed the atmosphere 
 with such potent fragrance that methought we should 
 never draw pure breath again. The present sacrifice 
 seemed to startle the lovers of the jyeed more than 
 any that they had hitherto witnessed.^ 
 
 " Well, they Ve put my pipe out," sam an old gentle- 
 man, flinging it into the flames in a pet. " What is 
 this world coming to? Everything rich and racy 
 all the spice of life is to be condemned as useless. 
 Now that they have kindled the bonfire, if these non- 
 sensical reformers would fling themselves into it, all 
 would be well enough ! " 
 
 " Be patient," responded a stanch conservative ; " it 
 will come to that in the end. They will first fling us in, 
 and finally themselves." 
 
 From the general and systematic measures of re- 
 form, I now turned to consider the individual contribu- 
 tions to this memorable bonfire. In many instances 
 these were of a very amusing character. One poor 
 fellow threw in his empty purse, and another a bundle 
 of counterfeit or insolvable bank notes. Fashionable 
 ladies threw in their last season's bonnets, together 
 with heaps of ribbons, yellow lace, and much other 
 half-worn milliner's ware ; all of which proved even 
 more evanescent in the fire than it had been in the 
 fashion. A multitude of lovers of both sexes dis- 
 carded maids or bachelors, and couples mutually weary 
 of one another tossed in bundles of perfumed letters 
 and enamored sonnets. A hack politician, being de- 
 prived of bread by the loss of office, threw in his
 
 i 34 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 teeth, which happened to be false ones. The Rev. 
 Sidney Smith having voyaged across the Atlantic 
 for that sole purpose came up to the bonfire with 
 a bitter grin, and threw in certain repudiated bonds, 
 fortified though they were with the broad seal of 
 a sovereign state. A little boy of five years old, in 
 the premature manliness of the present epoch, threw 
 in his playthings; a college graduate, his diploma; 
 an apothecary, ruined by the spread of homoeopathy, 
 his whole stock of drugs and medicines; a physician, 
 his library ; a parson, his old sermons ; and a fine gentle- 
 man of the old school, his code of manners, which he 
 had formerly written down for the benefit of the next 
 generation. A widow, resolving on a second marriage, 
 slyly threw in her dead husband's miniature. A young 
 man jilted by his mistress, would willingly have flung 
 his own desperate heart into the flames, but could find 
 no means to wrench it out of his bosom. An Ameri- 
 can author, whose works were neglected by the public, 
 threw his pen and paper into the bonfire, and betook 
 himself to some less discouraging occupation. It some- 
 what startled me to overhear a number of ladies, highly 
 respectable in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns 
 and petticoats into the flames, and assume the garb, 
 together with the manners, duties, offices, and respon- 
 sibilities, of the opposite sex. 
 
 What favor was accorded to this scheme, I am unable 
 to say ; my attention being suddenly drawn to a poor, 
 deceived, and half-delirious girl, who, exclaiming that she 
 was the most worthless thing alive or dead, attempted 
 to cast herself into the fire, amid all that wrecked and 
 broken trumpery of the world. A good man, however, 
 ran to her rescue. 
 
 " Patience, my poor girl ! " said he, as he drew her 
 back from the fierce embrace of the destroying angel. 
 " Be patient, and abide Heaven's will. So long as you 
 possess a living soul, all may be restored to its first fresh- 
 ness. These things of matter, and creations of human 
 fantasy, are fit for nothing but to be burnt, when once 
 they have had their day. But your day is eternity ! "
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 135 
 
 "Yes," said the wretched girl, whose frenzy seemed 
 now to have sunk down into deep despondency; "yes, 
 and the sunshine is blotted out of it ! " 
 
 It was now rumored among the spectators that all the 
 weapons and munitions of war were to be thrown into 
 the bonfire, with the exception of the world's stock of 
 gunpowder, which, as the safest mode of disposing of 
 it, had already been drowned in the sea. This intelli- 
 gence seemed to awaken great diversity of opinion. 
 The hopeful philanthropist esteemed it a token that the 
 rnftlennium was already come ; while persons of another 
 stamp, in whose view mankind was a breed of bull- 
 dogs, prophesied that all the old stoutness, fervor, noble- 
 ness, generosity, and magnanimity of the race would 
 disappear; these qualities, as they affirmed, requiring 
 blood for their nourishment. They comforted them- 
 selves, however, in the belief that the proposed aboli- 
 tion of war was impracticable, for any length of time 
 together/! 
 
 Be that as it might, numberless great guns, whose 
 thunder had long been the voice of battle the artillery 
 of the Armada, the battering-trains of Marlborough, and 
 the adverse cannon of Napoleon and Wellington were 
 trundled into the midst of the fire. By the continual 
 addition of dry combustibles, it had now waxed so in- 
 tense that neither brass nor iron could withstand it. It 
 was wonderful to behold how these terrible instruments 
 of slaughter melted away like playthings of wax. Then 
 the armies of the earth wheeled around the mighty 
 furnace, with their military music playing triumphant 
 marches, and flung in their muskets and swords. The 
 standard-bearers, likewise, cast one look upward at their 
 banners, all tattered with shot-holes, and inscribed with 
 the names of victorious fields, and, giving them a last 
 flourish on the breeze, they lowered them into the flame, 
 which snatched them upward in its rush towards the 
 clouds. This ceremony being over, the world was left 
 without a single weapon in its hands, except, possibly, a 
 few old king's arms and rusty swords, and other trophies 
 of the Revolution, in some-of our state armories. And
 
 136 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 now the drums were beaten and the trumpets brayed 
 all together, as a prelude to the proclamation of univer- 
 sal and eternal peace, and the announcement that glory 
 was no longer to be won by blood ; but that it would 
 henceforth be the contention of the human race to work 
 out the greatest mutual good, and that beneficence, in 
 the future annals of the earth, would claim the praise 
 of valor. The blessed tidings were accordingly promul- 
 gated, and caused infinite rejoicings among those who 
 had stood aghast at the horror and absurdity of war. 
 
 But I saw a grim smile pass over the seared visage of 
 a stately old commander by his war-worn figure and 
 rich military dress, he might have been one of Napo- 
 leon's famous marshals who, with the rest of the 
 world's soldiery, had just flung away the sword 
 that had been familiar to his right hand for half a 
 century. 
 
 " Aye, aye ! " grumbled he. " Let them proclaim 
 what they please ; but, in the end, we shall find that all 
 this foolery has only made more work for the armorers 
 and cannon-founders." 
 
 " Why, sir," exclaimed I, in astonishment, " do you 
 imagine that the human race will ever so far return on 
 the steps of its past madness as to weld another sword, 
 or cast another cannon ? " 
 
 " There will be no need," observed, with a sneer, one 
 who neither felt benevolence, nor had faith in it. 
 " When Cain wished to slay his brother, he was at no 
 loss for a weapon." 
 
 "We shall see," replied the veteran commander. "If 
 I am mistaken, so much the better ; but in my opinion 
 
 without pretending to philosophize about the matter 
 
 the necessity of war lies far deeper than these honest 
 gentlemen suppose. What ! Is there a field for all the 
 petty disputes of individuals, and shall there be no great 
 law-court for the settlement of national difficulties ? The 
 battle-field is the only court where such suits can be 
 tried ! " 
 
 "You forget, general," rejoined I, "that, in this 
 advanced stage of civilization, Reason and Philanthropy
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 137 
 
 combined will constitute just such a tribunal as is 
 requisite." 
 
 " Ah, I had forgotten that, indeed ! " said the old 
 warrior, as he limped away. 
 
 The fire was now to be replenished with materials 
 that had hitherto been considered of even greater im- 
 portance to the well-being of society, than the warlike 
 munitions which we had already seen consumed. A 
 body of reformers had travelled all over the earth, in 
 quest of the machinery by which the different nations 
 were accustomed to inflict the punishment of death. A 
 shudder passed through the multitude, as these ghastly 
 emblems were dragged forward. Even the flames 
 seemed at first to shrink away, displaying the shape 
 and murderous contrivance of each in a full blaze of 
 light, which, of itself, was sufficient to convince man- 
 kind of the long and deadly error of human law. Those 
 old implements of cruelty those horrible monsters 
 of mechanism those inventions which it seemed to 
 demand something worse than man's natural heart to 
 contrive, and which had lurked in the dusky nooks of 
 ancient prisons, the subject of terror-stricken legend 
 were now brought forth to view. Headsmen's axes, 
 with the rust of noble and royal blood upon them, and 
 a vast collection of halters that had choked the breath 
 of plebeian victims, were thrown in together. A shout 
 greeted the arrival of the guillotine, which was thrust 
 forward on the same wheels that had borne it from one' 
 to another of the blood-stained streets of Paris. But 
 the loudest roar of applause went up, telling the dis- 
 tant sky of the triumph of the earth's redemption, when 
 the gallows made its appearance. An ill-looking fellow, 
 however, rushed forward, and, putting himself in the 
 path of the reformers, bellowed hoarsely, and fought 
 with brute fury to stay their progress. 
 
 It was little matter of surprise, perhaps, that the 
 executioner should thus do his best to vindicate and 
 uphold the machinery by which he himself had his 
 livelihood, and worthier individuals their death. But 
 it deserved special note, that men of a far different
 
 138 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 sphere, even of that class in whose guardianship the 
 world is apt to trust its benevolence were found to 
 take the hangman's view of the question. 
 
 " Stay, my brethren ! " cried one of them. " You are 
 misled by a false philanthropy ! you know not what 
 you do. The gallows is a Heaven-ordained instrument ! 
 Bear it back, then, reverently, and set it up in its old 
 place ; else the world will fall to speedy ruin and 
 desolation ! " 
 
 " Onward, onward ! " shouted a leader in the reform. 
 " Into the flames with the accursed instrument of man's 
 bloody policy. How can human law inculcate benevo- 
 lence and love, while it persists in setting up the gallows 
 as its chief symbol ? One heave more, good friends, 
 and the world will be redeemed from its greatest 
 error ! " 
 
 A thousand hands, that, nevertheless, loathed the 
 touch, now lent their assistance, and thrust the ominous 
 burthen far, far, into the centre of the raging furnace. 
 There its fatal and abhorred image was beheld, first 
 black, then a red coal, then ashes. 
 
 " That was well done ! " exclaimed I. 
 
 "Yes, it was well done," replied but with less 
 enthusiasm than I expected the thoughtful observer 
 who was still at my side ; " well done, if the world be 
 good enough for the measure. Death, however, is an 
 idea that cannot easily be dispensed with, in any con- 
 dition between the primal innocence and that other 
 purity and perfection, which, perchance, we are des- 
 tined to attain after travelling round the full circle. 
 But, at all events, it is well that the experiment should 
 now be tried." 
 
 " Too cold ! too cold ! " impatiently exclaimed the 
 young and ardent leader in this triumph. " Let the 
 heart have its voice here, as well as the intellect. And 
 as for ripeness and as for progress let mankind 
 always do the highest, kindest, noblest thing that, at 
 any given period, it has attained the perception of ; 
 and surely that thing cannot be wrong, nor wrongly 
 timed."
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 139 
 
 I know not whether it were the excitement of the 
 scene, or whether the good people around the bonfire 
 were really growing more enlightened every instant; 
 but they now proceeded to measures, in the full length 
 of which I was hardly prepared to keep them company. 
 For instance, some threw their marriage certificates into 
 the flames, and declared themselves candidates for a 
 higher, holier, and more comprehensive union than that 
 which had subsisted from the birth of time, under the 
 form of the connubial tie. Others hastened to the vaults 
 of banks, and to the coffers of the rich all of which 
 were open to the first comer, on this fated occasion 
 and brought entire bales of paper-money to enliven the 
 blaze and tons of coin to be melted down by its intensity. 
 Henceforth, they said, universal benevolence, uncoined 
 and exhaustless, was to be the golden currency of the 
 world. At this intelligence, the bankers, and specula- 
 tors in the stocks, grew pale ; and a pickpocket, who 
 had reaped a rich harvest among the crowd, fell down 
 in a deadly fainting-fit. A few men of business burnt 
 their day-books and ledgers, the notes and obligations of 
 their creditors, and all other evidences of debts due to 
 themselves ; while perhaps a somewhat larger number 
 satisfied their zeal for reform with the sacrifice of any 
 uncomfortable recollection of their own indebtment. 
 There was then a cry, that the period was arrived when 
 the title-deeds of landed property should be given to 
 the flames, and the whole soil of the earth revert to the 
 public, from whom it had been wrongfully abstracted, 
 and most unequally distributed among individuals. An- 
 other party demanded that all written constitutions, set 
 forms of government, legislative acts, statute-books, and 
 everything else on which human invention had en- 
 deavored to stamp its arbitrary laws, should at once 
 be destroyed, leaving the consummated world as free as 
 the man first created. 
 
 Whether any ultimate action was taken with regard 
 to these propositions, is beyond my knowledge; for, 
 just then, some matters were in progress that concerned 
 my sympathies more nearly.
 
 140 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " See ! see ! what heaps of books and pam- 
 phlets ! " cried a fellow, who did not seem to be a lover 
 of literature. " Now we shall have a glorious blaze ! " 
 
 "That's just the thing," said a modern philosopher. 
 " Now we shall get rid of the weight of dead men's 
 thought, which has hitherto pressed so heavily on the 
 living intellect that it has been incompetent to any 
 effectual self-exertion. Well done, my lads ! Into the 
 fire with them ! Now you are enlightening the world, 
 indeed ! " 
 
 " But what is to become of the Trade ? " cried a 
 frantic bookseller. 
 
 " Oh, by all means, let them accompany their mer- 
 chandise," coolly observed an author. " It will be a 
 noble funeral pile ! " 
 
 The truth was, that the human race had now reached 
 a stage of progress so far beyond what the wisest and 
 wittiest men of former ages had ever dreamed of, that 
 it would have been a manifest absurdity to allow the 
 earth to be any longer encumbered with their poor 
 achievements in the literary line. Accordingly, a thor- 
 ough and searching investigation had swept the book- 
 sellers' shops, hawkers' stands, public and private 
 libraries, and even the little book-shelf by the country 
 fireside, and had brought the world's entire mass of 
 printed paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the already 
 mountain-bulk of our illustrious bonfire. Thick, heavy 
 folios, containing the labors of lexicographers, commen- 
 tators, and encyclopaedists, were flung in, and, falling 
 among the embers with a leaden thump, smouldered 
 away to ashes, like rotten wood. The small, richly gilt 
 French tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumes 
 of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower 
 of sparkles and little jets of flame ; while the current 
 literature of the same nation burnt red and blue, and 
 threw an infernal light over the visages of the specta- 
 tors, converting them all to the aspect of parti-colored 
 fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent 
 of brimstone. The English standard authors made ex- 
 cellent fuel, generally exhibiting the properties of sound
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 141 
 
 oak logs. Milton's works, in particular, sent up a power- 
 ful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal, which prom- 
 ised to endure longer than almost any other material of 
 the pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of 
 such marvellous splendor that men shaded their eyes 
 as against the sun's meridian glory ; nor even when the 
 works of his own elucidators were flung upon him did 
 he cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance from beneath 
 the ponderous heap. It is my belief that he is still blaz- 
 ing as fervidly as ever. 
 
 " Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame," 
 remarked I, "he might then consume the midnight oil 
 to some good purpose." 
 
 " That is the very thing which modern poets have 
 been too apt to do, or at least to attempt," answered a 
 critic. " The chief benefit to be expected from this 
 conflagration of past literature undoubtedly is, that 
 writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps 
 at the sun or stars." 
 
 " If they can reach so high," said I. " But that task 
 requires a giant, who may afterward distribute the light 
 among inferior men. It is not every one that can steal 
 the fire from heaven, like Prometheus ; but when once 
 he had done the deed, a thousand hearths were kindled 
 by it." 
 
 It amazed me much to observe how indefinite was 
 the proportion between the physical mass of any given 
 author, and the property of brilliant and long-continued 
 combustion. For instance, there was not a quarto vol- 
 ume of the last century nor, indeed, of the present 
 that could compete, in that particular, with a child's 
 little gilt-covered book, containing Mother Goose's Mel- 
 odies. The Life and Death of Tom Thumb outlasted 
 the biography of Marlborough. An epic indeed, a 
 dozen of them was converted to white ashes, before 
 the single sheet of an old ballad was half consumed. 
 In more than one case, too, when volumes of applauded 
 verse proved incapable of anything better than a stifling 
 smoke, an unregarded ditty of some nameless bard 
 perchance in the corner of a newspaper soared up
 
 i 4 2 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 among the stars, with a flame as brilliant as their own. 
 Speaking of the properties of flame, methought Shel- 
 ley's poetry emitted a purer light than almost any other 
 productions of his day ; contrasting beautifully with the 
 fitful and lurid gleams, and gushes of black vapor, that 
 flashed and eddied from the volumes of Lord Byron. 
 As for Tom Moore, some of his songs diffused an odor 
 like a burning pastille. 
 
 I felt particular interest in watching the combustion 
 of American authors, and scrupulously noted, by my 
 watch, the precise number of moments that changed 
 most of them from shabbily printed books to indistin- 
 guishable ashes. It would be invidious, however, if 
 not perilous, to betray these awful secrets; so that I 
 shall content myself with observing, that it was not 
 invariably the writer most frequent in the public mouth 
 that made the most splendid appearance in the bonfire. 
 I especially remember, that a great deal of excellent 
 inflammability was exhibited in a thin volume of poems 
 by Ellery Channing ; although, to speak the truth, there 
 were certain portions that hissed and spluttered in a 
 very disagreeable fashion. A curious phenomenon 
 occurred in reference to several writers, native as well 
 as foreign. Their books, though of highly respectable 
 figure, instead of bursting into a blaze, or even smoul- 
 dering out their substance in smoke, suddenly melted 
 away, in a manner that proved them to be ice. 
 
 If it be no lack of modesty to mention my own works, 
 it must here be confessed, that I looked for them with 
 fatherly interest, but in vain. Too probably, they were 
 changed to vapor by the first action of the heat; at 
 best, I can only hope that, in their quiet way, they con- 
 tributed a glimmering spark or two to the splendor of 
 the evening. 
 
 " Alas ! and woe is me ! " thus bemoaned himself a 
 heavy-looking gentleman in green spectacles. "The 
 world is utterly ruined, and there is nothing to live for 
 any longer ! The business of my life is snatched from 
 me. Not a volume to be had for love or money ! " 
 
 " This," remarked the sedate observer beside me, "is
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 143 
 
 a book-worm one of those men who are born to 
 gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are covered 
 with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain 
 of ideas ; and, in good earnest, now that the old stock 
 is abolished, I do not see what is to become of the poor 
 fellow. Have you no word of comfort for him ? " r \ 
 
 /' My dear sir," said I, to the desperate book-worm, ^ 
 ''is not Nature better than a book ?/- is not the human \J 
 heart deeper than any system of ^philosophy ? is not 
 life replete with more instruction than past observers 
 have found it possible to write down in maxims ? Be of 
 good cheer ! The great book of Time is still spread 
 open before us ; and, if we read it aright, it will be to 
 us a volume of eternal Truth." 
 
 "Oh, my books, my books, my precious printed 
 books ! " reiterated the forlorn book-worm. " My only 
 reality was a bound volume ; and now they will not 
 leave me even a shadowy pamphlet ! " 
 
 In fact, the last remnant of the literature of all the 
 ages was now descending upon the blazing heap, in the 
 shape of a cloud of pamphlets from the press of 
 the New World. These, likewise, were consumed in 
 the twinkling of an eye, leaving the earth, for the first 
 time since the days of Cadmus, free from the plague of 
 letters an enviable field for the authors of the next 
 generation ! 
 
 " Well ! and does anything remain to be done ? " 
 inquired I, somewhat anxiously. " Unless we set fire 
 to the earth itself, and then leap boldly off into infinite 
 space, I know not that we can carry reform to any 
 further point." 
 
 " You are vastly mistaken, my good friend," said the 
 observer. " Believe me, the fire will not be allowed to 
 settle down without the addition of fuel that will 
 startle many persons, who have lent a willing hand thus 
 far." 
 
 Nevertheless, there appeared to be a relaxation of 
 effort, for a little time, during which, probably, the 
 leaders of the movement were considering what should 
 be done next. In the interval, a philosopher threw his
 
 i 4 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD M^NSE 
 
 theory into the flames ; a sacrifice which, by those who 
 knew how to estimate it, was pronounced the most 
 remarkable that had yet been made. The combustion, 
 however, was by no means brilliant. Some indefatiga- 
 ble people, scorning to take a moment's ease, now em- 
 ployed themselves in collecting all the withered leaves 
 and fallen boughs of the forest, and thereby recruited 
 the bonfire to a greater height than ever. But this was 
 mere by-play. 
 
 "Here comes the fresh fuel that I spoke of," said my 
 companion. 
 
 To my astonishment, the persons who now advanced 
 into the vacant space around the mountain fire, bore 
 surplices and other priestly garments, mitres, crosiers, 
 and a confusion of Popish and Protestant emblems, 
 with which it seemed their purpose to consummate the 
 great Act of Faith. Crosses, from the spires of old 
 cathedrals, were cast upon the heap with as little 
 remorse as if the reverence of centuries, passing in 
 long array beneath the lofty towers, had not looked up 
 to them as the holiest of symbols. The font, in which 
 infants were consecrated to God; the sacramental 
 vessels, whence Piety received the hallowed draught ; 
 were given to the same destruction. Perhaps it most 
 nearly touched my heart to see, among these devoted 
 relics, fragments of the humble communion-tables and 
 undecorated pulpits, which I recognized as having been 
 torn from the meeting-houses of New England. Those 
 simple edifices might have been permitted to retain all 
 of sacred embellishments that their Puritan founders 
 had bestowed, even though the mighty structure of St. 
 Peter's had sent its spoils to the fire of this terrible 
 sacrifice. Yet I felt that these were but the externals of 
 religion, and might most safely be relinquished by 
 spirits that best knew their deep significance. 
 
 "All is well," said I, cheerfully. "The woodpaths 
 shall be the aisles of our cathedral the firmament 
 itself shall be its ceiling ! What needs an earthly roof 
 between the Deity and his worshippers ? Our faith can 
 well afford to lose all the drapery that even the holiest
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 145 
 
 men have thrown around it, and be only the more 
 sublime in its simplicity." 
 
 " True," said my companion. " But will they pause 
 here?" 
 
 The doubt implied in his question was well founded. 
 In the general destruction of books already described, 
 a holy volume that stood apart from the catalogue 
 of human literature, and yet, in one sense, was at its 
 head had been spared. But the Titan of innova- 
 tion angel or fiend, double in his nature, and capable 
 of deeds befitting both characters at first shaking 
 down only the old and rotten shapes of things, had 
 now, as it appeared, laid his terrible hand upon the 
 main pillars which supported the whole edifice of our 
 moral and spiritual state. The inhabitants of the earth 
 had grown too enlightened to define their faith within a 
 form of words, or to limit the spiritual by any analogy 
 to our material existence. Truths, which the heavens 
 trembled at, were now but a fable of the world's 
 infancy. Therefore, as the final sacrifice of human 
 error, what else remained to be thrown upon the embers 
 of that awful pile, except the Book, which, though a 
 celestial revelation to past ages, was but a voice from a 
 lower sphere, as regarded the present race of man ? It 
 was done ! Upon the blazing heap of falsehood and 
 worn-out truth things that the earth had never 
 needed, or had ceased to need, or had grown childishly 
 weary of fell the ponderous church Bible, the great 
 old volume, that had lain so long on the cushion of the 
 pulpit, and whence the pastor's solemn voice had given 
 holy utterance on so many a Sabbath day. There, 
 likewise, fell the family Bible, which the long-buried 
 patriarch had read to his children in prosperity or 
 sorrow, by the fireside and in the summer shade of 
 trees and had bequeathed downward, as the heirloom 
 of generations. There fell the bosom Bible, the little 
 volume that had been the soul's friend of some sorely 
 tried child of dust, who thence took courage, whether 
 his trial were for life or death, steadfastly confronting 
 both in the strong assurance of immortality.
 
 146 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 All these were flung into the fierce and riotous blaze ; 
 and then a mighty wind came roaring across the plain, 
 with a desolate howl, as if it were the angry lamenta- 
 tions of the Earth for the loss of Heaven's sunshine, 
 and it shook the gigantic pyramid of flame, and scat- 
 tered the cinders of half-consumed abominations around 
 upon the spectators. 
 
 " This is terrible ! " said I, feeling that my cheek 
 grew pale, and seeing a like change in the visages 
 about me. 
 
 "Be of good courage yet," answered the man with 
 whom I had so often spoken. He continued to gaze 
 steadily at the spectacle, with a singular calmness, as if 
 it concerned him merely as an observer. " Be of good 
 courage nor yet exult too much ; for there is far less 
 both of good and evil, in the effect of this bonfire, than 
 the world might be willing to believe." 
 
 " How can that be ? " exclaimed I, impatiently. " Has 
 it not consumed everything ? Has it not swallowed up, 
 or melted down, every human or divine appendage of 
 our mortal state that had substance enough to be acted 
 on by fire ? Will there be anything left us to-morrow 
 morning, better or worse than a heap of embers and 
 ashes ? " 
 
 " Assuredly there will," said my grave friend. " Come 
 hither to-morrow morning or whenever the combus- 
 tible portion of the pile shall be quite burnt out and 
 you will find among the ashes everything really valuable 
 that you have seen cast into the flames. Trust me, the 
 world of to-morrow will again enrich itself with the gold 
 and diamonds which have been cast off by the world of 
 to-day. Not a truth is destroyed nor buried so deep 
 among the ashes, but it will be raked up at last." 
 
 This was a strange assurance. Yet I felt inclined to 
 credit it ; the more especially as I beheld among the 
 wallowing flames a copy of the Holy Scriptures, the 
 pages of which, instead of being blackened into tinder, 
 only assumed a more dazzling whiteness as the finger- 
 marks of human imperfection were purified away. Cer- 
 tain marginal notes and commentaries, it is true, yielded
 
 EARTH'S HOLOCAUST 147 
 
 to the intensity of the fiery test, but without detriment 
 to the smallest syllable that had flamed from the pen of 
 inspiration. 
 
 " Yes there is the proof of what you say," answered 
 I, turning to the observer. " But if only what is evil 
 can feel the action of the fire, then, surely, the conflagra- 
 tion has been of inestimable utility. Yet if I understand 
 aright, you intimate a doubt whether the world's expecta- 
 tion of benefit would be realized by it." 
 
 " Listen to the talk of these worthies," said he, point- 
 ing to a group in front of the blazing pile. " Possibly 
 they may teach you something useful, without intending 
 it." 
 
 The persons whom he indicated consisted of that 
 brutal and most earthly figure who had stood forth so 
 furiously in defence of the gallows the hangman, in 
 short, together with the last thief and the last murderer ; 
 all three of whom were clustered about the last toper. 
 The latter was liberally passing the brandy bottle, which 
 he had rescued from the general destruction of wines 
 and spirits. This little convivial party seemed at the low- 
 est pitch of despondency ; as considering that the puri- 
 fied world must needs be utterly unlike the sphere that 
 they had hitherto known, and therefore but a strange 
 and desolate abode for gentlemen of their kidney. 
 
 " The best counsel for all of us" is," remarked the 
 hangman, "that as soon as we have finished the last 
 drop of liquor I help you, my three friends, to a com- 
 fortable end upon the nearest tree, and then hang my- 
 self on the same bough. This is no world for us any 
 longer." 
 
 " Poh, poh, my good fellows ! " said a dark-com- 
 plexioned personage, who now joined the group his 
 complexion was indeed fearfully dark, and his eyes 
 glowed with a redder light than that of the bonfire 
 " be not so cast down, my dear friends ; you shall see 
 good days yet. There is one thing that these wiseacres 
 have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which 
 all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all ; yes 
 though they had burnt the earth itself to a cinder ! "
 
 148 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 "And what may that be?" eagerly demanded the last 
 murderer. 
 
 " What but the human heart itself ! " said the dark- 
 visaged stranger, with a portentous grin. " And unless 
 they hit upon some method of purifying that foul cavern, 
 forth from it will re-issue all the shapes of wrong and 
 misery the same old shapes, or worse ones which 
 they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume 
 to ashes. I have stood by, this livelong night, and 
 laughed in my sleeve at the whole business. Oh, take 
 my word for it, it will be the old world yet ! " 
 
 This brief conversation supplied me with a theme for 
 lengthened thoughtyXHow sad a truth if true it were 
 that Man's age-long endeavor for perfection had served 
 only to render him the mockery of the Evil Principle, 
 from the fatal circumstance of an error at the very root 
 of the matter !/ /The heart the heart there was the 
 little yet boundless sphere, wherein existed the original 
 wrong, of which the crime and misery of this outward 
 world were merely types. Purify that inward sphere ; 
 *\ and the many shapes of evil that haunt the outward, 
 and which now seem almost our only realities, will turn 
 to shadowy phantoms, and vanish of their own accord. J 
 But if we go no deeper than the Intellect, and strive, / 
 with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and rec- 
 tify what is wrong, our whole accomplishment will be a 
 dream; so unsubstantial, that it matters little whether 
 the bonfire, which I have so faithfully described, were 
 what we choose to call a real event, and a flame that 
 would scorch the finger or only a phosphoric radiance, 
 and a parable of my own brain !
 
 PASSAGES FROM A RELINQUISHED WORK 
 
 AT HOME 
 
 FROM infancy I was under the guardianship of a 
 village parson, who made me the subject of daily 
 prayer and the sufferer of innumerable stripes, using no 
 distinction, as to these marks of paternal love, between 
 myself and his own three boys. The result, it must be 
 owned, has been very different in their cases and mine, 
 they being all respectable men and well settled in life ; 
 the eldest as the successor to his father's pulpit, the 
 second as a physician, and the third as a partner in a 
 wholesale shoe-store ; while I, with better prospects 
 than either of them, have run the course which this vol- 
 ume will describe. Yet there is room for doubt whether 
 I should have been any better contented with such suc- 
 cess as theirs than with my own misfortunes, at least, 
 till after my experience of the latter had made it too 
 late for another trial. 
 
 My guardian had a name of considerable eminence, 
 and fitter for the place it occupies in ecclesiastical his- 
 tory than for so frivolous a page as mine. In his own 
 vicinity, among the lighter part of his hearers, he was 
 called Parson Thumpcushion, from the very forcible 
 gestures with which he illustrated his doctrines. Cer- 
 tainly, if his powers as a preacher were to be estimated 
 by the damage done to his pulpit-furniture, none of his 
 living brethren, and but few dead ones, would have been 
 worthy even to pronounce a benediction after him. 
 Such pounding and expounding the moment he began 
 to grow warm, such slapping with his open palm, 
 thumping with his closed fist, and banging with the 
 whole weight of the great Bible, convinced me that he 
 149
 
 150 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 held, in imagination, either the Old Nick or some Uni- 
 tarian infidel at bay, and belabored his unhappy cushion 
 as proxy for those abominable adversaries. Nothing but 
 this exercise of the body while delivering his sermons 
 could have supported the good parson's health under 
 the mental toil which they cost him in composition. 
 
 Though Parson Thumpcushion had an upright heart, 
 and some called it a warm one, he was invariably stern 
 and severe, on principle, I suppose, to me. With late 
 justice, though early enough, even now, to be tinctured 
 with generosity, I acknowledge him to have been a 
 good and wise man after his own fashion. If his man- 
 agement failed as to myself, it succeeded with his three 
 sons ; nor, I must frankly say, could any mode of edu- 
 cation with which it was possible for him to be acquainted 
 have made me much better than what I was or led me 
 to a happier fortune than the present. He could neither 
 change the nature that God gave me nor adapt his own 
 inflexible mind to my peculiar character. Perhaps it 
 was my chief misfortune that I had neither father nor 
 mother alive; for parents have an instinctive sagacity 
 in regard to the welfare of their children, and the child 
 feels a confidence both in the wisdom and affection of 
 his parents which he cannot transfer to any delegate of 
 their duties, however conscientious. An orphan's fate 
 is hard, be he rich or poor. As for Parson Thump- 
 cushion, whenever I see the old gentleman in my dreams 
 he looks kindly and sorrowfully at me, holding out his 
 hand as if each had something to forgive. With such 
 kindness and such forgiveness, but without the sorrow, 
 may our next meeting be ! 
 
 I was a youth of gay and happy temperament, with 
 an incorrigible levity of spirit, of no vicious propensities, 
 sensible enough, but wayward and fanciful. What a 
 character was this to be brought in contact with the 
 stern old Pilgrim spirit of my guardian ! We were at 
 variance on a thousand points ; but our chief and final 
 dispute arose from the pertinacity with which he in- 
 sisted on my adopting a particular profession ; while I, 
 being heir to a moderate competence, had avowed my
 
 A RELINQUISHED WORK 151 
 
 purpose of keeping aloof from the regular business of 
 life. This would have been a dangerous resolution 
 anywhere in the world ; it was fatal in New England. 
 There is a grossness in the conceptions of my country- 
 men ; they will not be convinced that anv good thing 
 may consist with what they call idleness/ they can an- 
 ticipate nothing but evil of a young rr/an who neither 
 studies physic, law, nor gospel, nor opens a store, nor 
 takes to farming, but manifests an incomprehensible 
 disposition to be satisfied with what his father left him. 
 The principle is excellent in its general influence, but 
 most miserable in its effect on the few that violate it. 
 I had a quick sensitiveness to public opinion, and felt 
 as if it ranked me with the tavern haunters and town 
 paupers, with the drunken poet who hawked his own 
 Fourth of July odes, and the broken soldier who had 
 been good for nothing since last war. The conse- 
 quence of all this was a piece of light-hearted despera- 
 tion. 
 
 I do not overestimate my notoriety when I take it for 
 granted that many of my readers must have heard of me 
 in the wild way of life which I adopted. The idea of 
 becoming a wandering story-teller had been suggested, 
 a year or two before, by an encounter with several 
 merry vagabonds in a showman's wagon, where they 
 and I had sheltered ourselves during a summer shower. 
 The project was not more extravagant than most which 
 a young man forms. Stranger ones are executed every 
 day ; and, not to mention my prototypes in the East, 
 and the wandering orators and poets whom my own 
 ears have heard, I had the example of one illustrious 
 itinerant in the other hemisphere, of Goldsmith, who 
 planned and performed his travels through France and 
 Italy on a less promising scheme than mine. I took 
 credit to myself for various qualifications, mental and 
 personal, suited to the undertaking. Besides, my mind 
 had latterly tormented me for employment, keeping up 
 an irregular activity even in sleep, and making me con- 
 scious that I must toil, if it were but in catching butter- 
 flies. But my chief motives were, discontent with home
 
 152 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 and a bitter grudge against Parson Thumpcushion, who 
 would rather have laid me in my father's tomb than 
 seen me either a novelist or an actor, two characters 
 which I thus hit upon a method of uniting. After all, 
 it was not half so foolish as if I had written romances 
 instead of reciting them. 
 
 The following pages will contain a picture of my 
 vagrant life, intermixed with specimens, generally brief 
 and slight, of that great mass of fiction to which I gave 
 existence, and which has vanished like cloud-shapes. 
 Besides the occasions when I sought a pecuniary re- 
 ward, I was accustomed to exercise my narrative faculty 
 wherever chance had collected a little audience idle 
 enough to listen. These rehearsals were useful in test- 
 ing the strong points of my stories ; and, indeed, the 
 flow of fancy soon came upon me so abundantly that 
 its indulgence was its own reward, though the hope of 
 praise also became a powerful incitement. Since I 
 shall never feel the warm gush of new thought as I did 
 then, let me beseech the reader to believe that my tales 
 were not always so cold as he may find them now. 
 With each specimen will be given a sketch of the cir- 
 cumstances in which the story was told. Thus my 
 air-drawn pictures will be set in frames perhaps more 
 valuable than the pictures themselves, since they will 
 be embossed with groups of characteristic figures, amid 
 the lake and mountain scenery, the villages and fertile 
 fields, of our native land. But I write the book for the 
 sake of its moral, which many a dreaming youth may 
 profit by, though it is the experience of a wandering 
 story-teller. 
 
 A FLIGHT IN THE FOG 
 
 I set out on my rambles one morning in June about 
 sunrise. The day promised to be fair, though at that 
 early hour a heavy mist lay along the earth and settled 
 in minute globules on the folds of my clothes, so that I 
 looked precisely as if touched with a hoar-frost. The
 
 A RELINQUISHED WORK 153 
 
 sky was quite obscured, and the trees and houses invis- 
 ible till they grew out of the fog as I came close upon 
 them. There is a hill towards the west whence the road 
 goes abruptly down, holding a level course through the 
 village and ascending an eminence on the other side, 
 behind which it disappears. The whole view comprises 
 an extent of half a mile. Here I paused; and, while 
 gazing through the misty veil, it partially rose and swept 
 away with so sudden an effect that a gray cloud seemed 
 to have taken the aspect of a small white town. A thin 
 vapor being still diffused through the atmosphere, the 
 wreaths and pillars of fog, whether hung in air or 
 based on earth, appeared not less substantial than the 
 edifices, and gave their own indistinctness to the whole. 
 It was singular that such an unromantic scene should 
 look so visionary. 
 
 Half of the parson's dwelling was a dingy white house, 
 and half of it was a cloud ; but Squire Moody's man- 
 sion, the grandest in the village, was wholly visible, 
 even the lattice-work of the balcony under the front 
 window ; while in another place only two red chimneys 
 were seen above the mist, appertaining to my own pa- 
 ternal residence, then tenanted by strangers. I could 
 not remember those with whom I had dwelt there, not 
 even my mother. The brick edifice of the bank was in 
 the clouds ; the foundations of what was to be a great 
 block of buildings had vanished, ominously, as it proved ; 
 the dry-goods store of Mr. Nightingale seemed a doubt- 
 ful concern ; and Dominicus Pike's tobacco manufactory 
 an affair of smoke, except the splendid image of an 
 Indian chief in front. The white spire of the meeting- 
 house ascended out of the densest heap of vapor, as if 
 that shadowy base were its only support : or, to give a 
 truer interpretation, the steeple was the emblem of 
 Religion, enveloped in mystery below, yet pointing to a 
 cloudless atmosphere, and catching the brightness of the 
 east on its gilded vane. 
 
 As I beheld these objects, and the dewy street, with 
 grassy intervals and a border of trees between the wheel- 
 track and the sidewalks, all so indistinct, and not to be
 
 154 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 traced without an effort, the whole seemed more like 
 memory than reality. I would have imagined that years 
 had already passed, and I was far away, contemplating 
 that dim picture of my native place, which I should retain 
 in my mind through the mist of time. No tears fell from 
 my eyes among the dewdrops of the morning ; nor does 
 it occur to me that I heaved a sigh. In truth, I had 
 never felt such a delicious excitement nor known what 
 freedom was till that moment when I gave up my home 
 and took the whole world in exchange, fluttering the 
 wings of my spirit as if I would have flown from one star 
 to another through the universe. I waved my hand 
 towards the dusky village, bade it a joyous farewell, and 
 turned away to follow any path but that which might 
 lead me back. Never was Childe Harold's sentiment 
 adopted in a spirit more unlike his own. 
 
 Naturally enough, I thought of Don Quixote. Recol- 
 lecting how the knight and Sancho had watched for 
 auguries when they took the road to Toboso, I began, 
 between jest and earnest, to feel a similar anxiety. It 
 was gratified, and by a more poetical phenomenon than 
 the braying of the dappled ass or the neigh of Rosinante. 
 The sun, then just above the horizon, shone faintly 
 through the fog, and formed a species of rainbow in the 
 west, bestriding my intended road like a gigantic portal. 
 I had never known before that a bow could be generated 
 between the sunshine and the morning mist. It had no 
 brilliancy, no perceptible hues, but was a mere unpainted 
 framework, as white and ghostlike as the lunar rainbow, 
 which is deemed ominous of evil. But, with a light 
 heart, to which all omens were propitious, I advanced 
 beneath the misty archway of futurity. 
 
 I had determined not to enter on my profession within 
 a hundred miles of home, and then to cover myself with 
 a fictitious name. The first precaution was reasonable 
 enough, as otherwise Parson Thumpcushion might have 
 put an untimely catastrophe to my story ; but as nobody 
 would be much affected by my disgrace, and all was to 
 be suffered in my own person, I know not why I cared 
 about a name. For a week or two I travelled almost at
 
 A RELINQUISHED WORK 155 
 
 random, seeking hardly any guidance except the whirl- 
 ing of a leaf at some turn of the road, or the green bough 
 that beckoned me, or the naked branch that pointed its 
 withered finger onward. All my care was to be farther 
 from home each night than the preceding morning. 
 
 A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 
 
 One day at noontide, when the sun had burst suddenly 
 out of a cloud, and threatened to dissolve me, I looked 
 round for shelter, whether of tavern, cottage, barn, or 
 shady tree. The first which offered itself was a wood, 
 not a forest, but a trim plantation of young oaks, grow- 
 ing just thick enough to keep the mass of sunshine out, 
 while they admitted a few straggling beams, and thus 
 produced the most cheerful gloom imaginable. A brook, 
 so small and clear, and apparently so cool, that I wanted 
 to drink it up, ran under the road through a little arch 
 of stone without once meeting the sun in its passage from 
 the shade on one side to the shade on the other. As 
 there was a stepping-place over the stone wall and a 
 path along the rivulet, I followed it and discovered its 
 source, a spring gushing out of an old barrel. 
 
 In this pleasant spot I saw a light pack suspended 
 from the branch of a tree, a stick leaning against the 
 trunk, and a person seated on the grassy verge of the 
 spring with its back towards me. He was a slender 
 figure, dressed in black broadcloth, which was none of 
 the finest nor very fashionably cut. On hearing my 
 footsteps he started up rather nervously, and, turning 
 round, showed the face of a young man about my own 
 age, with his finger in a volume which he had been 
 reading till my intrusion. His book was evidently a 
 pocket Bible. Though I piqued myself at that period 
 on my great penetration into people's characters and 
 pursuits, I could not decide whether this young man in 
 black were an unfledged divine from Andover, a college 
 student, or preparing for college at some academy. In 
 either case I would quite as willingly have found a
 
 156 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 merrier companion ; such, for instance, as the comedian 
 with whom Gil Bias shared his dinner beside a fountain 
 in Spain. 
 
 After a nod, which was duly returned, I made a gob- 
 let of oak leaves, filled and emptied it two or three 
 times, and then remarked, to hit the stranger's classical 
 associations, that this beautiful fountain ought to flow 
 from an urn instead of an old barrel. He did not show 
 that he understood the allusion, and replied very briefly, 
 with a shyness that was quite out of place between per- 
 sons who met in such circumstances. Had he treated 
 my next observation in the same way, we should have 
 parted without another word. 
 
 "It is very singular," said I, "though doubtless 
 there are good reasons for it, that Nature should pro- 
 vide drink so abundantly, and lavish it everywhere by 
 the roadside, but so seldom anything to eat. Why 
 should not we find a loaf of bread on this tree as well 
 as a barrel of good liquor at the foot of it ? " 
 
 " There is a loaf of bread on the tree," replied the 
 stranger, without even smiling at a coincidence which 
 made me laugh. " I have something to eat in my bun- 
 dle ; and, if you can make a dinner with me, you shall 
 be welcome." 
 
 " I accept your offer with pleasure," said I. " A pil- 
 grim such as I am must not refuse a providential meal." 
 
 The young man had risen to take his bundle from the 
 branch of the tree, but now turned round and regarded 
 me with great earnestness, coloring deeply at the same 
 time. However, he said nothing, and produced part of 
 a loaf of bread and some cheese, the former being evi- 
 dently home baked, though some days out of the oven. 
 The fare was good enough, with a real welcome, such as 
 his appeared to be. After spreading these articles on 
 the stump of a tree, he proceeded to ask a blessing on 
 our food, an unexpected ceremony, and quite an impres- 
 sive one at our woodland table, with the fountain gush- 
 ing beside us and the bright sky glimmering through 
 the boughs; nor did his brief petition affect me less 
 because his embarrassment made his voice tremble. At
 
 A RELINQUISHED WORK 157 
 
 the end of the meal he returned thanks with the same 
 tremulous fervor. 
 
 He felt a natural kindness for me after thus relieving 
 my necessities, and showed it by becoming less reserved. 
 On my part, I professed never to have relished a dinner 
 better ; and, in requital of the stranger's hospitality, 
 solicited the pleasure of his company to supper. 
 
 " Where ? At your home ? " asked he. 
 
 " Yes," said I, smiling. 
 
 " Perhaps our roads are not the same," observed he. 
 
 " Oh, I can take any road but one, and yet not miss 
 my way," answered I. "This morning I breakfasted at 
 home ; I shall sup at home to-night ; and a moment ago 
 I dined at home. To be sure, there was a certain place 
 which I called home ; but I have resolved not to see it 
 again till I have been quite round the globe and enter 
 the street on the east as I left it on the west. In the 
 mean time, I have a home everywhere, or nowhere, just 
 as you please to take it." 
 
 " Nowhere, then ; for this transitory world is not our 
 home," said the young man, with solemnity. "We are 
 all pilgrims and wanderers; but it is strange that we 
 two should meet." 
 
 I inquired the meaning of this remark, but could 
 obtain no satisfactory reply. But we had eaten salt 
 together, and it was right that we should form acquaint- 
 ance after that ceremony as the Arabs of the desert 
 do, especially as he had learned something about my- 
 self, and the courtesy of the country entitled me to as 
 much information in return. I asked whither he was 
 travelling. 
 
 " I do not know," said he ; "but God knows." 
 
 "That is strange!" exclaimed I; "not that God 
 should know it, but that you should not. And how is 
 your road to be pointed out ? " 
 
 " Perhaps by an inward conviction," he replied, look- 
 ing sideways at me to discover whether I smiled ; " per- 
 haps by an outward sign." 
 
 "Then, believe me," said I, "the outward sign is 
 already granted you, and the inward conviction ought
 
 158 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 to follow. We are told of pious men in old times who 
 committed themselves to the care of Providence, and 
 saw the manifestation of its will in the slightest circum- 
 stances, as in the shooting of a star, the flight of a bird, 
 or the course taken by some brute animal. Sometimes 
 even a stupid ass was their guide. May I not be as 
 good a one ? " 
 
 " I do not know," said the pilgrim, with perfect sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 We did, however, follow the same road, and were not 
 overtaken, as I partly apprehended, by the keepers of 
 any lunatic asylum in pursuit of a stray patient. Per- 
 haps the stranger felt as much doubt of my sanity as I 
 did of his, though certainly with less justice, since I was 
 fully aware of my own extravagances, while he acted as 
 wildly, and deemed it heavenly wisdom. We were a 
 singular couple, strikingly contrasted, yet curiously as- 
 similated, each of us remarkable enough by himself, and 
 doubly so in the other's company. Without any formal 
 compact, we kept together day after day till our union 
 appeared permanent. Even had I seen nothing to love 
 and admire in him, I could never have thought of desert- 
 ing one who needed me continually ; for I never knew 
 a person, not even a woman, so unfit to roam the world 
 in solitude as he was, so painfully shy, so easily dis- 
 couraged by slight obstacles, and so often depressed by 
 a weight within himself. 
 
 I was now far from my native place, but had not yet 
 stepped before the public. A slight tremor seized me 
 whenever I thought of relinquishing the immunities of 
 a private character, and giving every man, and for 
 money too, the right which no man yet possessed, of 
 treating me with open scorn. But about a week after 
 contracting the above alliance I made my bow to an 
 audience of nine persons, seven of whom hissed me in a 
 very disagreeable manner, and not without good cause. 
 Indeed, the failure was so signal that it would have been 
 mere swindling to retain the money, which had been 
 paid on my implied contract to give its value of amuse- 
 ment. So I called in the doorkeeper, bade him refund
 
 A RELINQUISHED WORK 159 
 
 the whole receipts, a mighty sum, and was gratified 
 with a round of applause by way of offset to the hisses. 
 This event would have looked most horrible in antici- 
 pation, a thing to make a man shoot himself, or run 
 amuck, or hide himself in caverns where he might not 
 see his own burning blush ; but the reality was not so 
 very hard to bear. It is a fact that I was more deeply 
 grieved by an almost parallel misfortune which hap- 
 pened to my companion on the same evening. In my 
 own behalf I was angry and excited, not depressed ; my 
 blood ran quick, my spirits rose buoyantly, and I had 
 never felt such a confidence of future success and deter- 
 mination to achieve it as at that trying moment. I 
 resolved to persevere, if it were only to wring the 
 reluctant praise from my enemies. 
 
 Hitherto I had immensely underrated the difficulties 
 of my idle trade ; now I recognized that it demanded 
 nothing short of my whole powers cultivated to the ut- 
 most, and exerted with the same prodigality as if I were 
 speaking for a great party or for the nation at large on 
 the floor of the Capitol. No talent or attainment could 
 come amiss; everything, indeed, was requisite, wide 
 observation, varied knowledge, deep thoughts, and spar- 
 kling ones ; pathos and levity, and a mixture of both, like 
 sunshine in a raindrop ; lofty imagination, veiling itself 
 in the garb of common life ; and the practised art which 
 alone could render these gifts, and more than these, 
 available. Not that I ever hoped to be thus qualified. 
 But my despair was no ignoble one ; for, knowing the 
 impossibility of satisfying myself, even should the world 
 be satisfied, I did my best to overcome it ; investigated 
 the causes of every defect ; and strove, with patient 
 stubbornness, to remove them in the next attempt. It 
 is one of my few sources of pride, that, ridiculous as 
 the object was, I followed it up with the firmness and 
 energy of a man. 
 
 I manufactured a great variety of plots and skeletons 
 of tales, and kept them ready for use, leaving the filling 
 up to the inspiration of the moment ; though I cannot 
 remember ever to have told a tale which did not vary
 
 160 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 considerably from my preconceived idea, and acquire 
 a novelty of aspect as often as I repeated it. Oddly 
 enough, my success was generally in proportion to the 
 difference between the conception and accomplishment. 
 I provided two or more commencements and catastrophes 
 to many of the tales, a happy expedient, suggested by 
 the double sets of sleeves and trimmings which diversi- 
 fied the suits in Sir Piercy Shafton's wardrobe. But my 
 best efforts had a unity, a wholeness, and a separate 
 character that did not admit of this sort of mechanism. 
 
 THE VILLAGE THEATRE 
 
 About the first of September, my fellow-traveller and 
 myself arrived at a country town, where a small com- 
 pany of actors, on their return from a summer's cam- 
 paign in the British Provinces, were giving a series of 
 dramatic exhibitions. A moderately sized hall of the 
 tavern had been converted into a theatre. The per- 
 formances that evening were, The Heir at Law, and No 
 Song, no Supper, with the recitation of Alexander's 
 Feast between the play and farce. The house was thin 
 and dull. But the next day there appeared to be brighter 
 prospects, the playbills announcing at every corner, on 
 the town-pump, and awful sacrilege! on the very door 
 of the meeting-house, an Unprecedented Attraction ! 
 After setting forth the ordinary entertainments of a 
 theatre, the public were informed, in the hugest type that 
 the printing-office could supply, that the manager had 
 been fortunate enough to accomplish an engagement 
 with the celebrated Story-Teller. He would make his 
 first appearance that evening, and recite his famous tale 
 of Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe, which had been 
 received with rapturous applause by audiences in all the 
 principal cities. This outrageous flourish of trumpets, 
 be it known, was wholly unauthorized by me, who had 
 merely made an engagement for a single evening, with- 
 out assuming any more celebrity than the little I pos- 
 sessed. As for the tale, it could hardly have been
 
 A RELINQUISHED WORK 161 
 
 applauded by rapturous audiences, being as yet an un- 
 filled plot; nor even when I stepped upon the stage 
 was it decided whether Mr. Higginbotham should live 
 or die. 
 
 In two or three places, underneath the flaming bills 
 which announced the Story-Teller, was pasted a small 
 slip of paper, giving notice, in tremulous characters, of 
 a religious meeting to be held at the school-house, where, 
 with divine permission, Eliakim Abbott would address 
 sinners on the welfare of their immortal souls. 
 
 In the evening, after the commencement of the tragedy 
 of Douglas, I took a ramble through the town to quicken 
 my ideas by active motion. My spirits were good, with 
 a certain glow of mind which I had already learned to 
 depend upon as the sure prognostic of success. Pass- 
 ing a small and solitary school-house, where a light was 
 burning dimly and a few people were entering the door, 
 I went in with them, and saw my friend Eliakim at the 
 desk. He had collected about fifteen hearers, mostly 
 females. Just as I entered he was beginning to pray in 
 accents so low and interrupted that he seemed to doubt 
 the reception of his efforts both with God and man. 
 There was room for distrust in regard to the latter. At 
 the conclusion of the prayer several of the little audi- 
 ence went out, leaving him to begin his discourse under 
 such discouraging circumstances, added to his natural 
 and agonizing diffidence. Knowing that my presence 
 on these occasions increased his embarrassment, I had 
 stationed myself in a dusky place near the door, and 
 now stole softly out. 
 
 On my return to the tavern the tragedy was already 
 concluded ; and, being a feeble one in itself and indiffer- 
 ently performed, it left so much the better chance for 
 the Story-Teller. The bar was thronged with customers, 
 the toddy-stick keeping a continual tattoo ; while in the 
 hall there was a broad, deep, buzzing sound, with an 
 occasional peal of impatient thunder, all symptoms of 
 an overflowing house and an eager audience. I drank 
 a glass of wine-and-water, and stood at the side scene 
 conversing with a young person of doubtful sex. If a
 
 162 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 gentleman, how could he have performed the singing girl 
 the night before in No Song, no Supper ? Or, if a lady, 
 why did she enact Young Norval, and now wear a green 
 coat and white pantaloons in the character of Little 
 Pickle? In either case the dress was pretty and the 
 wearer bewitching ; so that, at the proper moment, I 
 stepped forward with a gay heart and a bold one ; while 
 the orchestra played a tune that had resounded at many 
 a country ball, and the curtain, as it rose, discovered 
 something like a country bar-room. Such a scene was 
 well enough adapted to such a tale. 
 
 The orchestra of our little theatre consisted of two 
 riddles and a clarinet ; but, if the whole harmony of the 
 Tremont had been there, it might have swelled in vain 
 beneath the tumult of applause that greeted me. The 
 good people of the town, knowing that the world con- 
 tained innumerable persons of celebrity undreamed of 
 by them, took it for granted that I was one, and that 
 their roar of welcome was but a feeble echo of those 
 which had thundered around me in lofty theatres. Such 
 an enthusiastic uproar was never heard. Each person 
 seemed a Briareus clapping a hundred hands, besides 
 keeping his feet and several cudgels in play with stamp- 
 ing and thumping on the floor ; while the ladies flour- 
 ished their white cambric handkerchiefs, intermixed with 
 yellow and red bandanna, like the flags of different 
 nations. After such a salutation, the celebrated Story- 
 Teller felt almost ashamed to produce so humble an 
 affair as Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe. 
 
 This story was originally more dramatic than as there 
 presented, and afforded good scope for mimicry and buf- 
 foonery, neither of which, to my shame, did I spare. I 
 never knew the "magic of a name" till I used that of 
 Mr. Higginbotham. Often as I repeated it, there were 
 louder bursts of merriment than those which responded 
 to what, in my opinion, were more legitimate strokes of 
 humor. The success of the piece was incalculably height- 
 ened by a stiff cue of horsehair, which Little Pickle, in 
 the spirit of that mischief -loving character, had fastened 
 to my collar, where, unknown to me, it kept making the
 
 A RELINQUISHED WORK 163 
 
 queerest gestures of its own in correspondence with all 
 mine. The audience, supposing that some enormous 
 joke was appended to this long tail behind, were inef- 
 fably delighted, and gave way to such a tumult of appro- 
 bation that, just as the story closed, the benches broke 
 beneath them and left one whole row of my admirers 
 on the floor. Even in that predicament they continued 
 their applause. In after times, when I had grown a 
 bitter moralizer, I took this scene for an example how 
 much of fame is humbug ; how much the meed of what 
 our better nature blushes at; how much an accident; 
 how much bestowed on mistaken principles ; and how 
 small and poor the remnant. From pit and boxes there 
 was now a universal call for the Story-Teller. 
 
 That celebrated personage came not when they did 
 call to him. As I left the stage, the landlord, being 
 also the postmaster, had given me a letter with the 
 postmark of my native village, and directed to my 
 assumed name in the stiff old handwriting of Parson 
 Thumpcushion. Doubtless he had heard of the rising 
 renown of the Story-Teller, and conjectured at once 
 that such a nondescript luminary could be no other 
 than his lost ward. His epistle, though I never read 
 it, affected me most painfully. I seemed to see the 
 Puritanic figure of my guardian standing among the 
 fripperies of the theatre and pointing to the players, 
 the fantastic and effeminate men, the painted women, 
 the giddy girl in boy's clothes, merrier than modest, 
 pointing to these with solemn ridicule, and eying me 
 with stern rebuke. His image was a type of the austere 
 duty, and they of the vanities of life. 
 
 I hastened with the letter to my chamber and held it 
 unopened in my hand, while the applause of my buffoon- 
 ery yet sounded through the theatre. Another train of 
 thought came over me. The stern old man appeared 
 again, but now with the gentleness of sorrow, softening 
 his authority with love as a father might, and even bend- 
 ing his venerable head, as if to say that my errors had 
 an apology in his own mistaken discipline. I strode 
 twice across the chamber, then held the letter in the
 
 164 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 flame of the candle, and beheld it consume unread. It 
 is fixed in my mind, and was so at the time, that he had 
 addressed me in a style of paternal wisdom, and love, 
 and reconciliation which I could not have resisted had 
 I but risked the trial. The thought still haunts me that 
 then I made my irrevocable choice between good and 
 evil fate. 
 
 Meanwhile, as this occurrence had disturbed my mind 
 and indisposed me to the present exercise of my profes- 
 sion, I left the town, in spite of a laudatory critique in 
 the newspaper, and untempted by the liberal offers of 
 the manager. As we walked onward, following the 
 same road, on two such different errands, Eliakim 
 groaned in spirit, and labored with tears to convince 
 me of the guilt and madness of my life.
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 
 
 THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 
 
 IT was now the middle of September. We had come 
 since sunrise from Bartlett, passing up through the 
 valley of the Saco, which extends between mountainous 
 walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as level 
 as a church-aisle. All that day and two preceding ones 
 we had been loitering towards the heart of the White 
 Mountains, those old crystal hills, whose mysterious 
 brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant wanderings 
 before we thought of visiting them. Height after 
 height had risen and towered one above another till 
 the clouds began to hang below the peaks. Down 
 their slopes were the red pathways of the slides, thpse 
 avalanches of earth, stones, and trees, which descend 
 into the hollows, leaving vestiges of their track hardly 
 to be effaced by the vegetation of ages. We had moun- 
 tains behind us and mountains on each side, and a group 
 of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along 
 the Saco, right towards the centre of that group, as if 
 to climb above the clouds in its passage to the farther 
 region. 
 
 In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the 
 inroads of the Northern Indians, coming down upon 
 them from this mountain rampart through some defile 
 known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous 
 path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the 
 Titans, was travelling up the valley, elbowing the 
 heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at length a 
 great mountain took its stand directly across his in- 
 tended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but, 
 rending it asunder a thousand feet from peak to base, 
 165 t
 
 166 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 discloses its treasures of hidden minerals, its sunless 
 waters, all the secrets of the mountain's inmost heart, 
 with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each 
 side. This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame 
 on me that I have attempted to describe it by so 
 mean an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of 
 those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the 
 sentiment, though not to the conception, of Omnipo- 
 tence. 
 
 ****** 
 
 We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed 
 almost the appearance of having been cut by human 
 strength and artifice in the solid rock. There was a 
 wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous, 
 especially on our right, and so smooth that a few ever- 
 greens could hardly find foothold enough to grow there. 
 This is the entrance, or, in the direction we were going, 
 the extremity, of the romantic defile of the Notch. 
 Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels ap- 
 proached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out 
 of the mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, 
 and a smart driver, in a drab great-coat, touching the 
 wheel-horses with the whip-stock and reigning in the 
 leaders. To my mind there was a sort of poetry in 
 such an incident, hardly inferior to what would have 
 accompanied the painted array of an Indian war-party 
 gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the pas- 
 sengers, except a very fat lady on the back seat, had 
 alighted. One was a mineralogist, a scientific, green- 
 spectacled figure in black, bearing a heavy hammer, 
 with which he did great damage to the precipices, and 
 put the fragments in his pocket. Another was a well- 
 dressed young man, who carried an opera-glass set in 
 gold, and seemed to be making a quotation from some 
 of Byron's rhapsodies on mountain scenery. There was 
 also a trader, returning from Portland to the upper part 
 of Vermont; and a fair young girl, with a very faint 
 bloom like one of those pale and delicate flowers which 
 sometimes occur among alpine cliffs. 
 
 They disappeared, and we followed them, passing
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 167 
 
 through a deep pine forest, which for some miles allowed 
 us to see nothing but its own dismal shade. Towards 
 nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre, surrounded 
 by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine 
 long before it left the external world. It was here that 
 we obtained our first view, except at a distance, of the 
 principal group of mountains. They are majestic, and 
 even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood, yet, 
 by their breadth of base and the long ridges which sup- 
 port them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of 
 towering height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked 
 near to Heaven : he was white with snow a mile down- 
 ward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing 
 through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget 
 the other names of American statesmen that have been 
 stamped upon these hills, but still call the loftiest WASH- 
 INGTON. Mountains are Earth's undecaying monuments. 
 They must stand while she endures, and never should be 
 consecrated to the mere great men of their own age and 
 country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is 
 universal, and whom all time will render illustrious. 
 
 The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly 
 two thousand feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, 
 like that of a clear November evening in the lowlands. 
 By morning, probably, there would be a frost, if not a 
 snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface over 
 the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect 
 of comfortable quarters in a house which we were ap- 
 proaching, and of pleasant company in the guests who 
 were assembled at the door. 
 
 OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 We stood in front of a gooH substantial farm-house, 
 of old date in that wild country. A sign over the door 
 denoted it to be the White Mountain Post-Office, an 
 establishment which distributes letters and newspapers 
 to perhaps a score of persons, comprising the population 
 of two or three townships among the hills. The broad
 
 i68 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 and weighty antlers of a deer, "a stag of ten," were 
 fastened at the corner of the house ; a fox's bushy tail 
 was nailed beneath them ; and a huge black paw lay on 
 the ground, newly severed and still bleeding, the 
 trophy of a bear-hunt. Among several persons collected 
 about the doorsteps, the most remarkable was a sturdy 
 mountaineer, of six feet two, and corresponding bulk, 
 with a heavy set of features, such as might be moulded 
 on his own blacksmith's anvil, but yet indicative of 
 mother wit and rough humor. As we appeared, he 
 uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five feet long, and blew a 
 tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival or to 
 awaken an echo from the opposite hill. 
 
 Ethan Crawford's guests were of such a motley de- 
 scription as to form quite a picturesque group, seldom 
 seen together except at some place like this, at once the 
 pleasure-house of fashionable tourists and the homely 
 inn of country travellers. Among the company at the 
 door were the mineralogist and the owner of the gold 
 opera-glass whom we had encountered in the Notch ; two 
 Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their Southern 
 blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington ; 
 a physician and his wife from Conway ; a trader of 
 Burlington and an old squire of the Green Mountains ; 
 and two young married couples, all the way from Mas- 
 sachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt. Besides these 
 strangers, the rugged county of Coos, in which we were, 
 was represented by half a dozen wood-cutters, who had 
 slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his paw. 
 
 I had joined the party, and had a moment's leisure to 
 examine them before the echo of Ethan's blast returned 
 from the hill. Not one, but many echoes had caught 
 up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its compli- 
 cated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in 
 one stern trumpet-tone. It was a distinct yet distant 
 and dreamlike symphony of melodious instruments, as 
 if an airy band had been hidden on the hillside and 
 made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial 
 produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the 
 first. A field-piece was then discharged from the top of
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 169 
 
 a neighboring hill, and gave birth to one long reverbera- 
 tion, which ran round the circle of mountains in an 
 unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a 
 separate echo. After these experiments, the cold at- 
 mosphere drove us all into the house, with the keenest 
 appetites for supper. 
 
 It did one's heart good to see the great fires that were 
 kindled in the parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, 
 where the fireplace was built of rough stone, and might 
 have contained the trunk of an old tree for a backlog. 
 A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest 
 is at his very door. In the parlor, when the evening 
 was fairly set in, we held our hands before our eyes to 
 shield them from the ruddy glow, and began a pleasant 
 variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the 
 physician talked about the invigorating qualities of the 
 mountain air, and its excellent effect on Ethan Craw- 
 ford's father, an old man of seventy-five, with the 
 unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides and the 
 doctor's wife held a whispered discussion, which, by 
 their frequent titterings and a blush or two, seemed to 
 have reference to the trials or enjoyments of the matri- 
 monial state. The bridegrooms sat together in a corner, 
 rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, 
 being still in the odd predicament of bashfulness towards 
 their own young wives. The Green Mountain squire 
 chose me for his companion, and described the difficulties 
 he had met with half a century ago in travelling from the 
 Connecticut River through the Notch to Conway, now a 
 single day's journey, though it had cost him eighteen. 
 The Georgians held the album between them, and 
 favored us with the few specimens of its contents, which 
 they considered ridiculous enough to be worth hearing. 
 One extract met with deserved applause. It was a 
 " Sonnet to the Snow on Mount Washington," and had 
 been contributed that very afternoon, bearing a signature 
 of great distinction in magazines and annuals. The 
 lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote from 
 familiar sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling 
 those curious specimens of crystallized vapor which I
 
 170 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 observed next day on the mountain-top. The poet was 
 understood to be the young gentleman of the gold opera- 
 glass, who heard our laudatory remarks with the com- 
 posure of a veteran. 
 
 Such was our party, and such their ways of amuse- 
 ment. But on a winter evening another set of guests 
 assembled at the hearth where these summer travellers 
 were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to 
 spend a month hereabouts, in sleighing-time, for the 
 sake of studying the yeomen of New England, who then 
 elbow each other through the Notch by hundreds, on 
 their way to Portland. There could be no better school 
 for such a purpose than Ethan Crawford's inn. Let the 
 student go thither in December, sit down with the team- 
 sters at their meals, share their evening merriment, and 
 repose with them at night, when every bed has its three 
 occupants and parlor, bar-room, and kitchen are strewn 
 with slumberers around the fire. Then let him rise be- 
 fore daylight, button his great-coat, muffle up his ears, 
 and stride with the departing caravan a mile or two, to 
 see how sturdily they make head against the blast. A 
 treasure of characteristic traits will repay all incon- 
 veniences, even should a frozen nose be of the number. 
 
 The conversation of our party soon became more ani- 
 mated and sincere, and we recounted some traditions of 
 the Indians, who believed that the father and mother of 
 their race were saved from a deluge by ascending the 
 peak of Mount Washington. The children of that pair 
 have been overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. In 
 the mythology of the savage, these mountains were after- 
 wards considered sacred and inaccessible, full of un- 
 earthly wonders, illuminated at lofty heights by the blaze 
 of precious stones, and inhabited by deities, who some- 
 times shrouded themselves in the snow-storm and came 
 down on the lower world. There are few legends more 
 poetical than that of the " Great Carbuncle " of the White 
 Mountains. The belief was communicated to the Eng- 
 lish settlers, and is hardly yet extinct, that a gem, of 
 such immense size as to be seen shining miles away, 
 hangs from a rock over a clear, deep lake, high up among
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 171 
 
 the hills. They who had once beheld its splendor were 
 enthralled with an unutterable yearning to possess it. 
 But a spirit guarded that inestimable jewel, and bewil- 
 dered the adventurer with a dark mist from the enchanted 
 lake. Thus life was worn away in the vain search for 
 an unearthly treasure, till at length the deluded one went 
 up the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned 
 no more. On this theme methinks I could frame a tale 
 with a deep moral. 
 
 The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these 
 superstitions of the red men, though we spoke of them 
 in the centre of their haunted region. The habits and 
 sentiments of that departed people were too distinct from 
 those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It 
 has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut 
 out from the most peculiar field of American fiction by 
 an inability to see any romance, or poetry, or grandeur, 
 or beauty in the Indian character, at least till such traits 
 were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian story. 
 Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place 
 in our literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. 
 His subject, as referring to tribes which have mostly 
 vanished from the earth, gives him a right to be placed 
 on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which will sus- 
 tain him there. 
 
 I made inquiries whether, in his researches about 
 these parts, our mineralogist had found the three " Sil- 
 ver Hills " which an Indian sachem sold to an English- 
 man nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of 
 which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking 
 for ever since. But the man of science had ransacked 
 every hill along the Saco, and knew nothing of these 
 prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual with 
 men on the eve of great adventure, we had prolonged 
 our session deep into the night, considering how early 
 we were to set out on our six miles' ride to the foot of 
 Mount Washington. There was now a general breaking 
 up. .1 scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and 
 saw but little probability of their leaving the bosom of 
 earthly bliss, in the first week of the honeymoon and at
 
 172 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the frosty hour of three, to climb above the clouds ; nor, 
 when I felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed through 
 a broken pane and eddied between the chinks of my 
 unplastered chamber, did I anticipate much alacrity on 
 my own part, though we were to seek for the "Great 
 Carbuncle." 
 
 THE CANAL-BOAT 
 
 I was inclined to be poetical about the Grand Canal. 
 In my imagination De Witt Clinton was an enchanter, 
 who had waved his magic wand from the Hudson to 
 Lake Erie and united them by a watery highway, 
 crowded with the commerce of two worlds, till then in- 
 accessible to each other. This simple and mighty con- 
 ception had conferred inestimable value on spots which 
 Nature seemed to have thrown carelessly into the great 
 body of the earth, without foreseeing that they could 
 ever attain importance. I pictured the surprise of the 
 sleepy Dutchmen when the new river first glittered by 
 their doors, bringing them hard cash or foreign com- 
 modities in exchange for their hitherto unmarketable 
 produce. Surely the water of this canal must be the 
 most fertilizing of all fluids ; for it causes towns, with 
 their masses of brick and stone, their churches and 
 theatres, their business and hubbub, their luxury and 
 refinement, their gay dames and polished citizens, to 
 spring up, till in time the wondrous stream may flow 
 between two continuous lines of buildings, through one 
 thronged street, from Buffalo to Albany. I embarked 
 about thirty miles below Utica, determining to voyage 
 along the whole extent of the canal at least twice in the 
 course of the summer. 
 
 Behold us, then, fairly afloat, with three horses har- 
 nessed to our vessel, like the steeds of Neptune to a 
 huge scallop-shell in mythological pictures. Bound to 
 a distant port, we had neither chart nor compass, nor 
 cared about the wind, nor felt the heaving of a billow, 
 nor dreaded shipwreck, however fierce the tempest, in
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 173 
 
 our adventurous navigation of an interminable mud- 
 puddle ; for a mud-puddle it seemed, and as dark and 
 turbid as if every kennel in the land paid contribution 
 to it. With an imperceptible current, it holds its drowsy 
 way through all the dismal swamps and unimpressive 
 scenery that could be found between the great lakes 
 and the sea-coast. Yet there is variety enough, both on 
 the surface of the canal and along its banks, to amuse 
 the traveller, if an overpowering tedium did not deaden 
 his perceptions. 
 
 Sometimes we met a black and rusty-looking vessel, 
 laden with lumber, salt from Syracuse, or Genesee flour, 
 and shaped at both ends like a square-toed boot, as if it 
 had two sterns, and were fated always to advance back- 
 ward. On its deck would be a square hut, and a woman 
 seen through the window at her household work, with a 
 little tribe of children who perhaps had been born in this 
 strange dwelling and knew no other home. Thus, while 
 the husband smoked his pipe at the helm and the eldest 
 son rode one of the horses, on went the family, travelling 
 hundreds of miles in their own house and carrying their 
 fireside with them. The most frequent species of craft 
 were the " line-boats," which had a cabin at each end, 
 and a great bulk of barrels, bales, and boxes in the midst, 
 or light packets like our own decked all over with a row 
 of curtained windows from stem to stern, and a drowsy 
 face at every one. Once we encountered a boat of rude 
 construction, painted all in gloomy black, and manned by 
 three Indians, who gazed at us in silence and with a sin- 
 gular fixedness of eye. Perhaps these three alone, among 
 the ancient possessors of the land, had attempted to de- 
 rive benefit from the white man's mighty projects and 
 float along the current of his enterprise. Not long after, 
 in the midst of a swamp and beneath a clouded sky, we 
 overtook a vessel that seemed full of mirth and sunshine. 
 It contained a little colony of Swiss on their way to 
 Michigan, clad in garments of strange fashion and gay 
 colors, scarlet, yellow, and bright blue, singing, laughing, 
 and making merry in odd tones and a babble of outland- 
 ish words. One pretty damsel, with a beautiful pair of
 
 174 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 naked white arms, addressed a mirthful remark to me. 
 She spoke in her native tongue, and I retorted in good 
 English, both of us laughing heartily at each other's un- 
 intelligible wit. I cannot describe how pleasantly this 
 incident affected me. These honest Swiss were an itin- 
 erant community of jest and fun journeying through a 
 gloomy land and among a dull race of money-getting 
 drudges, meeting none to understand their mirth, and 
 only one to sympathize with it, yet still retaining the 
 happy lightness of their own spirit. 
 
 Had I been on my feet at the time instead of sailing 
 slowly along in a dirty canal-boat, I should often have 
 paused to contemplate the diversified panorama along the 
 banks of the canal. Sometimes the scene was a forest, 
 dark, dense, and impervious, breaking away occasionally 
 and receding from a lonely tract, covered with dismal 
 black stumps, where, on the verge of the canal, might 
 be seen a log-cottage and a sallow-faced woman at the 
 window. Lean and aguish, she looked like poverty 
 personified, half clothed, half fed, and dwelling in a des- 
 ert, while a tide of wealth was sweeping by her door. 
 Two or three miles farther would bring us to a lock, 
 where the slight impediment to navigation had created 
 a little mart of trade. Here would be found commodi- 
 ties of all sorts, enumerated in yellow letters on the 
 window-shutters of a small grocery-store, the owner of 
 which had set his soul to the gathering of coppers and 
 small change, buying and selling through the week, and 
 counting his gains on the blessed Sabbath. The next 
 scene might be the dwelling-houses and stores of a 
 thriving village, built of wood or small gray stones, a 
 church-spire rising in the midst, and generally two tav- 
 erns, bearing over their piazzas the pompous titles of 
 "hotel," "exchange," "tontine," or "coffee-house." 
 Passing on, we glide now into the unquiet heart of an 
 inland city, of Utica, for instance, and find ourselves 
 amid piles of brick, crowded docks and quays, rich 
 warehouses, and a busy population. We feel the eager 
 and hurrying spirit of the place, like a stream and eddy 
 whirling us along with it. Through the thickest of the
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 175 
 
 tumult goes the canal, flowing between lofty rows of 
 buildings and arched bridges of hewn stone. Onward, 
 also, go we, till the hum and bustle of struggling enter- 
 prise die away behind us and we are threading an avenue 
 of the ancient woods again. 
 
 This sounds not amiss in description, but was so tire- 
 some in reality that we were driven to the most childish 
 expedients for amusement. An English traveller paraded 
 the deck, with a rifle in his walking-stick, and waged 
 war on squirrels and woodpeckers, sometimes sending 
 an unsuccessful bullet among flocks of tame ducks and 
 geese which abound in the dirty water of the canal. I, 
 also, pelted these foolish birds with apples, and smiled 
 at the ridiculous earnestness of their scrambles for the 
 prize while the apple bobbed about like a thing of life. 
 Several little accidents afforded us good-natured diver- 
 sion. At the moment of changing horses the tow-rope 
 caught a Massachusetts farmer by the leg and threw him 
 down in a very indescribable posture, leaving a purple 
 mark around his sturdy limb. A new passenger fell flat 
 on his back in attempting to step on deck as the boat 
 emerged from under a bridge. Another, in his Sunday 
 clothes, as good luck would have it, being told to leap 
 aboard from the bank, forthwith plunged up to his third 
 waistcoat-button in the canal, and was fished out in a 
 very pitiable plight, not at all amended by our three 
 rounds of applause. Anon a Virginia schoolmaster, too 
 intent on a pocket Virgil to heed the helmsman's warn- 
 ing, " Bridge ! bridge ! " was saluted by the said bridge 
 on his knowledge-box. I had prostrated myself like a 
 pagan before his idol, but heard the dull, leaden sound 
 of the contact, and fully expected to see the treasures of 
 the poor man's cranium scattered about the deck. How- 
 ever, as there was no harm done, except a large bump 
 on the head, and probably a corresponding dent in the 
 bridge, the rest of us exchanged glances and laughed 
 quietly. Oh, how pitiless are idle people ! 
 
 ****** 
 
 The table being now lengthened through the cabin 
 and spread for supper, the next twenty minutes were
 
 176 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the pleasantest I had spent on the canal, the same space 
 at dinner excepted. At the close of the meal it had 
 become dusky enough for lamplight. The rain pattered 
 unceasingly on the deck, and sometimes came with a 
 sullen rush against the windows, driven by the wind as 
 it stirred through an opening of the forest. The intol- 
 erable dulness of the scene engendered an evil spirit in 
 me. Perceiving that the Englishman was taking notes 
 in a memorandum-book, with occasional glances round 
 the cabin, I presumed that we were all to figure in a 
 future volume of travels, and amused my ill-humor by 
 falling into the probable vein of his remarks. He would 
 hold up an imaginary mirror, wherein our reflected faces 
 would appear ugly and ridiculous, yet still retain an 
 undeniable likeness to the originals. Then, with more 
 sweeping malice, he would make these caricatures the 
 representatives of great classes of my countrymen. 
 
 He glanced at the Virginia schoolmaster, a Yankee 
 by birth, who, to recreate himself, was examining a 
 freshman from Schenectady College in the conjugation 
 of a Greek verb. Him the Englishman would portray 
 as the scholar of America, and compare his erudition to 
 a schoolboy's Latin theme made up of scraps ill-selected 
 and worse put together. Next the tourist looked at the 
 Massachusetts farmer, who was delivering a dogmatic 
 harangue on the iniquity of Sunday mails. Here was 
 the far-famed yeoman of New England ; his religion, 
 writes the Englishman, is gloom on the Sabbath, long 
 prayers every morning and eventide, and illiberality at 
 all times ; his boasted information is merely an abstract 
 and compound of newspaper paragraphs, Congress de- 
 bates, caucus harangues, and the argument and judge's 
 charge in his own lawsuits. The book-monger cast his 
 eye at a Detroit merchant, and began scribbling faster 
 than ever. In this sharp-eyed man, this lean man, of 
 wrinkled brow, we see daring enterprise and close-fisted 
 avarice combined. Here is the worshipper of Mammon 
 at noonday ; here is the three times bankrupt, richer 
 after every ruin ; here, in one word, (O wicked English- 
 man to say it!) here is the American. He lifted his
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 177 
 
 eye-glass to inspect a Western lady, who at once be- 
 came aware of the glance, reddened, and retired deeper 
 into the female part of the cabin. Here was the pure, 
 modest, sensitive, and shrinking woman of America, 
 shrinking when no evil is intended, and sensitive like 
 diseased flesh, that thrills if you but point at it; and 
 strangely modest, without confidence in the modesty of 
 other people ; and admirably pure, with such a quick 
 apprehension of all impurity. 
 
 In this manner I went all through the cabin, hitting 
 everybody as hard a lash as I could, and laying the 
 whole blame on the infernal Englishman. At length I 
 caught the eyes of my own image in the looking-glass, 
 where a number of the party were likewise reflected, 
 and among them the Englishman, who at that moment 
 was intently observing myself. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The crimson curtain being let down between the 
 ladies and gentlemen, the cabin became a bedchamber 
 for twenty persons, who were laid on shelves one above 
 another. For a long time our various incommodities 
 kept us all awake except five or six, who were accus- 
 tomed to sleep nightly amid the uproar of their own 
 snoring, and had little to dread from any other species 
 of disturbance. It is a curious fact that these snorers 
 had been the most quiet people in the boat while awake, 
 and became peace-breakers only when others cease to 
 be so, breathing tumult out of their repose. Would it 
 were possible to affix a wind-instrument to the nose, 
 and thus make melody of a snore, so that a sleeping 
 lover might serenade his mistress or a congregation 
 snore a psalm-tune! Other, though fainter, sounds 
 than these contributed to my restlessness. My head 
 was close to the crimson curtain, the sexual division 
 of the boat, behind which I continually heard whis- 
 pers and stealthy footsteps ; the noise of a comb laid on 
 the table or a slipper dropped on the floor ; the twang, 
 like a broken harp-string, caused by loosening a tight 
 belt ; the rustling of a gown in its descent ; and the un- 
 lacing of a pair of stays. My ear seemed to have the
 
 178 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 properties of an eye ; a visible image pestered my fancy 
 in the darkness ; the curtain was withdrawn between 
 me and the Western lady, who yet disrobed herself 
 without a blush. 
 
 Finally all was hushed in that quarter. Still I was 
 more broad awake than through the whole preceding 
 day, and felt a feverish impulse to toss my limbs miles 
 apart and appease the unquietness of mind by that of 
 matter. Forgetting that my berth was hardly so wide 
 as a coffin, I turned suddenly over and fell like an ava- 
 lanche on the floor, to the disturbance of the whole 
 community of sleepers. As there were no bones broken, 
 I blessed the accident and went on deck. A lantern 
 was burning at each end of the boat, and one of the 
 crew was stationed at the bows, keeping watch, as mari- 
 ners do on the ocean. Though the rain had ceased, the 
 sky was all one cloud, and the darkness so intense that 
 there seemed to be no world except the little space on 
 which our lanterns glimmered. Yet it was an impres- 
 sive scene. 
 
 We were traversing the " long level," a dead flat be- 
 tween Utica and Syracuse, where the canal has not rise 
 or fall enough to require a lock for nearly seventy miles. 
 There can hardly be a more dismal tract of country. 
 The forest which covers it, consisting chiefly of white- 
 cedar, black-ash, and other trees that live in excessive 
 moisture, is now decayed and death-struck by the par- 
 tial draining of the swamp into the great ditch of the 
 canal. Sometimes, indeed, our lights were reflected 
 from pools of stagnant water which stretched far in 
 among the trunks of the trees, beneath dense masses of 
 dark foliage. But generally the tall stems and inter- 
 mingled branches were naked, and brought into strong 
 relief amid the surrounding gloom by the whiteness of 
 their decay. Often we beheld the prostrate form of 
 some old sylvan giant which had fallen and crushed 
 down smaller trees under its immense ruin. In spots 
 where destruction had been riotous, the lanterns showed 
 perhaps a hundred trunks, erect, half overthrown, ex- 
 tended along the ground, resting on their shattered
 
 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY 179 
 
 limbs or tossing them desperately into the darkness, 
 but all of one ashy white, all naked together, in desolate 
 confusion. Thus growing out of the night as we drew 
 nigh, and vanishing as we glided on, based on obscurity, 
 and overhung and bounded by it, the scene was ghost- 
 like, the very land of unsubstantial things, whither 
 dreams might betake themselves when they quit the 
 slurnberer's brain. 
 
 My fancy found another emblem. The wild nature 
 of America had been driven to this desert-place by the 
 encroachments of civilized man. And even here, where 
 the savage queen was throned on the ruins of her em- 
 pire, did we penetrate, a vulgar and worldly throng, 
 intruding on her latest solitude. In other lands decay 
 sits among fallen palaces ; but here her home is in the 
 forests. 
 
 Looking ahead, I discerned a distant light, announc- 
 ing the approach of another boat, which soon passed 
 us, and proved to be a rusty old scow, just such a 
 craft as the " Flying Dutchman " would navigate on the 
 canal. Perhaps it was that celebrated personage him- 
 self whom I imperfectly distinguished at the helm in a 
 glazed cap and rough great-coat, with a pipe in his 
 mouth, leaving the fumes of tobacco a hundred yards 
 behind. Shortly after our boatman blew a horn, send- 
 ing a long and melancholy note through the forest ave- 
 nue, as a signal for some watcher in the wilderness to 
 be ready with a change of horses. We had proceeded 
 a mile or two with our fresh team when the tow-rope 
 got entangled in a fallen branch on the edge of the 
 canal, and caused a momentary delay, during which I 
 went to examine the phosphoric light of an old tree a 
 little within the forest. It was not the first delusive 
 radiance that I had followed. 
 
 The tree lay along the ground, and was wholly con- 
 verted into a mass of diseased splendor, which threw a 
 ghastliness around. Being full of conceits that night, I 
 called it a frigid fire, a funeral light, illumining decay 
 and death, an emblem of fame that gleams around the 
 dead man without warming him, or of genius when if
 
 i8o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 owes its brilliancy to moral rottenness, and was thinking 
 that such ghostlike torches were just fit to light up this 
 dead forest or to blaze coldly in tombs, when, starting 
 from my abstraction, I looked up the canal. I recol- 
 lected myself, and discovered the lanterns glimmering 
 far away. 
 
 " Boat ahoy ! " shouted I, making a trumpet of my 
 closed fists. 
 
 Though the cry must have rung for miles along that 
 hollow passage of the woods, it produced no effect. 
 These packet-boats make up for their snail-like pace by 
 never loitering day nor night, especially for those who 
 have paid their fare. Indeed, the captain had an inter- 
 est in getting rid of me ; for I was his creditor for a 
 breakfast. 
 
 "They are gone, Heaven be praised! " ejaculated I ; 
 " for I cannot possibly overtake them. Here am I, on 
 the ' long level,' at midnight, with the comfortable pros- 
 pect of a walk to Syracuse, where my baggage will be 
 left. And now to find a house or shed wherein to pass 
 the night." So thinking aloud, I took a flambeau from 
 the old tree, burning, but consuming not, to light my 
 steps withal, and, like a jack-o'-the-lantern, set out on 
 my midnight tour.
 
 THE OLD APPLE-DEALER 
 
 THE lover of the moral picturesque may sometimes 
 find what he seeks in a character, which is, never- 
 theless, of too negative a description to be seized upon, 
 and represented to the imaginative vision by word-paint- 
 ing. As an instance, I remember an old man who 
 carries on a little trade of gingerbread and apples, at 
 the depot of one of our railroads. While awaiting the 
 departure of the cars, my observation, flitting to and 
 fro among the livelier characteristics of the scene, has 
 often settled insensibly upon this almost hueless object. 
 Thus, unconsciously to myself, and unsuspected by him, 
 I have studied the old apple-dealer, until he has become 
 a naturalized citizen of my inner world. How little 
 would he imagine poor, neglected, friendless, unap- 
 preciated, and with little that demands appreciation 
 that the mental eye of an utter stranger has so often 
 reverted to his figure ! Many a noble form many a 
 beautiful face has flitted before me, and vanished like 
 a shadow. It is a strange witchcraft, whereby this faded 
 and featureless old apple-dealer has gained a settlement 
 in my memory ! 
 
 He is a small man, with gray hair and gray stubble- 
 beard, and is invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff- 
 color, closely buttoned, and half-concealing a pair of 
 gray pantaloons ; the whole dress, though clean and 
 entire, being evidently flimsy with much wear. His 
 face, thin, withered, furrowed, and with features which 
 even age has failed to render impressive, has a frost- 
 bitten aspect. It is a moral frost, which no physical 
 warmth or comfortableness could counteract. The sum- 
 mer sunshine may fling its white heat upon him, or the 
 good fire of the depot-room may make him the focus 
 of its blaze, on a winter's day ; but all in vain ; for still 
 181 t
 
 i82 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 the old man looks as if he were in a frosty atmosphere, 
 with scarcely warmth enough to keep life in the region 
 about his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, 
 hopeless, shivering aspect. He is not desperate that, 
 though its etymology implies no more, would be too 
 positive an expression but merely devoid of hope. As 
 all his past life, probably, offers no spots of brightness 
 to his memory, so he takes his present poverty and dis- 
 comfort as entirely a matter of course ; he thinks it the 
 definition of existence, so far as himself is concerned, 
 to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It may be added, 
 that time has not thrown dignity, as a mantle, over the 
 old man's figure ; there is nothing venerable about him ; 
 you pity him without a scruple. 
 
 He sits on a bench in the depot-room ; and before 
 him, on the floor, are deposited two baskets, of a 
 capacity to contain his whole stock in trade. Across, 
 from one basket to the other, extends a board, on 
 which is displayed a plate of cakes and gingerbread, 
 some russet and red cheeked apples, and a box con- 
 taining variegated sticks of candy ; together with that 
 delectable condiment, known by children as Gibraltar 
 rock, neatly done up in white paper. There is like- 
 wise a half-peck measure of cracked walnuts, and two 
 or three tin half-pints or gills, filled with the nut 
 kernels ready for purchasers. Such are the small 
 commodities with which our old friend comes daily 
 before the world, ministering to its petty needs and 
 little freaks of appetite, and seeking thence the solid 
 subsistence so far as he may subsist of his 
 life. 
 
 A slight observer would speak of the old man's quie- 
 tude. But, on closer scrutiny, you discover that there 
 is a continual unrest within him, which somewhat re- 
 sembles the fluttering action of the nerves, in a corpse 
 from which life has recently departed. Though he 
 never exhibits any violent action, and, indeed, might 
 appear to be sitting quite still, yet you perceive, when 
 his minuter peculiarities begin to be detected, that he 
 is always making some little movement or other. He
 
 THE OLD APPLE-DEALER 183 
 
 looks anxiously at his plate of cakes, or pyramid of 
 apples, and slightly alters their arrangement, with an 
 evident idea that a great deal depends on their being 
 disposed exactly thus and so. Then, for a moment, 
 he gazes out of the window ; then he shivers, quietly, 
 and folds his arms across his breast, as if to draw him- 
 self closer within himself, and thus keep a flicker of 
 warmth in his lonesome heart. Now he turns again 
 to his merchandise of cakes, apples, and candy, and 
 discovers that this cake or that apple, or yonder stick 
 of red and white candy, has, somehow, got out of its 
 proper position. And is there not a walnut-kernel 
 too many, or too few, in one of those small tin meas- 
 ures ? Again, the whole arrangement appears to be 
 settled to his mind ; but in the course of a minute or 
 two, there will assuredly be something to set right. 
 At times, by an indescribable shadow upon his fea- 
 tures too quiet, however, to be noticed, until you are 
 familiar with his ordinary aspect the expression of 
 frost-bitten, patient despondency becomes very touch- 
 ing. It seems as if, just at that instant, the suspicion 
 occurred to him, that, in his chill decline of life, earning 
 scanty bread by selling cakes, apples, and candy, he is a 
 very miserable old fellow. 
 
 But, if he think so, it is a mistake. He can never 
 suffer the extreme of misery, because the tone of his 
 whole being is too much subdued for him to feel any- 
 thing acutely. 
 
 Occasionally, one of the passengers, to while away 
 a tedious interval, approaches the old man, inspects 
 the articles upon his board, and even peeps curiously 
 into the two baskets. Another, striding to and fro 
 along the room, throws a look at the apples and gin- 
 gerbread, at every turn. A third, it may be, of a more 
 sensitive and delicate texture of being, glances shyly 
 thitherward, cautious not to excite expectations of a 
 purchaser, while yet undetermined whether to buy. 
 But there appears to be no need of such a scrupulous 
 regard to our old friend's feelings. True, he is con- 
 scious of the remote possibility of selling a cake or an
 
 1 84 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 apple, but innumerable disappointments have rendered 
 him so far a philosopher, that, even if the purchased 
 article should be returned, he will consider it alto- 
 gether in the ordinary train of events. He speaks to 
 none and makes no sign of offering his wares to the 
 public ; not that he is deterred by pride, but by the 
 certain conviction that such demonstrations would not 
 increase his custom. Besides, this activity in busi- 
 ness would require an energy that never could have 
 been a characteristic of his almost passive disposition, 
 even in youth. Whenever an actual customer appears, 
 the old man looks up with a patient eye ; if the price 
 and the article are approved, he is ready to make 
 change ; otherwise, his eyelids droop again, sadly 
 enough, but with no heavier despondency than before. 
 He shivers, perhaps, folds his lean arms around his 
 lean body, and resumes the life-long, frozen patience, 
 in which consists his strength. Once in a while, a 
 schoolboy comes hastily up, places a cent or two upon 
 the board, and takes up a cake or stick of candy, or 
 a measure of walnuts, or an apple as red cheeked 
 as himself. There are no words as to price, that 
 being as well known to the buyer as to the seller. 
 The old apple-dealer never speaks an unnecessary 
 word ; not that he is sullen and morose ; but there is 
 none of the cheeriness and briskness in him, that stirs 
 up people to talk. 
 
 Not seldom, he is greeted by some old neighbor, a 
 man well-to-do in the world, who makes a civil, patron- 
 izing observation about the weather ; and then, by way 
 of performing a charitable deed, begins to chaffer for 
 an apple. Our friend presumes not on any past ac- 
 quaintance ; he makes the briefest possible response 
 to all general remarks, and shrinks quietly into himself 
 again. After every diminution of his stock, he takes 
 care to produce from the basket another cake, another 
 stick of candy, another apple, or another measure of 
 walnuts, to supply the place of the article sold. Two 
 or three attempts or, perchance, half a dozen are 
 requisite, before the board can be rearranged to his sat-
 
 THE OLD APPLE-DEALER 185 
 
 isfaction. If he have received a silver coin, he waits 
 till the purchaser is out of sight, then examines it 
 closely, and tries to bend it with his finger and thumb ; 
 finally, he puts it into his waistcoat pocket, with seem- 
 ingly a gentle sigh. This sigh, so faint as to be hardly 
 perceptible, and not expressive of any definite emotion, 
 is the accompaniment and conclusion of all his actions. 
 It is the symbol of the chilliness and torpid melancholy 
 of his old age, which only make themselves felt sensibly, 
 when his repose is slightly disturbed. 
 
 Our man of gingerbread and apples is not a speci- 
 men of the " needy man who has seen better days." 
 Doubtless, there have been better and brighter days 
 in the far-off time of his youth ; but none with so much 
 sunshine of prosperity in them, that the chill, the de- 
 pression, the narrowness of means, in his declining years, 
 can have come upon him by surprise. His life has all 
 been of a piece. His subdued and nerveless boyhood 
 prefigured his abortive prime, which, likewise, contained 
 within itself the prophecy and image of his lean and 
 torpid age. He was perhaps a mechanic, who never 
 came to be a master in his craft, or a petty tradesman, 
 rubbing onward between passably-to-do and poverty. 
 Possibly, he may look back to some brilliant epoch of 
 his career, when there were a hundred or two of dollars 
 to his credit, in the Savings Bank. Such must have 
 been the extent of his better fortune his little meas- 
 ure of this world's triumphs all that he has known of 
 success. A meek, downcast, humble, uncomplaining 
 creature, he probably has never felt himself entitled 
 to more than so much of the gifts of Providence. Is 
 it not still something, that he has never held out his 
 hand for charity, nor has yet been driven to that sad 
 home and household of Earth's forlorn and broken- 
 spirited children, the alms-house ? He cherishes no 
 quarrel, therefore, with his destiny, nor with the Author 
 of it. All is as it should be. 
 
 If, indeed, he have been bereaved of a son a bold, 
 energetic, vigorous young man, on whom the father's 
 feeble nature leaned, as on a staff of strength in
 
 i86 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 that case, he may have felt a bitterness that could not 
 otherwise have been generated in his heart. But me- 
 thinks, the joy of possessing such a son, and the agony 
 of losing him, would have developed the old man's 
 moral and intellectual nature to a much greater degree 
 than we now find it. Intense grief appears to be as 
 much out of keeping with his life, as fervid happiness. 
 
 To confess the truth, it is not the easiest matter in 
 the world to define and individualize a character like 
 this which we are now handling. The portrait must 
 be so gently negative, that the most delicate pencil is 
 likely to spoil it by introducing some too positive tint. 
 Every touch must be kept down, or else you destroy 
 the subdued tone, which is absolutely essential to the 
 whole effect. Perhaps more may be done by contrast, 
 than by direct description. For this purpose, I make 
 use of another cake-and-candy merchant, who likewise 
 infests the railway depot. This latter worthy is a very 
 smart and well-dressed boy, of ten years old or there- 
 abouts, who skips briskly hither and thither, addressing 
 the passengers in a pert voice, yet with somewhat of 
 good breeding in his tone and pronunciation. Now he 
 has caught my eye, and skips across the room with a 
 pretty pertness, which I should like to correct with a box 
 on the ear. " Any cake, sir ? any candy ? " 
 
 No ; none for me, my lad. I did but glance at your 
 brisk figure, in order to catch a reflected light, and 
 throw it upon your old rival yonder. 
 
 Again, in order to invest my conception of the old 
 man with a more decided sense of reality, I look at 
 him in the very moment of intensest bustle, on the 
 arrival of the cars. The shriek of the engine, as it 
 rushes into the car-house, is the utterance of the steam- 
 fiend, whom man has subdued by magic spells, and 
 compels to serve as a beast of burden. He has skimmed 
 rivers in his headlong rush, dashed through forests, 
 plunged into the hearts of mountains, and glanced from 
 the city to the desert place, and again to a far-off city, 
 with a meteoric progress, seen, and out of sight, while 
 his reverberating roar still fills the ear. The travellers
 
 THE OLD APPLE-DEALER 187 
 
 swarm forth from the cars. All are full of the momen- 
 tum which they have caught from their mode of con- 
 veyance. It seems as if the whole world, both morally 
 and physically, were detached from its old standfasts, 
 and set in rapid motion. And, in the midst of this 
 terrible activity, there sits the old man of gingerbread, 
 so subdued, so hopeless, so without a stake in life, and 
 yet not positively miserable there he sits, the forlorn 
 old creature, one chill and sombre day after another, 
 gathering scanty coppers for his cakes, apples, and 
 candy there sits the old apple-dealer, in his threadbare 
 suit of snuff-color and gray, and his grizzly stubble-beard. 
 See ! he folds his lean arms around his lean figure, with 
 that quiet sigh, and that scarcely perceptible shiver, 
 which are the tokens of his inward state. I have him 
 now. He and the steam-fiend are each other's antipo- 
 des ; the latter is the type of all that go ahead and 
 the old man, the representative of that melancholy class 
 who, by some sad witchcraft, are doomed never to share 
 in the world's exulting progress. Thus the contrast 
 between mankind and this desolate brother becomes 
 picturesque and even sublime. 
 
 And now farewell, old friend ! Little do you suspect 
 that a student of human life has made your character 
 the theme of more than one solitary and thoughtful 
 hour. Many would say, that you have hardly individual- 
 ity enough to be the object of your own self-love. How, 
 then, can a stranger's eye detect anything in your mind 
 and heart, to study and to wonder at? Yet could I 
 read but a tithe of what is written there, it would be a 
 volume of deeper and more comprehensive import than 
 all that the wisest mortals have given to the world; for the 
 soundless depths of the human soul, and of eternity, 
 have an opening through your breast. God be praised, 
 were it only for your sake, that the present shapes of 
 human existence are not cast in iron, nor hewn in ever- 
 lasting adamant, but moulded of the vapors that vanish 
 away while the essence flits upward to the infinite. 
 There is a spiritual essence in this gray and lean old 
 shape that shall flit upward, too. Yes ; doubtless there
 
 1 88 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 is a region, where the life-long shiver will pass away 
 from his being, and that quiet sigh, which it has taken 
 him so many years to breathe, will be brought to a close 
 for good and all.
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 AN elderly man, with his pretty daughter on his arm, 
 was passing along the street, and emerged from 
 the gloom of the cloudy evening into the light that fell 
 across the pavement from the window of a small shop. 
 It was a projecting window ; and on the inside were sus- 
 pended a variety of watches, pinchbeck, silver, and 
 one or two of gold, all with their faces turned from 
 the street, as if churlishly disinclined to inform the way- 
 farers what o'clock it was. Seated within the shop, 
 sidelong to the window, with his pale face bent earnestly 
 over some delicate piece of mechanism, on which was 
 thrown the concentrated lustre of a shade-lamp, ap- 
 peared a young man. 
 
 "What can Owen Warland be about?" muttered old 
 Peter Hovenden, himself a retired watchmaker, and 
 the former master of this same young man, whose occu- 
 pation he was now wondering at. " What can the fellow 
 be about ? These six months past, I have never come 
 by his shop without seeing him just as steadily at work 
 as now. It would be a flight beyond his usual foolery 
 to seek for the Perpetual Motion. And yet I know / 
 enough of my old business to be certain, that what he is 
 now so busy with is no part of the machinery of a 
 watch." 
 
 " Perhaps, father," said Annie, without showing much 
 interest in the question, " Owen is inventing a new kind 
 of time-keeper. I am sure he has ingenuity enough." 
 
 "Pooh, child! he has not the sort of ingenuity to 
 invent anything better than a Dutch toy," answered her 
 father, who had formerly been put to much vexation by 
 Owen Warland's irregular genius. " A plague on such 
 ingenuity ! All the effect that ever I knew of it was, to 
 spoil the accuracy of some of the best watches in my 
 189
 
 190 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 shop. He would turn the sun out of its orbit, and 
 derange the whole course of time, if, as I said before, 
 his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger than a child's 
 toy ! " 
 
 " Hush, father ! he hears you," whispered Annie, 
 pressing the old man's arm. " His ears are as delicate 
 as his feelings, and you know how easily disturbed they 
 are. Do let us move on." 
 
 So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded 
 on, without further conversation, until, in a by-street of 
 the town, they found themselves passing the open door 
 of a blacksmith's shop. Within was seen the forge, now 
 blazing up, and illuminating the high and dusky roof, 
 and now confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the 
 coal-strewn floor, according as the breath of the bellows 
 was puffed forth, or again inhaled into its vast leathern 
 lungs. In the intervals of brightness, it was easy to 
 distinguish objects in remote corners of the shop, and 
 the horse-shoes that hung upon the wall ; in the momen- 
 tary gloom, the fire seemed to be glimmering amidst the 
 vagueness of unenclosed space. Moving about in this 
 red glare and alternate dusk, was the figure of the black- 
 smith, well worthy to be viewed in so picturesque an 
 aspect of light and shade, where the bright blaze strug- 
 gled with the black night, as if each would have snatched - 
 his comely strength from the other. Anon, he drew^a 
 white-hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it on the anvil, 
 uplifted his arm of might, and was seen enveloped in the 
 myriads of sparks which the strokes of his hammer scat- 
 tered into the surrounding gloom. 
 
 " Now, that is a pleasant sight," said the old watch- 
 maker. " I know what it is to work in gold, but give 
 me the worker in iron, after all is said and done. He 
 spends his labor upon a reality. What say you, daugh- 
 ter Annie ? " 
 
 " Pray don't speak so loud, father," whispered Annie, 
 " Robert Danforth will hear you." 
 
 "And what if he should hear me?" said Peter 
 Hovenden ; " I say again, it is a good and a wholesome 
 thing to depend upon main strength and reality, and to
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 191 
 
 earn one's bread with the bare and brawny arm of a 
 blacksmith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzled by 
 his wheels within a wheel, or loses his health or the 
 nicety of his eyesight, as was my case ; and finds him- 
 self, at middle age, or a little after, past labor at his own 
 trade, and fit for nothing else, yet too poor to live at his 
 ease. So, I say once again, give me main strength for 
 my money. And then, how it takes the nonsense out of 
 a man ! Did you ever hear of a blacksmith being such 
 a fool as Owen Warland, yonder ? " 
 
 " Well said, uncle Hovenden ! " shouted Robert Dan- 
 forth, from the forge, in a full, deep, merry voice, that 
 made the roof re-echo. " And what says Miss Annie to 
 that doctrine ? She, I suppose, will think it a genteeler 
 business to tinker up a lady's watch than to forge a 
 horse-shoe or make a gridiron ! " 
 
 Annie drew her father onward, without giving him 
 time for reply. 
 
 But we must return to Owen Warland's shop, and 
 spend more meditation upon his history and character 
 than either Peter Hovenden, or probably his daughter 
 Annie, or Owen's old school-fellow, Robert Danforth, 
 would have thought due to so slight a subject. From 
 the time that his little fingers could grasp a pen-knife, 
 Owen had been remarkable for a delicate ingenuity, 
 which sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood, prin- 
 cipally figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes 
 seemed to aim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism. 
 But it was always for purposes of grace, and never with 
 any mockery of the useful. He did not, like the crowd 
 of school-boy artisans, construct little windmills on the 
 angle of a barn, or watermills across the neighboring 
 brook. Those who discovered such peculiarity in the 
 boy, as to think it worth their while to observe him 
 closely, sometimes saw reason to suppose that he was 
 attempting to imitate the beautiful movements of nature, 
 as exemplified in the flight of birds or the activity of little 
 animals. It seemed, in fact, a new development of the 
 love of the Beautiful, such as might have made him a 
 poet, a painter, or a sculptor, and which was as com-
 
 192 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 pletely refined from all utilitarian coarseness, as it could 
 have been in either of the fine arts. He looked with 
 singular distaste at the stiff and regular processes of 
 ordinary machinery. Being once carried to see a steam- 
 engine, in the expectation that his intuitive comprehen- 
 sion of mechanical principles would be gratified, he 
 turned pale, and grew sick, as if something monstrous 
 and unnatural had been presented to him. This horror 
 was partly owing to the size and terrible energy of the 
 Iron Laborer; for the character of Owen's mind was 
 microscopic, and tended naturally to the minute, in 
 accordance with his diminutive frame, and the marvel- 
 lous smallness and delicate power of his fingers. Not 
 that his sense of beauty was thereby diminished into a 
 sense of prettiness. The beautiful Idea has no relation 
 to size, and may be as perfectly developed in a space too 
 minute for any but microscopic investigation, as within 
 the ample verge that is measured by the arc of the rain- 
 bow ; but, at all events, this characteristic minuteness in 
 his objects and accomplishments made the world even 
 more incapable than it might otherwise have been, of 
 appreciating Owen Warland's genius. The boy's rela- 
 tives saw nothing better to be done as perhaps there 
 was not than to bind him apprentice to a watchmaker, 
 hoping that his strange ingenuity might thus be regu- 
 lated and put to utilitarian purposes. 
 
 Peter Hovenden's opinion of his apprentice has al- 
 ready been expressed. He could make nothing of the 
 lad. Owen's apprehension of the professional mysteries, 
 it is true, was inconceivably quick. But he altogether 
 forgot or despised the grand object of a watchmaker's 
 business, and cared no more for the measurement of 
 time than if it had been merged into eternity. So long, 
 however, as he remained under his old master's care, 
 Owen's lack of sturdiness made it possible, by strict 
 injunctions and sharp oversight, to restrain his creative 
 eccentricity within bounds. But when his apprentice- 
 ship was served out, and he had taken the little shop 
 which Peter Hovenden's failing eyesight compelled him 
 to relinquish, then did people recognize how unfit a per-
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 193 
 
 son was Owen Warland to lead old blind Father Time 
 along his daily course. One of his most rational projects 
 was, to connect a musical operation with the machinery 
 of his watches, so that all the harsh dissonances of life 
 might be rendered tuneful, and each flitting moment 
 fall into the abyss of the Past in golden drops of har- 
 mony. If a family-clock was intrusted to him for re- 
 pair one of those tall, ancient clocks that have grown 
 nearly allied to human nature, by measuring out the 
 lifetime of many generations he would take upon him- 
 self to arrange a dance or funeral procession of figures 
 across its venerable face, representing twelve mirthful 
 or melancholy hours. Several freaks of this kind quite 
 destroyed the young watchmaker's credit with that steady 
 and matter-of-fact class of people, who hold the opinion 
 that time is not to be trifled with, whether considered 
 as the medium of advancement and prosperity in this 
 world, or preparation for the next. His custom rapidly 
 diminished a misfortune, however, that was probably 
 reckoned among his better accidents by Owen Warland, 
 who was becoming more and more absorbed in a secret 
 occupation, which drew all his science and manual dex- 
 terity into itself, and likewise gave full employment to 
 the characteristic tendencies of his genius. This pur- 
 suit had already consumed many months. 
 
 After the old watchmaker and his pretty daughter 
 had gazed at him, out of the obscurity of the street, 
 Owen Warland was seized with a fluttering of the 
 nerves, which made his hand tremble too violently to 
 proceed with such delicate labor as he was now engaged 
 upon. 
 
 " It was Annie herself ! " murmured he. " I should 
 have known by this throbbing of my heart, before I 
 heard her father's voice. Ah, how it throbs ! I shall 
 scarcely be able to work again on this exquisite mechan- 
 ism to-night. Annie dearest Annie thou shouldst 
 give firmness to my heart and hand, and not shake them 
 thus ; for if I strive to put the very spirit of Beauty into 
 form, and give it motion, it is for thy sake alone. Oh, 
 throbbing heart, be quiet ! If my labor be thus thwarted,
 
 194 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 there will come vague and unsatisfied dreams, which will 
 leave me spiritless to-morrow." 
 
 As he was endeavoring to settle himself again to his 
 task, the shop-door opened, and gave admittance to no 
 other than the stalwart figure which Peter Hovenden 
 had paused to admire, as seen amid the light and shadow 
 of the blacksmith's shop. Robert Danforth had brought 
 a little anvil of his own manufacture, and peculiarly con- 
 structed, which the young artist had recently bespoken. 
 Owen examined the article, and pronounced it fashioned 
 according to his wish. 
 
 "Why, yes," said Robert Danforth, his strong voice 
 filling the shop as with the sound of a bass-viol, " I con- 
 sider myself equal to anything in the way of my own 
 trade ; though I should have made but a poor figure at 
 yours, with such a fist as this," added he, laughing, 
 as he laid his vast hand beside the delicate one of Owen. 
 " But what then ? I put more main strength into one 
 blow of my sledge-hammer, than all that you have ex- 
 pended since you were a 'prentice. Is not that the truth ? " 
 
 "Very probably," answered the low and slender voice 
 of Owen. " Strength is an earthly monster. I make 
 no pretensions to it. My force, whatever there may be 
 of it, is altogether spiritual." 
 
 " Well, but, Owen, what are you about ? " asked his 
 old school-fellow, still in such a hearty volume of tone 
 that it made the artist shrink ; especially as the question 
 related to a subject so sacred as the absorbing dream of 
 his imagination. " Folks do say, that you are trying to 
 discover the Perpetual Mdtion." 
 
 " The Perpetual Motion ? nonsense ! " replied Owen 
 Warland, with a movement of disgust ; for he was full 
 of little petulances. " It never can be discovered ! It 
 is a dream that may delude men' whose brains are mys- 
 tified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such a dis- 
 covery were possible, it would not be worth my while 
 to make it, only to have the secret turned to such pur- 
 poses as are now effected by steam and water-power. 
 I am not ambitious to be honored with the paternity of 
 a new kind of cotton-machine."
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 195 
 
 " That would be droll enough ! " cried the blacksmith, 
 breaking out into such an uproar of laughter, that Owen 
 himself, and the bell-glasses on his work-board, quivered 
 in unison. " No, no, Owen ! No child of yours will 
 have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won't hinder you 
 any more. Good night, Owen, and success ; and if you 
 need any assistance, so far as a downright blow of ham- 
 mer upon anvil will answer the purpose, I'm your 
 man ! " 
 
 And with another laugh, the man of main strength 
 left the shop. 
 
 " How strange it is," whispered Owen Warland to 
 himself, leaning his head upon his hand, "that all my 
 musings, my purposes, my passion for the Beautiful, 
 my consciousness of power to create it a finer, more 
 ethereal power, of which this earthly giant can have no 
 conception all, all, look so vain and idle whenever my 
 path is crossed by Robert Danforth ! He would drive 
 me mad, were I to meet him often. His hard, brute 
 force darkens and confuses the spiritual element within 
 me. But I, too, will be strong in my own way. I will 
 not yield to him ! " 
 
 He took from beneath a glass a piece of minute ma- 
 chinery, which he set in the condensed light of his 
 lamp, and, looking intently at it through a magnifying 
 glass, proceeded to operate with a delicate instrument 
 of steel. In an instant, however, he fell back in his 
 chair, and clasped his hands, with a look of horror on 
 his face, that made its small features as impressive as 
 those of a giant would have been. 
 
 " Heaven ! What have I done ! " exclaimed he. 
 "The vapor! the influence of that brute force! it 
 has bewildered me, and obscured my perception. I 
 have made the very stroke the fatal stroke that I 
 have dreaded from the first! It is all over the toil of 
 months the object of my life ! I am ruined ! " 
 
 And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp 
 flickered in the socket, and left the Artist of the Beau- 
 tiful in darkness. 
 / Thus it is, that ideas which grow up within the im-
 
 196 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 agination, and appear so lovely to it, and of a value 
 beyond whatever men call valuable, are exposed to be 
 shattered and annihilated by contact with the Practical. / 
 It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force oF 
 character that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy ; 
 he must keep his faith in himself, while the incredulous 
 world assails him with its utter disbelief ; he must stand 
 up against mankind and be his own sole disciple, both 
 as respects his genius and the objects to which it is 
 directed. 
 
 For a time, Owen Warland succumbed to this severe 
 but inevitable test. He spent a few sluggish weeks, 
 with his head so continually resting in his hands, that 
 the townspeople had scarcely an opportunity to see his 
 countenance. When, at last, it was again uplifted to 
 the light of day, a cold, dull, nameless change was per- 
 ceptible upon it. In the opinion of Peter Hovenden, 
 however, and that order of sagacious understandings 
 who think that life should be regulated, like clock-work, 
 with leaden weights, the alteration was entirely for the 
 better. Owen, now, indeed, applied himself to business 
 with dogged industry. It was marvellous to witness 
 the obtuse gravity with which he would inspect the 
 wheels of a great, old silver watch ; thereby delighting 
 the owner, in whose fob it had been worn till he deemed 
 it a portion of his own life, and was accordingly jealous 
 of its treatment. In consequence of the good report 
 thus acquired, Owen Warland was invited by the proper 
 authorities to regulate the clock in the church-steeple. 
 He succeeded so admirably in this matter of public 
 interest, that the merchants gruffly acknowledged his 
 merits on 'Change ; the nurse whispered his praises, as 
 she gave the potion in the sick-chamber ; the lover 
 blessed him at the hour of appointed interview; and 
 the town in general thanked Owen for the punctuality 
 of dinner-time. In a word, the heavy weight upon his 
 spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his 
 own system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the 
 church-clock were audible. It was a circumstance, 
 though minute, yet characteristic of his present state,
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 197 
 
 that, when employed to engrave names or initials on 
 silver spoons, he now wrote the requisite letters in the 
 plainest possible style; omitting a variety of fanciful 
 flourishes, that had heretofore distinguished his work in 
 this kind. 
 
 One day, during the era of this happy transformation, 
 old Peter Hovenden came to visit his former apprentice. 
 
 " Well, Owen," said he, " I am glad to hear such good 
 accounts of you from all quarters ; and especially from 
 the town-clock yonder, which speaks in your commenda- 
 tion every hour of the twenty-four. Only get rid al- 
 together of your nonsensical trash about the Beautiful 
 which I, nor nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could 
 ever understand only free yourself of that, and your 
 success in life is as sure as daylight. Why, if you go 
 on in this way, I should even venture to let you doctor 
 this precious old watch of mine ; though, except my 
 daughter Annie, I have nothing else so valuable in the 
 world." 
 
 " I should hardly dare touch it, sir," replied Owen, in 
 a depressed tone ; for he was weighed down by his old 
 master's presence. 
 
 " In time," said the latter, "in time you will be capa- 
 ble of it." 
 
 The old watchmaker, with the freedom naturally con- 
 sequent on his former authority, went on inspecting the 
 work which Owen had in hand at the moment, together 
 with other matters that were in progress. The artist, 
 meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head. There was 
 nothing so antipodal to his nature as this man's cold, 
 unimaginative sagacity, by contact with which every- 
 thing was converted into a dream, except the densest 
 matter of the physical world. Owen groaned in spirit, 
 and prayed fervently to be delivered from him. 
 
 " But what is this ? " cried Peter Hovenden, abruptly, 
 taking up a dusty bell-glass, beneath which appeared 
 a mechanical something, as delicate and minute as the 
 system of a butterfly's anatomy. " What have we here ! 
 Owen, Owen ! there is witchcraft in these little chains, 
 and wheels, and paddles ! See ! with one pinch of my
 
 I 9 8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 finger and thumb, I am going to deliver you from all 
 future peril." 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," screamed Owen Warland, 
 springing up with wonderful energy, " as you would 
 not drive me mad do not touch it ! The slightest 
 pressure of your finger would ruin me forever." 
 
 " Aha, young man ! And is it so ? " said the old 
 watchmaker, looking at him with just enough of pene- 
 tration to torture Owen's soul with the bitterness of 
 worldly criticism. " Well ; take your own course. But 
 I warn you again, that in this small piece of mechanism 
 lives your evil spirit. Shall I exorcise him ? " 
 
 " You are my Evil Spirit," answered Owen, much 
 excited " you, and the hard, coarse world ! The 
 leaden thoughts and the despondency that you fling 
 upon me are my clogs. Else, I should long ago have 
 achieved the task that I was created for." 
 
 Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture 
 of contempt and indignation which mankind, of whom 
 he was partly a representative, deem themselves en- 
 titled to feel towards all simpletons who seek other 
 prizes than the dusty one along the highway. He 
 then took his leave with an uplifted finger, and a sneer 
 upon his face, that haunted the artist's dreams for many 
 a night afterwards. At the time of his old master's 
 visit, Owen was probably on the point of taking up 
 the relinquished task; but, by this sinister event, he 
 was thrown back into the state whence he had been 
 slowly emerging. 
 
 But the innate tendency of his soul had only been 
 accumulating fresh vigor, during its apparent sluggish- 
 ness. As the summer advanced, he almost totally re- 
 linquished his business, and permitted Father Time, so 
 far as the old gentleman was represented by the clocks 
 and watches under his control, to stray at random 
 through human life, making infinite confusion among 
 the train of bewildered hours. He wasted the sunshine, 
 as people said, in wandering through the woods and 
 fields, and along the banks of streams. There, like a 
 child, he found amusement in chasing butterflies, or
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 199 
 
 watching the motions of water-insects. There was 
 something truly mysterious in the intentness with which 
 he contemplated these living playthings, as they sported 
 on the breeze ; or examined the structure of an impe- 
 rial insect whom he had imprisoned. The chase of 
 butterflies was an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in 
 which he had spent so many golden hours. But, would 
 the Beautiful Idea ever be yielded to his hand, like the 
 butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet, doubtless, were 
 these days, and congenial to the artist's soul. They 
 were full of bright conceptions, which gleamed through 
 his intellectual world, as the butterflies gleamed through 
 the outward atmosphere, and were real to him for the 
 instant, without the toil, and perplexity, and many dis- 
 appointments, of attempting to make them visible to 
 the sensual eye. Alas, that the artist, whether in poetry 
 or whatever other material, may not content himself 
 with the inward enjoyment of the Beautiful, but must 
 chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his ethe- 
 real domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with 
 a material grasp ! Owen Warland felt the impulse to 
 give external reality to his ideas, as irresistibly as any 
 of the poets or painters, who have arrayed the world 
 in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied 
 from the richness of their visions. 
 
 The night was now his time for the slow progress of 
 re-creating the one Idea, to which all his intellectual 
 activity referred itself. Always, at the approach of 
 dusk, he stole into the town, locked himself within his 
 shop, and wrought with patient delicacy of touch, for 
 many hours. Sometimes he was startled by the rap of 
 the watchman, who, when all the world should be 
 asleep, had caught the gleam of lamp-light through the 
 crevices of Owen Warland's shutters. Daylight, to the 
 morbid sensibility of his mind, seemed to have an in- 
 trusiveness that interfered with his pursuits. On cloudy 
 and inclement days, therefore, he sat with his head 
 upon his hands, muffling, as it were, his sensitive brain 
 in a mist of indefinite musings ; for it was a relief to 
 escape from the sharp distinctness with which he was
 
 200 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 compelled to shape out his thoughts, during his nightly 
 toil. 
 
 From one of these fits of torpor, he was aroused by 
 the entrance of Annie Hovenden, who came into the 
 shop with the freedom of a customer, and also with 
 something of the familiarity of a childish friend. She 
 had worn a hole through her silver thimble, and wanted 
 Owen to repair it. 
 
 " But I don't know whether you will condescend to 
 such a task," said she, laughing, " now that you are so 
 taken up with the notion of putting spirit into machin- 
 ery." 
 
 " Where did you get that idea, Annie ? " said Owen, 
 starting in surprise. 
 
 " Oh, out of my own head," answered she, " and 
 from something that I heard you say, long ago, when 
 you were but a boy, and I a little child. But, come ! 
 will you mend this poor thimble of mine ? " 
 
 " Anything for your sake, Annie," said Owen War- 
 land " anything, even were it to work at Robert 
 Danforth's forge." 
 
 " And that would be a pretty sight ! " retorted Annie, 
 glancing with imperceptible slightness at the artist's 
 small and slender frame. " ?f W^ll ; here is the thimble." 
 
 "But that is a strange idea of yours," said Owen, 
 " about the spiritualization of matter ! " 
 
 And then the thought stole into his mind, that this 
 young girl possessed the gift to comprehend him, bet- 
 ter than all the world beside. And what a help and 
 strength would it be to him, in his lonely toil, if he 
 could gain the sympathy of the only being whom he 
 loved ! To persons whose pursuits are insulated from 
 the common business of life who are either in ad- 
 vance of mankind, or apart from it there often comes 
 a sensation of moral cold, that makes the spirit shiver, 
 as if it had reached the frozen solitudes around the 
 pole. What the prophet, the poet, the reformer, the 
 criminal, or any other man, with human yearnings, but 
 separated from the multitude by a peculiar lot, might 
 feel, poor Owen Warland felt.
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 201 
 
 "Annie," cried he, growing pale as death at the 
 thought, " how gladly would I tell you the secret of 
 my pursuit! You, methinks, would estimate it rightly. 
 You, I know, would hear it with a reverence that I must 
 not expect from the harsh, material world." 
 
 " Would I not ! to be sure I would ! " replied Annie 
 Hovenden, lightly laughing. " Come ; explain to me 
 quickly what is the meaning of this little whirligig, so 
 delicately wrought that it might be a plaything for 
 Queen Mab. See ; I will put it in motion." 
 
 " Hold," exclaimed Owen, " hold! " 
 
 Annie had but given the slightest possible touch, 
 with the point of a needle, to the same minute portion 
 of complicated machinery which has been more than 
 once mentioned, when the artist seized her by the wrist 
 with a force that made her scream aloud. She was 
 affrighted at the convulsion of intense rage and anguish 
 that writhed across his features. The next instant he 
 let his head sink upon his hands. 
 
 " Go, Annie," murmured he ; "I have deceived my- 
 self, and must suffer for it. I yearned for sympathy 
 and thought and fancied and dreamed that 
 you might give it me. But you lack the talisman, 
 Annie, that should admit you into my secrets. That 
 touch has undone the toil of months, and the thought 
 of a lifetime ! It was not your fault, Annie but you 
 have ruined me ! " 
 
 Poor Owen Warland ! He had indeed erred, yet 
 pardonably ; for if any human spirit could have suf- 
 ficiently reverenced the processes so sacred in his 
 eyes, it must have been a woman's. Even Annie 
 Hovenden, possibly, might not have disappointed him, 
 had she been enlightened by the deep intelligence of love. 
 
 The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way that 
 satisfied any persons, who had hitherto retained a 
 hopeful opinion of him, that he was, in truth, irrevo- 
 cably doomed to inutility as regarded the world, and 
 to an evil destiny on his own part. The decease of a 
 relative had put him in possession of a small inher- 
 itance. Thus freed from the necessity of toil, and
 
 202 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 having lost the steadfast influence of a great purpose 
 great, at least, to him he abandoned himself to 
 habits from which, it might have been supposed, the 
 mere delicacy of his organization would have availed 
 to secure him. But when the ethereal portion of a 
 man of genius is obscured, the earthly part assumes 
 an influence the more uncontrollable, because the 
 character is now thrown off the balance to which 
 Providence had so nicely adjusted it, and which, in 
 coarser natures, is adjusted by some other method. 
 Owen Warland made proof of whatever show of bliss 
 may be found in riot. He looked at the world through 
 the golden medium of wine, and contemplated the 
 visions that bubble up so gayly around the brim of 
 the glass, and that people the air with shapes of pleas- 
 ant madness, which so soon grow ghostly and forlorn. 
 Even when this dismal and inevitable change had 
 taken place, the young man might still have con- 
 tinued to quaff the cup of enchantments, though its 
 vapor did but shroud life in gloom, and fill the gloom 
 with spectres that mocked at him. There was a cer- 
 tain irksomeness of spirit, which, being real, and the 
 deepest sensation of which the artist was now con- 
 scious, was more intolerable than any fantastic miser- 
 ies and horrors that the abuse of wine could summon 
 up. In the latter case, he could remember, even out 
 of the midst of his trouble, that all was but a delusion ; 
 in the former, the heavy anguish was his actual life. 
 
 From this perilous state, he was redeemed by an 
 incident which more than one person witnessed, but 
 of which the shrewdest could not explain nor con- 
 jecture the operation on Owen Warland's mind. It 
 was very simple. On a warm afternoon of Spring, as 
 the artist sat among his riotous companions, with a 
 glass of wine before him, a splendid butterfly flew in 
 at the open window, and fluttered about his head. 
 
 " Ah ! " exclaimed Owen, who had drank freely, 
 " are you alive again, child of the sun, and playmate 
 of the summer breeze, after your dismal winter's nap ! 
 Then it is time for me to be at work ! "
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 203 
 
 And, leaving his unemptied glass upon the table, he 
 departed, and was never known to sip another drop 
 of wine. 
 
 And now, again, he resumed his wanderings in the 
 woods and fields. It might be fancied that the bright 
 butterfly, which had come so spirit-like into the win- 
 dow, as Owen sat with his rude revellers, was indeed 
 a spirit, commissioned to recall him to the pure, ideal 
 life that had so etherealized him among men. It 
 might be fancied, that he went forth to seek this 
 spirit, in its sunny haunts ; for still, as in the summer- 
 time gone by, he was seen to steal gently up, wherever 
 a butterfly had alighted, and lose himself in contem- 
 plation of it. When it took flight, his eyes followed 
 the winged vision, as if its airy track would show the 
 path to heaven. But what could be the purpose of 
 the unseasonable toil, which was again resumed, as the 
 watchman knew by the lines of lamp-light through the 
 crevices of Owen Warland's shutters ? The towns- 
 people had one comprehensive explanation of all these 
 singularities. Owen Warland had gone mad ! How 
 universally efficacious how satisfactory, too, and 
 soothing to the injured sensibility of narrowness and 
 dulness is this easy method of accounting for what- 
 ever lies beyond the world's most ordinary scope ! 
 From Saint Paul's days, down to our poor little Artist 
 of the Beautiful, the same talisman had been applied 
 to the elucidation of all mysteries in the words or 
 deeds of men, who spoke or acted too wisely or too 
 well. In Owen Warland's case, the judgment of his 
 townspeople may have been correct. Perhaps he was 
 mad. The lack of sympathy that contrast between 
 himself and his neighbors, which took away the re- 
 straint of example was enough to make him so. 
 Or, possibly, he had caught just so much of ethereal 
 radiance as served to bewilder him, in an earthly 
 sense, by its intermixture with the common daylight. 
 
 One evening, when the artist had returned from a 
 customary ramble, and had just thrown the lustre of 
 his lamp on the delicate piece of work, so often inter-
 
 204 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 rupted, but still taken up again, as if his fate were 
 embodied in its mechanism, he was surprised by the 
 entrance of old Peter Hovenden. Owen never met 
 this man without a shrinking of the heart. Of all the 
 world, he was most terrible, by reason of a keen under- 
 standing, which saw so distinctly what it did see, and 
 disbelieved so uncompromisingly in what it could not 
 see. On this occasion, the old watchmaker had merely 
 a gracious word or two to say. 
 
 "Owen, my lad," said he, "we must see you at my 
 house to-morrow night." 
 
 The artist began to mutter some excuse. 
 
 "Oh, but it must be so," quoth Peter Hovenden, 
 " for the sake of the days when you were one of the 
 household. What, my boy, don't you know that my 
 daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth ? We 
 are making an entertainment, in our humble way, to 
 celebrate the event." 
 
 "Ah!" said Owen. 
 
 That little monosyllable was all he uttered ; its tone 
 seemed cold and unconcerned, to an ear like Peter 
 Hovenden's ; and yet there was in it the stifled outcry 
 of the poor artist's heart, which he compressed within 
 him like a man holding down an evil spirit. One 
 slight outbreak, however, imperceptible to the old 
 watchmaker, he allowed himself. Raising the instru- 
 ment with which he was about to begin his work, he 
 let it fall upon the little system of machinery that 
 had, anew, cost him months of thought and toil. It 
 was shattered by the stroke ! 
 
 Owen Warland's story would have been no tolerable 
 representation of the troubled life of those who strive 
 to create the Beautiful, if amid all other thwarting 
 influences love had not interposed to steal the cun- 
 ning from his hand. Outwardly he had been no 
 ardent or enterprising lover ; the career of his pas- 
 sion had confined its tumults and vicissitudes so 
 entirely within the artist's imagination, that Annie 
 herself had scarcely more than a woman's intuitive 
 perception of it. But, in Owen's view, it covered the
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 205 
 
 whole field of his life. Forgetful of the time when 
 she had shown herself incapable of any deep response, 
 he had persisted in connecting all his dreams of artis- 
 tical success with Annie's image ; she was the visible 
 shape in which the spiritual power that he worshipped, 
 and on whose altar he hoped to lay a not unworthy 
 offering, was made manifest to him. Of course he 
 had deceived himself ; there were no such attributes 
 in Annie Hovenden as his imagination had endowed 
 her with. She, in the aspect which she wore to his 
 inward vision, was as much a creation of his own, as 
 the mysterious piece of mechanism would be were it 
 ever realized. Had he become convinced of his mis- 
 take through the medium of successful love ; had he 
 won Annie to his bosom, and there beheld her fade 
 from angel into ordinary woman, the disappointment 
 might have driven him back, with concentrated energy, 
 upon his sole remaining object. On the other hand, 
 had he found Annie what he fancied, his lot would 
 have been so rich in beauty, that out of its mere 
 redundancy he might have wrought the Beautiful into 
 many a worthier type than he had toiled for. But the 
 guise in which his sorrow came to him, the sense that 
 the angel of his life had been snatched away and given 
 to a rude man of earth and iron, who could neither 
 need nor appreciate her ministrations ; this was the 
 very perversity of fate, that makes human existence 
 appear too absurd and contradictory to be the scene 
 of one other hope or one other fear. There was 
 nothing left for Owen Warland but to sit down like 
 a man that had been stunned. 
 
 He went through a fit of illness. After his recovery, 
 his small and slender frame assumed an obtuser garni- 
 ture of flesh than it had ever before worn. His thin 
 cheeks became round ; his delicate little hand, so spirit- 
 ually fashioned to achieve fairy task-work, grew plumper 
 than the hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had a 
 childishness, such as might have induced a stranger to 
 pat him on the head pausing, however, in the act, to 
 wonder what manner of child was here. It was as if the
 
 206 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 spirit had gone out of him, leaving the body to nourish 
 in a sort of vegetable existence. Not that Owen War- 
 land was idiotic. He could talk, and not irrationally. 
 Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin to think 
 him ; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length, 
 of marvels of mechanism that he had read about in 
 books, but which he had learned to consider as absolutely 
 fabulous. Among them he enumerated the Man of Brass, 
 constructed by Albertus Magnus, and the Brazen Head 
 of Friar Bacon ; and, coming down to later times, the 
 automata of a little coach and horses, which, it was pre- 
 tended, had been manufactured for the Dauphin of 
 France ; together with an insect that buzzed about the 
 ear like a living fly, and yet was but a contrivance of 
 minute steel springs. There was a story, too, of a duck 
 that waddled, and quacked, and ate ; though, had any 
 honest citizen purchased it for dinner, he would have 
 found himself cheated with the mere mechanical appari- 
 tion of a duck. 
 
 " But all these accounts," said Owen Warland, " I am 
 now satisfied, are mere impositions." 
 
 Then, in a mysterious way, he would confess that he 
 once thought differently. In his idle and dreamy days 
 he had considered it possible, in a certain sense, to 
 spiritualize machinery ; and to combine with the new 
 species of life and motion, thus produced, a beauty, that 
 should attain to the ideal, which Nature has proposed to 
 herself, in all her creatures, but has never taken pains 
 to realize. He seemed, however, to retain no very dis- 
 tinct perception either of the process of achieving this 
 object, or of the design itself. 
 
 " I have thrown it all aside now," he would say. " It 
 was a dream, such as young men are always mystifying 
 themselves with. Now that I have acquired a little 
 common sense, it makes me laugh to think of it." 
 
 Poor, poor, and fallen Owen Warland ! These were 
 the symptoms that he had ceased to be an inhabitant of 
 the better sphere that lies unseen around us. He had 
 lost his faith in the invisible, and now prided himself, as 
 such unfortunates invariably do, in the wisdom which
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 207 
 
 rejected much that even his eye could see, and trusted con- 
 fidently in nothing but what his hand could touch. This 
 is the calamity of men whose spiritual part dies out of 
 them, and leaves the grosser understanding to assimilate 
 them more and more to the things of which alone it can 
 take cognizance. But, in Owen Warland, the spirit was 
 not dead, nor passed away ; it only slept. 
 
 How it awoke again, is not recorded. Perhaps, the 
 torpid slumber was broken by a convulsive pain. Per- 
 haps, as in a former instance, the butterfly came and 
 hovered about his head, and reinspired him as, indeed, 
 this creature of the sunshine had always a mysterious 
 mission for the artist reinspired him with the former 
 purpose of his life. Whether it were pain or happiness 
 that thrilled through his veins, his first impulse was to 
 thank Heaven for rendering him again the being of 
 thought, imagination, and keenest sensibility, that he 
 had long ceased to be. 
 
 " Now for my task," said he. " Never did I feel 
 such strength for it as now." 
 
 Yet, strong as he felt himself, he was incited to toil 
 the more diligently, by an anxiety lest death should sur- 
 prise him in the midst of his labors. This anxiety, per- 
 haps, is common to all men who set their hearts upon 
 anything so high, in their own view of it, that life 
 becomes of importance only as conditional to its accom- 
 plishment. So long as we love life for itself, we seldom 
 dread the losing it. When we desire life for the attain- 
 ment of an object, we recognize the frailty of its texture. 
 But, side by side with this sense of insecurity, there is a 
 vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death, 
 while engaged in any task that seems assigned by Provi- 
 dence as our proper thing to do, and which the world 
 would have cause to mourn for, should we leave it unac- 
 complished. Can the philosopher, big with the inspira- 
 tion of an idea that is to reform mankind, believe that 
 he is to be beckoned from this sensible existence, at the 
 very instant when he is mustering his breath to speak 
 the word of light ? Should he perish so, the weary ages 
 may pass away the world's whole life-sand may fall,
 
 2o8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 drop by drop before another intellect is prepared to 
 develop the truth that might have been uttered then. 
 But history affords many an example, where the most 
 precious spirit, at any particular epoch manifested in 
 human shape, has gone hence untimely, without space 
 allowed him, so far as mortal judgment could discern, to 
 perform his mission on the earth. The prophet dies ; 
 and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives on. 
 The poet leaves his song half sung, or finishes it, beyond 
 the scope of mortal ears, in a celestial choir. The 
 painter as Allston did leaves half his conception on 
 the canvas, to sadden us with its imperfect beauty, and 
 goes to picture forth the whole, if it be no irreverence 
 to say so, in the hues of Heaven. But, rather, such in- 
 complete designs of this life will be perfected nowhere. 
 This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects 
 must be taken as a proof, that the deeds of earth, how- 
 ever etherealized by piety or genius, are without value, 
 except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit. In 
 Heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melo- 
 dious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another 
 verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here ? 
 
 But to return to Owen Warland. It was his fortune, 
 good or ill, to achieve the purpose of his life. Pass we 
 over a long space of intense thought, yearning effort, 
 minute toil, and wasting anxiety, succeeded by an instant 
 of solitary triumph ; let all this be imagined ; and then 
 behold the artist, on a winter evening, seeking admit- 
 tance to Robert Danforth's fireside circle. There he 
 found the Man of Iron, with his massive substance, 
 thoroughly warmed and attempered by domestic influ- 
 ences. And there was Annie, too, now transformed 
 into a matron, with much of her husband's plain and 
 sturdy nature, but imbued, as Owen Warland still 
 believed, with a finer grace, that might enable her to 
 be the interpreter between Strength and Beauty. It 
 happened, likewise, that old Peter Hovenden was a 
 guest, this evening, at his daughter's fireside ; and it 
 was his well-remembered expression of keen, cold criti- 
 cism, that first encountered the artist's glance.
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 209 
 
 " My old friend Owen ! " cried Robert Danforth, 
 starting up, and compressing the artist's delicate fin- 
 gers within a hand that was accustomed to gripe bars of 
 iron. " This is kind and neighborly, to come to us at 
 last ! I was afraid your Perpetual Motion had bewitched 
 you out of the remembrance of old times." 
 
 "We are glad to see you ! " said Annie, while a blush 
 reddened her matronly cheek. " It was not like a friend 
 to stay from us so long." 
 
 "Well, Owen," inquired the old watchmaker, as his 
 first greeting, " how comes on the Beautiful ? Have 
 you created it at last?" 
 
 The artist did not immediately reply, being startled 
 by the apparition of a young child of strength, that was 
 tumbling about on the carpet ; a little personage who 
 had come mysteriously out of the infinite, but with 
 something so sturdy and real in his composition that he 
 seemed moulded out of the densest substance which 
 earth could supply. This hopeful infant crawled tow- 
 ards the newcomer, and setting himself on end as 
 Robert Danforth expressed the posture stared at 
 Owen with a look of such sagacious observation, that 
 the mother could not help exchanging a proud glance 
 with her husband. But the artist was disturbed by the 
 child's look, as imagining a resemblance between it and 
 Peter Hovenden's habitual expression. He could have 
 fancied that the old watchmaker was compressed into 
 this baby-shape, and looking out of those baby-eyes, 
 and repeating as he now did the malicious ques- 
 tion : 
 
 " The Beautiful, Owen ! How comes on the Beauti- 
 ful? Have you succeeded in creating the Beautiful?" 
 
 " I have succeeded," replied the artist, with a momen- 
 tary light of triumph in his eyes, and a smile of sun- 
 shine, yet steeped in such depth of thought, that it was 
 almost sadness. " Yes, my friends, it is the truth. I 
 have succeeded ! " 
 
 " Indeed ! " cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthful- 
 ness peeping out of her face again. " And is it lawful, 
 now, to inquire what the secret is ? "
 
 210 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 "Surely; it is to disclose it, that I have come," 
 answered Owen Warland. " You shall know, and see, 
 and touch, and possess the secret ! For, Annie if by 
 that name I may still address the friend of my boyish 
 years Annie, it is for your bridal gift that I have 
 wrought this spiritual mechanism, this harmony of 
 motion, this Mystery of Beauty ! It comes late, indeed ; 
 but it is as we go onward in life, when objects begin to 
 lose their freshness of hue, and our souls their delicacy 
 of perception, that the spirit of Beauty is most needed. 
 If forgive me, Annie if you know how to value 
 this gift, it can never come too late ! " 
 
 He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel-box. 
 It was carved richly out of ebony by his own hand, and 
 inlaid with a fanciful tracery of pearl, representing a 
 boy in pursuit of a butterfly, which, elsewhere, had 
 become a winged spirit, and was flying heavenward; 
 while the boy, or youth, had found such efficacy in his 
 strong desire, that he ascended from earth to cloud, and 
 from cloud to celestial atmosphere, to win the Beautiful. 
 This case of ebony the artist opened, and bade Annie 
 place her finger on its edge. She did so, but almost 
 screamed, as a butterfly fluttered forth, and, alighting 
 on her finger's tip, sat waving the ample magnificence 
 of its purple and gold-speckled wings, as if in prelude 
 to a flight. It is impossible to express by words the 
 glory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness, which 
 were softened into the beauty of this object. Nature's 
 ideal butterfly was here realized in all its perfection ; 
 not in the pattern of such faded insects as flit among 
 earthly flowers, but of those which hover across the 
 meads of Paradise, for child-angels and the spirits of 
 departed infants to disport themselves with. The rich 
 down was visible upon its wings ; the lustre of its eyes 
 seemed instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered 
 around this wonder the candles gleamed upon it 
 but it glistened apparently by its own radiance, and 
 illuminated the finger and outstretched hand on which 
 it rested, with a white gleam like that of precious stones. 
 In its perfect beauty, the consideration of size was
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 211 
 
 entirely lost. Had its wings overreached the firma- 
 ment, the mind could not have been more filled or 
 satisfied. 
 
 " Beautiful ! Beautiful ! " exclaimed Annie. " Is it 
 alive ? Is it alive ? " 
 
 " Alive ? To be sure it is," answered her husband. 
 " Do you suppose any mortal has skill enough to 
 make a butterfly, or would put himself to the 
 trouble of making one, when any child may catch 
 a score of them in a summer's afternoon? Alive? 
 certainly ! But this pretty box is undoubtedly of our 
 friend Owen's manufacture; and really it does him 
 credit." 
 
 At this moment the butterfly waved its wings anew, 
 with a motion so absolutely lifelike that Annie was 
 startled, and even awe-stricken; for, in spite of her 
 husband's opinion, she could not satisfy herself whether 
 it was indeed a living creature, or a piece of wondrous 
 mechanism. 
 
 "Is it alive?" she repeated, more earnestly than 
 before. 
 
 " Judge for yourself," said Owen Warland, who stood 
 gazing in her face with fixed attention. 
 
 The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered 
 round Annie's head, and soared into a distant region 
 of the parlor, still making itself perceptible to sight by 
 the starry gleam in which the motion of its wings envel- 
 oped it. The infant, on the floor, followed its course 
 with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the 
 room, it returned, in a spiral curve, and settled again on 
 Annie's finger. 
 
 " But is it alive ? " exclaimed she again ; and the 
 finger, on which the gorgeous mystery had alighted, 
 was so tremulous that the butterfly was forced to balance 
 himself with his wings. "Tell me if it be alive, or 
 whether you created it ? " 
 
 " Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful ? " 
 replied Owen Warland. " Alive ? Yes, Annie ; it may 
 well be said to possess life, for it has absorbed my own 
 being into itself ; and in the secret of that butterfly, and
 
 2i2 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 in its beauty which is not merely outward, but deep 
 as its whole system is represented the intellect, the 
 imagination, the sensibility, the soul, of an Artist of the 
 Beautiful ! Yes, I created it. But " and here his 
 countenance somewhat changed "this butterfly is not 
 now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off, in the 
 day-dreams of my youth." 
 
 " Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything," said the 
 blacksmith, grinning with childlike delight. " I wonder 
 whether it would condescend to alight on such a great 
 clumsy finger as mine ? Hold it hither, Annie ! " 
 
 By the artist's direction, Annie touched her finger's 
 tip to that of her husband ; and, after a momentary 
 delay, the butterfly fluttered from one to the other. It 
 preluded a second flight by a similar, yet not precisely 
 the same waving of wings, as in the first experiment. 
 Then ascending from the blacksmith's stalwart finger, 
 it rose in a gradually enlarging curve to the ceiling, 
 made one wide sweep around the room, and returned 
 with an undulating movement to the point whence it had 
 started. 
 
 " Well, that does beat all nature ! " cried Robert 
 Danforth, bestowing the heartiest praise that he could 
 find expression for; and, indeed, had he paused there, 
 a man of finer words and nicer perception could not 
 easily have said more. "That goes beyond me, I con- 
 fess ! But what then ? There is more real use in one 
 downright blow of my sledge-hammer, than in the whole 
 five years' labor that our friend Owen has wasted on 
 this butterfly ! " 
 
 Here the child clapped his hands, and made a great 
 babble of indistinct utterance, apparently demanding 
 that the butterfly should be given him for a plaything. 
 
 Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at Annie, 
 to discover whether she sympathized in her husband's 
 estimate of the comparative value of the Beautiful and 
 the Practical. There was, amid all her kindness 
 towards himself, amid all the wonder and admiration 
 with which she contemplated the marvellous work of his 
 hands, and incarnation of his idea, a secret scorn ; too
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 213 
 
 secret, perhaps, for her own consciousness, and percep- 
 tible only to such intuitive discernment as that of the 
 artist. But Owen, in the latter stages of his pursuit, 
 had risen out of the region in which such a discovery 
 might have been torture. He knew that the world, and 
 Annie as the representative of the world, whatever 
 praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting 
 word, nor feel the fitting sentiment, which should be the 
 perfect recompense of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty 
 moral by a material trifle converting what was earthly 
 to spiritual gold had won the Beautiful into his handi- 
 work. Not at this latest moment was he to learn that 
 the reward of all high performance must be sought 
 within itself, or sought in vain. There was, however, a 
 view of the matter, which Annie, and her husband, and 
 even Peter Hovenden, might fully have understood, and 
 which would have satisfied them that the toil of years 
 had here been worthily bestowed. Owen Warland 
 might have told them, that this butterfly, this play- 
 thing, this bridal gift of a poor watchmaker to a 
 blacksmith's wife, was, in truth, a gem of art that a 
 monarch would have purchased with honors and abun- 
 dant wealth, and have treasured it among the jewels 
 of his kingdom, as the most unique and wondrous of 
 them all ! But the artist smiled and kept the secret to 
 himself. 
 
 " Father," said Annie, thinking that a word of praise 
 from the old watchmaker might gratify his former 
 apprentice, " do come and admire this pretty butterfly ! " 
 
 " Let us see," said Peter Hovenden, rising from his 
 chair, with a sneer upon his face that always made 
 people doubt, as he himself did, in everything but a 
 material existence. " Here is my finger for it to alight 
 upon. I shall understand it better when once I have 
 touched it." 
 
 But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, when 
 the tip of her father's finger was pressed against that of 
 her husband, on which the butterfly still rested, the 
 insect drooped its wings, and seemed on the point of 
 falling to the floor. Even the bright spots of gold upon
 
 2i 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 its wings and body, unless her eyes deceived her, grew 
 dim, and the glowing purple took a dusky hue, and the 
 starry lustre that gleamed around the blacksmith's hand 
 became faint, and vanished. 
 
 "It is dying ! It is dying ! " cried Annie, in alarm. 
 
 " It has been delicately wrought," said the artist, 
 calmly. "As I told you, it has imbibed a spiritual 
 essence call it magnetism, or what you will. In an 
 atmosphere of doubt and mockery, its exquisite sus- 
 ceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who 
 instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its 
 beauty ; in a few moments more, its mechanism would 
 be irreparably injured." 
 
 "Take away your hand, father!" entreated Annie, 
 turning pale. " Here is my child ; let it rest on his 
 innocent hand. There, perhaps, its life will revive, and 
 its colors grow brighter than ever." 
 
 Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. 
 The butterfly then appeared to recover the power of 
 voluntary motion ; while its hues assumed much of their 
 original lustre and the gleam of starlight, which was its 
 most ethereal attribute, again formed a halo round about 
 it. At first, when transferred from Robert Danforth's 
 hand to the small finger of the child, this radiance grew 
 so powerful that it positively threw the little fellow's 
 shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile, extended 
 his plump hand as he had seen his father and mother 
 do, and watched the waving of the insect's wings with 
 infantine delight. Nevertheless, there was a certain 
 odd expression of sagacity, that made Owen Warland 
 feel as if here were old Peter Hovenden, partially, and 
 but partially, redeemed from his hard scepticism into 
 childish faith. 
 
 " How wise the little monkey looks ! " whispered 
 Robert Danforth to his wife. 
 
 " I never saw such a look on a child's face," answered 
 Annie, admiring her own infant, and with good reason, 
 far more than the artistic butterfly. "The darling 
 knows more of the mystery than we do." 
 
 As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of
 
 THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 215 
 
 something not entirely congenial in the child's nature, 
 it alternately sparkled and grew dim. At length, it 
 arose from the small hand of the infant with an airy 
 motion, that seemed to bear it upward without an 
 effort; as if the ethereal instincts, with which its 
 master's spirit had endowed it, impelled this fair 
 vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there 
 been no obstruction, it might have soared into the sky, 
 and grown immortal. But its lustre gleamed upon the 
 ceiling ; the exquisite texture of its wings brushed against 
 that earthly medium ; and a sparkle or two, as if star- 
 dust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the carpet. 
 Then the butterfly came fluttering down, and, instead of 
 returning to the infant, was apparently attracted towards 
 the artist's hand. 
 
 " Not so, not so ! " murmured Owen Warland, as if 
 his handiwork could have understood him. " Thou hast 
 gone forth out of thy master's heart. There is no re- 
 turn for thee ! " 
 
 With a wavering movement, and emitting a tremulous 
 radiance,, the butterfly struggled, as it were, towards the 
 infant, and was about to alight upon his finger. But, 
 while it still hovered in the air, the little Child of 
 Strength, with his grandsire's sharp and shrewd ex- 
 pression in his face, made a snatch at the marvellous 
 insect, and compressed it in his hand. Annie screamed! 
 Old Peter Hovenden burst into a cold and scornful laugh. 
 The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed the infant's 
 hand, and found within the palm a small heap of glit- 
 tering fragments, whence the Mystery of Beauty had 
 fled forever. And as for Owen Warland, he looked 
 placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and 
 which yet was no ruin. He had caught a far other 
 butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough 
 to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he made 
 it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in 
 his eyes, while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoy- 
 ment of the reality.
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 
 
 THE other day, having a leisure hour at my dis- 
 posal, I stept into a new museum, to which my 
 notice was casually drawn by a small and unobtrusive 
 sign : " To BE SEEN HERE, A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION." 
 Such was the simple, yet not altogether unpromising 
 announcement, that turned my steps aside, for a little 
 while, from the sunny sidewalk of our principal thor- 
 oughfare. Mounting a sombre staircase, I pushed open 
 a door at its summit, and found myself in the presence 
 of a person, who mentioned the moderate sum that 
 would entitle me to admittance : 
 
 " Three shillings, Massachusetts tenor," said he ; 
 " no, I mean half a dollar, as you reckon in these 
 days." 
 
 While searching my pocket for the coin, I glanced at 
 the door-keeper, the marked character and individuality 
 of whose aspect encouraged me to expect something not 
 quite in the ordinary way. He wore an old-fashioned 
 great-coat, much faded, within which his meagre person 
 was so completely enveloped, that the rest of his attire 
 was undistinguishable. But his visage was remarkably 
 wind-flushed, sun-burnt, and weather-worn, and had a 
 most unquiet, nervous, and apprehensive expression. 
 It seemed as if this man had some all-important object 
 in view, some point of deepest interest to be decided, 
 some momentous question to ask, might he but hope 
 for a reply. As it was evident, however, that I could 
 have nothing to do with his private affairs, I passed 
 through an open doorway, which admitted me into the 
 extensive hall of the Museum. 
 
 Directly in front of the portal was the bronze statue 
 of a youth with winged feet. He was represented in 
 the act of flitting away from earth, yet wore such a 
 
 216
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 217 
 
 look of earnest invitation that it impressed me like a 
 summons to enter the hall. 
 
 " It is the original statue of Opportunity, by the 
 ancient sculptor Lysippus," said a gentleman who now 
 approached me ; "I place it at the entrance of my 
 Museum, because it is not at all times that one can 
 gain admittance to such a collection." 
 
 The speaker was a middle-aged person, of whom it 
 was not easy to determine whether he had spent his 
 life as a scholar, or as a man of action; in truth, all 
 outward and obvious peculiarities had been worn away 
 by an extensive and promiscuous intercourse with the 
 world. There was no mark about him of profession, 
 individual habits, or scarcely of country ; although his 
 dark complexion and high features made me conjecture 
 that he was a native of some southern clime of Europe. 
 At all events, he was evidently the Virtuoso in person. 
 
 " With your permission," said he, " as we have no 
 descriptive catalogue, I will accompany you through 
 the Museum, and point out whatever may be most 
 worthy of attention. In the first place, here is a choice 
 collection of stuffed animals." 
 
 Nearest the door stood the outward semblance of a 
 wolf, exquisitely prepared, it is true, and showing a 
 very wolfish fierceness in the large glass eyes, which 
 were inserted into its wild and crafty head. Still it 
 was merely the skin of a wolf, with nothing to dis- 
 tinguish it from other individuals of that unlovely 
 breed. 
 
 " How does this animal deserve a place in your col- 
 lection ? " inquired I. 
 
 " It is the wolf that devoured Little Red Riding- 
 Hood," answered the Virtuoso; "and by his side, 
 with a milder and more matronly look, as you per- 
 ceive, stands the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and 
 Remus." 
 
 "Ah, indeed!" exclaimed I. "And what lovely 
 lamb is this, with the snow-white fleece, which seems to 
 be of as delicate a texture as innocence itself ?" 
 
 " Methinks you have but carelessly read Spenser,"
 
 218 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 replied my guide, " or you would at once recognize the 
 ' milk-white lamb ' which Una led. But I set no great 
 value upon the lamb. The next specimen is better 
 worth our notice." 
 
 " What ! " cried I, " this strange animal, with the 
 black head of an ox upon the body of a white horse ? 
 Were it possible to suppose it, I should say that this 
 was Alexander's steed Bucephalus." 
 
 " The same," said the Virtuoso. " And can you like- 
 wise give a name to the famous charger that stands 
 beside him ? " 
 
 Next to the renowned Bucephalus stood the mere 
 skeleton of a horse, with the white bones peeping 
 through his ill-conditioned hide. But, if my heart had 
 not warmed towards that pitiful anatomy, I might as 
 well have quitted the Museum at once. Its rarities had 
 not been collected with pain and toil from the four 
 quarters of the earth, and from the depths of the sea, 
 and from the palaces and sepulchres of ages, for those 
 who could mistake this illustrious steed. 
 
 " It is Rosinante ! " exclaimed I, with enthusiasm. 
 
 And so it proved ! My admiration for the noble and 
 gallant horse caused me to glance with less interest at 
 the other animals, although many of them might have 
 deserved the notice of Cuvier himself. There was the 
 donkey which Peter Bell cudgelled so soundly, and a 
 brother of the same species, who had suffered a similar 
 infliction from the ancient prophet Balaam. Some doubts 
 were entertained, however, as to the authenticity of the 
 latter beast. My guide pointed out the venerable Argus, 
 that faithful dog of Ulysses, and also another dog (for 
 so the skin bespoke it), which, though imperfectly pre- 
 served, seemed once to have had three heads. It was 
 Cerberus. I was considerably amused at detecting, in 
 an obscure corner, the fox that became so famous by the 
 loss of his tail. There were several stuffed cats, which, 
 as a dear lover of that comfortable beast, attracted my 
 affectionate regards. One was Dr. Johnson's cat Hodge ; 
 and in the same row stood the favorite cats of Mahomet, 
 Gray, and Walter Scott, together with Puss in Boots,
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 219 
 
 and a cat of very noble aspect who had once been a 
 deity of ancient Egypt. Byron's tame bear came next. 
 I must not forget to mention the Erymanthian boar, the 
 skin of St. George's Dragon, and that of the serpent 
 Python ; and another skin, with beautifully variegated 
 hues, supposed to have been the garment of the " spirited 
 Sly Snake," which tempted Eve. Against the walls were 
 suspended the horns of a stag that Shakespeare shot ; 
 and on the floor lay the ponderous shell of the tortoise 
 which fell upon the head of ^Eschylus. In one row, as 
 natural as life, stood the sacred bull Apis, the " cow 
 with the crumpled horn," and a very wild-looking young 
 heifer, which I guessed to be the cow that jumped over 
 the moon. She was probably killed by the rapidity of 
 her descent. As I turned away, my eyes fell upon an 
 indescribable monster, which proved to be a griffin. 
 
 "I look in vain," observed I, "for the skin of an 
 animal which might well deserve the closest study of a 
 naturalist, the winged horse Pegasus." 
 
 " He is not yet dead," replied the Virtuoso, "but he 
 is so hard ridden by many young gentlemen of the day, 
 that I hope soon to add his skin and skeleton to my 
 collection." 
 
 We now passed to the next alcove of the hall, in 
 which was a multitude of stuffed birds. They were 
 very prettily arranged, some upon the branches of trees, 
 others brooding upon nests, and others suspended by 
 wires so artificially that they seemed in the very act of 
 flight. Among them was a white dove, with a withered 
 branch of olive leaves in her mouth. 
 
 " Can this be the very dove," inquired I, " that brought 
 the message of peace and hope to the tempest-beaten 
 passengers of the ark ? " 
 
 " Even so," said my companion. 
 
 "And this raven, I suppose," continued I, "is the 
 same that fed Elijah in the wilderness." 
 
 " The raven ? no," said the Virtuoso, "it is a bird of 
 modern date. He belonged to one Barnaby Rudge; 
 and many people fancied that the devil himself was dis- 
 guised under his sable plumage. But poor Grip has
 
 220 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 drawn his last cork, and has been forced to ' say die ' at 
 last. This other raven, hardly less curious, is that in 
 which the soul of King George the First revisited his 
 lady love, the Duchess of Kendall." 
 
 My guide next pointed out Minerva's owl, and the 
 vulture that preyed upon the liver of Prometheus. 
 There was likewise the sacred Ibis of Egypt, and one 
 of the Stymphalides, which Hercules shot in his sixth 
 labor. Shelley's sky-lark, Bryant's water-fowl, and a 
 pigeon from the belfry of the Old South Church, pre- 
 served by N. P. Willis, were placed on the same perch. 
 I could not but shudder on beholding Coleridge's alba- 
 tross, transfixed with the Ancient Mariner's crossbow 
 shaft. Beside this bird of awful poesy stood a gray 
 goose of very ordinary aspect. 
 
 " Stuffed goose is no such rarity," observed I. " Why 
 do you preserve such a specimen in your Museum ? " 
 
 " It is one of the flock whose cackling saved the 
 Roman Capitol," answered the Virtuoso. " Many geese 
 have cackled and hissed, both before and since ; but 
 none, like those, have clamored themselves into immor- 
 tality." 
 
 There seemed to be little else that demanded notice 
 in this department of the Museum, unless we except 
 Robinson Crusoe's parrot, a live phoenix, a footless bird 
 of Paradise, and a splendid peacock, supposed to be the 
 same that once contained the soul of Pythagoras. I 
 therefore passed to the next alcove, the shelves of which 
 were covered with a miscellaneous collection of curiosi- 
 ties, such as are usually found in similar establishments. 
 One of the first things that took my eye was a strange- 
 looking cap, woven of some substance that appeared to 
 be neither woollen, cotton, nor linen. 
 
 " Is this a magician's cap ? " I asked. 
 
 " No," replied the Virtuoso, " it is merely Dr. Frank- 
 lin's cap of asbestos. But here is one which, perhaps, 
 may suit you better. It is the wishing-cap of Fortunatus. 
 Will you try it on ? " 
 
 "By no means," answered I, putting it aside with 
 my hand. "The day of wild wishes is past with me.
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 221 
 
 I desire nothing that may not come in the ordinary 
 course of Providence." 
 
 " Then, probably," returned the Virtuoso, " you will 
 not be tempted to rub this lamp ? " 
 
 While speaking, he took from the shelf an antique 
 brass lamp, curiously wrought with embossed figures, 
 but so covered with verdigris that the sculpture was 
 almost eaten away. 
 
 " It is a thousand years," said he, " since the genius 
 of this lamp constructed Aladdin's palace in a single 
 night. But he still retains his power ; and the man 
 who rubs Aladdin's lamp, has but to desire either a 
 palace or a cottage." 
 
 " I might desire a cottage," replied I, " but I would have 
 it founded on sure and stable truth, not on dreams and fan- 
 tasies. I have learned to look for the real and the true." 
 
 My guide next showed me Prospero's magic wand, 
 broken into three fragments by the hand of its mighty 
 master. On the same shelf lay the gold ring of ancient 
 Gyges, which enabled the wearer to walk invisible. On 
 the other side of the alcove was a tall looking-glass in a 
 frame of ebony, but veiled with a curtain of purple silk, 
 through the rents of which the gleam of the mirror was 
 perceptible. 
 
 "This is Cornelius Agrippa's magic glass," observed 
 the Virtuoso. " Draw aside the curtain, and picture any 
 human form within your mind, and it will be reflected 
 in the mirror." 
 
 " It is enough if I can picture it within my mind," 
 answered I. " Why should I wish it to be repeated in 
 the mirror ? But, indeed, these works of magic have 
 grown wearisome to me. There are so many greater 
 wonders in the world, to those who keep their eyes open, 
 and their sight undimmed by custom, that all the delu- 
 sions of the old sorcerers seem flat and stale. Unless 
 you can show me something really curious, I care not to 
 look further into your Museum." 
 
 " Ah, well, then," said the Virtuoso, composedly, 
 " perhaps you may deem some of my antiquarian rarities 
 deserving of a glance."
 
 222 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 He pointed out the Iron Mask, now corroded with 
 rust ; and my heart grew sick at the sight of this dread- 
 ful relic, which had shut out a human being from sym- 
 pathy with his race. There was nothing half so terrible 
 in the axe that beheaded King Charles, nor in the dag- 
 ger that slew Henry of Navarre, nor in the arrow that 
 pierced the heart of William Rufus, all of which were 
 shown to me. Many of the articles derived their inter- 
 est, such as it was, from having been formerly in the 
 possession of royalty. For instance, here was Charle- 
 magne's sheepskin cloak, the flowing wig of Louis 
 Quatorze, the spinriing-wheel of Sardanapalus, and King 
 Stephen's famous breeches, which cost him but a crown. 
 The heart of the Bloody Mary, with the word " Calais " 
 worn into its diseased substance, was preserved in a 
 bottle of spirits ; and near it lay the golden case in which 
 the queen of Gustavus Adolphus treasured up that hero's 
 heart. Among these relics and heirlooms of kings, I 
 must not forget the long, hairy ears of Midas, and a 
 piece of bread which had been changed to gold by the 
 touch of that unlucky monarch. And as Grecian Helen 
 was a queen, it may here be mentioned, that I was per- 
 mitted to take into my hand a lock of her golden hair, 
 and the bowl which a sculptor modelled from the curve 
 of her perfect breast. Here, likewise, was the robe 
 that smothered Agamemnon, Nero's fiddle, the Czar 
 Peter's brandy-bottle, the crown of Semiramis, and Ca- 
 nute's sceptre, which he extended over the sea. That 
 my own land may not deem itself neglected, let me 
 add, that I was favored with a sight of the skull of King 
 Philip,, the famous Indian chief, whose head the Puritans 
 smote off and exhibited upon a pole. 
 
 " Show me something else," said I to the Virtuoso. 
 " Kings are in such an artificial position, that people in 
 the ordinary walks of life cannot feel an interest in their 
 relics. If you could show me the straw hat of sweet 
 little Nell, I would far rather see it than a king's golden 
 crown." 
 
 " There it is," said my guide, pointing carelessly with 
 his staff to the straw hat in question. " But, indeed,
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 223 
 
 you are hard to please. Here are the seven-leagued 
 boots. Will you try them on ? " 
 
 " Our modern railroads have superseded their use," 
 answered I ; " and as to these cow-hide boots, I could 
 show you quite as curious a pair at the transcendental 
 community in Roxbury." 
 
 We next examined a collection of swords and other 
 weapons, belonging to different epochs, but thrown 
 together without much attempt at arrangement. Here 
 was Arthur's sword Excalibar, and that of the Cid Cam- 
 peodor, and the sword of Brutus rusted with Caesar's 
 blood and his own, and the sword of Joan of Arc, and 
 that of Horatius, and that with which Virginius slew his 
 daughter, and the one which Dionysius suspended over 
 the head of Damocles. Here, also, was Arria's sword, 
 which she plunged into her own breast, in order to taste 
 of death before her husband. The crooked blade of 
 Saladin's scimetar next attracted my notice. I know 
 not by what chance, but so it happened, that the sword 
 of one of our own militia generals was suspended be- 
 tween Don Quixote's lance and the brown blade of 
 Hudibras. My heart throbbed high at the sight of the 
 helmet of Miltiades, and the spear that was broken in 
 the breast of Epaminondas. I recognized the shield of 
 Achilles by its resemblance to the admirable cast in the 
 possession of Professor Felton. Nothing in this apart- 
 ment interested me more than Major Pitcairn's pistol, the 
 discharge of which, at Lexington, began the war of the 
 Revolution, and was reverberated in thunder around 
 the land for seven long years. The bow of Ulysses, 
 though unstrung for ages, was placed against the wall, 
 together with a sheaf of Robin Hood's arrows, and the 
 rifle of Daniel Boone. 
 
 " Enough of weapons," said I, at length ; " although I 
 would gladly have seen the sacred shield which fell from 
 Heaven in the time of Numa. And surely you should 
 obtain the sword which Washington unsheathed at 
 Cambridge. But the collection does you much credit. 
 Let us pass on." 
 
 In the next alcove we saw the golden thigh of Pythago-
 
 224 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 ras, which had so divine a meaning ; and, by one of 
 the queer analogies to which the Virtuoso seemed to 
 be addicted, this ancient emblem lay on the same shelf 
 with Peter Stuyvesant's wooden leg, that was fabled to 
 be of silver. Here was a remnant of the Golden Fleece ; 
 and a sprig of yellow leaves that resembled the foliage of 
 a frost-bitten elm, but was duly authenticated as a portion 
 of the golden branch by which ^Eneas gained admit- 
 tance to the realm of Pluto. Atalanta's golden apple, 
 and one of the apples of discord, were wrapt in the 
 napkin of gold which Rampsinitus brought from Hades ; 
 and the whole were deposited in the golden vase of Bias, 
 with its inscription : "To THE WISEST." 
 
 " And how did you obtain this vase ? " said I to the 
 Virtuoso. 
 
 " It was given me long ago," replied he, with a scorn- 
 ful expression in his eye, "because I had learned to 
 despise all things." 
 
 It had not escaped me that, though the Virtuoso was 
 evidently a man of high cultivation, yet he seemed to 
 lack sympathy with the spiritual, the sublime, and the 
 tender. Apart from the whim that had led him to de- 
 vote so much time, pains, and expense to the collection 
 of this Museum, he impressed me as one of the hardest 
 and coldest men of the world whom I had ever met. 
 
 " To despise all things ! " repeated I. " This, at best, 
 is the wisdom of the understanding. It is the creed of 
 a man whose soul, whose better and diviner part, 
 has never been awakened, or has died out of him." 
 
 " I did not think that you were still so young," said 
 the Virtuoso. " Should you live to my years, you will 
 acknowledge that the vase of Bias was not ill bestowed." 
 
 Without further discussion of the point, he directed 
 my attention to other curiosities. I examined Cinder- 
 ella's little glass slipper, and compared it with one of 
 Diana's sandals, and with Fanny Elssler's shoe, which 
 bore testimony to the muscular character of her illustri- 
 ous foot. On the same shelf were Thomas the Rhymer's 
 green velvet shoes, and the brazen shoe of Empedocles, 
 which was thrown out of Mount ytna. Anacreon's
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 225 
 
 drinking-cup was placed in apt juxtaposition with one 
 of Tom Moore's wine-glasses and Circe's magic bowl. 
 These were symbols of luxury and riot ; but near them 
 stood the cup whence Socrates drank his hemlock ; and 
 that which Sir Philip Sydney put from his death-parched 
 lips to bestow the draught upon a dying soldier. Next 
 appeared a cluster of tobacco pipes, consisting of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh's, the earliest on record, Dr. Parr's, 
 Charles Lamb's, and the first calumet of peace which 
 was ever smoked between a European and an Indian. 
 Among other musical instruments, I noticed the lyre of 
 Orpheus, and those of Homer and Sappho, Dr. Frank- 
 lin's famous whistle, the trumpet of Anthony Van 
 Corlear, and the flute which Goldsmith played upon in 
 his rambles through the French provinces. The staff 
 of Peter the Hermit stood in a corner, with that of good 
 old Bishop Jewel, and one of ivory, which had belonged 
 to Papirius, the Roman Senator. The ponderous club 
 of Hercules was close at hand. The Virtuoso showed 
 me the chisel of Phidias, Claude's palette, and the brush 
 of Apelles, observing that he intended to bestow the 
 former either on Greenough, Crawford, or Powers, and 
 the two latter upon Washington Allston. There was a 
 small vase of oracular gas from Delphos, which, I trust, 
 will be submitted to the scientific analysis of Professor 
 Silliman. I was deeply moved on beholding a phial of 
 the tears into which Niobe was dissolved ; nor less so 
 on learning that a shapeless fragment of salt was a 
 relic of that victim of despondency and sinful regrets, 
 Lot's wife. My companion appeared to set great value 
 upon some Egyptian darkness in a blacking jug. Sev- 
 eral of the shelves were covered by a collection of coins ; 
 among which, however, I remember none but the 
 Splendid Shilling, celebrated by Phillips, and a dollar's 
 worth of the iron money of Lycurgus, weighing about 
 fifty pounds. 
 
 Walking carelessly onward, I had nearly fallen over 
 a huge bundle, like a pedlar's pack, done up in sack- 
 cloth, and very securely strapped and corded. 
 
 " It is Christian's burthen of sin," said the Virtuoso.
 
 226 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 " Oh, pray let us open it ! " cried I. " For many a 
 year I have longed to know its contents." 
 
 " Look into your own consciousness and memory," 
 replied the Virtuoso. "You will there find a list of 
 whatever it contains." 
 
 As this was an undeniable truth, I threw a melan- 
 choly look at the burthen, and passed on. A collection 
 of old garments, hanging on pegs, was worthy of some 
 attention, especially the shirt of Nessus, Caesar's mantle, 
 Joseph's coat of many colors, the Vicar of Bray's cassock, 
 Goldsmith's peach-bloom suit, a pair of President Jef- 
 ferson's scarlet breeches, John Randolph's red baize 
 hunting-shirt, the drab small-clothes of the Stout Gentle- 
 man, and the rags of the " man all tattered and torn." 
 George Fox's hat impressed me with deep reverence, as 
 a relic of perhaps the truest apostle that has appeared 
 on earth for these eighteen hundred years. My eye 
 was next attracted by an old pair of shears, which I 
 should have taken for a memorial of some famous tailor, 
 only that the Virtuoso pledged his veracity that they 
 were the identical scissors of Atropos. He also showed 
 me a broken hour-glass, which had been thrown aside 
 by Father Time, together with the old gentleman's gray 
 forelock, tastefully braided into a brooch. In the hour- 
 glass was the handful of sand, the grains of which had 
 numbered the years of the Cumasan Sibyl. I think it 
 was in this alcove that I saw the inkstand which Luther 
 threw at the Devil, and the ring which Essex, while 
 under sentence of death, sent to Queen Elizabeth. And 
 here was the blood-incrusted pen of steel with which 
 Faust signed away his salvation. 
 
 The Virtuoso now opened the door of a closet, and 
 showed me a lamp burning, while three others stood 
 unlighted by its side. One of the three was the lamp 
 of Diogenes, another that of Guy Faux, and the third 
 that which Hero set forth to the midnight breeze in 
 the high tower of Abydos. 
 
 " See ! " said the Virtuoso, blowing with all his force 
 at the lighted lamp. 
 
 The flame quivered and shrank away from his breath,
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 227 
 
 but clung to the wick, and resumed its brilliancy as 
 soon as the blast was exhausted. 
 
 " It is an undying lamp from the tomb of Charle- 
 magne," observed my guide. " That flame was kindled 
 a thousand years ago." 
 
 " How ridiculous to kindle an unnatural light in 
 tombs ! " exclaimed I. " We should seek to behold the 
 dead in the light of Heaven. But what is the meaning 
 of this chafing-dish of glowing coals ? " 
 
 "That," answered the Virtuoso, "is the original fire 
 which Prometheus stole from Heaven. Look stead- 
 fastly into it, and you will discern another curi- 
 osity." 
 
 Tgazed into that fire, which, symbolically, was the 
 origin of all that was bright and glorious in the soul of 
 man, and in the midst of it, behold ! a little reptile, 
 sporting with evident enjoyment of the fervid heat. It 
 was a salamander. 
 
 "What a sacrilege! " cried I, with inexpressible dis- 
 gust. " Can you find no better use for this ethereal fire 
 than to cherish a loathsome reptile in it? Yet there are 
 men who abuse the sacred fire of their own souls to as 
 foul and guilty a purpose." 
 
 The Virtuoso made no answer, except by a dry laugh, 
 and an assurance that the salamander was the very same 
 which Benvenuto Cellini had seen in his father's house- 
 hold fire. He then proceeded to show me other rarities ; 
 for this closet appeared to be the receptacle of what he 
 considered most valuable in his collection. 
 
 "There," said he, "is the great carbuncle of the 
 White Mountains." 
 
 I gazed with no little interest at this mighty gem, 
 which it had been one of the wild projects of my youth 
 to discover. Possibly it might have looked brighter to 
 me in those days than now ; at all events, it had not 
 such brilliancy as to detain me long from the other 
 articles of the Museum. The Virtuoso pointed to me 
 a crystalline stone, which hung by a gold chain against 
 the wall. 
 
 " That is the Philosopher's Stone," said he.
 
 228 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 "And have you the Elixir Vitae, which generally 
 accompanies it?" inquired I. 
 
 "Even so this urn is filled with it," he replied. 
 "A draught would refresh you. Here is Hebe's cup, 
 will you quaff a health from it ? " 
 
 My heart thrilled within me at the idea of such a 
 reviving draught; for methought I had great need of 
 it, after travelling so far on the dusty road of life. 
 But I know not whether it were a peculiar glance in 
 the Virtuoso's eye, or the circumstance that this most 
 precious liquid was contained in an antique sepulchral 
 urn, that made me pause. Then came many a thought, 
 with which, in the calmer and better hours of life, I 
 had strengthened myself to feel that Death is the very 
 friend whom, in his due season, even the happiest mor- 
 tal should be willing to embrace. 
 
 " No, I desire not an earthly immortality," said I. 
 "Were man to live longer on the earth, the spiritual 
 would die out of him. The spark of ethereal fire 
 would be choked by the material, the sensual. There 
 is a celestial something within us that requires, after a 
 certain time, the atmosphere of Heaven to preserve it 
 from decay and ruin. I will have none of this liquid. 
 You do well to keep it in a sepulchral urn ; for it would 
 produce death, while bestowing the shadow of life." 
 
 " All this is unintelligible to me," responded my guide, 
 with indifference. " Life earthly life is the only 
 good. But you refuse the draught ? Well, it is not 
 likely to be offered twice within one man's experience. 
 Probably you have griefs which you seek to forget in 
 death. I can enable you to forget them in life. Will 
 you take a draught of Lethe ?" 
 
 As he spoke the Virtuoso took from the shelf a crys- 
 tal vase containing a sable liquor, which caught no re- 
 flected image from the objects around. 
 
 " Not for the world ! " exclaimed I, shrinking back. 
 " I can spare none of my recollections, not even those 
 of error or sorrow. They are all alike the food of my 
 spirit As well never to have lived, as to lose them 
 now."
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 229 
 
 Without further parley we passed to the next alcove, 
 the shelves of which were burthened with ancient vol- 
 umes, and with those rolls of papyrus, in which was 
 treasured up the eldest wisdom of the earth. Perhaps 
 the most valuable work in the collection, to a biblio- 
 maniac, was the Book of Hermes. For my part, how- 
 ever, I would have given a higher price for those six of 
 the Sibyl's books which Tarquin refused to purchase, and 
 which the Virtuoso informed me he had himself found 
 in the cave of Trophonius. Doubtless these old volumes 
 contain prophecies of the fate of Rome, both as respects 
 the decline and fall of her temporal empire, and the rise 
 of her spiritual one. Not without value, likewise, was 
 the work of Anaxagoras on Nature, hitherto supposed 
 to be irrecoverably lost ; and the missing treatises of 
 Longinus, by which modern criticism might profit ; and 
 those books of Livy, for which the classic student has 
 so long sorrowed without hope. Among these precious 
 tomes I observed the original manuscript of the Koran, 
 and also that of the Mormon Bible, in Joe Smith's 
 authentic autograph. Alexander's copy of the Iliad 
 was also there, enclosed in the jewelled casket of Darius, 
 still fragrant of the perfumes which the Persian kept 
 in it. 
 
 Opening an iron-clasped volume, bound in black 
 leather, I discovered it to be Cornelius Agrippa's book 
 of magic ; and it was rendered still more interesting by 
 the fact that many flowers, ancient and modern, were 
 pressed between its leaves. Here was a rose from Eve's 
 bridal bower, and all those red and white roses which 
 were plucked in the garden of the Temple, by the 
 partisans of York and Lancaster. Here was Halleck's 
 Wild Rose of Alloway. Cowper had contributed a 
 Sensitive Plant, and Wordsworth an Eglantine, and 
 Burns a Mountain Daisy, and Kirke White a Star of 
 Bethlehem, and Longfellow a Sprig of Fennel, with its 
 yellow flowers. James Russell Lowell had given a 
 Pressed Flower, but fragrant still, which had been 
 shadowed in the Rhine. There was also a sprig from 
 Southey's Holly-Tree. One of the most beautiful sped-
 
 230 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 mens was a Fringed Gentian, which had been plucked 
 and preserved for immortality by Bryant. From Jones 
 Very, a poet whose voice is scarcely heard among us, 
 by reason of its depth, there was a Wind Flower and 
 a Columbine. 
 
 As I closed Cornelius Agrippa's magic volume, an 
 old, mildewed letter fell upon the floor; it proved to 
 be an autograph from the Flying Dutchman to his wife. 
 I could linger no longer among books, for the afternoon 
 was waning, and there was yet much to see. The bare 
 mention of a few more curiosities must suffice. The 
 immense skull of Polyphemus was recognizable by the 
 cavernous hollow in the centre of the forehead, where 
 once had blazed the giant's single eye. The tub of 
 Diogenes, Medea's caldron, and Psyche's vase of 
 beauty, were placed one within another. Pandora's 
 box, without the lid, stood next, containing nothing but 
 the girdle of Venus, which had been carelessly flung 
 into it. A bundle of birch rods, which had been used 
 by Shenstone's school-mistress, were tied up with the 
 Countess of Salisbury's garter. I knew not which to 
 value most, a Roc's egg, as big as an ordinary hogs- 
 head, or the shell of the egg which Columbus set upon 
 its end. Perhaps the most delicate article in the whole 
 Museum was Queen Mab's chariot, which, to guard it 
 from the touch of meddlesome fingers, was placed under 
 a glass tumbler. 
 
 Several of the shelves were occupied by specimens of 
 entomology. Feeling but little interest in the science, 
 I noticed only Anacreon's Grasshopper, and an Humble- 
 Bee, which had been presented to the Virtuoso by Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson. 
 
 In the part of the hall which we had now reached, I 
 observed a curtain that descended from the ceiling to 
 the floor in voluminous folds, of a depth, richness, and 
 magnificence which I had never seen equalled. It was 
 not to be doubted that this splendid, though dark and 
 solemn, veil concealed a portion of the Museum even 
 richer in wonders than that through which I had already 
 passed. But, on my attempting to grasp the edge of
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 231 
 
 the curtain and draw it aside, it proved to be an illusive 
 picture. 
 
 "You need not blush," remarked the Virtuoso, "for 
 that same curtain deceived Zeuxis. It is the celebrated 
 painting of Parrhasius." 
 
 In a range with the curtain, there were a number of 
 other choice pictures, by artists of ancient days. Here 
 was the famous Cluster of Grapes by Zeuxis, so admir- 
 ably depicted that it seemed as if the ripe juice were 
 bursting forth. As to the picture of the Old Woman, 
 by the same illustrious painter, and which was so ludi- 
 crous that he himself died with laughing at it, I cannot 
 say that it particularly moved my risibility. Ancient 
 humor seems to have little power over modern muscles. 
 Here, also, was the Horse, painted by Apelles, which 
 living horses neighed at ; his first portrait of Alexander 
 the Great, and his last unfinished picture of Venus Asleep. 
 Each of these works of art, together with others by Par- 
 rhasius, Timanthes, Polygnotus, Apollodorus, Pausias, 
 and Pamphilus, required more time and study than I 
 could bestow, for the adequate perception of their merits. 
 I shall therefore leave them undescribed and uncriticised, 
 nor attempt to settle the question of superiority between 
 ancient and modern art. 
 
 For the same reason I shall pass lightly over the 
 specimens of antique sculpture, which this indefatigable 
 and fortunate Virtuoso had dug out of the dust of fallen 
 empires. Here was Action's cedar statue of yEsculapius, 
 much decayed, and Alcon's iron statue of Hercules, 
 lamentably rusted. Here was the statue of Victory, six 
 feet high, which the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias had 
 held in his hand. Here was a forefinger of the Colossus 
 of Rhodes, seven feet in length. Here was the Venus 
 Urania of Phidias, and other images of male and female 
 beauty or grandeur, wrought by sculptors who appear 
 never to have debased their souls by the sight of any 
 meaner forms than those of gods, or godlike mortals. 
 But the deep simplicity of these great works was not to 
 be comprehended by a mind excited and disturbed, as 
 mine was, by the various objects that had recently been
 
 232 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 presented to it. I therefore turned away, with merely 
 a passing glance, resolving, on some future occasion, to 
 brood over each individual statue and picture, until my 
 inmost spirit should feel their excellence. In this de- 
 partment, again, I noticed the tendency to whimsical 
 combinations and ludicrous analogies, which seemed to 
 influence many of the arrangements of the Museum. 
 The wooden statue, so well known as the Palladium of 
 Troy, was placed in close apposition with the wooden 
 head of General Jackson, which was stolen a few years 
 since from the bows cf the Constitution. 
 
 We had now completed the circuit of the spacious 
 hall, and found ourselves again near the door. Feeling 
 somewhat wearied with the survey of so many novelties 
 and antiquities, I sat down upon Cowper's sofa, while 
 the Virtuoso threw himself carelessly into Rabelais's 
 easy-chair. Casting my eyes upon the opposite wall, I 
 was surprised to perceive the shadow of a man, flicker- 
 ing unsteadily across the wainscot, and looking as if it 
 were stirred by some breath of air that found its way 
 through the door or windows. No substantial figure was 
 visible, from which this shadow might be thrown ; nor, 
 had there been such, was there any sunshine that would 
 have caused it to darken upon the wall. 
 
 " It is Peter Schlemihl's shadow," observed the Vir- 
 tuoso, "and one of the most valuable articles in my 
 collection." 
 
 " Methinks a shadow would have made a fitting door- 
 keeper to such a Museum," said I, "although, indeed, 
 yonder figure has something strange and fantastic about 
 him, which suits well enough with many of the impres- 
 sions which I have received here. Pray, who is he ? " 
 
 While speaking, I gazed more scrutinizingly than before 
 at the antiquated presence of the person who had ad- 
 mitted me, and who still sat on his bench, with the same 
 restless aspect, and dim, confused, questioning anxiety, 
 that I had noticed on my first entrance. At this moment 
 he looked eagerly towards us, and, half-starting from his 
 seat, addressed me.
 
 A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION 233 
 
 " I beseech you, kind sir," said he, in a cracked, mel- 
 ancholy tone, " have pity on the most unfortunate man 
 in the world ! For Heaven's sake answer me a single 
 question ! Is this the town of Boston ? " 
 
 " You have recognized him now," said the Virtuoso. 
 " It is Peter Rugg, the Missing Man. I chanced to meet 
 him, the other day, still in search of Boston, and con- 
 ducted him hither ; and, as he could not succeed in find- 
 ing his friends, I have taken him into my service as 
 door-keeper. He is somewhat too apt to ramble, but 
 otherwise a man of trust and integrity." 
 
 "And might I venture to ask," continued I, "to 
 whom am I indebted for this afternoon's gratification ? " 
 
 The Virtuoso, before replying, laid his hand upon an 
 antique dart or javelin, the rusty steel head of which 
 seemed to have been blunted, as if it had encountered 
 the resistance of a tempered shield or breast-plate. 
 
 " My name has not been without its distinction in the 
 world, for a longer period than that of any other man 
 alive," answered he. " Yet many doubt of my existence, 
 perhaps you will do so to-morrow. This dart, which 
 I hold in my hand, was once grim Death's own weapon. 
 It served him well for the space of four thousand years. 
 But it fell blunted, as you see, when he directed it against 
 my breast." 
 
 These words were spoken with the calm and cold 
 courtesy of manner that had characterized this singular 
 personage throughout our interview. I fancied, it is 
 true, that there was a bitterness indefinably mingled 
 with his tone, as of one cut off from natural sympathies, 
 and blasted with a doom that had been inflicted on no 
 other human being, and by the results of which he had 
 ceased to be human. Yet, withal, it seemed one of the 
 most terrible consequences of that doom, that the victim 
 no longer regarded it as a calamity, but had finally 
 accepted it as the greatest good that could have befallen 
 him. 
 
 " You are the Wandering Jew ! " exclaimed I. 
 
 The Virtuoso bowed, without emotion of any kind ; 
 for, by centuries of custom, he had almost lost the sense
 
 234 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE 
 
 of strangeness in his fate, and was but imperfectly con- 
 scious of the astonishment and awe with which it affected 
 such as are capable of death. 
 
 "Your doom is indeed a fearful one!" said I, with 
 irrepressible feeling, and a frankness that afterwards 
 startled me ; " yet perhaps the ethereal spirit is not en- 
 tirely extinct, under all this corrupted or frozen mass 
 of earthly life. Perhaps the immortal spark may yet be 
 rekindled by a breath of heaven. Perhaps you may yet 
 be permitted to die, before it is too late to live eternally. 
 You have my prayers for such a consummation. Fare- 
 well." 
 
 " Your prayers will be in vain," replied he, with a smile 
 of cold triumph. " My destiny is linked with the reali- 
 ties of earth. You are welcome to your visions and 
 shadows of a future state ; but give me what I can see, 
 and touch, and understand, and I ask no more." 
 
 " It is indeed too late," thought I. " The soul is dead 
 within him ! " 
 
 Struggling between pity and horror, I extended my 
 hand, to which the Virtuoso gave his own, still with the 
 habitual courtesy of a man of the world, but without a 
 single heart-throb of human brotherhood. The touch 
 seemed like ice, yet I know not whether morally or 
 physically. As I departed, he bade me observe that the 
 inner door of the hall was constructed with the ivory 
 leaves of the gateway through which ^Eneas and the 
 Sibyl had been dismissed from Hades. 
 
 3681
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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