- 
 


DREAM LIFE: 
 
 31 fable 
 
 OF THE SEASONS 
 
 Kft. 
 
 We are such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made of; and our little life 
 Li rounded with a sleep. TEMPEST. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 -ScrHmer, 
 
 1852. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by 
 
 DONALD G. MITCHELL, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 C. W. BENEDICT. 
 STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER, 
 201 William st . N. Y 
 
DEDICATORY LETTER 
 
 ADDRESSED TO 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR: 
 
 I DO not know to whom I could more 
 appropriately dedicate this little hook than to 
 one who has been so long my teacher; and 
 who has seemed to be, so long, my friend. 
 
 It is true, that until six months ago, I had 
 never the honor of meeting with you : but, 
 there are thousands, Sir, who have never seen 
 you who yet know you, and esteem you, as 
 fully as myself. 
 
ii DEDICATORY LETTER. 
 
 If I have attained to any facility in the use 
 of language, or have gained any fitness of 
 expression, in which to dress my thoughts, I 
 know not to what writer of the English 
 language, I am more indebted, than to you. 
 And if I have shown as I have tried to 
 show a truthfulness of feeling, that is not 
 lighted by any counterfeit of passion, but 
 rather, by a close watchfulness of nature, and a 
 cordial sympathy with human suffering I 
 know not to what man's heart, that truthful 
 ness will come home sooner, than to your's. 
 
 Believe me, Dear Sir, it is from no wish to 
 associate my name with the names of the 
 great, that I ask your acceptance of this little 
 token of respect. My aims are humbler than 
 this : I would simply pay homage to the 
 Author, who has wrought our language into 
 the most exquisite forms of beauty ; and to the 
 man, who has touched our hearts, with the 
 tenderness of a friend. 
 

 DEDICATORY LETTER. iii 
 
 And if I might hope, that this simple mark 
 of my admiration, and of my esteem, would 
 commend me to your charity to say nothing 
 of your regard it is all that I would ask. 
 
 DONALD G. MITCHELL. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 I. WITH MY AUNT TABITHY, . 11 
 
 II. WITH MY READER, ; 20 
 
 DREAMS OF BOYHOOD. 
 
 SPRING, * . 33 
 
 I. RAIN IN THE GARRET, .... 38 
 
 II. SCHOOL DREAMS, 45 
 
 III. BOY SENTIMENT, . . , . . 56 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 WITH MY AUNT TABITHY. 
 
 |SHAW! said my Aunt Tabithy, have 
 you not done with dreaming ? 
 
 My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most 
 notable person, loves occasionally a quiet bit of satire. 
 And when I told her that I was sharpening my 
 pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies, and half 
 experiences, which lie grouped along the journeying 
 hours of my solitary life, she smiled as if in derision. 
 
 " Ah, Isaac," said she, " all that is exhausted : 
 
 you have rung so many changes on your hopes and 
 
12 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 your dreams, that you have nothing left, but to make 
 them real if you can." 
 
 It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured old 
 lady : I did better than this : I made her listen 
 to me. 
 
 Exhausted, do you say, Aunt Tabithy ? Is life 
 
 then exhausted, is hope gone out, is fancy dead f 
 
 No, no. Hope and the world are full ; and he who 
 drags into book-pages a phase or two of the great life 
 of passion, of endurance, of love, of sorrow, is but 
 wetting a feather, in the sea that breaks ceaselessly 
 along the great shore of the years. Every man's 
 heart is a living drama ; eveiy death is a drop-scene ; 
 every book only a faint foot-light to throw a little flicker 
 on the stage. 
 
 There is no need of wandering widely to catch 
 incident or adventure : they are everywhere about us ; 
 each day is a succession of escapes and joys ; not 
 perhaps clear to the world, but brooding in our thought, 
 and living in our brain. From the very first, Angels 
 and Devils are busy with us, and we are struggling 
 against them, and for them. 
 
 No, no, Aunt Tabithy, this life of musing does not 
 exhaust so easily. It is like the springs on the farm 
 land, that are fed with all the showers and the dews of 
 the year, and that from the narrow fissures of the rock, 
 send up streams continually : or it is like the deep 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 13 
 
 well in the meadow, where one may see stars at noon 
 when no stars are shining. 
 
 What is Reverie, and what are these Day-dreams, 
 but fleecy cloud-drifts that float eternally, and eternally 
 change shapes, upon the great over-arching sky of 
 thought ? You may seize the strong outlines that the 
 passion breezes of to-day shall throw into their figures ; 
 but to-morrow may breed a whirlwind that will chase 
 swift, gigantic shadows over the heaven of your 
 thought, and change the whole landscape of your life. 
 
 Dream-land will never be exhausted, until we enter 
 the land of dreams ; and until, in " shuffling off this 
 mortal coil," thought will become fact, and all facts will 
 be only thought. 
 
 As it is, I can conceive no mood of mind more in 
 keeping with what is to follow upon the grave, than 
 those fancies which warp our frail hulks toward the 
 ocean of the Infinite ; and that so sublimate the 
 realities of this being, that they seem to belong to 
 that shadowy realm, where every day's journey is 
 leading. 
 
 It was warm weather ; and my aunt was dozing. 
 " What is this all to be about ?" said she, recovering 
 her knitting needle. 
 
 "About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow," 
 said I. 
 
14 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 My aunt laid down her knitting, looked at me ever 
 the rim of her spectacles, and took snuff. 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 "How many times have you been in love, Isaac?" 
 said she. 
 
 It was now my turn to say " Pshaw !" 
 
 Judging from her look of assurance, I could not 
 possibly ha ye made a more satisfactory reply. 
 
 My aunt finished the needle she was upon smoothed 
 the stocking leg over her knee, and looking at me with 
 a very comical expression, said, " Isaac, you are a sad 
 fellow !" 
 
 I did not like the tone of this : it sounded very much 
 as if it would have been in the mouth of any one else 
 ' bad fellow.' 
 
 And she went on to ask me in a very bantering way, 
 if my stock of youthful loves was not nearly exhausted ; 
 and she cited the episode of the fair-haired Enrica, as 
 perhaps the most tempting that I could draw from my 
 experience. 
 
 A better man than myself, if he had only a fail- 
 share of vanity, would have been nettled at this ; and 
 I replied somewhat tartly, that I had never professed 
 to write my experiences. These might be more or less 
 tempting ; but certainly, if they were of a kind which 
 I have attempted to portray in the characters of Bella, 
 or of Carry, neither my Aunt Tabithy nor any one else, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 15 
 
 should have learned such truth from any book of mine. 
 There are griefs too sacred to be babbled to the world ; 
 and there may be loves, which one would forbear to 
 whisper even to a friend. 
 
 No, no, imagination has been playing pranks with 
 memory ; and if I have made the feeling real, I am 
 content that the facts should be false. Feeling indeed 
 has a higher truth in it, than circumstance. It appeals 
 to a larger jury, for acquittal : it is approved or con 
 demned by a better judge. And if I can catch this 
 bolder and richer truth of feeling, I will not mind if 
 the types of it are all fabrications. 
 
 If I run over some sweet experience of love, (my 
 Aunt Tabithy brightened a little) must I make good 
 the fact that the loved one lives, and expose her name 
 and qualities, to make your sympathy sound ? Or 
 shall I not rather be working upon higher and holier 
 ground, if I take the passion for itself, and so weave it 
 into words, that you, and every willing sufferer may 
 recognize the fervor, and forget the personality ? 
 
 Life after all is but a bundle of hints, each suggesting 
 actual and positive developement, but rarely reaching it. 
 And as I recal these hints, and in fancy, trace them to 
 their issues, I am as truly dealing with life, as if my lift 
 had dealt them all to me. 
 
 This is what I would be doing in the present book ; 
 I would catch up here and there the shreds of feeling, 
 
16 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 which the brambles and roughnesses of the world have 
 left tangling on my heart, and weave them out into 
 those soft, and perfect tissues, which if the world had 
 been only a little less rough, might now perhaps 
 enclose my heart altogether. 
 
 " Ah," said my Aunt Tabithy, as she smoothed the 
 stocking leg again, with a sigh, " there is after all but 
 one youth- time : and if you put down its memories 
 once, you can find no second growth." 
 
 My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much 
 growth hi the thoughts and feelings that run behind us, 
 as in those that run before us. You may make a rich, 
 full picture of your childhood to-day ; but let the hour 
 go by, and the darkness stoop to your pillow with its 
 million shapes of the past, and my word for it, you 
 shall have some flash of childhood lighten upon you, 
 that was unknown to your busiest thought of the 
 morning. 
 
 Let a week go by ; and in some interval of care, as 
 you recal the smile of a mother, or some pale sister who 
 is dead, a new crowd of memories will rush upon your 
 soul, and leave their traces in such tears as will make 
 you kinder and better for days and weeks. Or you 
 shall assist at some neighbor funeral, where the Kttle 
 dead one (like one you have seen before) shall hold 
 in its tiny grasp (as you have taught little dead hands 
 to do) fresh flowers, laughing flowers, lying lightly on 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 17 
 
 the white robe of the dear child all pale cold 
 silent 
 
 I had touched iny Aunt Tabithy : she had dropped 
 a stitch in her knitting. I believe she was weeping. 
 
 Aye, this brain of ours is a master- worker, whose 
 appliances we do not one half know ; and this heart of 
 ours is a rare storehouse, furnishing the brain with new 
 material every hour of our lives ; and their limits we 
 shall not know, until they shall end together. 
 
 Nor is there, as many faint-hearts imagine, but one 
 phase of earnestness in our life of feeling. One train 
 of deep emotion cannot fill up the heart : it radiates 
 like a star, God-ward and earth-ward. It spends and 
 reflects all ways. Its force is to be reckoned not 
 so much by token, as by capacity. Facts are the 
 poorest and most slumberous evidences of passion, or 
 of affection. True feeling is ranging everywhere ; 
 whereas your actual attachments are too apt to be tied 
 to sense. 
 
 A single affection may indeed be true, earnest and 
 absorbing ; but such an one after all, is but a type 
 and if the object be worthy, a glorious type of the 
 great book of feeling : it is only the vapor from the 
 cauldron of the heart, and bears no deeper relation to 
 its exhaustless sources, than the letter which my pen 
 makes, bears to the thought that inspires it, or than a 
 single morning strain of your orioles and thrushes,bears 
 
18 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 to that wide bird-chorus, which is making every sun 
 rise a worship, and every grove a temple ! 
 
 My Aunt Tabithy nodded. 
 
 Nor is this a mere bachelor fling against constancy. 
 I can believe, Heaven knows, in an unalterable and 
 unflinching affection, which neither desires nor admit* 
 the prospect of any other. But when one is tasking his 
 brain to talk for his heart, when he is not writing 
 positive history, but only making mention (as it were) 
 of the heart's capacities, who shall say that he has 
 reached the fullness, that he has exhausted the stock 
 of its feeling, or that he has touched its highest notes ? 
 It is true there is but one heart in a man to be stirred ; 
 but every stir creates a new combination of feeling, that 
 like the turn of a kaleidoscope will show some fresh 
 color, or form. 
 
 A bachelor to be sure has a marvellous advantage in 
 this ; and with the tenderest influences once anchored 
 in the bay of marriage, there is little disposition to scud 
 off under each pleasant breeze of feeling. Nay, I can 
 even imagine perhaps somewhat captiously that after 
 marriage, feeling would become a habit, a rich and 
 holy habit certainly, but yet a habit, which weakens the 
 omnivorous grasp of the affections, and schools one to a 
 unity of emotion, that doubts and ignores the prompt 
 ness and variety of impulse, which we bachelor 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 19 
 
 My aunt nodded again. 
 
 Could it be that she approved what I had been 
 saying ? I hardly knew. 
 
 Poor old lady, she did not know herself. She was 
 
IL 
 
 WITH MY READER. 
 
 HAVING silenced my Aunt Tabithy, I shall be 
 generous enough in my triumph, to offer an 
 explanatory chat to my reader. 
 
 This is a history of Dreams ; and there will be those 
 who will sneer at such a history, as the work of a 
 dreamer. So indeed it is ; and you, my courteous 
 reader, are a dreamer too ! 
 
 You would perhaps like to find your speculations 
 about wealth, marriage or influence, called by some 
 better name than Dreams. You would like to see the 
 history of them if written at all baptized at the font 
 of your own vanity, with some such title as life's 
 cares, or life's work. If there had been a philosophic 
 naming to my observations, you might have reckoned 
 
WITH MY READER. 21 
 
 them good : as it is, you count them all bald and 
 palpable fiction. 
 
 But is it so ? I care not how matter of fact you 
 may be, you have in your own life, at some time, 
 proved the very truth of what I have set down: 
 and the chances are, that even now, gray as you may 
 be, and economic as you may be, and devotional as you 
 pretend to be, you light up your Sabbath reflections 
 with just such dreams of wealth, of per centages, or of 
 family, as you will find scattered over these pages. 
 
 I am not to be put aside with any talk about stocks, 
 and duties, and respectability : all these though very 
 eminent matters, are but so many types in the volume 
 of your thought ; and your eager resolves about them, 
 are but so many ambitious waves, breaking up from 
 that great sea of dreamy speculation, that has spread 
 over your soul, from its first start into the realm of 
 CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so 
 blind, that they cannot catch food for dreams. Each 
 little episode of life is full, had we but the perception 
 of its fullness. There is no such thing as blank, in the 
 world of thought. Every action and emotion have 
 their development growing and gaining on the soul. 
 Every affection has its tears and smiles. Nay, the very 
 material world is full of meaning, and by suggesting 
 
22 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 thought, is making us what we are, and what we 
 will be. 
 
 The sparrow that is twittering on the edge of my 
 balcony, is calling up to me this moment, a world of 
 memories that reach over half my life time, and a 
 world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of 
 sparrows. The rose-tree which shades his mottled coat 
 is full of buds and blossoms; and each bud and 
 blossom is a token of promise, that has issues covering 
 life, and reaching beyond death. The quiet sunshine 
 beyond the flower and beyond the sparrow, glistening 
 upon the leaves, and playing in delicious waves of 
 warmth over the reeking earth, is lighting both heart 
 and hope, and quickening into activity a thousand 
 thoughts of what has been, and of what will be. The 
 meadow stretching away under its golden flood 
 waving with grain, and with the feathery blossoms of 
 the grass, and golden butter cups, and white, nodding 
 daisies, comes to my eye like the lapse of fading 
 childhood, studded here and there with the bright 
 blossoms of joy, crimsoned all over with the flush of 
 health, and enamelled with memories that perfume the 
 soul. The blue hills beyond, with deep blue shadows 
 gathered in their bosom, lie before me like mountains 
 of years, over which I shall climb through shadows to 
 the slope of Age, and go down to the deeper shadows 
 of Death. 
 
WITH MY READER. 23 
 
 Nor are dreams without their variety, whatever your 
 character may be. I care not how much, in the pride 
 of your practical judgment, or in your learned fancies, 
 you may sneer at any dream of love, and reckon it all a 
 poet's fiction : there are times when such dreams come 
 over you like a summer cloud, and almost stifle you 
 with their warmth. 
 
 Seek as you will for increase of lands or moneys, and 
 there are moments when a spark of some giant mind 
 will flash over your cravings, and wake your soul 
 suddenly to a quick, and yearning sense of that 
 influence which is begotten of intellect ; and you task 
 your dreams as I have copied them here to build 
 before you the pleasures of such a renown. 
 
 I care not how worldly you may be : there are times 
 when all distinctions seem like dust, and when at the 
 graves of the great, you dream of a coming country, 
 where your proudest hopes shall be dimmed forever. 
 
 Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, 
 you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and 
 feel, that your life is but a dream. Yet you call this 
 fiction : you stave off the thoughts in print which come 
 over you in reverie. You will not admit to the eye 
 what is true to the heart. Poor weakling, and 
 worldling, you are not strong enough to face your 
 self! 
 
 You will read perhaps with smiles : you will possibly 
 
24 I) RE AM-LlP E . 
 
 praise the ingenuity : you will talk, with a lip schooled 
 against the slightest quiver, of some bit of pathos, and 
 say that it is well done. Yet why is it well done ? 
 only because it is stolen from your very life and heart. 
 It is good, because it is so common : ingenious, 
 because it is so honest : well-conceived, because it is 
 not conceived at all. 
 
 There are thousands of mole-eyed people, who count 
 all passion in print a lie : people who will grow into 
 a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark, and love in 
 secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all 
 under the cloak of what they call propriety. I can 
 see before me now some gray-haired old gentleman, 
 very money-getting, very correct, very cleanly, who 
 reads the morning paper with unction, and his Bible 
 with determination : who listens to dull sermons with 
 patience, and who prays with quiet self-applause, and 
 yet there are moments belonging to his life, when his 
 curdled affections yearn for something that they have 
 not, when his avarice oversteps all the command 
 ments, when his pride builds castles full of splendor ; 
 and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the 
 most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant 
 fiction, what cannot be proved to the elders. 
 
 We do not like to see our emotions unriddled : it is 
 not agreeable to the proud man to find his weaknesses 
 exposed : it is shocking to the disappointed lover to see 
 
WITH MY READER. 2 
 
 his heart laid bare : it is a great grief to the pining 
 maiden to witness the exposure of her loves. We do 
 not like our fancies painted : we do not contrive them 
 for rehearsal : our dreams are private, and when they 
 aie made public, we disown them. 
 
 I sometimes think that I must be a very honest 
 fellow, for writing down those fancies which every one 
 else seems afraid to whisper. I shall at least, come in 
 for my share of the odium in entertaining such fancies : 
 indeed I shall expect the charge of entertaining them 
 exclusively ; and shall scarce expect to find a single 
 fellow-confessor, unless it be some ^pure, and innocent 
 thoughted girl, who will say peccavi, to here and 
 there a single rainbow fancy. 
 
 Well, I can bear it ; but in bearing it, I shall be 
 consoled with the reflection that I have a great 
 company of fellow-sufferers, who lack only the honesty 
 to tell me of their sympathy. It will even relieve in 
 no small degree my burden, to watch the effort they 
 will take to conceal, what I kave so boldly divulged. 
 
 Nature is very much the same thing in one man, that 
 it is in another : and as I have already said, Feeling 
 has a higher truth in it, than circumstance. Let it 
 only be touched fairly and honestly, and the heart of 
 humanity answers ; but if it be touched foully or 
 one-sidedly, you may find here and there a lame-souled 
 2 
 
26 D R E A M - L I F E . 
 
 creature who will give response, but there is no heart 
 throb in it. 
 
 Of one thing I am sun. : if my pictures are fair, 
 worthy, and hearty, you must see it in tie reading; 
 but if they are forced and hard, no amount of kindness 
 can make you feel their truth as I want them felt. 
 
 I make no self-praise out of this : if feeling has been 
 honestly set down, it is only in virtue of a native 
 impulse, over which I have altogether too little control ; 
 but if it is set down badly, I have wronged Nature, 
 and, (as Nature is kind) I have wronged myself. 
 
 A great many inquisitive people will, I do not doubt, 
 be asking after all this prelude, if my pictures are true 
 pictures? The question, the courteous reader will 
 allow me to say, is an impertinent one. It is but a 
 shabby truth that wants an author's affidavit to make it 
 trust-worthy. I shall not help my story by any such 
 poor support. If there are not enough elements of 
 truth, honesty and nature in my pictures, to make then 
 believed, they shall have no oath of mine to tolster 
 them up. 
 
 I have been a sufferer in this way before now ; and a 
 little book that I had the whim to publish a year since, 
 has been set down by many as an arrant piece of 
 imposture. Claiming sympathy as a Bachelor, I have 
 been recklessly set down as a cold, undeserving man of 
 
WITH MY READER. 27 
 
 family ! My story of troubles and loves has been 
 sneered at, as the sheerest gammon. 
 
 But among this crowd of cold-blooded critics, it was 
 pleasant to hear of one or two pursy old fellows who 
 railed at me, for winning the affections of a sweet Italian 
 girl, and then leaving her to pine in discontent ! Yet 
 in the face of this, an old companion of mine in Rome, 
 with whom I accidentally met the other day, wondered 
 how on earth I could have made so tempting a story 
 out of the matronly and black-haired spinster, with 
 whom I happened to be quartered in the Eternal City ! 
 
 I shall leave my critics to settle such difference? 
 between themselves ; and consider it far better to bear 
 with slanders from both sides of the house, than to 
 bewray the pretty tenderness of the pursy old gentle 
 men, or to cast a doubt upon the practical testimony of 
 my quondam companion. Both give me high and 
 judicious compliment all the more grateful because 
 only half deserved. For I never yet was conscious 
 alas, that the confession should be forced from me ! 
 of winning the heart of any maiden whether native, of 
 Italian ; and as for such delicacy of imagination as to 
 work up a lovely damsel out of the withered remnant 
 that forty odd years of Italian life can spare, I can 
 assure my middle-aged friends, (and it may serve as a 
 caveat) I can lay no claim to it whatever. 
 
 The trouble has been, that those who have believed 
 
28 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 one passage have discredited another ; and those who 
 have sympathized with me in trifles, have deserted me 
 when affairs grew earnest. I have had sympathy 
 enough with my married griefs ; but when it came to 
 
 the perplexing torments of my single life not a 
 
 weeper could I find ! 
 
 I would suggest to those who intend to believe only 
 half of my present book, that they exercise a little 
 discretion in their choice. I am not fastidious in the 
 matter ; and only ask them to believe what counts 
 most toward the goodness of humanity, and to discredit 
 if they will persist in it only what tells badly for 
 our common nature. The man or the woman who 
 believes well, is apt to work well ; and Faith is as much 
 the key to happiness here, as it is the key to happiness 
 hereafter. 
 
 I have only one thing more to say, before I get upon 
 my story. A great many sharp-eyed people, who have 
 a horror of light reading by which they mean what 
 ever does not make mention of stocks, cottons, or moral 
 homilies, will find much fault with my book for its 
 ephemeral character. 
 
 I am sorry that I cannot gratify such : homilies are 
 not at all in my habit ; and it does seem to me an 
 exhausting way of disposing of a good moral, to 
 hammer it down to a single point, so that there shall be 
 only one chance of driving it home. For my own 
 
WITH MT READER. 29 
 
 part, I count it a great deal better philosophy to fuse it, 
 and rarify it, so that it shall spread out into every 
 crevice of a story, and give a color and a taste, as it 
 were, to the whole mass. 
 
 I know there are very good people, who if they 
 cannot lay their finger on so much doctrine set down in 
 old fashioned phrase, will never get an inkling of it at 
 all. With such people, goodness is a thing of under 
 standing, more than of feeling ; and all their morality 
 has its action in the brain. 
 
 God forbid that I should sneer at this terrible 
 infirmity, which Providence has seen fit to inflict : God 
 forbid too, that I should not be grateful to the same 
 kind Providence, for bestowing upon others among his 
 creatures a more genial apprehension of true goodness, 
 and a hearty sympathy with eveiy shade of "human 
 kindness. 
 
 But in all this, I am not making out a case for my 
 own correct teaching, or insinuating the propriety of 
 my tone. I shall leave the book in this regard, to 
 speak for itself; and whoever feels himself growing 
 worse for the reading, I advise to lay it down. It will 
 be very harmless on the shelf, however it may be in the 
 hand. 
 
 I shall lay no claim to the title of moralist, teacher, 
 or romancist : my thoughts start pleasant pictures to 
 my mind ; and in a garrulous humor, I put my finger 
 
30 DREAM -LIFE. 
 
 in the button-hole of my indulgent friend, and tell him 
 some of them, giving him leave to quit me whenever 
 he chooses. 
 
 Or, if a lady is my listener, let her fancy me only an 
 honest, simple-hearted fellow, whose familiarities are so 
 innocent that she can pardon them ; taking her hand 
 in his, and talking on ; sometimes looking in her eyes, 
 and then looking into the sunshine for relief; some 
 times prosy with narrative, and then sharpening up my 
 matter with a few touches of honest pathos ; let her 
 imagine this, I say, and we may become the most 
 excellent friends in the world. 
 
Spring; 
 
 COr 
 53reams of 
 
DREAMS OF BOYHOOD. 
 
 SPRING. 
 
 THE old chroniclers made the year begin in the 
 season of frosts ; and they have launched us 
 upon the current of the months, from the snowy banks 
 of January. I love better to count time, from spring 
 to spring ; it seems to me far more cheerful, to reckon 
 the year by blossoms, than by blight. 
 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Vir 
 ginia, makes the bloom of the cocoa- tree, or the growth 
 of the banana, a yearly and a loved monitor of the 
 passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the 
 comparison, would be the icy chronology of the North ; 
 So many years have I seen the lakes locked, 
 
 and the foliage die I 
 2* 
 
34 DREAM -LIFE. 
 
 The budding and blooming of spring, seem to be 
 long properly to tlie opening of the months. It is the 
 season of the quickest expansion, of the warmest blood, 
 of the readiest growth ; it is the boy-age of the year. 
 The birds sing in chorus in the spring just as chil 
 dren prattle ; the brooks run full like the overflow of 
 young hearts ; the showers drop easily as young tears 
 flow ; and the whole sky is as capricious as the mind 
 of a boy. 
 
 Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, 
 struggles into the warmth of life. The old year, say 
 what the chronologists will, lingers upon the very lap 
 of spring ; and is only fairly gone, when the blossoms 
 of April have strewn their pall of glory upon his tomb, 
 and the blue-birds have chanted his requiem. 
 
 It always seems to me as if an access of life came 
 with the melting of the winter's snows ; and as if every 
 rootlet of grass that lifted its first green blade from the 
 matted debris of the old year's decay, bore my spirit 
 upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven. 
 
 I love to trace the break of spring step by step : I 
 love even those long rain-storms that sap the icy for 
 tresses of the lingering winter, that melt the snows 
 upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks ; that 
 make the pools heave up their glassy cerements of 
 ice, and hurry down the crashing fragments into the 
 wastes of ocean 
 
S P u i N i . 35 
 
 I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by 
 day, by the stained snow-banks, shrinking from the 
 grass ; and by the gentle drip of the cottage-eaves. I 
 love to search out the sunny slopes by a southern wall, 
 where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth, 
 and where the frail anemone, or the faint blush of the 
 arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere, 
 will touch your heart, like a hope of Heaven, in a field 
 of graves ! Later come those soft, smoky days, when 
 the patches of winter grain show green under the 
 shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow-drifts, re 
 duced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope 
 of northern hills, leaking away their life. 
 
 Then, the grass at your door grows into the color of 
 the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell, 
 and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the 
 plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole 
 picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the 
 sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down 
 their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green ; 
 and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the 
 minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blos 
 soms of the maple. Finally, the oaks step into the 
 opening quadrille of spring, with greyish tufts of a 
 modest verdure, which, by and by, will be long and 
 glossy leaves. The dog-wood pitches his broad, white 
 tent, in the edge of the forest ; the dandelions lie 
 
36 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 along the hillocks, like stars in a sky of green ; and 
 the wild cherry, growing in all the hedge-rows, without 
 other culture than God's, lifts up to Him, thankfully, 
 its tremulous white fingers. 
 
 Amid all this, come the rich rains of spring. The 
 affections of a boy grow up with tears to water them ; 
 and the year blooms with showers. But the clouds 
 hover over an April sky, timidly like shadows upon 
 innocence. The showers come gently, and drop daintily 
 to the earth, with now and then a glimpse of sun 
 shine to make the drops bright like so many tears of 
 
 jy- 
 
 The rain of winter is cold, and it comes in bitter 
 scuds that blind you ; but the rain of April steals 
 upon you coyly, half reluctantly, yet lovingly like 
 the steps of a bride to the Altar. 
 
 It does not gather like the storm-clouds of winter, 
 grey and heavy along the horizon, and creep with 
 subtle and insensible approaches (like age) to the very 
 zenith ; but there are a score of white-winged swim 
 mers afloat, that your eye has chased, as you lay 
 fatigued with the delicious languor of an April sun ; 
 nor have you scarce noticed that a little bevy of those 
 floating clouds had grouped together in a sombre 
 company. But presently, you see across the fields, the 
 dark grey streaks stretching like lines of mists, from the 
 gren bosom cf the valley, to that spot of sky where the 
 
SPRING. 87 
 
 company of clouds is loitering ; and with an easy 
 shifting of the helm, the fleet of swimmers come 
 drifting over you, and drop their burden into the danc 
 ing pools, and make the flowers glisten, and the eaves 
 drip with their crystal bounty. 
 
 The cattle linger still, cropping the new-come grass ; 
 and childhood laughs joyously at the warm rain ; or 
 under the cottage roof, catches with eager ear, the pat 
 ter of its fall. 
 
 And with that patter on the roof, so like to 
 
 the patter of childish feet my story of boyish dreams 
 shall begin. 
 
I. 
 
 RAIN IN THE GARRET. 
 
 IT is an old garret with big, brown rafters ; and the 
 boards between are stained darkly with the rain 
 storms of fifty years. And as the sportive April 
 shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents 
 would come dashing through the shingles, upon you, 
 and upon your play. But it will not ; for you know 
 that the old roof is strong ; and that it has kept you, 
 and all that love you, for long years from the rain, and 
 from the cold : you know that the hardest storms of 
 winter will only make a little oozing leak, that trickles 
 down the brown stains, like tears. 
 
 You love that old garret roof ; and you nestle down 
 under its slope, with a sense of its protecting power 
 that no castle walls can give to your maturer years. 
 
RAIN IN THE GARRET. 39 
 
 Aye, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of 
 the old family garret, with a grateful affection, and an 
 earnest confidence, that the after years whatever may 
 be their successes, or their honors can never re-create. 
 Under the roof-tree of his home, the boy feels SAFE : 
 and where, in the whole realm of life, with its bitter 
 toils, and its bitterer temptations, will he feel safe 
 
 But this you do not know. It seems only a grand 
 old place ; and it is capital fun to search in its corners, 
 and drag out some bit of quaint old furniture, with a 
 leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix your 
 reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then 
 gallop away ! And you offer sister Nelly a chance, if 
 she will be good; and throw out very patronizing 
 words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much 
 humbler horse, to wit, a decrepid nursery-chair, as 
 he of right should be, since he is three years your 
 junior. 
 
 I know no nobler forage ground for a romantic, ven 
 turesome, mischievous boy, than the garret of an old 
 family mansion, on a day of storm. It is a perfect 
 field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain, 
 the piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the 
 big trunks to hide in, the old white coats and hats 
 hanging in obscure corners, like ghosts are great! 
 And it is so far away from tjie old lady, who keeps 
 
40 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 rule in the nursery, that there is no possible risk of 
 a scolding, for twisting off the fringe of the rug. There 
 is no baby in the garret to wake up. There is no 
 * company' in the garret to be disturbed by the noise. 
 There is no crotchety old Uncle, or Grand-Ma, with 
 their everlasting " Boys boys !" and then a look of 
 such horror ! 
 
 There is great fun in groping through a tall barrel 
 of books and pamphlets, on the look-out for startling 
 pictures ; and there are chestnuts in the garret, drying, 
 which you have discovered on a ledge of the chimney ; 
 and you slide a few into your pocket, and munch them 
 quietly, giving now and then one to Nelly, and 
 begging her to keep silent ; for you have a great fear 
 of its being forbidden fruit. 
 
 Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of 
 cast-away clothes, of twenty years gone by ; and it is 
 rare sport to put them on; buttoning in a pillow or 
 two for the sake of good fulness ; and then to trick out 
 Nelly in some strange-shaped head-gear, and old- 
 fashioned brocade petticoat caught up with pins ; and 
 in such guise, to steal cautiously down stairs, and creep 
 sh'ly into the sitting-room, half afraid of a scolding, 
 and very sure of good fun ; trying to look very sober, 
 and yet almost ready to die with the laugh that you 
 know you will make. And your mother tries to look 
 harshly at little Nelly for putting on her grandmother's 
 
RAIN IN THE GARRET. 41 
 
 best bonnet; but Nelly's laughing eyes forbid it ut 
 terly ; and the mother spoils all her scolding with a 
 perfect shower of kisses. 
 
 After this, you go marching, very stately, into the 
 nursery ; and utterly amaze the old nurse ; and make 
 a deal of wonderment for the staring, half-frightened 
 baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob at you, as 
 if he would jump into your waistcoat pocket. 
 
 But you grow tired of this ; you tire even of the 
 swing, and of the pranks of Charlie ; and you glide 
 away into a corner, with an old, dog's-eared copy of 
 Robinson Crusoe. And you grow heart and soul into 
 the story, until you tremble for the poor fellow with his 
 guns, behind the palisade ; and are yourself half dead 
 with fright, when you peep cautiously over the hill 
 with your glass, and see the cannibals at their orgies 
 around the fire. 
 
 Yet, after all, you think the old fellow must have 
 had a capital time, with a whole island to himself; and 
 you think you would like such a time yourself, if only 
 Nelly, and Charlie, could be there with you. But this 
 thought does not come till afterward ; for the time, you 
 are nothing but Crusoe ; you are living in his cave 
 with Poll the parrot, and are looking out for your 
 goats, and man Friday. 
 
 You dream what a nice thing it would be, for you to 
 slip away some pleasant morning not to York, 03 
 
42 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 young Crusoe did, but to New York, and take pas 
 sage as a sailor ; and how, if they knew you were 
 going, there would be such a world of good-byes ; and 
 how, if they did not know it, there would be such a 
 world of wonder ! 
 
 And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such 
 a jaunty affair ; and it would be such rare sport to lie 
 off upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen sailors in 
 pictures, looking out upon the blue and tumbling sea. 
 No thought now in your boyish dreams, of sleety 
 storms, and cables stiffened with ice, and crashing 
 spars, and great ice-bergs towering fearfully arounr 
 you ! 
 
 You would have better luck than even Crusoe ; you 
 would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of 
 hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great puncheons 
 of sweetmeats (which Crusoe altogether overlooked) ; 
 and you would save a tent or two, which you could set 
 up on the shore, and an American flag, and a small 
 piece of cannon, which you could fire as often as you 
 liked. At night, you would sleep in a tree though 
 you wonder how Crusoe did it, and would say the 
 prayers you had been taught to say at home, and fall 
 to sleep, dreaming of Nelly and Charlie. 
 
 At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down, 
 feeling very much refreshed ; and make a very nice 
 breakfast off of smoked herring and sea-bread, with a lit- 
 
RAIN IN. THE GARRET. 43 
 
 tie currant jam, and a few oranges. After this you 
 would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes, 
 and putting a few large jack-knives in your pocket, 
 would take a stroll over the island, and dig a cave 
 somewhere, and roll in a cask or two of sea-bread. 
 And you fancy yourself growing after a time very tall 
 and corpulent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin 
 cap, trimmed with green ribbons, and set off with 
 a plume. You think you would have put a few more 
 guns in the palisade than Crusoe did, and charged 
 them with a little more grape. 
 
 After a long while, you fancy a ship would arrive, 
 which would cany you back ; and you count upon 
 very great surprise on the part of your father, and little 
 Nelly, as you march up to the door of the old family 
 mansion, with plenty of gold in your pocket, and 
 a small bag of cocoanuts for Charlie, and with a great 
 deal of pleasant talk, about your island, far away in 
 the South Seas. 
 
 Or, perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your 
 
 eyes and your heart cling to, but only some little story 
 about Paul and Virginia ; that dear little Virginia ! 
 how many teare have been shed over her not in gar 
 rets only, or by boys only ! 
 
 You would have liked Virginia you know you 
 would ; but you perfectly hate the beldame aunt, who 
 sent for her to come to France ; you think she must 
 
44 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 have been like the old school-mistress, who occasionally 
 boxes your ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or 
 makes you wear one of the girls' bonnets, that smells 
 strongly of paste-board, and calico. 
 
 As for black Domingue, you think he was a capital 
 old fellow ; and you think more of him, and his bana 
 nas, than you do of the bursting, throbbing heart of 
 poor Paul. As yet, Dream-life does not take hold on 
 love. A little maturity of heart is wanted, to make up 
 what the poets call sensibility. If love should come to 
 be a dangerous, chivalric matter, as in the case of Helen 
 Mar and Wallace, you can very easily conceive of it, 
 and can take hold of all the little accessories of male 
 costume, and embroidering of banners ; but as for pure 
 sentiment, such as lies in the sweet story of Bernardin 
 de St. Pierre, it is quite beyond you. 
 
 The rich, soft nights, in which one might doze in his 
 hammock, watching the play of the silvery moon 
 beams upon the orange leaves, and upon the waves, 
 you can understand ; and you fall to dreaming of that 
 lovely Isle of France ; and wondering if Virginia did 
 not perhaps have some relations on the island, who 
 raise pine-apples, and such sort of things, still ? 
 
 And so, with your head upon your hand, in 
 
 your quiet garret corner, over some such beguiling 
 story, your thought leans away from the book, into 
 vour own dreamv cruise over the sea of life. 
 
11. 
 
 SCHOOL DREAMS. 
 
 IT is a proud thing to go out from under the realm 
 of a school-mistress, and to be enrolled in a 
 company of boys who are under the guidance of a 
 master. It is one of the earliest steps of worldly pride, 
 which has before it a long and tedious ladder of ascent. 
 Even the advice of the old mistress, and the nine-penny 
 book that she thrusts into your hand as a parting gift, 
 pass for nothing ; and her kiss of adieu, if she tenders it 
 in the sight of your fellows, will call up an angry rush 
 of blood to the cheek, that for long years, shall drown 
 all sense of its kindness. 
 
 You have looked admiringly many a day upon the 
 tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. BidloVs 
 school : you have locked with reverence, second only 
 
40 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 to that felt for the old village church, upon its dark- 
 looking heavy brick walls. It seemed to be redolent of 
 learning; and stopping at times, to gaze upon the 
 gallipots and broken retorts, at the second story- 
 window, you have pondered, in your boyish way, 
 upon the inscrutable wonders of Science, and the 
 ineffable dignity of Dr. Bidlow's brick school ! 
 
 Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of 
 giants ; and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a hooked 
 nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack in his voice, 
 a wig, and very dirty wristbands. Still you stand 
 in awe at the mere sight of him; an awe that is 
 very much encouraged by a report made to you by a 
 small boy, that " Old Bid" keeps a large ebony rulei 
 in his desk. You are amazed at the small boy's 
 audacity : it astonishes you that any one who had ever 
 smelt the strong fumes of sulphur and ether in the 
 Doctor's room, and had seen him turn red vinegar 
 blue, (as they say he does) should call him " Old 
 Bid!" 
 
 You, however, come very little under his control: 
 you enter upon the proud life, in the sir ill boyV 
 department, under the dominion of the English 
 master. He is a different personage from Dr Bidlow : 
 he is a dapper, little man, who twinkles his eye 
 in a peculiar fashion, and who has a way of marching 
 about the school-room with his hands crossed behind 
 
SCHOOL-DREAMS. 47 
 
 him, giving a playful flirt to his coat-tails. He wears a 
 pen tucked behind his ear : his hair is carefully set up 
 at the sides, and upon the top, to conceal (as you think 
 later in Me) his diminutive height ; and he steps very 
 springily around behind the benches, glancing now and 
 then at the books, cautioning one scholar about his 
 dogs-ears, and startling another from a doze, by a yery 
 loud and odious snap of his forefinger upon the boy's 
 head. 
 
 At other times, he sticks a hand in the armlet of his 
 waistcoat : he brandishes in the other a thickish bit of 
 smooth cherry-wood, sometimes dressing his hair 
 withal ; and again, giving his head a slight scratch 
 behind the ear, while he takes occasion at the same 
 time, for an oblique glance at a fat boy in the corner, 
 who is reaching down from his seat after a little paper 
 pellet, that has just been discharged at him from some 
 unknown quarter. The master steals very cautiously 
 and quickly to the rear of the stooping boy, 
 dreadfully exposed by his unfortunate position, and 
 inflicts a stinging blow. A weak-eyed little scholar on 
 the next bench ventures a modest titter ; at which the 
 assistant makes a significant motion with his ruler 
 on the seat, as it were, of an imaginary pair of 
 pantaloons, which renders the weak-eyed boy on a 
 sudden, very insensible to the recent joke. 
 
 You. meantime, profess to be very much engrossed 
 
48 D R E A M - L I F E . 
 
 with your grammar turned up-side down : you think 
 it must have hurt ; and are only sorry that it did not 
 happen to a tall, dark-faced boy who cheated you in a 
 swop of jack-knives. You innocently think that he 
 must be a very bad boy ; and fancy aided by a 
 suggestion of the old nurse at home, on the same 
 point, that he will one day come to the gallows. 
 
 There is a platform on one side of the school-room, 
 where the teacher sits at a little red table, and they 
 have a tradition among the boys, that a pin properly 
 bent, was one day put into the chair of the English 
 master, and that he did not wear his hand in the 
 armlet of his waistcoat, for two whole days thereafter. 
 Yet his air of dignity seems proper enough in a man 
 of such erudition, and such grasp of imagination, as he 
 must possess. For he can quote poetry, some of the 
 big scholars have heard him do it : he can parse the 
 whole of Paradise Lost; and he can cipher in Long 
 Division, and the Rule of Three, as if it was all 
 Simple Addition ; and then such a hand as he writes, 
 and such a superb capital B ! It is hard to understand 
 how he does it. 
 
 Sometimes, lifting the lid of your desk, where you 
 pretend to be very busy with your papers, you steal the 
 reading of some brief passage of Lazy Lawrence, or of 
 the Hungarian Brothers, and muse about it for hours 
 afterward, to the great detriment of your ciphering ; 
 
SCHOOL DREAMS. 49 
 
 or, deeply lost in the story of the Scottish Chiefs, you 
 fall to comparing such villains as Monteith with the 
 stout boys who tease you ; and you only wish they 
 could come within reach of the fierce Kirkpatrick's 
 claymore. 
 
 But you are frighted out of this stolen reading by a 
 circumstance that stirs your young blood very strangely. 
 The master is looking very sourly on a certain morning, 
 and has caught sight of the little weak-eyed boy over 
 beyond you, reading Roderick Random. He sends 
 out for a long birch rod, and having trimmed off the 
 leaves carefully, with a glance or two in your direction, 
 he marches up behind the bench of the poor 
 culprit, who turns deathly pale, grapples him by the 
 collar, drags him out over the desks, his limbs dangling 
 in a shocking way against the sharp angles, and having 
 him fairly in the middle of the room, clinches his rod 
 with a new, and, as it seems to you, a very sportive 
 grip. 
 
 You shudder fearfully. 
 
 " Please don't whip me," says the boy whimpering. 
 
 "Aha!" says the smirking pedagogue, bringing 
 down the stick with a quick, sharp cut, " you don't 
 like it, eh?" 
 
 The poor fellow screams, and struggles to escape ; 
 but the blows come faster and thicker. The blood 
 tingles in your finger ends with indignation. 
 3 
 
50 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 " Please don't strike me again," says the boy sobbing 
 and taking breath as he writhes about the legs of the 
 master ; " I won't read another time." 
 
 " Ah, you won't, sir won't you ? I don't mean you 
 shall, sir," and the blows fall thick and fast, until 
 the poor fellow crawls back, utterly crest-fallen and 
 heart-sick, to sob over his books. 
 
 You grow into a sudden boldness : you wish you 
 were only large enough to beat the master : you know 
 such treatment would make you miserable : you 
 shudder at the thought of it : you do not believe he 
 would dare : you know the other boy has got no 
 father. This seems to throw a new light upon the 
 matter, but it only intensifies your indignation. You 
 are sure that no father would suffer it ; or if you 
 thought so, it would sadly weaken your love for him. 
 You pray Heaven that it may never be bought to such 
 proof. 
 
 Let a boy once distrust ihe love or the tender 
 ness of his parents, and the last resort of his yearning 
 affections so far as the world goes is utterly gone. 
 Jle is in the sure road to a bitter fate. His heart will 
 take on a hard iron covering, that will flash out plenty 
 of fire in his after contact with the world, but it will 
 never never melt ! 
 
 There are some tall trees that overshadow an angle 
 of the school-house ; and the larger scholars play some 
 
SCHOOL DREAMS. 51 
 
 very surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs : 
 one boy for instance, will hang for an incredible length 
 of time by his feet, with his head down ; and when you 
 tell Charlie of it at night, with such additions as your 
 boyish imagination can contrive, the old nurse is 
 shocked, and states very gravely that it is dangerous ; 
 and that the blood all runs to the head, and sometimes 
 bursts out of the eyes and mouth. You look at that 
 particular boy with astonishment afterward ; and expect 
 to see him some day burst into bleeding from the nose 
 and ears, and flood the school-room benches. 
 
 In time, however, you get to performing some 
 modest experiments yourself upon the very lowest 
 limbs, taking care to avoid the observation of the 
 larger boys, who else might laugh at you : you 
 especially avoid the notice of one stout fellow in pea- 
 green breeches, who is a sort of ' bully ' among the 
 small boys, and who delights in kicking your marbles 
 about, very accidentally. He has a fashion too of 
 twisting his handkerchief into what he calls a ' snapper,' 
 with a knot at the end, and cracking at you with it, 
 very much to the irritation of your spirit^ and of your 
 
 Sometimes, when he has brought you to an angry 
 burst of teai*s, he will verv graciously force upon you 
 the handkerchief, and insist upon your cracking him in 
 return ; which, as you know nothing about his effective 
 
62 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 method of making the knot bite, is a very harmless 
 proposal on his part. 
 
 But you have still stronger reason to remember that 
 boy. There are trees, as I said, near the school ; and 
 you get the reputation after a time of a good climber. 
 One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and being 
 dared by the boys below, you venture higher higher 
 than any boy has ever gone before. You feel very 
 proudly ; but just then catch sight of the sneering face 
 of your old enemy of the snapper ; and he dares you to 
 go upon a limb that he points out. 
 
 The rest say, for you hear them plainly " it won't 
 bear him." And Frank, a great friend of yours, shouts 
 loudly to you, not to try. 
 
 " Pho," says your tormentor, " the little coward !" 
 
 If you could whip him, you would go down the tree 
 and do it willingly : as it is, you cannot let him 
 triumph : so you advance cautiously out upon the 
 limb : it bends and sways fearfully with your weight : 
 presently it cracks : you try to return, but it is too late : 
 you feel yourself going : your mind flashes home 
 over your life your hope your fate, like lightning : 
 then comes a sense of dizziness, a succession of quick 
 blows, and a dull, heavy crash ! 
 
 You are conscious of nothing again, until you find 
 yourself in the great hall of the school, covered with 
 
SCHOOL DREAMS. 53 
 
 blood, the old Doctor standing over you with a phial, 
 and Frank kneeling by you, and holding your shattered 
 arm, which has been broken by the fall. 
 
 After this, come those long, weary days of confine 
 ment, when you lie still, through all the hours of noon, 
 looking out upon the cheerful sunshine, only through 
 the windows of your little room. Yet it seems a grand 
 thing to have the whole household attendant upon you. 
 The doors are opened and shut softly, and they all step 
 noiselessly about your chamber ; and when you groan 
 with pain, you are sure of meeting sad, sympathizing 
 looks. Your mother will step gently to your side and 
 lay her cool, white hand upon your forehead ; and little 
 Nelly will gaze at you from the foot of your bed with 
 a sad earnestness, and with teal's of pity in her soft 
 hazel eyes. And afterward, as your pain passes away, 
 she will bring you her prettiest books, and fresh 
 flowers, and whatever she knows you will love. 
 
 But it is dreadful, when you wake at night, from 
 your feverish slumber, and see nothing but the spectral 
 shadows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth throws 
 aslant the walls ; and hear nothing but the heavy 
 breathing of the old nurse in the easy chair, and 
 the ticking of the clock upon the mantel ! Then, 
 silence and the night crowd upon your soul drearily. 
 But your thought is active. It shapes at your bed-side 
 the loved figure of your mother, or it calls up tho 
 
54 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 whole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys ; and weeks 
 of study or of play, group like magic on your 
 quickened vision : then, a twinge of pain will call 
 again the dreariness, and your head tosses upon the 
 pillow, and your eye searches the gloom vainly for 
 pleasant faces ; and your fears brood on that drearier, 
 coming night of Death far longer, and far more 
 cheerless than this. 
 
 But even here, the memory of some little prayer 
 you have been taught, which promises a Morning after 
 the Night, comes to your throbbing brain ; and its 
 murmur on your fevered lips, as you breathe it, soothes 
 like a caress of angels, and wooes you to smiles and 
 sleep. 
 
 As the days pass, you grow stronger ; and Frank 
 comes in to tell you of the school, and that your old 
 tormentor has been expelled : and you grow into 
 a strong friendship with Frank, and you think of 
 yourselves as a new Damon and Pythias and that you 
 will some day live together in a fine house, with plenty 
 of horses, and plenty of chestnut trees. Alas, the boy 
 counts little on those later and bitter fates of life, which 
 sever his early friendships, like wisps of straw ! 
 
 At other times, with your eye upon the sleek, trim 
 figure of the Doctor, and upon his huge bunch of 
 watch seals, you think you will some day be a Doctor ; 
 and that with a wife and children, and a respectable 
 
SCHOOL D RE A:\IC. 55 
 
 gig, and gold watch, with seals to match, you would 
 needs be a very happy fellow. 
 
 And with such fancies drifting on your thought, you 
 count for the hundredth time the figures upon the 
 curtains of your bed, you trace out the flower wreatl-s 
 upon the paper-hangings of your room ; your eyos 
 rest idly on the cat playing with the fringe of the 
 curtain ; you see your mother sitting with her 
 needle-work beside the fire ; you watch the sunbeams 
 as they drift along the carpet, from morning until 
 noon ; and from noon till night, you watch them playing 
 on the leaves, and dropping spangles on the lawn ; and 
 as you watch you dream. 
 
III. 
 
 Bor SENTIMENT. 
 
 '\\ yEEKS, and even years of your boyhood roll on, 
 T V in the which your dreams are growing wider 
 and grander, even as the Spring, which I have made 
 the type of the boy-age, is stretching its foliage farther 
 and farther, and dropping longer and heavier shadows 
 on the land. 
 
 Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart 
 strangely ; - and you think that all they write in their 
 books about love, cannot equal your fondness for little 
 Nelly. She is pretty, they say ; but what do you care 
 for her prettiness ? She is so good, so kind so 
 watchful of all your wants, so willing to yield to your 
 haughty claims ! 
 
 But, alas, it is only when this sisterly love is lost 
 
BOY SENTIMENT. 57 
 
 forever, only when the inexorable world separates a 
 family and tosses it upon the waves of fate to wide- 
 lying distances perhaps to graves ! that a man feels, 
 what a boy can never know, the disinterested and 
 abiding affection of a sister. 
 
 All this, that I have set down, comes back to you 
 long afterward, when you recal with tears of regret, 
 your reproachful words, or some swift outbreak of 
 passion. 
 
 Little Madge is a friend of Nelly's a mischievous, 
 blue-eyed hoyden. They tease you about Madge. 
 You do not of course care one straw for her, but yet it 
 is rather pleasant to be teased thus. Nelly never does 
 this ; oh no, not she. I do not know but in the age of 
 childhood, the sister is jealous of the affections of a 
 brother, and would keep his heart wholly at home, 
 until suddenly, and strangely, she finds her own 
 wandering. 
 
 But after all, Madge is pretty ; and there is some 
 thing taking in her name. Old people, and very 
 precise people, call her Margaret Boyne. But you do 
 not : it is only plain Madge ; it sounds like her very 
 rapid and mischievous. It would be the most absurd 
 thing in the world for you to like her, for she teases you 
 in innumerable ways : she laughs at your big shoes ; 
 (such a sweet little foot as she has !) and she pins strips 
 of paper on your coat collar ; and time and again she 
 8* 
 
58 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 has worn off your hat in triumph, very well knowing 
 that you, such a quiet body, and so much afraid of her, 
 will never venture upon any liberties with her gipsy 
 bonnet. 
 
 You sometimes wish, in your vexation, as you see 
 her running, that she would fall and hurt herself badly ; 
 but the next moment, it seems a very wicked wish, and 
 you renounce it. Once, she did come very near it. 
 You were all playing together by the big swing (how 
 plainly it swings in your memory now !) Madge had 
 the seat, and you were famous for running under with a 
 long push, which Madge liked better than anything 
 else : well, you have half run over the ground, when 
 crash comes the swing, and poor Madge with it ! You 
 fairly scream as you catch her up. But she is not hurt 
 only a cry of fright, and a little sprain of that fairy 
 ancle ; and as she brushes away the tears, and those 
 flaxen curls, and breaks into a merry laugh, half at 
 your woe-worn face, and half in vexation at herself; 
 and leans her hand (such a hand !) upon your shoulder, 
 to limp away into the shade, you dream your first 
 dream of love. 
 
 But it is only a dream, not at all acknowledged by 
 you : she is three or four years your junior, too young 
 altogether. It is very absurd to talk about it. There 
 is nothing to be said of Madge only Madge ! The 
 name does it. 
 
BOY SENTIMENT. 59 
 
 It is rather a pretty name to write. You are fond 
 of making capital M's ; and sometimes you follow it 
 with a capital A. Then you practise a little upon a D, 
 and perhaps back it up with a G. Of course it is the 
 merest accident that these letters come together. It 
 seems funny to you very. And as a proof that they 
 are made at random, you make a T or an R before 
 them, and some other quite irrelevant letters after it. 
 
 Finally, as a sort of security against all suspicion, you 
 cross it out cross it a great many ways ; even holding 
 it up to the light, to see that there should be no air of 
 intention about it. 
 
 You need have no fear, Clarence, that your 
 
 hieroglyphics will be studied so closely. Accidental as 
 they are, you are very much more interested in them 
 than any one else ! 
 
 It is a common fallacy of this dream in most 
 
 stages of life, that a vast number of persons employ 
 their time chiefly in spying out its operations. 
 
 Yet Madge cares nothing about you, that you know 
 of. Perhaps it is the very reason, though you do not 
 suspect it then, why you care so much for her. At any 
 rate, she is a friend of Nelly's ; and it is your duty not 
 to dislike her. Nelly too, sweet Nelly, gets an inkling 
 of matters ; for sisters are very shrewd in suspicions of 
 this sort shrewder than brothers or fathers ; and like 
 
<30 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 the good kind girl that she is, she wishes to humor even 
 your weakness. 
 
 Madge drops in to tea quite often : Nelly has some 
 thing in particular to show her, two or three times a 
 week. Good Nelly, perhaps she is making your 
 troubles all the greater ! You gather large bunches of 
 grapes for Madge because she is a friend of Nelly's 
 which she doesn't want at all, and very pretty bouquets, 
 which she either drops, or pulls to pieces. 
 
 In the presence of your father one day, you drop 
 some hint about Madge, in a very careless way -a way 
 shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion ; at which 
 your father laughs. This is odd : it makes you wonder 
 if your father was ever in love himself. 
 
 You rather think that he has been. 
 
 Madge's father is dead and her mother is poor ; and 
 you sometimes dream, how whatever your father may 
 think or feel you will some day make a large fortune,' 
 in some very easy way, and build a snug cottage, and 
 have one horse for your carriage, and one for your wife, 
 (not Madge, of course that is absurd) and a turtle 
 shell cat for your wife's mother, and a pretty gate to 
 the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery, and how your 
 wife will come dancing down the path to meet you, 
 as the Wife does in Mr. Irving's Sketch Book, and 
 how she will have a harp inside, and will wear white 
 dresses, with a blue sash. 
 
BOY SENTIMENT. 01 
 
 Poor Clarence, it never once occurs to you, that 
 
 even Madge may grow fat, and wear check aprons, and 
 snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and twist her hair 
 in yellow papers ! Oh no, boyhood has no such dreams 
 as that ! 
 
 I shall leave you here in the middle of your first 
 foray into the world of sentiment, with those wicked 
 blue eyes chasing rainbows over your heart, and those 
 little feet walking every day into your affections. 
 I shall leave you before the affair has ripened into any 
 overtures, and while there is only a sixpence split 
 in halves, and tied about your neck, and Maggie's 
 neck, to bind your destinies together. 
 
 If I even hinted at any probability of your marrying 
 her, or of your not marrying her, you would be very 
 likely to dispute me. One knows his own feelings, or 
 thinks he does, so much better than any one can 
 tell him ! 
 
IV. 
 
 A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 
 
 r I ^0 visit, is a great thing in the boy calendar : 
 J- not to visit this or that neighbor, to drink 
 tea, or eat strawberries, or play at draughts ; but, to 
 go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and 
 a great-coat, and an umbrella : this is large ! 
 
 It makes no difference, that they wish to be rid 
 of your noise, now that Charlie is sick of a fever : 
 the reason is not at all in the way of your pride of 
 visiting. You are to have a long ride in a coach, 
 and eat a dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town 
 almost as large as the one you live in, and you are to 
 make new acquaintances. In short, you are to see the 
 world : a very proud thing it is, to see the world ! 
 
 As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu, 
 
A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 63 
 
 and as you see fences and houses to which you have 
 not been used, you think them very odd indeed : but it 
 occurs to you, that the geographies speak of very 
 various national characteristics, and you are greatly 
 gratified with this opportunity of verifying your study. 
 You see new crops too, perhaps a broad-leaved tobacco 
 field, which reminds you pleasantly of the luxuriant 
 vegetation of the tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley, 
 and others. 
 
 As for the houses and barns in the new town, they 
 quite startle you with their strangeness : you observe 
 that some of the latter instead of having one stable 
 door, have five or six, a fact which puzzles you very 
 much indeed. You observe farther, that the houses 
 many of them have balustrades upon the top, which 
 seems to you a very wonderful adaptation to the wants 
 of boys, who wish to fly kites, or to play upon 
 the roof. You notice with special favor, one very low 
 roof which you might climb upon by a mere plank, and 
 you think the boys, whose father lives in that house, 
 are very fortunate boys. 
 
 Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think wears a 
 very queer cap, being altogether different from that of 
 the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne, Madge's mother. 
 As for the house she lives in, it is quite wonderful. 
 There are such an immense number of closets, and 
 closets within closets, reminding you of the mysteries 
 
64 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 of Rinaldo Rinaldmi. Beside which, there are im 
 mensely curious bits of old furniture so bla-ck and 
 heavy, and with such curious carving ! and you think 
 of the old wainscot in the Children of the Abbey. 
 You think you will never tire of rambling about in its 
 odd corners, and of what glorious stories you will have 
 to tell of it, when you go back to Nelly, and Charlie. 
 
 As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day 
 with a tall boy next door, called Nat. which seems an 
 extraordinary name. Besides, he has travelled ; and 
 as he sits with you on the summer nights under the 
 linden trees, he tells you gorgeous stories of the things 
 he has seen. He has made the voyage to London ; 
 and he talks about the ship (a real ship) and starboard 
 and larboard, and the spanker, in a way quite surprising ; 
 and he takes the stern oar, in the little skiff when you 
 row off in the cove abreast of the town, in a most 
 seaman-like way. 
 
 He bewilders you too, with his talk about the great 
 bridges of London London bridge specially, where 
 they sell kids for a penny ; which story your new 
 acquaintance, unfortunately, does not confirm. You 
 have read of these bridges, and seen pictures of them 
 in the Wonders of the World ; but then Nat. has seen 
 them with his own eyes : he has literally walked over 
 London Bridge, on his own feet ! You look at his 
 very shoes in wonderment and are surprised you do 
 
A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 65 
 
 not find some startling difference between those shoes, 
 and your shoes. But there is none only yours are a 
 trifle stouter in the welt. You think Nat. one of the 
 fortunate boys of this world born, as your old nurse 
 used to say with a gold spoon in his mouth. 
 
 Beside Nat, there is a girl lives over the opposite 
 side of the way, named Jenny, \rith an eye as black as 
 a coal ; and a half a year older than you ; but about 
 your height ; whom you fancy amazingly. 
 
 She has any quantity of toys, that she lets you play 
 with, as if they were your own. And she has an odd, 
 old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together, 
 and then marries you after his fashion, much to the 
 amusement of a grown up house-maid, whenever she 
 gets a peep at the performance. And it makes you 
 somewhat proud to hear her called your wife ; and you 
 wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won't be true some 
 day or other. 
 
 Fie, Clarence, where is your split sixpence, 
 
 and your blue ribbon ! 
 
 Jenny is romantic, and talks of Thaddeus of Wai-saw 
 in a very touching manner, and promises to lend you 
 the book. She folds billets in a lover's fashion, and 
 practises love-knots upon her bonnet strings. She looks 
 out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs. 
 She is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces. 
 
66 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 She has great pity for middle-aged bachelors, and 
 thinks them all disappointed men. 
 
 After a time she writes notes to you, begging you 
 would answer them at the earliest possible moment, and 
 signs herself 'your attached Jenny.' She takes the 
 marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way as trifling 
 with a very serious subject, and looks tenderly at you. 
 She is very much shocked when her uncle offers to kiss 
 her ; and when he proposes it to you, she is equally 
 indignant, but with a great change of color. 
 
 Nat. says one day, in a confidential conversation, that 
 it won't do to marry a woman six months older than 
 yourself; and this coming from Nat. who has been to 
 London, rather staggers you. You sometimes think 
 that you would like to marry Madge and Jenny both, if 
 the thing were possible ; for Nat. says they sometimes 
 do so the other side of the ocean, though he has never 
 seen it himself. 
 
 Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weakness 
 
 as you grow older : you will find that Providence has 
 charitably, so tempered our affections, that every man 
 of only ordinary nerve will be amply satisfied with a 
 single wife ! 
 
 All this time, for you are making your visit a very 
 long one, so that autumn has come, and the nights are 
 growing cool, and Jenny and yourself are transferring 
 your little coquetries to the chimney corner; poor 
 
A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 67 
 
 Charlie lies sick, at home. Boyhood, thank Heaven, 
 does not suffer severely from sympathy when the object 
 is remote. And those letters from the mother, telling 
 
 ' O. 
 
 you that Charlie cannot play, cannot talk even as he 
 used to do; and that perhaps his 'Heavenly Father 
 will take him away, to be with him in the better 
 world,' disturb you for a time only. Sometimes, 
 however, they come back to your thought on a 
 wakeful night, and you dream about his suffering, and 
 think why it is not you, but Charlie, who is sick? 
 The thought puzzles you ; and well it may, for in it lies 
 the whole mystery of our fate. 
 
 Those letters grow more and more discouraging, and 
 the kind admonitions of your mother grow more 
 earnest, as if (though the thought does not come to 
 you until years afterward) she was preparing herself to 
 fasten upon you, that surplus of affection, which she 
 fears may soon be withdrawn forever from the sick 
 child. 
 
 It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are playing 
 with Nat. that the letter reaches you which says 
 Charlie is growing worse, and that you must come to 
 your home. It makes a dreamy night for you 
 fancying how Charlie will look, and if sickness has 
 altered him much, and if he will not be well by 
 Christmas. From this, you fall away in your reverie, to 
 the odd old house, and its secret cupboards, and your 
 
68 DREAM-LIFE 
 
 aunt's queer caps : then come up those black eyes of 
 ' your attached Jenny,' and you think it a pity that she 
 is six months older than you ; and again as you recal 
 one of her sighs you think that six months are not 
 much after all ! 
 
 You bid her good-bye, with a little sentiment 
 swelling in your throat, and are mortally afraid Nat. 
 will see your lip tremble. Of course you promise to 
 write, and squeeze her hand with an honesty, you do 
 not think of doubting for weeks. 
 
 It is a dull, cold ride, that day, for you. The 
 winds sweep over the withered corn-fields, with a harsh, 
 chilly whistle ; and the surfaces of the little pools by the 
 road-side are tossed up into cold blue wrinkles of water. 
 Here and there a flock of quail, with their feathers 
 ruffled in the autumn gusts, tread through the hard, dry 
 stubble of an oat-field ; or startled by the snap of the 
 driver's whip, they stare a moment at the coach, then 
 whir away down the cold current of the wind. The 
 blue jays scream from the road-side oaks, and the last 
 of the blue and purple asters shiver along the wall. 
 And as the sun sinks, reddening all the western clouds, 
 to the color of the frosted maples, light lines of the 
 Aurora gush up from the northern hills, and trail their 
 splintered fingers far over the autumn sky. 
 
 It is quite dark when you reach home, but you see 
 the bright reflection of a fire within, and presently at 
 
A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 69 
 
 the open door, Nelly clapping her hands for welcome. 
 But there are sad faces when you enter. Your mother 
 folds you to her heart ; but at your first noisy out-burst 
 of joy, puts her finger on her lip, and whispers poor 
 Charlie's name. The Doctot you see too, slipping 
 softly out of the bed-room door with glasses in his 
 hand ; and you hardly know how your spirits grow 
 sad, and your heart gravitates to the heavy air of all 
 about you. 
 
 You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says ; and you cannot 
 in the quiet parlor, tell Nelly a single one of the many 
 things, which you had hoped to tell her. She says 
 ' Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would 
 never know him.' You listen to her, but you cannot 
 talk : she asks you what you have seen, and you begin, 
 for a moment joyously ; but when they open the door 
 of the sick room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot 
 go on. You sit still, with your hand in Nelly's, and 
 look thoughtfully into the blaze. 
 
 You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with 
 singular and perplexed fancies haunting you; and when 
 you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the 
 night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead : 
 you dream of seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly 
 described him, and with the starched grave clothes on 
 him. You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and 
 feverish. You cannot sleep ; and you get up stealthily, 
 
70 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 and creep down stairs ; a light is burning in the hall : 
 the bed-room door stands half open, and you listen 
 fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on through 
 the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A 
 little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt 
 shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling. 
 Your mother is in her chair, with her head upon her 
 hand though it is long after midnight. The Doctor 
 is standing with his back toward you, and with Charlie's 
 little wrist in his fingers ; and you hear hard breathing, 
 and now and then, a low sigh from your mother's 
 chair. 
 
 An occasional gleam of fire-light makes the gaunt 
 shadows stagger on the wall, like something spectral. 
 You look wildly at them, and at the bed where your 
 own brother your laughing, gay-hearted brother, is 
 lying. You long to see him, and sidle up softly a step 
 or two : but your mother's ear has caught the sound, 
 and she beckons you 'to her, and folds you again in her 
 embrace. You whisper to her what you wish. She 
 rises, and takes you by the hand, to lead you to the 
 bedside. 
 
 The Doctor looks very solemnly, as we approach. 
 He takes out his watch. He is not counting Charlie's 
 pulse, for he has dropped his hand ; and it lies care 
 lessly, but oh, how thin ! over the edge of the bed. 
 
 He shakes his head mournfully at your mother ; and 
 
A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 71 
 
 she springs forward, dropping your hand, and lays her 
 fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her 
 hand over his mouth. 
 
 "Is he asleep, Doctor?" she says, in a tone you 
 do not know. 
 
 " Be calm, madam." The Doctor is very calm. 
 
 "I am calm," says your mother; but you do not 
 think it, for you see her tremble very plainly. 
 
 " Dear madam, he will never waken in this world !" 
 
 There is no cry, only a bowing down of your 
 mother's head upon the body of poor, dead Charlie ! 
 and only when you see her form shake and quiver with 
 the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud 
 and strong. 
 
 The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that yen may 
 see that pale head, those blue eyes all sunken, that 
 flaxen hair gone, those white lips pinched and hard ! 
 
 Never, never, will the boy forget his first terrible 
 
 sight of Death ! 
 
 In your silent chamber, after the storm of sobs has 
 wearied you, the boy-dreams are strange and earnest. 
 They take hold on that awful Visitant, that strange 
 slipping away from life, of which we know so little, and 
 yet know, alas, so much ! Charlie that was your 
 brother, is now only a name : perhaps he is an angel : 
 perhaps (for the old nurse has said it, when he was 
 ugly and now, you hate her for it) he is with Satan. 
 
72 DuEAM-LlFE. 
 
 But you are sure this cannot be : you are sure that 
 God who made him suffer, would not now quicken, and 
 multiply his suffering. It agrees with your religion to 
 think so ; and just now, you want your religion to help 
 you all it can. 
 
 You toss in your bed, thinking over and over of that 
 
 strange thing Death: and that perhaps it may 
 
 overtake you, before you are a man ; and you sob out 
 those prayers (you scarce know why) which ask God to 
 Keep life in you. You think the involuntary fear that 
 makes your little prayer full of sobs, is a holy feeling : 
 and so it is a holy feeling the same feeling which 
 makes a stricken child, yearn for the embrace, and 
 the protection of a Parent, But you will find there 
 are those canting ones, trying to persuade you at a 
 later day, that it is a mere animal fear, and not to be 
 cherished. 
 
 You feel an access of goodness growing out of your 
 boyish grief : you feel right-minded : it seems as if 
 your little brother in going to Heaven, had opened a 
 pathway thither, down which, goodness comes streaming 
 over your soul. 
 
 You think how good a life you will lead ; and you 
 map out great purposes, spreading themselves. over the 
 school- weeks of your remaining boyhood ; and you love 
 your friends, or seem to, far more dearly than you ever 
 loved them before ; and you forgive the boy who 
 
A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 73 
 
 provoked you to that sad fall from the oaks, and you 
 forgive him all his wearisome teasings. But you 
 cannot forgive yourself for some harsh words that 
 you have once spoken to Charlie : still less can you 
 forgive yourself for having once struck him, in passion, 
 
 with your fist. You cannot forget his sobs then : 
 
 if he were only alive one little instant, to let you say, 
 " Charlie, will you forgive me ?" 
 
 Yourself, you cannot forgive ; and sobbing over it, 
 and murmuring " Dear dear Charlie !" you drop into 
 a troubled sleep. 
 
V. 
 
 BOY RELIGION. 
 
 IS any weak soul frightened, that I should write 
 of the Religion of the boy ? How indeed could I 
 cover the field of his moral, or intellectual growth, if I 
 left unnoticed those dreams of futurity and of goodness, 
 which come sometimes to his quieter moments, and 
 oftener, to his hours of vexation and trouble ? It 
 would be as wise to describe the season of Spring, with 
 no note of the silent influences of that burning Day- 
 god, which is melting day by day the shattered ice-drifts 
 of Winter ; which is filling every bud with succulence, 
 and painting one flower with crimson, and another with 
 white. 
 
 I know there is a feeling by much too general as it 
 seems to me, that the subject may not be approached, 
 
BOY RELIGION. 75 
 
 except through the dicta of certain ecclesiastic bodies ; 
 and that the language which touches it, must not bo 
 that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of 
 our thought, but should have some twist of that 
 theologic mannerism, which is as cold to the boy, as to 
 the busy man of the world. 
 
 I know very well that a great many good souls will 
 call levity, what I call honesty; and will abjure that 
 familiar handling of the boy's lien upon Eternity, which 
 my story will show. But I shall feel sure that in 
 keeping true to Nature with word and with thought, I 
 shall in no way offend against those Highest truths, to 
 which all truthfulness is kindred. 
 
 You have Christian teachers, who speak always 
 reverently of the Bible : you grow up in the hearing 
 of daily prayers : nay, you are perhaps taught to say 
 them. 
 
 Sometimes they have a meaning, and sometimes they 
 have none. They have a meaning, when your heart is 
 troubled, when a grief or a wrong weighs upon you : 
 then, the keeping of the Father, which you implore, 
 seems to come from the bottom of your soul ; and your 
 eye suffuses with such tears of feeling, as you count 
 holy, and as you love to cherish in your memory. 
 
 But, they have no meaning, when some trifling 
 vexation angers you, and a distaste for all about you, 
 breeds a distaste for all above you. In the long hours 
 
70 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 of toilsome days, little thought comes over you of the 
 morning prayer; and only when evening deepens its 
 shadows, and your boyish vexations fatigue you to 
 thoughtfulness, do you dream of that coming, and 
 endless night, to which, they tell you, prayers soften 
 the way. 
 
 Sometimes upon a Summer Sunday, when you are 
 wakeful upon your seat in church, with some strong- 
 worded preacher, who says things that half fright you, 
 it occurs to you to consider how much goodness you 
 are made of ; and whether there be enough of it after 
 all, to carry you safely away from the clutch of Evil ? 
 And straightway you reckon up those friendships where 
 your heart lies : you know you are a true and honest- 
 friend to Frank ; and you love your mother, and your 
 father : as for Nelly, Heaven knows, you could not 
 contrive a way to love her better than you do. 
 
 You dare not take much credit to yourself for the 
 love of little Madge : partly because you have some 
 times caught yourself trying not to love her: and 
 partly because the black-eyed Jenny comes in tho 
 way. Yet you can find no command in the Cate 
 chism, to love one girl to the exclusion of all other 
 girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do mid it. 
 But, as for loving some half dozen you could name, 
 whose images drift through your thought, in dirty, 
 salmon-colored frocks, and slovenly shoes, it is quite 
 
BOY RELIGION. 77 
 
 impossible ; and suddenly this thought, coupled with 
 a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons, 
 utterly breaks down your hopes. 
 
 Yet, you muse again, there are plenty of good 
 people as the times go, who have their dislikes, and 
 who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking clergy 
 man, you have heard say some veiy sour things about 
 his landlord, who raised his rent the last year. And 
 you know that he did not talk as mildly as he does in 
 the Church, when he found Frank and yourself quietly 
 filching a few of his peaches, through the orchard 
 fence. 
 
 But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what 
 seems to you, quite unnecessary coldness, that good 
 ness is not to be reckoned in your chances of safety ; 
 that there is a Higher Goodness, whose merit is All- 
 Sufficient. This puzzles you sadly; nor will you 
 escape the puzzle, until in the presence of the Home 
 altar, which seems to guard you, as the Lares guarded 
 Roman children, you feel you cannot tell how, 
 that good actions must spring from good sources ; and 
 that those sources must lie in that Heaven, toward 
 which your boyish spirit yearns, as you kneel at your 
 mother's side. 
 
 Conscience too, is all the while approving you for 
 deeds well done ; and, wicked as you fear the preacher 
 might judge it, you cannot but found on these deeds, 
 
78 DREAM LIFE. 
 
 a hope that your prayer at night flows more easily, 
 more freely, and more holily toward "Our Father in 
 Heaven." Nor indeed, later in life, whatever may be 
 the ill-advised expressions of human teachers will you 
 ever find that Duty performed, and generous endeavor 
 will stand one whit in the way either of Faith, or of 
 Love. Striving to be good, is a very direct road 
 toward Goodness ; and if life be so tempered by high 
 motive as to make actions always good, Faith is 
 unconsciously won. 
 
 Another notion that disturbs you very much, is 
 your positive dislike of long sermons, and of such 
 singing as they have when the organist is away. 
 You cannot get the force of that verse of Dr. Watts 
 which likens heaven to a never-ending Sabbath ; you 
 do hope though it seems a half wicked hope that 
 
 old Dr. , will not be the preacher. You think 
 
 that your heart in its best moments, craves for some 
 thing more lovable. You suggest this perhaps to 
 some Sunday teacher, who only shakes his head sourly, 
 and tells you it is a thought that the Devil is putting 
 in your brain. It strikes you oddly that the Devil 
 should be using a verse of Dr. Watts to puzzle you ! 
 But if it be so, he keeps it sticking by your thought 
 very pertinaciously, until some simple utterance of 
 your mother about the Love that reigns in tho other 
 
BOY RE LI GI o N. 79 
 
 world, seems on a sudden to widen Heaven, and to 
 waft away your doubts like a cloud. 
 
 It excites your wonder not a little, to find people 
 who talk gravely and heartily of the excellence of 
 sermons and of Church-going, do sometimes fall asleep 
 under it all. And you wonder if they really like 
 preaching so well, why they do not buy some of the 
 minister's old manuscripts, and read them over on 
 week-days; or, invite the Clergyman to preach to 
 them in a quiet way in private ? 
 
 Ah, Clarence, you do not yet know the poor 
 
 weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble 
 gropings of the soul toward a soul's paradise, in the 
 best of the world ! You do not yet know either that 
 ignorance and fear will be thrusting their untruth and 
 false show into the very essentials of Religion. 
 
 Again, you wonder, if the Clergymen are all such 
 very good men as you are taught to believe, why it is, 
 that every little while people will be trying to send 
 them off; and very anxious to prove that instead of 
 being so good, they are in fact, very stupid and bad 
 men. At that day, you have no clear conceptions 
 of the distinction between stupidity and vice; and 
 think that a good man must necessarily say very 
 eloquent things. You will find yourself sadly mistaken 
 on this point, before you get on very far in life. 
 
 Heaven, when your mother peoples it with friends 
 
80 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 gone, and little Charlie, and that better Friend, who, 
 she says, took Charlie in his arms, and is now his 
 Father, above the skies, seems a place to be loved, and 
 longed for. But to think that Mr. Such-an-one, who 
 is only good on Sundays, will be there too ; and to 
 think of his talking as he does, of a place which you 
 are sure he would spoil if he were there, puzzles you 
 again; and you relapse into wonder, doubt and 
 yearning. 
 
 And there, Clarence, for the present I shall 
 
 leave you. A wide, rich Heaven hangs above you, 
 but it hangs very high. A wide, rough world is 
 around you, and it lies very low ! 
 
 I am assuming in these sketches no office of a 
 teacher. I am seeking only to make a truthful analysis 
 of the boyish thought and feeling. But having 
 ventured thus far into what may seem sacred ground, 
 I shall venture still farther, and clinch my matter with 
 a moral. 
 
 There is very much Religious teaching, even in so 
 good a country as New England, which is far too 
 harsh, too dry, too cold for the heart of a boy. Long 
 sermons, doctrinal precepts, and such tediously-worded 
 dogmas as were uttered by those honest, but hard- 
 spoken men the Westminster Divines, fatigue, and 
 puzzle, and dispirit him. 
 
BOY RELIGION. 81 
 
 They may be well enough for those strong souls 
 which strengthen by task-work, or for those mature 
 people whose iron habit of self-denial has made patience 
 a cardinal virtue; but they fall (experto crede) upon 
 the unfledged faculties of the boy, like a winter's rain 
 upon Spring flowers, like hammers of iron upon lithe 
 timber. They may make deep impression upon his 
 moral nature, but there is great danger of a sad 
 rebound. 
 
 Is it absurd to suppose that some adaptation is 
 desirable ? And might not the teachings of that Reli 
 gion, which is the ^Egis of our moral being, be 
 inwrought with some of those finer harmonies of speech 
 and form which were given to wise ends ; and lure 
 the boyish soul, by something akin to that gentleness, 
 which belonged to the Nazarene Teacher ; and which 
 provided not only, meat for men, but "inilk for 
 babes?" 
 
VI. 
 
 A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE. 
 
 "T7\RANK has a grandfather living in the country, 
 JL a good specimen of the old fashioned New 
 England farmer. And go where one will, the world 
 over I know of no race of men, who taken together, 
 possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of 
 those elements of comfort, which go to make a home 
 beloved, and the social basis firm, than the New 
 England fanners. 
 
 They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined ; 
 they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic; 
 they know only so much of older nations as their 
 histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashion 
 able world they hold no place; but in energy, in 
 industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge, 
 
A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE. 83 
 
 and in manly independence, they make up a race, that 
 is hard to be matched. 
 
 The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of 
 intelligence, and sterling worth, infants, compared with 
 them : and the farmers of England are either the 
 merest jockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their 
 sacks, samples, and market-days ; or, with added 
 cultivation, they lose their independence in a subservi 
 ency to some neighbor patron of rank ; and superior 
 intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly, as that 
 their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and 
 are to be left to their cattle and the goad. 
 
 There are English farmers indeed, who are men 
 in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the 
 current of the year's intelligence; but such men are 
 the exceptions. In New England, with the school 
 upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, free- 
 acting church, to watch every valley with week-day 
 quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound, 
 the men become as a class, bold, intelligent, and 
 honest actors, who would make again, as they have 
 made before, a terrible army of defence; and who 
 would find reasons for their actions, as strong as their 
 armies. 
 
 Frank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still 
 hale, erect, and strong. His dress is homely, but neat. 
 Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy 
 
84 DREAM LIFE. 
 
 for the gew-ga\?s of foreign importation, and makes it 
 a point to appear always in the village church, and 
 on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun. 
 He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none. 
 He is known as the Squire, throughout the township ; 
 and no important measure can pass the board of 
 select-men without the Squire's approval : and this, 
 from no blind subserviency to his opinion, because his 
 farm is large, and he is reckoned " fore-handed," but 
 because there is a confidence in his judgment. 
 
 He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the 
 country parson, or of the school-master, or of the 
 Village doctor ; and although the latter is a testy 
 politician of the opposite party, it does not at all 
 impair the Squire's faith in his calomel ; he suffers 
 all his Radicalism, with the same equanimity that he 
 suffers his rhubarb. 
 
 The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the 
 small farmers consider the Squire's note of hand for 
 their savings, better than the best bonds of city origin ; 
 and they seek his advice is all matters of litigation. 
 He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire 
 hi a New England village implies ; and many are the 
 country courts that you peep upon, with Frank, from 
 the door of the great dining room. 
 
 The defendant always seems to you, in these 
 
A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE. 85 
 
 important cases, especially if his beard is rather 
 long, an extraordinary ruffian ; to whom Jack Shep- 
 pard would have been a comparatively innocent boy. 
 You watch curiously the old gentleman, sitting in his 
 big arm chair, with his spectacles in their silver case 
 at his elbow, and his snuff box in hand, listening 
 attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him 
 ponder deeply with a pinch of snuff to aid his judg 
 ment, and you listen with intense admiration, as 
 he gives a loud, preparatory -'Ahem," and clears away 
 the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong 
 practical sense, which distinguishes the New England 
 farmer, getting at the very hinge of the matter, 
 without any consciousness of his own precision, and 
 satisfying the defendant by tne clearness of his talk, as 
 much as by the leniency of his judgment. 
 
 His lands lie along those swelling hills which in 
 southern New England, cariy the chain of the White 
 and Green Mountains, in gentle undulations, to the 
 borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred 
 acres, " suitably divided," as the old school agricul 
 turists say, into " wood-land, pasture, and tillage." The 
 farm-house, a large irregularly built mansion of wood, 
 stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward, 
 and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and 
 out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx, a 
 little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them 
 
86 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 a high timber gate, opens upon the scattered pasture 
 lands of the hills : opposite to this, and across the 
 farm-yard which is the lounging place of scores of red 
 necked turkeys, and of matronly hens, clucking to their 
 callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens 
 upon the wide meadow land, which rolls with a heavy 
 " ground swell," along the valley of a mountain river. 
 A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadow- 
 gate, its trunk all scarred with the ruthless cuts of 
 new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in summer 
 time, with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking 
 scythes. 
 
 The high-road passes a stone's throw away ; but 
 there is little " travel " to be seen ; and every chance 
 passer will inevitably come under the range of the 
 kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes 
 of the stout dairy-maid : to say nothing of the 
 stalwart Indian cook. 
 
 This last, you cannot but admire as a type of that 
 noble old race, among whom your boyish fancy has 
 woven so many stories of romance. You wonder how 
 she must regard the white interlopers upon her own 
 soil ; and you think that she tolerates the Squire's 
 farming privileges, with more modesty than you would 
 suppose. You learn, however, that she pays very 
 little regard to white rights, when they conflict with 
 her own; and further learn, to your, deep regret. 
 
A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE. 87 
 
 that your Princess of the old tribe, is sadly addicted 
 to cider drinking : and having heard her once or 
 twice, with a very indistinct " Goo-er night Sq-quare," 
 upon her lips your dreams about her, grow very 
 tame. 
 
 The Squire, like all very sensible men, has his 
 hobbies, and peculiarities. He has a great contempt, 
 for instance, for all paper money ; and imagines banks 
 to be corporate societies, skillfully contrived for the 
 legal plunder of the community. He keeps a supply 
 of silver and gold by him, in the foot of an old 
 stocking ; and seems to have great confidence in the 
 value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of 
 patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig, 
 and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists ; and has 
 far more respect for the contents of his barn-yard, than 
 for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific 
 farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he 
 says, ' to keep idle young fellows from the City out of 
 mischief ; but as for real, effective management, there's 
 nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot 
 until they were ten, and who count the hard winters 
 by their frozen toes.' And he is fond of quoting in 
 this connection, the only quotation by the by, that 
 the old gentleman ever makes that couplet of Poor 
 Richard : 
 
88 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 He that by the plough would thrive, 
 Himself must either hold or drive. 
 
 The Squire has been in his day, connected more or 
 less intimately with Turn-pike enterprise, which the 
 rail-roads of the day have thrown sadly into the back 
 ground; and he reflects often, in a melancholy way, 
 upon the good old times when a man could travel in 
 his own carriage quietly across the country, without 
 being frightened with the clatter of an engine; and 
 when Turn-pike stock, paid wholesome yearly dividends 
 of six per cent. 
 
 An almost constant hanger-on about the premises, 
 and a great favorite with the Squire, is a stout, middle- 
 aged man, with a heavy bearded face to whom Frank 
 introduces you, as " Captain Dick" ; and he tells you 
 moreover, that he is a better butcher, a better wall 
 layer, and cuts a broader "swathe," than any man 
 upon the farm. Beside all which, he has an immense 
 deal of information. He knows, in the Spring, where 
 all the crows' nests are to be found; he tells Frank 
 where the foxes burrow ; he has even shot two or 
 three raccoons in the swamps ; he knows the best 
 season to troll for pickerel ; he has a thorough under 
 standing of bee-hunting ; he can tell the ownership 
 of every stray heifer that appears upon the road : 
 indeed, scarce an inquiry is made, or an opinion 
 
A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE. 89 
 
 formed, on any of these subjects, or on such kindred 
 ones as the weather, or potato crop, without previous 
 consultation with " Captain Dick." 
 
 You have an extraordinary respect for Captain 
 Dick : his gruff tones, dark beard, patched waist 
 coat, and cow-hide boots, only add to it : you can 
 compare your regard for him, only with the sentiments 
 you entertain for those fabulous Roman heroes, led 
 on by Horatius, who cut down the bridge across 
 the Tiber, and then swam over to their wives and 
 families. 
 
 A superannuated old greyhound lives about the 
 premises, and stalks lazily around, thrusting his thin 
 nose into your hands, in a veiy affectionate manner. 
 
 Of course, in your way, you are a lion among 
 the boys of the neighborhood : a blue jacket that 
 you wear, with bell buttons of white metal, is their 
 especial wonderment. You astonish them, moreover, 
 with your stories of various parts of the world which 
 they have never visited. They tell you of the haunts 
 of rabbits, and great snake stories, as you sit in the 
 dusk after supper, under the old oaks ; and you 
 delight them in turn, with some marvellous tale of 
 South American reptiles, out of Peter Parley's books. 
 
 In all this, your new friends are men of observation ; 
 while Frank and yourself, are comparatively men of 
 reading. In ciphering, and all schooling, you find 
 
90 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 yourself a long way before th ^m ; and you talk of 
 problems, and foreign seas, and Latin declensions, in a 
 way that sets them all agape. 
 
 As for the little country girls, their bare legs rather 
 stagger your notions of propriety ; nor can you wholly 
 get over their outside pronunciation of some of the vow 
 els. Frank, however, has a little cousin, a toddling, 
 wee thing, some seven years your junior, who has a rich 
 eye for an infant. But, alas, its color means nothing ; 
 poor Fanny is stone blind ! Your pity leans toward 
 her strangely, as she feels her way about the old parlor ; 
 and her dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or over the 
 clear, blue sky with the same, sad, painful vacancy. 
 
 And yet it is very strange ! she does not grieve : 
 there is a sweet, soft smile upon her lip, a smile that 
 will come to you in your fancied troubles of after life, 
 with a deep voice of reproach. 
 
 Altogether, you grow into a liking of the country : 
 your boyish spirit loves its fresh, bracing air, and tho 
 sparkles of dew, that at sunrise cover the hills with 
 diamonds ; and the wild river, with its black-topped, 
 loitering pools ; and the shaggy mists that lie, in the 
 nights of early autumn, like unravelled clouds, lost 
 upon the meadow. You love the hills climbing green 
 and grand to the skies ; or stretching away in distance, 
 their soft, blue, smoky caps, like the sweet, half- faded 
 
A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE. 91 
 
 memories of the years behind you. You love those 
 oaks tossing up their broad arms into clear heaven, with 
 a spirit and a strength, that kindles your dawning pride 
 and purposes; and that makes you yearn, as your 
 forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit, 
 and a kindred strength. Above all, you love though 
 you do not know it now the BREADTH of a country 
 life. In the fields of God's planting, there is ROOM. 
 No walls of brick and mortar cramp one : no factitious 
 distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches 
 of the spirit, tend toward the True, and the Natural. 
 The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all 
 give width to your intent, The boy grows into 
 manliness, instead of growing to be like men. He 
 claims, with tears almost, of brotherhood, his kinship 
 with Nature ; and he feels, in the mountains, his heir- 
 ship to the Father of Nature ! 
 
 This delirium of feeling may not find expression upon 
 the lip of the boy ; but yet it underlies his thought, and 
 will, without his consciousness, give the spring to his 
 musing dreams. 
 
 So it is, that as you he there upon the sunny 
 
 greensward, at the old Squire's door, you muse upon 
 the time when some rich lying land, with huge 
 granaries, and cozy old mansion sleeping under the 
 trees, shall be yours ; when the brooks shall water 
 your meadows, and come laughing down your pasture 
 
92 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 lands ; when the clouds shall shed their spring 
 fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless youi 
 paths. 
 
 You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your 
 lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, and 
 your snuff-box. You will be the happy, and respected 
 husband of some tidy old lady in black, and spectacles, 
 a little phthisicky, like Frank's grandmother, and 
 an accomplished cook of stewed pears, and Johnny 
 cakes ! 
 
 It seems a very lofty ambition, at this stage of 
 growth, to reach such eminence, as to convert your 
 drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret spring, into a 
 bank for the country people ; and the power to send a 
 man to jail, seems one of those stretches of human 
 prerogative, to which few of your fellow mortals can 
 ever hope to attain. 
 
 Well, it may all be. And who knows but the 
 
 Dreams of Age, when they are reached, will be lighted 
 by the same spirit and freedom of nature, that is 
 iround you now ? Who knows, but that after tracking 
 you through the Spring, and the Summer of Youth, 
 we shall find frosted Age settling upon you heavily, and 
 solemnly, in the very fields where you wanton to-day ? 
 
 This American life of ours is a tortuous and shifting 
 impulse. It brings Age back, from years of wandering, 
 to totter in the hamlet of its birth ; and it scatters 
 
A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE. 93 
 
 armies of ripe manhood, to bleach far-away shores with 
 their bones. 
 
 That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy 
 and the executioner of the Fateful changes of our life, 
 may bring you back in Manhood, or in Age, to this 
 mountain home of New England ; and that very willow 
 yonder, which your fancy now makes the graceful 
 mourner of your leave, may one day shadow mournfully 
 your grave ! 
 
VII. 
 
 THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 
 
 ri iHE country church is a square old building of 
 JL wood, without paint or decoration and of that 
 genuine, Puritanic stamp, which is now fast giving 
 way to Greek porticos, and to cockney towers. It 
 stands upon a hill with a little church yard in its 
 rear, where one or two sickly looking trees keep watch 
 and ward over the vagrant sheep that graze among 
 the graves. Bramble bushes seem to thrive on the 
 bodies below, and there is no flower in the little yard, 
 save a few golden rods, which flaunt their gaudy 
 inodorous color under the lee of the northern wall. 
 
 New England country-livers have as yet been very 
 little innoculated with the sentiment of beauty; even 
 the door-step to the church is a wide flat stone, that 
 
THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 95 
 
 shows not a single stroke of the hammer. Within, the 
 simplicity is even more severe. Brown galleries run 
 around three sides of the old building, supported by 
 timbers, on which you still trace, under the stains from 
 the leaky roof, the deep scoring of the woodman's axe. 
 
 Below, the unpainted pews are ranged in square 
 forms, and by age, have gained the color of those 
 fragmentary wrecks of cigar boxes, which you see upon 
 the top shelves, in the bar-rooms of country taverns. 
 The minister's desk is lofty, and has once been honored 
 with a coating of paint ; as well as the huge sounding- 
 board, which, to your great amazement, protrudes from 
 the wall, at a veiy dangerous angle of inclination, over 
 the speaker's head. As the Squire's pew is the place 
 of honor, to the right of the pulpit, you have a little 
 tremor yourself, at sight of the heavy sounding-board, 
 and cannot forbear indulging in a quiet feeling of 
 relief, when the last prayer is said. 
 
 There are in the Squire's pew, long, faded, crimson 
 cushions ; which, it seems to you, must date back 
 nearly to the commencement of the Christian era in 
 this country. There are also sundry old thumb-worn 
 copies of Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms of David 
 l appointed to fee sung in churches, by authority of 
 the General Association of the State of Connecticut. 1 
 The sides of Dr. Dwight's Version are, you observe, 
 sadly warped, and weather-stained ; and from some 
 
96 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 stray figures which appear upon a fly-leaf, you are 
 constrained to think, that the Squire has sometime 
 employed a quiet interval of the service, with reckoning 
 up the contents of the old stocking-leg at home. 
 
 The parson is a stout man, remarkable in your 
 opinion, chiefly, for a yellowish-brown wig, a strong 
 nasal tone, and occasional violent thumps upon the 
 little, dingy, red velvet cushion, studded with brass 
 tacks, at the top of the desk. You do not altogether 
 admire his style ; and by the time he has entered upon 
 his ' Fourthly,' you give your attention, in despair, to a 
 new reading (it must be the twentieth) of the preface 
 to Dr. D wight's Version of the Psalms. 
 
 The singing has a charm for you. There is a long, 
 thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tuning fork in 
 his waistcoat pocket, and who leads the choir. His 
 position is in the very front rank of gallery benches, 
 facing the desk ; and by the time the old clergyman 
 has read two verses of the psalm, the country chorister 
 turns around to his little group of aids consisting of 
 the blacksmith, a carroty headed school-master, two 
 women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in pink bonnet 
 to announce the tune. 
 
 This being done in an authoritative manner, he lifts 
 his long music book, glances again at his little com 
 pany, clears his throat by a powerful ahem, followed 
 by a powerful use of a bandanna pocket-handkerchief, 
 
THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 97 
 
 draws out his tuning fork, and waits for the parson to 
 close his reading. He now reviews once more his 
 company, throws a reproving glance at the young 
 woman in the pink hat, who at the moment is biting 
 off a stout bunch of fennel, lifts his music book, 
 thumps upon the rail with his fork, listens keenly, 
 gives a slight ahem, falls into the cadence, swells into 
 a strong crescendo, catches at the first word of the 
 line, as if he were afraid it might get away, turns to 
 his company, lifts his music book with spirit, gives it 
 a powerful slap with the disengaged hand, and with a 
 majestic toss of the head, soars away, with half the 
 women below straggling on in his wake, into some such 
 biave, old melody as LITCHFIELD ! 
 
 Being a visitor, and in the Squire's pew, you are 
 naturally an object of considerable attention to the girls 
 about your age ; as well as to a great many fat, old 
 ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you excessively, by 
 patting you under the chin after church ; and insist upon 
 mistaking you for Frank ; and force upon you very dry 
 cookies, spiced with caraway seeds. 
 
 You keep somewhat shy of the young ladies, as they 
 are rather stout for your notions of beauty ; and wear 
 thick calf-skin boots. They compare very poorly with 
 Jenny. Jenny, you think, would be above eating 
 gingerbread between service. None of them, you 
 imagine, even read Thaddeus of Warsaw, or ever used 
 5 
 
98 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 a colored glass seal with a heart upon it. You are 
 quite certain they never did, or they could not, surely, 
 wear such dowdy gowns, and suck their thumbs as they 
 do! 
 
 The farmers you have a high respect for ; particu 
 larly for one weazen-faced old gentleman in a brown 
 surtout, who brings his whip into church with him, who 
 sings in a very strong voice, and who drives a span of 
 gray colts. You think, however, that he has got rather 
 a stout wife ; and from the way he humors her in 
 stopping to talk with two or three other fat women, 
 before setting off for home, (though he seems a little 
 fidgetty) you naively think, that he has a high regard 
 for her opinion. Another townsman, who attracts your 
 notice, is a stout old deacon, who before entering, 
 always steps around the corner of the church, and puts 
 his hat upon the ground, to adjust his wig in a quiet 
 way. He then marches up the broad aisle in a stately 
 manner, and plants his hat, and a big pair of buckskin 
 mittens, on the little table under the desk. When he 
 is fairly seated in his corner of the pew, with his elbow 
 upon the top-rail almost the only man who can 
 comfortably reach it, you observe that he spreads his 
 brawny fingers over his scalp, in an exceedingly cautious 
 manner ; and you innocently think again, that it is very 
 hypocritical in a Deacon, to be pretending to lean upon 
 his hand, when he is only keeping his wig straight. 
 
THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 99 
 
 After the morning service, they have an l hour's 
 intermission,' as the preacher calls it ; during which, the 
 old men gather on a sunny side of the building, and 
 after shaking hands all around, and asking after the 
 'folks' at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the 
 crops. One man for instance, with a twist in his nose, 
 would say, ' it's raether a growin' season ; ' and another 
 would reply ' tolerable, but potatoes is feelin' the wet, 
 badly.' The stout deacon approves this opinion, and 
 confirms it, by blowing his nose very powerfully. 
 
 Two or three of the more worldly minded ones, will 
 perhaps stroll over to a neighbor's barn-yard, and take a 
 look at his young stock, and talk of prices, and whittle 
 a little ; and very likely some two of them, will make a 
 conditional * swop ' of ' three likely yer'lings ' for a pair 
 of * two-year-olds.' 
 
 The youngsters are fond of getting out into the 
 grave-yard, and comparing jack-knives, or talking about 
 the school-master, or the menagerie ; or, it may be, of 
 some prospective * travel ' in the fall, either to town 
 or perhaps to the * sea-shore.' 
 
 Afternoon service hangs heavily ; and the tall choris 
 ter is by no means so blithe, or so majestic in the toss 
 of his head, as in the morning. A boy in the next box, 
 tries to provoke you into familiarity by dropping pellets 
 of gingerbread through the bars of the pew ; but as 
 
100 DREAM -LIFE. 
 
 you are not accustomed to that way of making 
 acquaintance, you decline all overtures. 
 
 After the service is finished, the wagons that have 
 been disposed on either side of the road, are drawn up 
 before the door. The old Squire meantime, is sure to 
 have a little chat with the parson before he leaves ; in 
 the course of which, the parson takes occasion to say 
 that his wife is a little ailing ' a slight touch,' he 
 thinks, ' of the rheumatiz.' One of the children too, 
 has been troubled with the ' summer complaint' for a day 
 or two; but he thinks that a dose of catnip, under 
 Providence, will effect a cure. The younger, and 
 unmarried men, with red wagons, flaming upon bright, 
 yellow wheels, make great efforts to drive off in the van ; 
 and they spin frightfully near some of the fat, sour-faced 
 women, who remark in a quiet, but not very Christian 
 tone, that ' they fear the elder's sermon hasn't done the 
 young bucks much good.' It is much to be feared, in 
 truth, that it has not. 
 
 In ten minutes the old church is thoroughly deserted ; 
 the neighbor who keeps the key has locked up for 
 another week, the creaking door ; and nothing of the 
 service remains within, except Dr. Dwight's version, 
 the long music books, crumbs of gingerbread, and 
 refuse stalks of despoiled fennel. 
 
 And yet, under the influence of that old weather- 
 stained temple, are perhaps growing up though you 
 
THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 101 
 
 do not once fancy it souls, possessed of an energy, an 
 industry, and a respect for virtue, which will make them 
 stronger for the real work of life, than all the elegant 
 children of a city. One lesson, which even the rudest 
 churches of New England teach, with all their harsh 
 ness, and all their repulsive severity of form is the 
 lesson of SELF-DENIAL. Once armed with that, and 
 manhood is strong. The soul that possesses the 
 consciousness of mastering passion, is endowed with an 
 element of force, that can never harmonize with 
 defeat. Difficulties, it wears like a summer garment, 
 and flings away, at the first approach of the winter of 
 
 NEED. 
 
 Let not any one suppose then, that in this detail of 
 the country life, through which our hero is led, I 
 would cast obloquy, or a sneer, upon its simplicity, or 
 upon its lack of refinement. Goodness, and strength, 
 in this world, are quite as apt to wear rough coats, as 
 fine ones. And the words of thorough, and self- 
 sacrificing kindness, are far more often dressed in the 
 uncouth sounds of retired life, than in the polished 
 utterance of the town. Heaven has not made warm 
 hearts, and honest hearts distinguishable by the quality 
 of the covering. True diamonds need no work of the 
 artificer to reflect, and multiply their rays. Goodness 
 is more within, than without ; and purity is of nearer 
 kin to the soul, than to the body. 
 
102 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 And, Clarence, it may well happen, that later 
 
 in life under the gorgeous ceilings of Venetian 
 churches, or at some splendid mass of Notre Dame, 
 
 with embroidered coats, and costly silks around you, 
 
 your thoughts will run back to that little storm-beaten 
 church, and to the willow waving in its yard with a 
 Hope that glows ; and with a tear, that you embalm ! 
 
vin. 
 
 A HOME SCENE. 
 
 AND now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood, 
 or suffer my hero to slip away from this gala 
 time of his life, without a fair look at that Home where 
 his present pleasures lie, and where all his dreams begin 
 and end. 
 
 Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts 
 by, floating him out insensibly from the harbor of his 
 home, upon the great sea of life, what joys, what 
 opportunities, what affections, are slipping from him 
 into the shades of that inexorable Past, where no man 
 can go, save on the wings of his dreams. Little does 
 he think and God be praised, that the thought does 
 not sink deep lines in his young forehead ! as he leans 
 upon the lap of his mother, with his eye turned to her, 
 
104 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 m some earnest pleading for a fancied pleasure of the 
 hour, or in some important story of his griefs, that such 
 sharing of his sorrows, and such sympathy with his 
 wishes, he will find no where again. 
 
 Little does he imagine, that the fond Nelly, ever 
 thoughtful of his pleasure, ever smiling away his griefs 
 will soon be beyond the reach of either ; and that the 
 waves of the years which come rocking so gently under 
 him, will soon toss her far away, upon the great swell 
 of life. 
 
 But now, you are there. The fire-light glimmers 
 upon the walls of your cherished home, like the Vestal 
 fire of old upon the figures of adoring virgins, or 
 like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore 
 hearts to Heaven. The big chair of your father is 
 drawn to its wonted corner by the chimney side; 
 his head, just touched with gray, lies back upon its 
 oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee, looking 
 up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Oppo 
 site, sits your mother; her figure is thin, her look 
 cheerful, yet subdued; her arm perhaps resting on 
 your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender 
 admonition, of the days that are to come. 
 
 The cat is purring on the hearth ; the clock that 
 ticked so plainly when Charlie died, is ticking on 
 the mantel still. The great table in the middle of the 
 room, with its books and work, waits only for the 
 
A HOME SCENE. 105 
 
 lighting of the evening lamp, to see a return to its 
 stores of embroidery, and of story. 
 
 Upon a little stand under the mirror, which catches 
 now and then a flicker of the fire-light, and makes 
 it play, as if in wanton, upon the ceiling, lies that big 
 book, reverenced of your New England parents the 
 Family Bible. It is a ponderous square volume, with 
 heavy silver clasps, that you have often pressed open 
 for a look at its quaint old pictures, or for a study of 
 those prettily bordered pages, which lie between the 
 Testaments, and which hold the Family Eecord. 
 
 There are the Births ; your father's, and your 
 mother's ; it seems as if they were born a long time 
 ago ; and even your own date of birth appears an al 
 most incredible distance back. Then, there are the 
 marriages ; only one as yet ; and your mother's maiden 
 name looks oddly to you : it is hard to think of her as 
 any one else than your doting parent. You wonder if 
 your name will ever come under that paging ; and 
 wonder, though you scarce whisper the wonder to your 
 self, how another name would look, just below yours 
 such a name for instance, as Fanny, or as Miss 
 Margaret Boyne ! 
 
 Last of all, come the Deaths only one. Poor 
 
 Charlie! How it looks? 'Died 12 September 18 
 
 Charles Henry, aged four years.' You know just how 
 
 it looks. You have turned to it often ; there, you seem 
 
 5* 
 
100 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 to be joined to him, though only by the turning of a 
 leaf. And over your thoughts, as you look at that 
 page of the record, there sometimes wanders a vague 
 shadowy fear, which will come, that your own name 
 may soon be there. You try to drop the notion, as if 
 it were not fairly your own ; you affect to slight it, as 
 you would slight a boy who presumed on your acquaint 
 ance, but whom you have no desire to know. It is a 
 common thing, you will find, with our world, to decline 
 familiarity with those ideas that fright us. 
 
 Yet your mother how strange it is ! has no feara 
 of such dark fancies. Even now, as you stand be 
 side her, and as the twilight deepens in the room, her 
 low, silvery voice is stealing upon your ear, telling you 
 that she cannot be long with you ; that the time is 
 coming, when you must be guided by your own judg 
 ment, and struggle with the world, unaided by the 
 friends of your boyhood. There is a little pride, and a 
 great deal more of anxiety in your thoughts now, as 
 you look steadfastly into the home blaze, while those 
 delicate fingers, so tender of your happiness, play with 
 the locks upon your brow. 
 
 To struggle with the world, that is a proud 
 
 thing ; to struggle alone, there lies the doubt ! Then, 
 crowds in swift, upon the calm of boyhood, the first 
 anxious thought of youth ; then chases over the sky of 
 Spring, the first heated, and wrathful cloud of Summer ! 
 
A HOME SCENE. 107 
 
 But the lamps are now lit in the little parlor, and 
 they shed a soft haze to tho farthest corner of the 
 room ; while the fire light streams over the floor where 
 puss lies purring. Little Madge is there; she has 
 dropped in softly with her mother, and Nelly has 
 welcomed her with a bound, and with a kiss. Jenny 
 has not so rosy a cheek as Madge. But Jenny with 
 her love notes, and her languishing dark eye, you think 
 of, as a lady ; and the thought of her is a constant drain 
 upon your sentiment. As for Madge that girl Madge, 
 whom you know so well, you think of her as a sister ; 
 and yet it is veiy odd, you look at her far oftener 
 than you do at Nelly ! 
 
 Frank too has come in to have a game with you at 
 draughts ; and he is in capital spirits, all brisk and 
 glowing with his evening's walk. He, bless his honest 
 heart! never observes that you arrange the board 
 very adroitly, so that you may keep half an eye upon 
 Madge, as she sits yonder beside Nelly. Nor does he 
 once notice your blush, as you catch her eye, when she 
 raises her head to fling back the ringlets; and then, 
 with a sly look at you, bends a most earnest gaze upon 
 the board, as if she were especially interested in the dis 
 position of the men. 
 
 You catch a little of the spirit of coquetry yourself 
 (what a native growth it is !) and if she lift her eyes, 
 when you are gazing at her, you very suddenly divert 
 
108 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 your look to the cat at her feet ; and remark to your 
 friend Frank, in an easy, off-hand way how still the 
 cat is lying ! 
 
 And Frank turns thinking probably, if he thinks at 
 all about it, that cats are very apt to lie still, when they 
 sleep. 
 
 As for Nelly, half neglected by your thought, as 
 well as by your eye, while mischievous looking Madge 
 is sitting by her, you little know as yet, what kind 
 ness what gentleness, you are careless of. Few loves 
 in life, and you will learn it before life is done, can 
 balance the lost love of a sister. 
 
 As for your parents, in the intervals of the game, you 
 listen dreamily to their talk with the mother of Madge 
 good Mrs. Boyne. It floats over your mind, as you 
 rest your chin upon your clenched hand, like a strain 
 of old familiar music, a household strain, that seems 
 to belong to the habit of your ear, a strain that will 
 linger about it melodiously for many years to come, 
 a strain that will be recalled long time hence, when 
 life is earnest and its cares heavy, with tears of regret, 
 and with sighs of bitterness. 
 
 By and by your game is done ; and other games, in 
 which join Nelly (the tears come when you write hex 
 name, now /) and Madge (the smiles come when you 
 look on her then,) stretch out that sweet eventide of 
 Home, until the lamp flickers, and you speak your friends 
 
A HOME SCENE. 109 
 
 adieu. To Madge, it is said boldly a boldness put 
 on to conceal a little lurking tremor; but there is 
 no tremor in tke home good-night. 
 
 Aye, my boy, kiss your mother kiss her 
 
 again ; fondle your sweet Nelly ; pass your little 
 hand through the gray locks of your father; love 
 them dearly, while you can ! Make your good-nights 
 linger; and make your adieus long, and sweet, and 
 often repeated. Love with your whole soul, Father, 
 Mother, and Sister ; for these loves shall die ! 
 
 Not indeed in thought : God be thanked ! 
 
 Nor yet in tears, for He is merciful ! But they shall 
 die as the leaves die, die as Spring dies into the heat, 
 and ripeness of Summer, and as boy-hood dies into the 
 elasticity and ambition of youth. Death, distance, and 
 time, shall each one of them dig graves for your affec 
 tions ; but this you do not know, nor can know, until 
 the story of your life is ended. 
 
 The dreams of riches, of love, of voyage, of learning, 
 that light up the boy-age with splendor, will pass on 
 and over into the hotter dreams of youth. Spring buds 
 and blossoms under the glowing sun of April, nurture 
 at their heart those firstlings of fruit, which the heat 
 of summer shall ripen. 
 
 You little know, and for this you may well thank 
 Heaven that you are leaving the Spring of life, and 
 that you are floating fast from the shady sources of 
 
110 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 your years, into heat, bustle, and storm. Your dreams 
 are now faint, flickering shadows, that play like fire-flies 
 in the coppices of leafy June. They have no rule, but 
 the rule of infantile desire. They have no joys to 
 promise, greater than the joys that belong to your 
 passing life ; they -lave no terrors, but such terrors as 
 the darkness of a Spring night makes. They do not 
 take hold on your soul, as the dreams of youth and 
 manhood will do. 
 
 Your highest hope is shadowed in a cheerful, boyish 
 home. You wish no friends but the friends of boy 
 hood ; no sister but your fond Nelly ; none to love 
 better than the playful Madge. 
 
 You forget, Clarence, that the Spring with you, is 
 the Spring with them ; and that the storms of Summer 
 may chace wide shadows over your path, and over 
 their's. And you forget, that SUMMER is even now, 
 lowering with its mist, and with its scorching rays, upon 
 the hem of your flowery May ! 
 
 The hands of the old clock upon the mantel, 
 
 that ticked off the hours when Charlie sighed, and 
 when Charlie died, draw on toward midnight. The 
 shadows that the fire-flame makes, grow dimmer 
 and dimmer. And thus it is, that Home, boy-home, 
 passes away forever, like the swaying of a pendulum, 
 like the fading of a shadow on the floor ! 
 
0ummer ; 
 
 flje JDnams of Sjcmtl). 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH. 
 
 SUMMER. 
 
 I FEEL a great deal of pity for those honest, but 
 misguided people, who call their little, spruce 
 suburban towns, or the shaded streets of their inland 
 cities, the country : and I have still more pity 
 for those who reckon a season at the summer resorts 
 country enjoyment. Nay, my feeling is more violent 
 than pity ; and I count it nothing less than blasphemy, 
 so to take the name of the country in vain. 
 
 I thank Heaven every summer's day of my life, 
 that my lot was humbly cast, within the hearing of 
 romping brooks, and beneath the shadow of oaks. 
 And from all the tramp, and bustle of the world, into 
 which fortune has led me in these latter years of my 
 life, I delight to steal away for days, and for weeks 
 
114 DREAM- LIFE. 
 
 together, and batlie my spirit in the freedom of the old 
 woods; and to grow young again, lying upon the 
 brook side, and counting the white clouds that sail 
 along the sky, softly and tranquilly even as holy 
 memories go stealing over the vault of life. 
 
 I am deeply thankful that I could never find it 
 in my heart, so to pervert truth, as to call the 
 smart villages with the tricksy shadow of their maple 
 avenues the Country. 
 
 I love these in their way; and can recall pleasant 
 passages of thought, as I have idled through the 
 Sabbath-looking towns, or lounged at the inn-door 
 of some quiet New England village. But I love far 
 better to leave them behind me ; and to dash boldly 
 out to where some out-lying farm-house sits like a 
 witness under the shelter of wooded hills, or nestles in 
 the lap of a noiseless valley. 
 
 In the town, small as it may be, and darkened as 
 it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot 
 forget men. Their oice, and strife, and ambition 
 come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging 
 sign-board of the tavern, and worst of all in the 
 trim-printed "ATTORNEY AT LAW." Even the little 
 milliner's shop, with its meagre show of leghorns, and 
 its string across the window, all hung with tabs and 
 with cloth roses, is a sad epitome of the great and con 
 ventional life of a city neighborhood. 
 
SUMME R . 115 
 
 I like to be rid of them all, as I am rid of tliem this 
 mid-summer's day. I like to steep my soul in a sea 
 of quiet, with nothing floating past me as I lie moored 
 to my thought, but the perfume of flowers, and soaring 
 birds, and shadows of clouds. 
 
 Two days since, I was sweltering in the heat of the 
 City, jostled by the thousand eager workers, and pant 
 ing under the shadow of the walls. But I have stolen 
 away; and for two hours of healthful regrowth into 
 the darling Past, I have been lying this blessed sum 
 mer's morning, upon the grassy bank of a stream that 
 
 babbled me to sleep in boyhood. Dear, old 
 
 stream, unchanging, unfaltering, with no harsher 
 notes now than then, never growing old, smiling in 
 your silver rustle, and calming yourself in the broad, 
 placid pools, I love you, as I love a friend ! 
 
 But now, that the sun has grown scalding hot, 
 and the waves of heat have come rocking under the 
 shadow of the meadow oaks, I have sought shelter in a 
 chamber of the old farm-house. The window-blinds 
 are closed ; but some of them are sadly shattered, and 
 I have intertwined in them a few branches of the 
 late-blossoming, white Azalia, so that every puff of the 
 summer air comes to me cooled with fragrance. A 
 dimple or two of the sunlight still steals through my 
 flowery screen, and dances (as the breeze moves the 
 branches) upon the oaken floor of the farm-house. 
 
116 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 Through one little gap indeed, I can see the broad 
 stretch of meadow, and the workmen in the field 
 bending and swaying to their scythes. I can see too 
 the glistening of the steel, as they wipe their blades ; 
 and can just catch floating on the air, the measured, 
 tinkling thwack of the rifle stroke. 
 
 Here and there a lark, scared from his feeding place 
 in the grass, soars up, bubbling forth his melody in 
 globules of silvery sound, and settles upon some tall 
 tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying 
 twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow 
 fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from 
 the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on 
 the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree ; and now 
 and then dashes down assassin-like, upon some home- 
 bound, honey-laden bee, and then, with a smack of his 
 bill, resumes his predatory watch. 
 
 A chicken or two lie in the sun, with a wing and 
 a leg stretched out, lazily picking at the gravel, or 
 relieving their ennui from time to time, with a spas 
 modic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen 
 stalks about the yard with a sedate step ; and with 
 quiet self-assurance, she utters an occasional series of 
 hoarse, and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an 
 astonished brood at her heels, is eyeing curiously, and 
 with earnest variations of the head, a full-fed cat, that 
 
SUMMER. llT 
 
 lies curled up, and dozing, upon the floor of the cottage 
 porch. 
 
 As I sit thus, watching through the interstices of my 
 leafy screen the various images of country life, I hear 
 distant mutterings from beyond the hills. 
 
 The sun has thrown its shadow upon the pewter 
 dial, two hours beyond the meridian line. Great 
 cream-colored heads of thunder clouds are lifting above 
 the sharp, clear line of the western horizon : the light 
 breeze dies away, and the air becomes stifling, even 
 under the shadow of my withered boughs in the 
 chamber window. The white-capped clouds roll up 
 nearer and nearer to the sun ; and the creamy masses 
 below grow dark in their seams. The mutterings 
 that came faintly before, now spread into wide volumes 
 of rolling sound, that echo again, and again, from the 
 eastward heights. 
 
 I hear in the deep intervals, the men shouting to 
 their teams in the meadows; and great companies 
 of startled swallows are dashing in all directions around 
 the gray roofs of the barn. 
 
 The clouds have now well nigh reached the sun, 
 which seems to shine the fiercer for his coming eclipse. 
 The whole West, as I look from the sources of the 
 brook, to its lazy drift under the swamps that lie to 
 the South, is hung with a curtain of darkness; and 
 
118 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 like swift-working, golden ropes that lift it toward the 
 Zenith, long chains of lightning flash through it; 
 and the growing thunder seems like the rumble of the 
 pulleys. 
 
 I thrust away my azalia boughs, and fling back the 
 shattered blinds as the sun and the clouds meet ; and 
 my room darkens with the coming shadows. For an 
 instant, the edges of the thick creamy masses of cloud 
 are gilded by the shrouded sun, and show gorgeous 
 scollops of gold, that toss upon the hem of the storm. 
 But the blazonry fades as the clouds mount ; and the 
 brightening lines of the lightning dart up from the 
 lower skirts, and heave the billowy masses into the 
 middle Heaven. 
 
 The workmen are urging their oxen fast across the 
 meadow ; and the loiterers come straggling after, with 
 rakes upon their shoulders. The matronly hen has 
 retreated to the stable door ; and the brood of turkeys 
 stand, dressing their feathers, under the open shed. 
 
 The air freshens, and blows now from the face of the 
 corning clouds. I see the great elms in the plain 
 swaying their tops, even before the storm breeze has 
 reached me ; and a bit of ripened grain upon a swell 
 of the meadow, waves and tosses like a billowy sea. 
 
 Presently, I hear the rush of the wind; and the 
 cherry and pear trees rustle through all their leaves; 
 and my paper is whisked away by the intruding blast. 
 
SUMMER. 119 
 
 There is a quiet of a moment, in which the wind 
 even, seems weary and faint; and nothing finds 
 utterance save one hoarse tree-toad, doling out his 
 lugubrious notes. 
 
 Now comes a blinding flash from the clouds ; and a 
 quick, sharp clang clatters through the heavens, and 
 bellows loud, and long among the hills. Then, like 
 great grief, spending its pent agony in tears come the 
 big drops of rain : pattering on the lawn, and on the 
 leaves, and most musically of all, upon the roof above 
 me; not now, with the light fall of the SPRING 
 shower, but with strong stoppings like the first proud 
 tread of YOUTH I 
 
C L o ISTER LIFE. 
 
 IT has very likely occurred to you, my reader, that I 
 am playing the wanton in these sketches; and 
 am breaking through all the canons of the writers, in 
 making You my hero. 
 
 It is even so ; for my work is a story of those vague 
 feelings, doubts, passions, which belong more or less to 
 every man of us all ; and therefore it is, that I lay upon 
 your shoulders the burden of these dreams. If this or 
 that one, never belonged to your experience, have 
 patience for a while. I feel sure that others are 
 coming, which will lie like a truth upon your heart ; 
 and draw you unwittingly perhaps tearfully even 
 into the belief that You are indeed my hero. 
 
 The scene now changes to the cloister of a college ; 
 
CLOISTER LIFE. 121 
 
 not the gray, classic cloisters which lie along the banks 
 of the Cam or the Isis huge, battered hulks, on whose 
 weather-stained decks, great captains of learning have 
 fought away their lives ; nor yet the cavernous, 
 quadrangular courts, that sleep under the dingy walls 
 of the Sorbonne. 
 
 The youth-dreams of Clarence, begin under the roof 
 of one of those long, ungainly piles of brick and 
 mortar, which make the colleges of New England. 
 
 The floor of the room is rough, and divided by wide 
 seams. The study table does not stand firmly, without 
 a few spare pennies to prop it into solid footing. The 
 book-case of stained fir-wood, suspended against the 
 wall by cords, is meagrely stocked, with a couple of 
 Lexicons, a pair of grammars, a Euclid, a Xenophon, 
 a Homer, and a Livy. Beside these, are scattered 
 about here and there, a thumb-worn copy of British 
 ballads, an odd volume of the Sketch Book, a clumsy 
 Shakspeare, and a pocket edition of the Bible. 
 
 With such appliances, added to the half score of 
 Professors and Tutors who preside over the awful 
 precincts, you are to work your way up to that proud 
 entry upon our American life, which begins with the 
 Baccalaureate degree. There is a tingling sensation 
 in walking first under the shadow of those walls, 
 uncouth as they are, and in feeling that you belong to 
 them ; that you are a member, as it were, of the body 
 G 
 
122 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 corporate, subject to an actual code of printed laws, and 
 to actual moneyed fines varying from a shilling, to fifty 
 cents ! 
 
 There is something exhilarating in the very con 
 sciousness of your subject state ; and in the necessity of 
 measuring your hours by the habit of such a learned 
 community. You think back upon your respect for the 
 lank figure of some old teacher of boy days, as a 
 childish weakness : even the little coteries of the home 
 fire-side, lose their importance, when compared with the 
 extraordinary sweep, and dignity of your present 
 position. 
 
 It is pleasant to measure yourself with men ; and 
 there are those about you, who seem to your untaught 
 eye, to be men already. Your chum, a hard-faced 
 fellow of ten more years than you, digging sturdily at 
 his tasks, seems by that very community of work, to 
 dignify your labor. You watch his cold, gray eye 
 bending down over some theorem of Euclid, with a 
 kind of proud companionship, in what so tasks his 
 manliness. 
 
 It is nothing for him to quit sleep at the first 
 tinkling of the alarm clock that hangs in your 
 chamber ; or to brave the weather, in that cheerless run 
 to the morning prayers of winter. Yet, with what a 
 dreamy horror, you wake on mornings of snow, to that 
 tinkling alarum ! and glide in the cold and darkness, 
 
CLOISTER LIFE. 123 
 
 under the shadow of the college walls : shuddering 
 under the sharp gusts that come sweeping between the 
 buildings ; and afterward, gathering yourself up in 
 your cloak, to watch in a sleepy, listless maze, the 
 flickering lamps that hang around the dreary chapel ! 
 You follow half unconsciously some tutor's rhetorical 
 reading of a chapter of Isaiah ; and then, as he closes 
 the Bible with a flourish, your eye, half-open, catches 
 the feeble figure of the old Domine, as he steps to the 
 desk, and with his frail hands stretched out upon the 
 cover of the big book, and his head leaning slightly to 
 one side, runs through in gentle and tremulous tones, 
 his wonted form of Invocation. 
 
 Your Division room is steaming with foul heat, and 
 there is a strong smell of burnt feathers, and oil. A 
 jaunty tutor with pug nose, and consequential air, steps 
 into the room while you all rise to show him 
 deference, and takes his place at the pulpit-like desk. 
 Then come the formal loosing of his camlet cloak clasp, 
 the opening of his sweaty Xenophon to where the day's 
 parasangs begin, the unsliding of his silver pencil 
 case, the keen, sour look around the benches, and the 
 cool pinch of his thumb and forefinger, into the fearful 
 box of names ! 
 
 How you listen for each as it is uttered, running 
 down the page in advance, rejoicing when some hard 
 passage comes to a stout man in the corner ; and what 
 
124 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 a sigh of relief on mornings after you have been out 
 late at night, when the last paragraph is reached, 
 the ballot drawn, and you, safe ! 
 
 You speculate dreamily upon the faces around you. 
 You wonder what sort of schooling they may have had, 
 and what sort of homes. You think one man has got 
 an extraordinary name ; and another, a still more 
 extraordinary nose. The glib, easy way of one student, 
 and his perfect sang-froid, completely charm you : you 
 set him down in your own mind as a kind of Crichton. 
 Another weazen-faced, pinched-up fellow in a scant 
 cloak, you think must have been sometime a school 
 master : he is so very precise, and wears such an 
 indescribable look of the ferule. There is one big 
 student, with a huge beard, and a rollicking good- 
 natured eye, who you would quite like to see measure 
 strength with your old usher ; and on careful com 
 parison, rather think the usher would get the worst of 
 it. Another appeal's as venerable as some fathers you 
 have seen ; and it seems wonderfully odd, that a man 
 old enough to have children, should recite Xenophon by 
 morning candle-light ! 
 
 The class in advance, you study curiously ; and are 
 quite amazed at the precocity of certain youths 
 belonging to it, who are apparently about your own 
 age. The Juniors you look upon, with a quiet rever 
 ence for their aplomb, and dignity of character ; and 
 
CLOISTER LIFE. J25 
 
 look forward with intense yearnings, to the time when 
 you too, shall be admitted freely to the precincts of the 
 Philosophical chamber, and to the very steep benches 
 of the Laboratory. This last, seems, from occasional 
 peeps through the blinds, a most mysterious building. 
 The chimneys, recesses, vats, and cisterns to say 
 nothing of certain galvanic communications, which you 
 are told, traverse the whole building in a way capable 
 of killing a rat, at an incredible remove from the bland 
 professor, utterly fatigue your wonder ! You humbly 
 trust though you have doubts upon the point that 
 you will have the capacity to grasp it all, when onco 
 you shall have arrived at the dignity of a Junior. 
 
 As for the Seniors, your admiration for them is 
 entirely boundless. In one or two individual instances, 
 it is true, it has been broken down, by an unfortunate 
 squabble, with thick set fellows in the Chapel aisle. 
 A person who sits not far before you at prayers, 
 and whose name you seek out very early, bears a 
 strong resemblance to some portrait of Dr. Johnson; 
 you have veiy much the same kind of respect for him, 
 that you feel for the great lexicographer ; and do not 
 for a moment doubt his capacity to compile a 
 Dictionary equal if not superior to Johnson's. 
 
 Another man with very bushy, black hair, and an 
 easy look of importance, carries a large cane ; and is 
 represented to you, as an astonishing scholar, and 
 
126 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 speaker. You do not doubt it ; his very air proclaims 
 it. You think of him, as, presently (say four or five 
 years hence) astounding the United States Senate 
 with his eloquence. And when once you have heard 
 him in debate, with that ineffable gesture of his, you 
 absolutely languish in your admiration for h/m ; and 
 you describe his speaking to your country friends, as 
 very little inferior, if any, to Mr. Burke's. Beside 
 this one, are some half dozen others, among whom the 
 question of superiority is, you understand, strongly 
 mooted. It puzzles you to think, what an avalanche 
 of talent will fall upon the country, at the graduation 
 of those Seniors ! 
 
 You will find, however, that the countiy bears 
 such inundations of college talent, with a remarkable 
 degree of equanimity. It is quite wonderful how all 
 the Burkes, and Scotts, and Peels, among college 
 Seniors, do quietly disappear, as a man gets on in life. 
 
 As for any degree of fellowship with such giants, 
 it is an honor hardly to be thought of. But you have 
 a classmate I will call him Dalton, who is very 
 intimate with a dashing Senior ; they room near each 
 other outside the college. You quite envy Dalton, 
 and you come to know him well. He says that you 
 are not a ' green-one,' that you have * cut your eye 
 teeth' ; in return for which complimentary opinions, you 
 entertain a strong friendship for Dalton. 
 
CLOISTER LIFE. 127 
 
 He is a ' fast, fellow, as the Senior calls him ; and it 
 is a proud thing to happen at their rooms occasionally, 
 and to match yourself for an hour or two (with the 
 windows darkened) against a Senior at * old sledge.' 
 It is quite * the thing' as Dalton says, to meet a Senior 
 familiarly in the street. Sometimes you go, after 
 Dalton has taught you ' the ropes,' to have a cosy sit- 
 down over oysters and champagne ; to which the 
 Senior lends himself, with the pleasantest condescension 
 in the world. You are not altogether used to hard 
 drinking ; but this, you conceal, as most spirited young 
 fellows do, by drinking a great deal. You have a 
 dim recollection of certain circumstances very unim 
 portant, yet very vividly impressed on your mind, 
 which occurred on one of these occasions. 
 
 The oysters were exceedingly fine, and the cham 
 pagne exquisite. You have a recollection of some 
 thing being said, toward the end of the first bottle, of 
 Xenophon, and of the Senior's saying in his playful 
 way, * Oh, d n Xenophon !' 
 
 You remember Dalton laughed at this ; and you 
 laughed for company. You remember that you 
 thought, and Dalton thought, and the Senior thought 
 by a singular coincidence, that the second bottle of 
 champagne was better even than the first. You 
 have a dim remembrance of the Senior's saying very 
 loudly, *' Clarence (calling you by your family name) 
 
128 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 is no spooney;" and drinking a bumper with you in 
 confirmation of the remark. 
 
 You remember that Dalton broke out into a song, 
 and that for a time you joined in the chorus ; you 
 think the Senior called you to order for repeating 
 the chorus, in the wrong place. You think the lights 
 burned with remarkable brilliancy ; and you remember 
 that a remark of yours to that effect, met with very 
 much such a response from the Senior, as he had 
 before employed with reference to Xenophon. 
 
 You have a confused idea of calling Dalton 
 Xenophon* You think the meeting broke up with 
 a chorus ; and that somebody you cannot tell who 
 broke two or three glasses. You remember question 
 ing yourself very seriously, as to whether you were? 
 or were not, tipsy. You think you decided that you 
 were not, but might be. 
 
 You have a confused recollection of leaning upon 
 some one, or something, going to your room; this 
 sense of a desire to lean, you think was very strong. 
 You remember being horribly afflicted with the idea 
 of having tried your night key at the tutor's door, 
 instead of your own ; you remember further a hot 
 stove, made certain indeed, by a large blister which 
 appeared on your hand, next day. You think of 
 throwing off your clothes, by one or two spasmodic 
 efforts, leaning, in the intervals, against the bed-post. 
 
CLOISTER LIFE. 129 
 
 There is a recollection of an uncommon dizziness 
 afterward as if your body was very quiet, and your 
 head gyrating with strange velocity, and a kind of 
 centrifugal action, all about the room, and the college, 
 and indeed the whole town. You think that you felt 
 uncontrollable nausea after this, followed by positive 
 sickness ; which waked your chum, who thought you 
 very incoherent, and feared derangement. 
 
 A dismal state of lassitude follows, broken by the 
 college clock striking three, and by very rambling 
 reflections upon champagne, Xenophon, * Captain 
 Dick,' Madge, and the old deacon who clinched his 
 wig in the church. 
 
 The next morning (ah, how vexatious that all our 
 follies are followed by a * next morning !') you 
 wake with a parched mouth, and a torturing thirst; 
 the sun is shining broadly into your reeking chamber. 
 Prayers and recitations are long ago over ; and you 
 see through the door, in the outer room, that hard 
 faced chum, with his Lexicon, and Livy, open before 
 him, working out with all the earnestness of his iron 
 purpose, the steady steps toward preferment, and 
 success. 
 
 You go with some story of sudden sickness to the 
 Tutor ; half fearful that the bloodshot, swollen eyes 
 will betray you. It is very mortifying too, to meet 
 Dal ton appearing so gay, and lively after it all, while 
 
130 DREAM LIFE. 
 
 you wear such an air of being * used up/ You envy 
 him thoroughly the extraordinary capacity that he has. 
 
 Here and there creeps in, amid all the pride and 
 shame of the new life, a tender thought of the old 
 home ; but its joys are joys no longer : its highest 
 aspirations even, have resolved themselves into fine 
 mist, like rainbows, that the sun drinks with his 
 beams. 
 
 The affection for a mother, whose kindness you recal 
 with a suffused eye, is not gone, or blighted ; but it is 
 woven up, as only a single adorning tissue, into the 
 growing pride of youth : it is cherished in the proud 
 soul, rather as a redeeming weakness, than as a vital 
 energy. 
 
 And the love for Nelly, though it bates no jot of 
 fervor, is woven into the scale of growing purposes, 
 rather as a color to adorn, than as a strand to 
 strengthen. 
 
 As for your other loves, those romantic ones, which 
 were kindled by bright eyes, and the stolen reading of 
 Miss Porter's novels, they linger on your mind like 
 perfumes ; and they float down your memory, with the 
 figure, the step, the last words of those young girls, who 
 raised them, like the types of some dimly-shadowed, 
 but deeper passion, which is some time to spur your 
 maturer purposes, and to quicken your manly resolves. 
 
 It would be hard to tell, for you do not as yet know, 
 
CLOISTER LIFE. 131 
 
 but that Madge herself, hoydenish, blue-eyed Madge, is 
 to be the very one who will gain such hold upon your 
 riper affections, as she has held already over your 
 boyish caprice. It is a part of the pride, I may say 
 rather an evidence of the pride, which youth feels in 
 leaving boyhood behind him, to talk laughingly, and 
 carelessly, of those attachments which made his young 
 years so balmy with dreams. 
 
IL 
 
 FIRST AMBITION. 
 
 I BELIEVE that sooner or later, there come to 
 every man, dreams of ambition. They may be 
 covered with the sloth of habit, or with a pretence of 
 humility : they may come only in dim, shadowy visions, 
 that feed the eye, like the glories of an ocean sun-rise ; 
 but, you may be sure that they will come : even before 
 one is aware, the bold, adventurous Goddess, whose 
 name is Ambition, and whose dower is Fame, will be 
 toying with the feeble heart. And she pushes her 
 ventures with a bold hand : she makes timidity strong, 
 and weakness valiant. 
 
 The way of a man's heart, will be foreshadowed by 
 what goodness lies in him, coming from above, and 
 from around ; but a way foreshadowed, is not a way 
 
FIRST AMBITION. 133 
 
 made. And the making of a man's way, comes only 
 from that quickening of resolve, which we call Ambition. 
 It is the spur that makes man struggle with Destiny : 
 it is Heaven's own incentive, to make Purpose great, 
 and Achievement greater. 
 
 It would be strange if you, in that cloister life of a 
 college, did not sometimes feel a dawning of flew 
 resolves. They grapple you indeed, oftener than you 
 dare to speak of. Here, you dream first of that very 
 sweet, but very shadowy success, called reputation. 
 
 You think of the delight and astonishment, it would 
 give your mother and father, and most of all, little 
 Nelly, if you were winning such honors, as now escape 
 you. You measure your capacities by those about you, 
 and watch their habit of study ; you gaze for a half 
 hour together, upon some successful man, who has won 
 his prizes; and wonder by what secret action he has 
 done it. And when, in time, you come to be a com 
 petitor yourself, your anxiety is immense. 
 
 You spend hours upon hours at your theme. 
 You write and re- write ; and when it is at length 
 complete, and out of your hands, you are harassed 
 by a thousand doubts. At times, as you recal your 
 hours of toil, you question if so much has been spent 
 upon any other; you feel almost certain of success. 
 You repeat to yourself, some passages of special 
 eloquence, at night. You fancy the admiration of 
 
134 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 the Professors at meeting with such wonderful per 
 formance. You have a slight fear that its superior 
 goodness may awaken the suspicion, that some one 
 out of the college some superior man, may have 
 written it. But this fear dies away. 
 
 The eventful day is a great one in your calendar ; 
 you hardly sleep the night previous. You tremble 
 as the Chapel bell is rang; you profess to be very 
 indifferent, as the reading, and the prayer close ; you 
 even stoop to take up your hat, as if you had entirely 
 overlooked the fact, that the old President was in the 
 desk, for the express purpose of declaring the suc 
 cessful names. You listen dreamily to his tremulous, 
 yet fearfully distinct enunciation. Your head swims 
 strangely. 
 
 They all pass out with a harsh murmur, along 
 the aisles, and through the door ways. It would 
 be well if there were no disappointments in life more 
 terrible than this. It is consoling to express very 
 deprecating opinions of the Faculty in general; and 
 very contemptuous ones of that particular officer who 
 decided upon the merit of the prize themes. An 
 evening or two at Dalton's room go still farther toward 
 healing the disappointment ; and if it must be said 
 toward moderating the heat of your ambition. 
 
 You grow up however, unfortunately, as the College 
 years fly by, into a very exaggerated sense of your 
 
FIRST AMBITION. 135 
 
 own capacities. Even the good, old, white-haired 
 Squire, for whom you had once entertained so much 
 respect, seems to yout crazy, classic fancy, a very 
 hum-drum sort of personage. Frank, although as 
 noble a fellow as ever sat a horse, is yet you cannot 
 help thinking very ignorant of Euripides; even the 
 English master at Dr. Bidlow's school, you feel 'sure 
 would balk at a dozen problems you could give him. 
 
 You get an exalted idea of that uncertain quality, 
 which turns the heads of a vast many of your fellows, 
 called Genius. An odd notion seems to be inherent in 
 the atmosphere of those College chambers, that there is 
 a certain faculty of mind first developed as would 
 seem in Colleges, which accomplishes whatever it 
 chooses, without any special pains-taking. For a time, 
 you fall yourself into this very unfortunate hallucina 
 tion ; you cultivate it, after the usual college fashion, 
 by drinking a vast deal of strong coffee, and whiskey 
 toddy, by writing a little poor verse, in the Byronic 
 temper, and by studying very late at night, with 
 closed blinds. 
 
 It costs you, however, more anxiety and hypocrisy 
 than you could possibly have believed. 
 
 You will learn, Clarence, when the Autumn 
 
 has rounded your hopeful Summer, if not before, that 
 there is no Genius in life, like the Genius of energy and 
 industry. You will learn, that all the traditions so 
 
136 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 current among very young men, that certain great 
 characters have wrought their greatness by an inspiration 
 as it were, grow out of a sad mistake. 
 
 And you will further find, when you come to 
 measure yourself with men, that there are no rivals 
 so formidable, as those earnest, determined minds, 
 which reckon the value of every hour, and which 
 achieve eminence by persistent application. 
 
 Literary ambition may inflame you at certain periods ; 
 and a thought of some great names will flash like 
 a spark into the mine of your purposes ; you dream till 
 midnight over books ; you set up shadows, and chase 
 them down other shadows, and they fly. Dreaming 
 will never catch them. Nothing makes the * scent lie 
 well,' in the hunt after distinction, but labor. 
 
 And it is a glorious thing, when once you are weary 
 of the dissipation, and the ennui of your own aimless 
 thought, to take up some glowing page of an earnest 
 thinker, and read deep, and long, until you feel the 
 metal of his thought tinkling on your brain, and striking 
 out from your flinty lethargy, flashes of ideas, that give 
 the mind light and heat. And away you go, in the 
 chase of what the soul within, is creating on the instant, 
 and you wonder at the fecundity of what seemed so 
 barren, and at the ripeness of what seemed so crude. 
 The glow of toil wakes you to the consciousness of 
 your real capacities : you feel sure that they have 
 
FIRST AMBITION. 137 
 
 taken a new step toward final development. In such 
 mood it is, that one feels grateful to the musty tomes, 
 which at other hours, stand like curiosity-making 
 mummies, with no warmth, and no vitality. Now 
 they grow into the affections like new-found friends ; 
 and gain a hold upon the heart, and light a fire in the 
 brain, that the years and the mould cannot cover, nor 
 quench. 
 
III. 
 
 COLLEGE ROMANCE. 
 
 IN following the mental vagaries of youth, I must 
 not forget the curvetings and wiltings of the heart. 
 The black-eyed Jenny, with whom a correspondence 
 at red heat, was kept up for several weeks, is long 
 before this, entirely out of your regard ; not so much 
 by reason of the six months disparity of age, as from 
 the fact, communicated quite confidentially by the 
 travelled Nat, that she has had a desperate flirtation 
 with a handsome midshipman. The conclusion is 
 natural, that she is an inconstant, cruel-hearted creature, 
 with little appreciation of real worth ; and further 
 more, that all midshipmen are a very contemptible, not 
 to say, dangerous set of men. She is consigned to 
 forgetfulness and neglect ; and the late lover has long 
 
COLLEGE ROMANCE. 139 
 
 ago consoled himself, by reading in a spirited way, that 
 passage of Childe Harold, commencing, 
 
 I have not loved the world, nor the world me. 
 
 As for Madge, the memory of her has been mae 
 wakeful, but less violent. To say nothing of occasional 
 returns to the old homestead when you have met her, 
 Nelly's letters not unfrequently drop a careless half- 
 sentence, that keeps her strangely in mind. 
 
 * Madge,' she says, ' is sitting by me with her work ; 
 or, * you ought to see the little, silk purse that Madge 
 is knitting;' or, speaking of some country rout 
 'Madge was there in the sweetest dress you can 
 imagine.' All this will keep Madge in mind ; not it is 
 true in the ambitious moods, or in the frolics with 
 Dalton ; but in those odd half hours that come stealing 
 over one at twilight, laden with sweet memories of the 
 days of old. 
 
 A new Romantic admiration is started by those pale 
 lady-faces which light up, on a Sunday, the gallery of 
 the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy, 
 gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very 
 atmosphere of those courts, wakened with high meta- 
 physic discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty, 
 and finesse ; and you attach to the prettiest that your 
 eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden, 
 
140 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 and all the learning of her father the Professor. 
 And as you lie half-wakeful, and half-dreaming, through 
 the long Divisions of the Doctor's morning discourse, 
 the twinkling eyes in soma corner of the gallery, bear 
 you pleasant company, as you float down those 
 streaming visions, which radiate from you, far over the 
 track of the coming life. 
 
 But following very closely upon this, comes a whole 
 volume of street romance. There are prettily shaped 
 figures that go floating, at convenient hours for college 
 observation, along the thoroughfares of the town. And 
 these figures come to be known, and the dresses, and 
 the streets ; and even the door-plate is studied. The 
 hours are ascertained, by careful observation, and 
 induction, at which some particular figure is to be met ; 
 or is to be seen at some low parlor window, in white 
 summer dress, with head leaning on the hand, very 
 melancholy, and very dangerous. Perhaps her very 
 card is stuck proudly into a corner of the mirror, in the 
 college chamber. After this may come moonlight 
 meetings at the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive 
 lyrics that steal out of the parlor windows, and that 
 blur wofully the text of the Conic Sections. 
 
 Or, perhaps she is under the fierce eye of some 
 Cerberus of a school mistress, about whose grounds 
 you prowl piteously, searching for small knot holes 
 in the surrounding board-fence, through which little 
 
COLLEGE ROMANCE. 141 
 
 souvenirs of impassioned feeling may be thrust. 
 Sonnets are written for the town papers, full of telling 
 phrases, and with classic allusions, and foot notes, which 
 draw attention to some similar felicity of expression in 
 Horace, or Ovid. Correspondence may even be ven 
 tured on, enclosing locks of hair, and interchanging 
 rings, and paper oaths of eternal fidelity. 
 
 But the old Cerberus is very wakeful : the letters 
 fail : the lamp that used to glimmer for a sign among 
 the sycamores, is gone out : a stolen wave of a 
 handkerchief, a despairing look, and tears, which 
 you fancy, but do not see, make you miserable for 
 long days. 
 
 The tyrant teacher, with no trace of compassion in 
 her withered heart, reports you to the college authorities. 
 There is a long lecture of admonition upon the folly of 
 such dangerous practices ; and if the offence be aggra 
 vated by some recent joviality with Dal ton and the 
 Senior, you are condemned to a month of exile with a 
 country clergyman. There are a few tearful regrets 
 over the painful tone of the home letters ; but the 
 bracing country air, and the p^tty faces of the village 
 girls heal your heart, with fresh wounds. 
 
 The old Doctor sees dimly through his spectacles ; 
 and his pew gives a good look out upon the smiling 
 choir of singers. A collegian wears the honors of a 
 stranger ; and the country bucks stand but poor chance 
 
142 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 in contrast with your wonderful attainments in cravats 
 and verses. But this fresh dream, odorous with its 
 memories of sleigh-rides, or lilac blossoms, slips by, and 
 yields again to the more ambitious dreams of the 
 cloister. 
 
 In the prouder moments that come, when you are 
 more a man, and less a boy with more of strategy 
 and less of faith your thought of woman runs loftily : 
 not loftily in the realm of virtue or goodness, but loftily 
 on your new world-scale. The pride of intellect that is 
 thirsting in you, fashions ideal graces after a classic 
 model. The heroines of fable are admired ; and the 
 soul is tortured with that intensity of passion, which 
 gleams through the broken utterances of Grecian 
 tragedy. 
 
 In the vanity of self-consciousness, one feels at a long 
 remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness of a 
 simple and pure heart. You turn away from all such 
 with a sigh of conceit, to graze on that lofty, but bitter 
 pasturage, where no daisies grow. Admiration may be 
 called up by some graceful figure that you see moving 
 under those sweeping elms ; and you follow it with an 
 intensity of look that makes you blush ; and straight 
 way, hide the memory of the blush, by summing up 
 some artful sophistry, that resolves your delighted 
 gaze into a weakness, and your contempt into a virtue. 
 
 But this cannot last. As the years drop off, a 
 
COLLEGE ROMANCE. 143 
 
 certain pair of eyes beam one day upon you, that seem 
 to have been cut out of a page of Greek poetry. They 
 have all its sentiment, its fire, its intellectual reaches : it 
 would be hard to say what they have not. The profile, 
 is a Greek profile ; and the heavy chestnut hair is 
 plaited in Greek bands. The figure too, might easily 
 be that of Helen, or of Andromache. 
 
 You gaze ashamed to gaze ; and your heart yearns 
 ashamed of its yearning. It is no young girl, who is 
 thus testing you : there is too much pride for that. 
 A. ripeness, and maturity rest upon her look, and 
 figure, that completely fill up that ideal, which 
 exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the Grecian 
 heaven. The vision steals upon you at all hours, 
 DOW rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous 
 metre of Epic Hexameter, and again, with its bounding 
 life, pulsating with the glorious dashes of tragic verse. 
 
 Yet, with the exception of stolen glances, and secret 
 admiration, you keep aloof. There is no wish to 
 fathom what seems a happy mystery. There lies a 
 content in secret obeisance. Sometimes it shames you. 
 as your mind glows with its fancied dignity ; but the 
 heart thrusts in its voice ; and yielding to it, you dream 
 dreams, like fond, old Boccacio's, upon the olive-shaded 
 slopes of Italy. The tongue even, is not trusted with 
 the thoughts that are seething within : they begin and 
 end in the voiceless pulsations of your nature. 
 
144- DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 After a time, it seems a long time, but it is in 
 truth, a very short time, you find who she is, who is 
 thus entrancing you. It is done most carelessly. No 
 creature could imagine that you felt any interest in the 
 accomplished sister of your friend Dalton. Yet it is 
 even she, who has thus beguiled you ; and she is at 
 least some ten years Dalton's senior ; and by even more 
 years, your own ! 
 
 It is singular enough, but it is true, that the affec 
 tions of that transition state from youth to manliness, 
 run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its 
 reaches toward strength, and completeness, creates a 
 heart-sympathy which, in its turn, craves fullness. 
 There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly 
 education, which is disposed to under-rate the innocence, 
 and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see 
 the mistake, as they grow older ; for the judgment 
 of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by 
 ten years, faster than a man's. 
 
 In place of any relentings on such score, you are 
 set on fire anew. The stories of her accomplishments, 
 and of her grace of conversation, absolutely drive you 
 mad. You watch your occasion for meeting her upon 
 the street. You wonder if she has any conception 
 of your capacity for mental labor ; and if she has any 
 adequate idea of your admiration for Greek poetry, 
 and for herself? 
 
COLLEGE ROMANCE. 145 
 
 You tie your cravat poet-wise, and wear broad 
 collars, turned down, wondering how such disposition 
 may affect her. Her figure and step become a kind 
 of moving romance to you, drifting forward, arid 
 outward into that great land of dreams, which you 
 call the world. When you see her walking with 
 others, you pity her ; and feel perfectly sure that if 
 she had only a hint of that intellectual fervor which 
 in your own mind, blazes up at the very thought 
 of her, she would perfectly scorn the stout gentleman 
 who spends his force in tawdry compliments. 
 
 A visit to your home wakens ardor, by contrast, 
 as much as by absence. Madge, so gentle, and now 
 stealing sly looks at you, in a way so different from 
 her hoydenish manner of school-days, you regard 
 complacently, as a most lovable, fond girl the very 
 one for some fond and amiable young man, whose soul 
 is not filled as yours is with higher things ! To 
 Nelly, earnestly listening, you drop only exaggerated 
 hints of the wonderful beauty, and dignity of this new 
 being of your fancy. Of her age, you scrupulously say 
 nothing. 
 
 The trivialities of Dalton amaze you ; it is hard to 
 
 understand how a man within the limit of such 
 
 influences, as Miss Dalton must inevitably exert, can 
 
 tamely sit down to a rubber of whist, and cigars ! 
 
 7 
 
146 DUE AM -LIFE. 
 
 There must be a sad lack of congeniality; it would 
 certainly be a proud thing to supply that lack ! 
 
 The new feeling, wild and vague as it is, for as yet, 
 you have only most casual acquaintance with Laura 
 Dalton, invests the whole habit of your study; not 
 quickening overmuch the relish for Dugald Stewart, or 
 the miserable skeleton of college Logic ; but spending 
 a sweet charm upon the graces of "Rhetoric, and the 
 music of Classic Verse. It blends harmoniously with 
 your quickened ambition. There is some last appear 
 ance that you have to make upon the College stage, 
 in the presence of the great worthies of the state, and 
 of all the beauties of the town, Laura chiefest among 
 them. In view of it, you feel dismally intellectual. 
 Prodigious faculties are to be brought to the task. 
 
 You think of throwing out ideas that will quite 
 startle His Excellency the Governor, and those very 
 distinguished public characters, whom the College 
 purveyors vote into their periodic public sittings. You 
 are quite sure of surprising them, and of deeply pro 
 voking such scheming, shallow politicians, as have never 
 read ' Wayland's Treatise ;' and who venture incautiously, 
 within hearing of your remarks. You fancy youi-self in 
 advance, the victim of a long leader in the next day's 
 paper ; and the thoughtful, but qui-?t cause of a great 
 change in the political programme of the State. But 
 crowning and eclipsing all the triumph, are those dark 
 
COLLEGE ROMANCE. 147 
 
 eyes beaming on you from some corner of the Church, 
 their floods of unconscious praise and tenderness. 
 
 Your father and Nelly are there to greet you. He 
 has spoken a few calm, }uiet words of encouragement, 
 that make you feel very wrongfully that he is a 
 cold man, with no earnestness of feeling. As for Nelly, 
 she clasps your arm with a fondness, and with a pride, 
 that tell at every step, her praises and her love. 
 
 But even this, true and healthful as it is, fades 
 before a single word of commendation from the new 
 arbitress of your feeling. You have seen Miss Dalton ! 
 You have met her on that last evening of your cloistered 
 life, in all the elegance of ball costume ; your eye has 
 feasted on her elegant figure, and upon her eye 
 sparkling with the consciousness of beauty. You have 
 talked with Miss Dalton about Byron, about Words 
 worth, about Homer. You have quoted poetry to 
 Miss Dalton ; you have clasped Miss Dalton's hand ! 
 
 Her conversation delights you by its piquancy and 
 grace ; she is quite ready to meet you (a grave matter 
 of surprise !) upon whatever subject you may suggest. 
 You lapse easily and lovingly into the current of her 
 thought, and blush to find yourself vacantly admiring, 
 when she is looking for reply. The regard you feel for 
 her, resolves itself into an exquisite mental love, vastly 
 superior as you think, to any other kind of love. 
 There is no dream of marriage as yet, but only of 
 
148 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 sitting beside her in the moonlight, during a countless 
 succession of hours, and talking of poetry and nature, 
 of destiny, and love. 
 
 Magnificent Miss Dalton ! 
 
 And all the while, vaunting youth is almost 
 
 mindless of the presence of that fond Nelly, whose 
 warm sisterly affection measures itself hopefully against 
 the proud associations of your growing years ; and 
 whose deep, loving eye half suffused with its native 
 tenderness, seems longing to win you back to the old 
 joys of that Home-love, which linger on the distant 
 horizon of your boy-hood, like the golden glories of a 
 sinking day. 
 
 As the night wanes, you wander, for a last look, 
 toward the dingy walls, that have made for you so long 
 a home. The old broken expectancies, the days of 
 glee, the triumphs, the rivalries, the defeats, the friend 
 ships, are recalled with a fluttering of the heart, that 
 pride cannot wholly subdue. You step upon the 
 Chanel-porch, in the quiet of the night, as you would 
 step on the graves of friends. You pace back and 
 forth in the wan moonlight, dreaming of that dim life 
 which opens wide and long, from the morrow. The 
 width and length oppress you : they crush down your 
 struggling self-consciousness, like Titans dealing with 
 Pigmies. A single piercing thought of the vast and 
 shadowy future which is so near, tear? off on the 
 
COLLEGE ROMANCE. 149 
 
 instant all the gew-gaws of pride, strips away the 
 vanity that doubles your bigness, and forces you down 
 to the bare nakedness of what you truly are ! 
 
 With one more yearning look at the gray hulks of 
 building, you loiter away under the trees. The 
 monster elms which have bowered your proud steps 
 through four years of proudest life, lift up to the night 
 their rounded canopy of leases, with a quiet majesty 
 that mocks you. They kiss the same calm sky, which 
 they wooed four years ago; and they droop their 
 trailing limbs lovingly to the same earth, which 
 has steadily, and quietly, wrought in them their stature, 
 and their strength. Only here and there, you catch 
 the loitering foot-fall of some other benighted dreamer, 
 strolling around the vast quadrangle of level green, 
 which lies like a prairie-child, under the edging shadows 
 of the town. The lights glimmer one by one ; and 
 one by one like breaking hopes they fade away 
 from the houses. The full risen moon that dapples the 
 ground beneath the trees, touches the tall church 
 spires with silver; and slants their loftiness as 
 memory slants grief in long, dark, tapering lines, upon 
 the silvered Green. 
 
IV. 
 
 FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 
 
 OUR Clarence is now fairly afloat upon the swift 
 tide of Youth. The thrall of teachers is ended, 
 and the audacity of self-resolve is begun. It is not 
 a little odd, that when we have least strength to 
 combat the world, we have the highest confidence in 
 our ability. 
 
 Veiy few individuals in the world, possess that 
 happy consciousness of their own prowess, which 
 belongs to the newly graduated Collegian. He has 
 most abounding faith in the tricksy panoply that he 
 has wrought out of the metal of his Classics. His 
 mathematics, he has not a doubt, will solve for him 
 every complexity of life's questions ; and his logic will 
 as certainly untie all gordian knots, whether in politics 
 or ethics. 
 
FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 151 
 
 He has no idea of defeat ; he proposes to take the 
 world by storm ; he half wonders that quiet people 
 are not startled by his presence. He brushes with an 
 air of importance about the halls of country hotels ; 
 he weai-s his honor at the public tables ; he fancies that 
 the inattentive guests can have little idea that the 
 young gentleman, who so recently delighted the public 
 ear with his dissertation on the " General tendency of 
 Opinion," is actually among them ; and quietly eating 
 from the same dish of beef, and of pudding ! 
 
 Our poor Clarence does not know heaven forbid he 
 should ! that he is but little wiser now, than when he 
 turned his back upon the old Academy, with its galli 
 pots and broken retorts; and that with the addition 
 of a few Greek roots, a smattering of Latin, and some 
 readiness of speech, he is almost as weak for breasting 
 the strong current of life, as when a boy. America 
 is but a poor place for the romantic book dreamer. 
 The demands of this new, Western life of ours, are 
 practical, and earnest. Prompt action, and ready tact, 
 are the weapons by which to meet it, and subdue it. 
 The education of the cloister offers at best, only a sound 
 starting point, from which to leap into the tide. 
 
 The father of Clarence is a cool, matter-of-fact man. 
 He has little sympathy with any of the romantic notions 
 that enthrall a youth of twenty. He has a very 
 humble opinion much humbler than you think he 
 
152 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 ought of your attainments at College. He advises a 
 short period of travel, that by observation, you may 
 find out more, how that world is made up, with which 
 you are henceforth to struggle. 
 
 Your mother half fears your alienation from tho 
 affections of home. Her letters all run over with a 
 tenderness that makes you sigh, and that makes you 
 feel a deep reproach.. You may not have been 
 wanting in the more ordinary tokens of affection ; you 
 have made your periodic visits ; but you blush for the 
 consciousness that fastens on you, of neglect at heart. 
 You blush for the lack of that glow of feeling, which 
 once fastened to every home-object. 
 
 [Does a man indeed outgrow affections as his mind 
 ripens ? Do the early and tender sympathies become 
 a part of his intellectual perceptions, to be appreciated 
 and reasoned upon, as one reasons about truths of 
 science ? Is their vitality necessarily young ? Is there 
 the same ripe, joyous burst of the heart, at the recol 
 lection of later friendships, which belonged to those of 
 boyhood ; and are not the later ones more the suggest 
 ions of judgment, and less, the absolute conditions 
 of the heart's health ?] 
 
 The letters of your mother, as I said, make you sigh : 
 there is no moment in our lives when we feel less 
 worthy of the love of others, and less worthy of our 
 own respect, than when we receive evidences of kind- 
 
FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 153 
 
 ness, which we know we do not merit ; and when souls 
 are laid bare to us, and we have too much indifference 
 to lay bare our own in return. 
 
 " Clarence" writes that neglected mother " you do 
 not know how much you are in our thoughts, and how 
 often you are the burden of my prayers. Oh, Clarence, 
 I could almost wish that you were still a boy still 
 running to me for those little favors, which I was only 
 too happy to bestow, still dependent in some degree 
 on your mother's love, for happiness. 
 
 " Perhaps I do you wrong, Clarence, but it does seem 
 from the changing tone of your letters that you are 
 becoming more and more forgetful of us all ; that you 
 are feeling less need of our advice, and what I feel 
 far more deeply less need of our affection. Do not, 
 my son, forget the lessons of home. There will come a 
 time, I feel sure, when you will know that those 
 lessons are good. They may not indeed help you in 
 that intellectual strife which soon will engross you ; and 
 they may not have fitted you to shine in what are 
 called the brilliant circles of the world ; but they are 
 such, Clarence, as make the heart pure, and honest, and 
 strong ! 
 
 " You may think me weak to write you thus, as I 
 would have written to my light-hearted boy, years ago ; 
 indeed I am not strong, but growing every day 
 more feeble. 
 
 7* 
 
154 DREAM -LIFE. 
 
 "Nelly, your sweet sister, is sitting by me: 'Tell 
 Clarence,' she says, * to come home soon.' You know, 
 my son, what hearty welcome will greet you ; and that 
 whether here, or away, our love and prayers will be 
 with you always ; and may God, in his infinite mercy 
 keep you from all harm !" 
 
 A tear or two, brushed away, as soon as they 
 come, is all that youth gives, to embalm such trea 
 sure of love ! A gay laugh, or the challenge of some 
 companion of a day, will sweep away into the night, 
 the earnest, regretful, yet happy dreams, that rise like 
 incense from the pages of such hallowed affection. 
 
 The brusque world too is to be met, with all 
 its hurry and promptitude. Manhood, in our swift 
 American world, is measured too much by forgetfulness 
 of all the sweet liens which tie the heart to the home 
 of its first attachments. We deaden the glow that 
 nature has kindled, lest it may lighten our hearts into 
 an enchanting flame of weakness. We have not 
 learned to make that flame the beacon of our purposes, 
 and the warmer of our strength. We are men too 
 early. 
 
 But an experience is approaching Clarence, that 
 will drive Hs heart home for shelter, like a wounded 
 bird! 
 
 It is an autumn morning, with such crimson 
 
 glories to kindle it, as lie along the twin ranges of 
 
FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 155 
 
 mountain that guard the Hudson. The white frosts shine 
 like changing silk, in the fields of late growing clover ; 
 the river mists curl, and idle along the bosom of the 
 waier, and creep up the hill sides ; and at noon, float 
 their feathery vapors aloft, in clouds ; the crimson trees 
 blaze in the side valleys, and blend their verimllion 
 tints under the fairy hands of our American frost- 
 painters, with the dark blood of the ash trees, and the 
 orange tinted oaks. Blue and bright, under the clear 
 Fall heaven, the broad river shines before the surging 
 prow of the boat, like a shield of steel. 
 
 The bracing air lights up rich dreams of life. Your 
 fancy peoples the valleys, and the hill-tops with its 
 creations ; and your hope lends some crowning beauty 
 of the landscape, to your dreamy future. The vision 
 of your last college year is not gone. That figure 
 whose elegance your eyes then feasted on, still floats 
 before you; and the memory of the last talk with 
 Laura, is as vivid, as if it were only yesterday, that you 
 listened. Indeed, this opening campaign of travel, 
 although you are half ashamed to confess it to your 
 self, is guided by the thought of her. 
 
 Dalton, with a party of friends, his sister among 
 them, are journeying to the north. A hope of meeting 
 them scarce acknowledged as an intention spurs you 
 on. The eye rests dreamily, and vaguely on the 
 beauties that appear at every turn : they are beauties 
 
156 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 that charm you, and charm you the more by an 
 indefinable association with that fairy object that floats 
 before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed. 
 The quiet towns, with their noon-day stillness, the 
 out-lying mansions with their stately splendor, the 
 bustling cities with their mocking din, and the long 
 reaches of silent, and wooded shore, chime with their 
 several beauties to your heart, in keeping with the 
 master key, that was touched long weeks before. 
 
 The cool, honest advices of the father, drift across 
 your memory in shadowy forms, as you wander through 
 the streets of the first northern cities ; and all the need 
 for observation, and the incentives to purpose, which 
 your ambitious designs would once have quickened, 
 fade dismally, when you find that she is not there. All 
 the lax gaiety of Saratoga palls on the appetite : even 
 the magnificent shores of Lake George, though stirring 
 your spirit to an insensible wonder and love, do not 
 cheat you into a trance that lingers. In vain, the sun 
 blazons every isle, and lights every shaded cove, and at 
 evening, stretches the Black mountain in giant slumber 
 on the waters. 
 
 Your thought bounds away from the beauty of sky 
 and lake, and fastens upon the ideal which your dreamy 
 humors cherish. The veiy glow of pursuit heightens 
 your fervor : a fervor that dims sadly the new-wakened 
 memories of home. The southern gates of Champlain, 
 
FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 157 
 
 those fir-draped Trosachs of America, are passed, and 
 you find yourself upon a golden evening of Canadian 
 autumn, in the quaint old city of Montreal. 
 
 Dalton, with his party, has gone down to Quebec. 
 He is to return within a few days, on his way to 
 Niagara. There is a letter from Nelly waiting you. 
 It says : * Mother is much more feeble : she often 
 speaks of your return, in a way that I am sure, if you 
 heard, Clarence, would bring you back to us soon. 7 
 
 Thei'e is a struggle in your mind : old affection is 
 weaker than young pride and hope. Moreover, the 
 world is to be faced : the new scenes around you are to 
 be studied. An answer is penned full of kind remem 
 brances, and begging a few days of delay. You 
 wander, wondering, under the quaint old houses, and 
 wishing for the return of Dalton. 
 
 He meets you with that happy, careless way of his 
 the dangerous way which some men are born to, and 
 which chimes easily to every tone of the world : a way 
 you wondered at once ; a way, you admire now, and a 
 way, that you will distrust, as you come to see more of 
 men. Miss Dalton (it seems sacrilege to call her 
 Laura) is the same elegant being that entranced you 
 first. 
 
 They urge you to join their party. But there is no 
 need of urgence : those eyes, that figure, the whole 
 presence indeed of Miss Dalton, attract you with a 
 
158 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 power which you can neither explain, nor resist. One 
 look of grace enslaves you ; and there is a strange 
 pride in the enslavement. 
 
 Is it dream, or is it earnest, those moon-lit 
 
 walks upon the hills that skirt the city, when you watch 
 the stare, listening to her voice, and feel the pressure of 
 that jewelled hand upon your arm ? when you drain 
 your memory of its whole stock of poetic beauties, to 
 lavish upon her ear ? Is it love, or is it madness, when 
 you catch her eye, as it beams more of eloquence than 
 lies in all your moonlight poetry, and feel an exultant 
 gush of the heart, that makes you proud as a man, and 
 yet timid as a boy, beside her ? 
 
 Has Dalton with that calm, placid, nonchalant look 
 of his, any inkling of the raptures, which his elegant 
 sister is exciting? Has the stout, elderly gentleman 
 who is so prodigal of his bouquets, and attentions, any 
 idea of the formidable rival that he has found ? Has 
 Laura herself you dream any conception of that 
 intensity of admiration with which you worship ? 
 
 Poor Clarence ! it is his first look at Life ! 
 
 The Thousand Isles with their leafy beauties, lie 
 around your passing boat, like the joys that skirt us 
 and pass us, on our way through life. The Thousand 
 Isles rise sudden before you, and fringe your yeasty 
 track, and drop away into floating spectres of beauty 
 
FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 159 
 
 of haze of distance, like those dreams of joy, that 
 your passion lends the brain. The low banks of 
 Ontario look sullen by night ; and the moon, rising 
 tranquilly over the tops of vast forests that stand in 
 majestic ranks over ten thousand acres of shore-land, 
 drips its silvery sparkles along the rocking waters, and 
 flashes across your foamy wake. 
 
 With such attendance, that subdues for the time the 
 dreamy forays of your passion, you draw toward tlio 
 sound of Niagara ; and its distant, vague roar coming 
 through great aisles of gloomy forest, bears up your 
 spirit, like a child's, into the Highest Presence. 
 
 The morning after, you are standing with your party 
 upon the steps of the Hotel. A letter is handed to 
 you. Dal ton remarks in a quizzical way, that * it shows 
 a lady's hand.' 
 
 " Aha, a lady !" says Miss Dalton ; and so gaily ! 
 
 " A sister," I say ; for it is Nelly's hand. 
 
 " By the by, Clarence," says Dalton, " it was a 
 very pretty sister, you gave us a glimpse of at 
 commencement." 
 
 " Ah, you think so," and there is something in your 
 tone, that shows a little indignation at this careless 
 mention of your fond Nelly ; and from those lips ! 
 It will occur to you again. 
 
 A single glance at the letter blanches your cheek. 
 Y"our heart throbs : throbs harder, throbs tumultu- 
 
160 DREAM >LiFE. 
 
 ously. You bite your lip ; for there are lookers on. 
 But it will not do. You hurry away : you find your 
 chamber : you close and lock the door, and burst into 
 a flood of teare. 
 
V. 
 
 A BROKEN HOME. 
 
 IT is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted; 
 blotted with her tears, and blotted with yours. 
 
 " It is all over, dear, dear Clarence ! oh, how I 
 
 wish you were here to mourn with us ! I can hardly 
 now believe that our poor mother is indeed dead." 
 
 Dead ! It is a terrible word. You repeat i\ 
 
 with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crumpled in 
 your hand. Unfold it again, sobbing, and read on. 
 
 " For a week, she had been failing every day ; but 
 on Saturday, we thought her very much better. I told 
 her, I felt sure she would live to see you again. 
 
 ' I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she, 
 bursting into tears." 
 
 Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and 
 
162 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 your strength now ? with only that frail paper to 
 annoy you, crushed in your grasp ! 
 
 " She sent for Father, and taking his hand in hers, 
 told him she was dying. I am glad you did not sec 
 his grief, I was kneeling beside her, and she put her 
 hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment, 
 while her lips moved, ss if she were praying. 
 
 * Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter : * kiss me 
 again for Clarence.* 
 
 " A little while after she died." 
 
 For a long time you remain with only that letter, 
 and your thought for company. You pace up and 
 down your chamber : again you seat yourself, and lean 
 your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief, 
 that you cherish still. The whole day passes thus : 
 you excuse yourself from all companionship : you have 
 not the heart to tell the story of your troubles to 
 Dalton, least of all, to Miss Dalton. How is this ? 
 Is sorrow too selfish, or too holy ? 
 
 Toward night-fall there is- a calmer, and stronger 
 feeling. The voice of the present world comes to your 
 ear again. But you move away from it unobserved to 
 that stronger voice of God, in the Cataract. Great 
 masses of angry cloud hang over the West ; but 
 beneath them the red harvest sun shines over the long 
 reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the whirling 
 rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over the quaking 
 
A B R o K E x HOME. 1 G3 
 
 bridge, and under the giant trees of the Island, to the 
 edge of the British Fall. You go out to the little 
 shattered tower, and gaze down with sensations that 
 will last till death, upon the deep emerald of those 
 awful masses of water. 
 
 It is not the place for a bad man to ponder : it 
 is not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones. 
 A man is never better than when he has the humblest 
 sense of himself: he is never so unlike the spirit of 
 Evil, as when his pride is utterly vanished. You 
 linger, looking upon the stream of fading sunlight that 
 plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of 
 the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray : 
 yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black 
 eddying masses, with white ribands streaming across 
 their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon 
 the frail cockle shells, their stout oarsmen dwindled to 
 pigmies, that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, 
 or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time. 
 
 Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to 
 cover the whole area of life ; you set up your affections 
 and your duties ; you build hopes with fairy scenery, 
 and away they all go, tossing like the relentless waters 
 to the deep gulf, that gapes a hideous welcome ! You 
 sigh at your weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and 
 your sighs float out into the breeze that rises ever from 
 the shock of the waves, and \thirl, empty-handed, to 
 
164 DREAM -LIFE. 
 
 Heaven. You avow high purposes, and clench them 
 with round utterance ; and your voice like a sparrow's, 
 is caught up in the roar of the fall, and thrown at you 
 from the cliffs, and dies away in the solemn thunders 
 of nature. Great thoughts of life come over you of 
 its work and destiny of its affections and duties, and 
 roll down swift like the river into the deep whirl 
 of doubt and danger. Other thoughts, grander and 
 stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come over 
 you, and knit your purposes together with their weight, 
 and crush you to exultant tears, and then leap, 
 shattered and broken, from the very edge of your 
 intent, into mists of fear. 
 
 The moon comes out, and gleaming through the 
 clouds, braids its light, fantastic bow upon the waters. 
 You feel calmer as the night deepens. The darkness 
 softens you ; it hangs like the pall that shrouds your 
 mother's corpse, low and heavily to your heart. It 
 helps your inward grief, with some outward show. It 
 makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing 
 water-drops so many attendant mourners. It makes 
 the Great Fall itself a mourner, and its roar a 
 requiem. 
 
 The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person 
 of the little company of fellow voyagers, you bid adieu 
 with regret ; pride, love, and hope point toward her, 
 while all the gentler affections stray back t.o the broken 
 
ABROKEN HOME. 165 
 
 home. Her smile of parting is very gracious, but it is 
 not after all, such smile as your warm heart pines for. 
 
 Ten days after, you are walking toward the old 
 homestead, with such feelings as it never called up 
 before. In the days of boyhood, there were triumphant 
 thoughts of the gladness, and the pride, with which, 
 when grown to the stature of manhood, you would 
 come back to that little town of your birth. As you 
 have bent with your dreamy resolutions over the tasks 
 of the cloister life, swift thoughts have flocked on you 
 of the proud step, and prouder heart, with which you 
 would one day greet the old acquaintances of boyhood ; 
 and you have regaled yourself on the jaunty manner 
 with which you would meet old Dr. Bidlow ; and the 
 patronizing air, with which you would address the 
 pretty, blue-eyed Madge. 
 
 It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the 
 tall sycamores that shade your home ; you shudder 
 now lest you may meet any whom you once knew. 
 The first, keen grief of youth seeks little of the sym 
 pathy of companions : it lies with a sensitive man, 
 bounded within the narrowest circles of the heart. 
 They only who hold the key to its innermost recesses 
 can speak consolation. Years will make a change ; 
 as the summer grows in fierce heats, the balminess of 
 the violet banks of Spring, is lost in the odor? of a 
 
166 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 thousand flowers ; the heart, as it gains in age, loses 
 freshness, but wins breadth. 
 
 Throw a pebble into the brook at its source, and 
 
 the agitation is terrible, and the ripples chafe madly 
 their narrowed banks ; throw in a pebble, when the 
 brook has become a river, and you see a few circles, 
 widening, and widening, and widening, until they are 
 lost in the gentle, every-day murmur of its life ! 
 
 You draw your hat over your eyes, as you walk 
 toward the familiar door; the yard is silent; the night 
 is falling gloomily ; a few katydids are crying in the 
 trees. The mother's window, where at such a season 
 as this, it was her custom to sit watching your play, is 
 shut ; and the blinds are closed over it. The honey 
 suckle which grew over the window, and which she 
 loved so much, has flung out its branches carelessly ; 
 and the spiders have hung their foul nets upon its 
 tendrils. 
 
 And she, who made that home so dear to your 
 boyhood, so real to your after years, standing amid 
 all the flights of your youthful ambition, and your 
 paltry cares (for they seem paltry now) and your 
 doubts, and anxieties and weaknesses of heart, like the 
 light of your hope burning ever there, under the 
 shadow of the sycamores, a holy beacon, by whose 
 guidance you always came to a sweet haven, and to a 
 refuge from all your toils, is gone, gone forever ! 
 
A BROKE \ HOME. 167 
 
 The father is there indeed; beloved, respected, 
 esteemed ; but the boyish heart, whose old life is now 
 reviving, leans more readily, and more kindly into that 
 void, where once beat the heart of a mother. 
 
 Nell} is there ; cherished now with all the added 
 love that is stricken off from her who has left you 
 forever. Nelly meets you at the door. 
 
 " Clarence !" 
 
 " Nelly !" 
 
 There are no other words ; but you feel her tears, as 
 the kiss of welcome is given. With your hand joined 
 in her's, you walk down the hall, into the old, familiar 
 room ; not with the jaunty, college step, not with 
 any presumption on your dawning manhood, oh, no, 
 nothing of this ! 
 
 Quietly, meekly, feeling your whole heart shattered, 
 and your mind feeble as a boy's, and your purposes 
 nothing, and worse than nothing, with only one 
 proud feeling, you fling your arm around the form 
 of that gentle sister, the pride of a protector ; the 
 feeling " / will care for you now, dear Nelly !" that 
 is all. And even that, proud as it is, brings weakness. 
 
 You sit down together upon the lounge; Nelly 
 buries her face in her hands, sobbing. 
 
 "Dear Nelly," and your arm clasps her more fondly. 
 
 There is a cricket in the corner of the room, chirping 
 very loudly. It seems as if nothing else were living 
 
168 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 only Nelly, Clarence, and the noisy cricket. Y"our eye 
 falls on the chair where she used to sit ; it is drawn up 
 with the same care as ever, be&ide the fire. 
 
 " I am so glad to see you, Clarence," says Nelly, 
 recovering herself; and there is a sweet, sad smile now. 
 And sitting there beside you, she tells you of it all ; 
 of the day, and of the hour ; and how she looked, 
 and of her last prayer, and how happy she was. 
 " And did she leave no message for me, Nelly ?" 
 " Not to forget us, Clarence ; but you could not !" 
 " Thank you, Nelly ; and was there nothing else ?" 
 " Yes, Clarence ; to meet her, one day ?" 
 You only press her hand. 
 
 Presently your father comes in : he greets you with 
 far more than his usual cordiality. He keeps your hand 
 a long time, looking quietly in your face, as if he were 
 reading traces of some resemblance, that had never 
 struck him before. 
 
 The father is one of those calm, impassive men, who 
 shows little upon the surface, and whose feelings you 
 have always thought, cold. But now, there is a 
 tremulousness in his tones that you never remember 
 observing before. He seems conscious of it himself, and 
 forbears talking. He goes to his old seat, and after 
 gazing at you a little while with the same steadfastness 
 as at first, leans forward, and buries his face in his 
 hands. 
 
A BROKEN HOME. 169 
 
 From that very moment, you feel a sympathy, and 
 a love for him, that you have never known till then. 
 And in after years, when suffering or trial come over 
 you, and when your thoughts fly, as to a refuge, to 
 that shattered home, you will recal that stooping image 
 of the father, with his head bowed, and from time 
 to time trembling convulsively with grief, and feel that 
 there remains yet by the household fires, a heart of 
 kindred love, and of kindred sorrow. 
 
 Nelly steals away from you gently, and stepping 
 across the room, lays her hand upon his shoulder, with 
 a touch, that says, as plainly as words could say it ; 
 " We are here, Father !" 
 
 And he rouses himself, passes his arm around her ; 
 looks in her face fondly, draws her to him, and 
 prints a kiss upon her forehead. 
 
 " Nelly, we must love each other now, more than 
 ever." 
 
 Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer ; a tear 
 or two go stealing down her cheek. 
 
 You approach them ; and your father takes your 
 hand again, with a firm grasp, looks at you thought 
 fully, drops his eyes upon the fire, and for a moment 
 there is a pause ; " We are quite alone, now, my 
 boy!" 
 
 is a Broken Home! " 
 
172 DREAM-LIFE . 
 
 and indifferent way that utterly surprises you. Can it 
 be, you think, that there has been some cause of 
 unkindness ? 
 
 Clarence is still very young ! 
 
 The fire glows warmly upon the accustomed hearth 
 stone ; and save that vacant place, never to be filled 
 again a home cheer reigns even in this time of your 
 mourning. The spirit of the lost parent seems to linger 
 over the remnant of the household ; and the Bible 
 upon its stand the book she loved so well the book 
 so sadly forgotten, seems still to open on you its 
 promises, in her sweet tones ; and to call you, as it 
 wore, with her angel voice, to the land that she 
 inherits. 
 
 And when late night has come, and the household 
 is quiet, you call up in the darkness of your chamber, 
 that other night of grief, which followed upon the 
 death of Charlie. That was the boy's vision of death ; 
 and this is the youthful vision. Yet essentially, there is 
 but little difference. Death levels the capacities of the 
 living, as it levels the strength of its victims. It is as 
 grand to the man, as to the boy : jts teachings are as 
 deep for age, as for infancy. 
 
 You may learn its manner, and estimate its 
 approaches ; but when it comes, it comes always with 
 the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood. 
 Reason and Revelation may point to rich issues that 
 
FAMILY CONFIDENCE. 173 
 
 unfold from its very darkness ; yet all these are no 
 more to your bodily sense, and no more to your 
 enlightened hope, than those foreshadowings of peace, 
 which rest like a halo, on the spirit of the child, as he 
 prays in guileless tones, OUR FATHEK, WHO ART IN 
 HEAVEN ! 
 
 It is a holy, and a placid grief that comes over you ; 
 not crushing, but bringing to life from the grave 
 of boyhood, all its better and nobler instincts. In their 
 light, your wild plans of youth look sadly misshapen ; 
 and in the impulse of the hour you abandon them ; 
 holy resolutions beam again upon your soul like 
 sunlight; your purposes seem bathed in goodness. 
 There is an effervescence of the spirit, that carries away 
 all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm, that 
 seems kindred to the land and to the life, whither the 
 sainted mother has gone. 
 
 This calm brings a smile in the middle of tears, 
 and an inward looking, and leaning toward that 
 Eternal Power which governs and guides us ; with 
 that smile and that leaning, sleep comes like an 
 angelic minister, and fondles your wearied frame, and 
 thought, into that repose which is the mirror of the 
 Destroyer. 
 
 Poor Clarence, he is like the rest of the world, 
 whose goodness lies chiefly in the occasional throbs 
 
172 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 and indifferent way that utterly surprises you. Can it 
 be, you thhik, that there has been some cause of 
 unkindness ? 
 
 Clarence is still very young ! 
 
 The fire glows warmly upon the accustomed hearth 
 stone ; and sare that vacant place, never to be filled 
 again a home cheer reigns even in this time of your 
 mourning. The spirit of the lost parent teems to linger 
 over the remnant of the household; and the Bible 
 upon its stand the book she loved so well the book 
 so sadly forgotten, seems still to open on you its 
 promises, in her sweet tones ; and to call you, as it 
 were, with her angel voice, to the land that she 
 inherits. 
 
 And when late night has come, and the household 
 is quiet, yon call up in the darkness of your chamber, 
 that other night of grie which followed upon the 
 death of Charlie, That was the boy's vision of death ; 
 and this is the youthful vision. Yet essentially, there is 
 but little difference. Death levels the capacities of the 
 living, as it levels the strength of ite victims. It is as 
 grand to the man, as to the boy : jts teachings are as 
 deep for age, m tor infancy. 
 
 You may learn its manner, and estimate its 
 approaches; bat when it come*, it comes always with 
 the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood. 
 Reason and Revelation may point to rich issue* that 
 
FAMILY CONFIDENCE, 173 
 
 unfold from its very darkness; yet all these are no 
 more to your bodily sense, and no more to your 
 enlightened hope, than those foreshadowings of peakv, 
 which rest like a halo, on Aft spirit of the child, as he 
 prays in guileless tones, OUR FATHER, WHO AST is 
 HEAVEX! 
 
 It is a holy, and a placid grief AMI comes over you ; 
 not crushing, but bringing to fife from the grave 
 of boyhood, all its better and aofer instincts. In their 
 Jjjghft, your wild plans of youth look sadly misshapen ; 
 and in the impulse of the hour you abandon them ; 
 holy resolutions beam again upon your soul fike 
 sunlight; your purposes seem bathed in goodness. 
 There is an effervescence of the spirit, that carries away 
 all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm, that 
 Reeins kindi^ to the land and to the life, whither the 
 sainted mother has gone. 
 
 This calm brings a smile in the middle of tears, 
 and an inward looking, and leaning toward that 
 Eternal Power which goferaa tad ftfiluu us ; with 
 that smile, and that leaning, sleep comes fike an 
 angelic minister, and fondks your wearied frame, and 
 thought, into that repose which is the mirror of the 
 Destroyer, 
 
 Poor Clarence, he is fike the rest of the world, 
 
 whose goodness ties chiefly in the omaionul throbs 
 
174 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 of a better nature, which soon subside, and leave them 
 upon the old level of desire. 
 
 As you lie between waking and sleeping, you have a 
 fancy of a sound at your door; it seems to open 
 softly ; and the tall figure of your father wrapped in his 
 dressing-gown stands over you, and gazes as he gazed 
 at you before; his look is very mournful; and he 
 murmurs your mother's name ; and sighs ; and looks 
 again ; and passes out. 
 
 At morning, you cannot tell if it was real, or a 
 dream. Those higher resolves too, which grief, and 
 the night made, seem very vague and shadowy. Life 
 with its ambitious, and cankerous desires wakes again. 
 You do not feel them at first ; the subjugation of holy 
 thoughts, and of reaches toward the Infinite, leave 
 their traces on you, and perhaps bewilder you into 
 a half consciousness of strength. But at the first touch 
 of the grosser elements about you ; on your very first 
 entrance upon those duties which quicken pride or 
 shame, and which are pointing at you from every 
 quarter, your holy calm, your high-born purpose, 
 your spiritual cleavings pass away, like the electricity of 
 August storms, drawn down by the thousand glittering 
 turrets of a city. 
 
 The world is stronger than the night; and the 
 bindings of sense are ten-fold stronger than the most 
 exquisite delirium of soul. This makes you feel, or will 
 
FAMILY CONFIDENCE. 175 
 
 one day make you feel, that life, strong life and sound 
 life, that life which lends approaches to the Infinite, 
 and takes hold on Heaven, is not so much a PROGRESS, 
 as it is a RESISTANCE. 
 
 There is one special confidence, which in all your 
 talk about plans, and purposes, you do not give to 
 your father; you reserve that for the ear of Nelly 
 alone. Why happens it, that a father is almost the 
 last confidant that a son makes in any matter deeply 
 affecting the feelings ? Is it the fear that a father may 
 regard such matter as boyish ? Is it a lingering 
 suspicion of your own childishness ; or of that extreme 
 of affection which reduces you to childishness ? 
 
 Why is it always, that a man of whatever age or 
 condition, forbears to exhibit to those, whose respect for 
 his judgment, and mental abilities he seeks only, the 
 most earnest qualities of the heart, and those intenser 
 susceptibilities of love, which underlie his nature, and 
 which give a color, in spite of him, to the habit of his 
 life ? Why is he so morbidly anxious to keep out of 
 sight any extravagances of affection, when he blurts 
 officiously to the world, his extravagances of action, and 
 of thought ? Can any lover explain me this ? 
 tz^ Again, why is a sister, the one of all others, to whom 
 you first whisper the dawnings of any strong emotion ; 
 as if it were a weakness, that her charity alone could 
 cover ? ^s 
 
176 D RE AM-LlFE . 
 
 However this may be, you have a long story for 
 Nelly's ear. It is some days after your return : you 
 are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane a remembered 
 place, when you first open to her your heart. Your 
 talk is of Laura Dalton. You describe her to Nelly, 
 with the extravagance of a glowing hope. You 
 picture those qualities that have attracted you most 5 
 you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, her 
 grace of conversation, her accomplishments. You make 
 a study that feeds your passion, as you go on. You 
 rise by the very glow of your speech into a frenzy 
 of feeling, that she has never excited before. You are 
 quite sure that you would be wretched, and miserable, 
 without her. 
 
 " Do you mean to marry her ?" says Nelly. 
 
 It is a question that gives a swift bound to the blood 
 of youth. It involves the idea of possession ; and of 
 the dependance of the cherished one upon your own 
 arm, and strength. But the admiration you entertain, 
 seems almost too lofty for this ; Nelly's question makes 
 you diffident of reply ; and you lose yourself in a new 
 story of those excellencies of speech, and of figure, 
 which have so charmed you. 
 
 Nelly's eye, on a sudden, becomes full of tears. 
 
 "What is it, Nelly?" 
 
 " Our mother ; Clarence." 
 
 The word, and the thought dampen your ardor; 
 
FAMILY CONFIDENCE. 177 
 
 the sweet watchfulness, and gentle kindness of that 
 parent, for an instant, make a sad contrast with the 
 showy qualities you have been naming ; and the spirit 
 of that mother called up by Nelly's words seems to 
 hang over you, with an anxious love, that subdues all 
 your pride of passion. 
 
 But this passes ; and now, half believing that 
 Nelly's thoughts have run over the same ground with 
 yours, you turn special pleader for your fancy. You 
 argue for the beauty, which you just now affirmed ; you 
 do your utmost to win over Nelly to some burst of 
 admiration. Yet there she sits beside you, thought 
 fully, and half sadly, playing with the frail autumn 
 flowers that grow at her side. What can she be 
 thinking ? You ask it by a look. 
 
 She smiles, takes your hand, for she will not let 
 you grow angry, 
 
 "I was thinking, Clarence, whether this Laura 
 Dalton, would after all, make a good wife, such an 
 one as you would love always ?" 
 8* 
 
VII. 
 
 A GOOD WIFE. 
 
 THE thought of Nelly suggests new dreams, that 
 are little apt to find place in the rhapsodies of a 
 youthful lover. The very epithet of a good wife, 
 mates tamely with the romantic fancies of a first 
 passion. It is measuring the ideal by too practical a 
 standard. It sweeps away all the delightful vagueness 
 of a faiiy dream of love, and reduces one to a dull, and 
 economic estimate of actual qualities. Passion lives 
 above all analysis and estimate, and arrives at its 
 conclusions by intuition. 
 
 Did Petrarch ever think if Laura would make 
 a good wife ; did Oswald ever think it of Corinne ? 
 Nay, did even the more practical Waverley, ever think 
 it of the impassioned Flora? Would it not weaken 
 
AGooDWiFE. 179 
 
 faith in their romantic passages, if you believed it? 
 What have such vulgar, practical issues to do with that 
 passion which sublimates the faculties, and makes the 
 loving dreamer to live in an ideal sphere, where nothing 
 but goodness and brightness can come ? 
 
 Nelly is to be pitied for entertaining such a thought; 
 and yet Nelly is very good, and kind. Her affections 
 are, without doubt, all centred in the remnant of the 
 shattered home : she has never known any further, and 
 deeper love, never once fancied it even 
 
 Ah, Clarence, you are veiy young ! 
 
 And yet there are some things that puzzle you in 
 Nelly. You have found, accidentally, in one of her 
 treasured books, a book that lies almost always on her 
 dressing table, a little withered flower, with its stem in 
 a slip of paper ; and on the paper the initials of your 
 old friend Frank. You recall, in connection with this, 
 her indisposition to talk of him on the first evening of 
 your return. It seems, you scarce know why that 
 these are the tokens of something very like a leaning of 
 the heart. It does occur to you, that she too, may 
 have her little casket of loves ; and you try one day, 
 very adroitly, to take a look into this casket. 
 
 You will learn, later in life, that the heart of a 
 
 modest, gentle girl, is a very hard matter, for even a 
 brother to probe : it is at once the most tender, and the 
 most unapproachable of all fastnesses. It admits 
 
180 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 feeling, by armies, with great trains of artillery, but 
 not a single scout. It is as calm and pure as polar 
 snows ; but deep underneath, wheie no footsteps have 
 gone, and where no eye can reach, but one, lies the 
 warm, and the throbbing earth. 
 
 Make what you will of the slight, quivering blushes, 
 and of the half-broken expressions, more you cannot 
 get. The love that a delicate-minded girl will tell, is a 
 short-sighted, and outside love ; but the love that she 
 cherishes without voice or token, is a love that will 
 mould her secret sympathies, and her deepest, fondest 
 yearnings, either to a quiet world of joy, or to a world 
 of placid sufferance. The true voice of her love she 
 will keep back long and late, fearful ever of her most 
 prized jewel, fearful to strange sensitiveness : she will 
 show kindness, but the opening of the real flood-gates 
 of the heart, and the utterance of those impassioned 
 yearnings, which belong to its nature, come far later. 
 And fearful, thrice fearful is the shock, if these flow 
 out unmet ! 
 
 That deep, thrilling voice bearing all the perfume of 
 the womanly soul in its flow, rarely finds utterance ; and 
 if uttered vainly, if called out by tempting devices, 
 and by a trust that is abused, desolate indeed is the 
 maiden heart, widowed of its chastest thought. The 
 soul shrinks affrighted within itself. Like a tired bird, 
 lost at sea, fluttering around what seem friendly 
 
A GOOD WIFE. 181 
 
 boughs, it stoops at length, and finding only cold, 
 slippery spars, with no bloom and no foliage its last 
 hope gone it sinks to a wild, ocean grave ! 
 
 Nelly and the thought brings a tear of sympathy 
 to your eye must have such a heart : it speaks in 
 every shadow of her action. And this very delicacy 
 seems to lend her a charm, that would make her a wife, 
 to be loved and honored. 
 
 Aye, there is something in that maidenly modesty, 
 retiring from you, as you advance, retreating timidly 
 from all bold approaches, fearful and yet joyous, which 
 wins upon the iron hardness of a man's nature, like a 
 rising flame. To force of action and resolve, he opposes 
 force : to strong will, he mates his own : pride lights 
 pride ; but to the gentleness of the true womanly 
 character, he yields with a gush of tenderness that 
 nothing else can call out. He will never be subjugated 
 on his own ground of action and energy ; but let him 
 be lured to that border country, over which the delicacy, 
 and fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his 
 energy yields, his haughty determination faints, he is 
 proud of submission. 
 
 And with this thought of modesty, and gentleness to 
 illuminate your dream of an ideal wife, you chase the 
 pleasant phantom to that shadowy home, lying far off 
 in the future, of which she is the glory, and the 
 crown. I know it is the fashion now-a-days with many, 
 
182 DREAM - 
 
 to look for a woman's excellencies, and influence, away 
 from her home ; but I know too, that a vast many 
 eager, and hopeful hearts, still cherish the belief that 
 her virtues will range highest, and live longest within 
 those sacred walls. 
 
 Where indeed, can the modest and earnest virtue of 
 a woman, tell a stronger story of its worth, than upon 
 the dawning habit of a child ? Where can her grace 
 of character win a higher, and a riper effect, than upon 
 the action of her household ? What mean those noisy 
 declaimers who talk of the feeble influence, and of the 
 crushed faculties of a woman ? 
 
 What school of learning, or of moral endeavor, 
 depends more on its teacher, than the home upon the 
 mother ? What influence of all the world's professors, 
 and teachers, tells so strongly on the habit of a man's 
 mind, as those gentle droppings from a mother's lips, 
 which, day by day, and hour by hour, grow into the 
 enlarging stature of his soul, and live with it forever ? 
 They can hardly be mothers, who aim at a broader, and 
 noisier field : they have forgotten to be daughters : they 
 must needs have lost the hope of being wives. 
 
 Be this how it may, the heart of a man, with whom 
 affection is n:>t a name, and love a mere passion of the 
 hour, yearns toward the quiet of a home, as toward 
 the goal of his earthly joy, and hope. And as you 
 fasten there, your thought, an indulgent, yet dreamy 
 
A GOOD WIFE. 183 
 
 fancy paints the loved image that is to adorn it, and to 
 make it sacred. 
 
 She is there to bid you God speed ! and an 
 
 adieu, that hangs like music on your ear, as you go out 
 to the every day labor of life. At evening, she is there 
 to greet you, as you come back wearied with a day's 
 toil ; and her look so full of gladness, cheats you of 
 your fatigue ; and she steals her arm around you, with 
 a soul of welcome, that beams like sunshine on her brow 
 and that fills your eye with tears of a twin gratitude - 
 to her, and Heaven. 
 
 She is not unmindful of those old-fashioned virtues 
 ( of cleanliness, and of order, which give an air of quiet, 
 and which secure content. Your wants are all antici 
 pated ; the fire is burning brightly ; the clean hearth 
 flashes under the joyous blaze ; the old elbow chair is 
 in its place. Your very unworthiness of all this haunts 
 you like an accusing spirit, and yet penetrates your 
 heart with a new devotion, toward the loved one who is 
 thus watchful of your comfort. 
 
 7 She is gentle ; keeping your love, as she has won it, 
 by a thousand nameless and modest virtues, which 
 radiate from her whole life and action. She steals upon 
 your affections like a summer wind breathing softly 
 over sleeping valleys. She gains a masteiy over your 
 sterner nature, by veiy contrast ; and wins you unwit 
 tingly to her lightest wish. And yet her wishes arc 
 
184 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 guided by that delicate tact, which avoids conflict with 
 your manly pride ; she subdues, by seeming to yield. 
 By a single soft word of appeal, she robs your vexation 
 of its anger ; and with a slight touch of that fair hand, 
 and one pleading look of that earnest eye, she disarms 
 your sternest pride. 
 
 She is kind ; shedding her kindness, as Heaven sheds 
 dew. Who indeed could doubt it ? least of all, you, 
 who are living on her kindness, day by day, as Jlowjrs 
 live on ligliU./^fnere is none of that officious paradey 
 
 ir ~*^ 
 
 which blunts the point of benevolence^Pbut Hflempers 
 every action with a blessing. If trouble has come upon 
 you, she knows that her voice beguiling you into 
 cheerfulness, will lay your fears ; and as she draws her 
 chair beside you, she knows that the tender and 
 confiding way, with which she takes your hand, and 
 looks up into your earnest face, will drive away from 
 your annoyance all its weight. As she lingers, leading 
 off your thought with pleasant words, she knows well 
 that she is redeeming you from care, and soothing you 
 to that sweet calm, which such home, and such wife 
 can alone bestow. And in sickness, sickness that you 
 almost covet for the sympathy it brings, that hand of 
 hers resting on your fevered forehead, or those fingers 
 playing with the scattered locks, are more full of kind 
 ness than the loudest vaunt of friends; and when 
 your failing strength will permit no more, you grasp 
 
AGooDWiFE. 185 
 
 that cherished hand, with a fullness of joy, of 
 thankfulness, and of love, which your tears only can 
 tell. 
 
 She is good ; her hopes live, where the angels live. 
 Her kindness and gentleness are sweetly tempered with 
 that meekness and forbearance which are bom of 
 Faith. Trust comes into her heart, as rivers come to 
 the sea. And in the dark hours of doubt and fore 
 boding, you rest fondly upon her buoyant Faith, as the 
 treasure of your common life; and in your holier 
 musings, you look to that frail hand, and that gentle 
 spirit, to lead you away from the vanities of worldly 
 ambition, to the fullness of that joy, which the good 
 inherit. 
 
 Is Laura Dalton, such an one? 
 
VIII. 
 
 A BROKEN HOPE. 
 
 YOUTHFUL passion is a giant. It overleaps 
 all the dreams, and all the resolves of our 
 better and quieter nature ; and drives madly toward 
 some wild issue, that lives only in its frenzy. How 
 little account does passion take of goodness ! It is not 
 within the cycle of its revolution : it is below : it is 
 tamer : it is older : it wears no wings. 
 
 And your proud heart flashing back to the memory 
 of that sparkling eye, which lighted your hope full-fed 
 upon the vanities of cloister learning, drives your soberer 
 visions to the wind. As you recal those tones, so full 
 of brilliancy and pride, the quiet virtues fade, like the 
 soft haze upon a spring landscape, driven westward by 
 a swift, sea-born storm. The pulse bounds : the eyes 
 
A BROKEN HOPE. 187 
 
 flash : the heart trembles with its sharp springs. Hope 
 dilates, like the eye, fed with swift blood, leaping to 
 the brain. 
 
 Again the image of Miss Dalton, so fine, so noble, so 
 womanly, fills, and bounds the Future. The lingering 
 tears of grief drop away from your eye, as the lingering 
 loves of boyhood drop from your scalding passion, or 
 drift into clouds of vapor. 
 
 You listen to the calm, thoughtful advice of the 
 father, with a deep consciousness of something stronger 
 than his counsels, seething in your bosom. The words 
 of caution, of instruction, of guidance, fall upon your 
 heated imagination, like the night-dews upon the crater 
 of an Etna. They are beneficent, and healthful for the 
 straggling herbage upon the surface of the mountain ; 
 but they do not reach, or temper the inner fires, that 
 are rolling their billows of flame, beneath. 
 
 You drop hints from time to time to those with 
 whom you are most familiar, of some prospective 
 change of condition. There is a new and cheerful 
 interest in the building plans of your neighbors : a 
 new, and cheerful study of the principles of domestic 
 architecture ; in which, very elegant boudoirs, adorned 
 with harps, hold prominent place ; and libraries with 
 gilt-bound books, veiy rich in lyrical, and dramatic 
 poetry ; fine views from bay windows ; graceful pots 
 of flowers ; sleek looking Italian grey-hounds ; 
 
188 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 cheerful sunlight ; musical goldfinches chattering on 
 the wall ; superb pictures of Princesses in peasant 
 dresses ; soft Axminster carpets ; easy-acting bell- 
 pulls ; gigantic candelabras ; porcelain vases of classic 
 shape ; neat waiters in white aprons ; luxurious 
 lounges ; and, to crown them all with the very height 
 of your pride, the elegant Laura, the mistress, and the 
 guardian of your soul moving amid the scene, like a 
 new Duchess of Valliere ! 
 
 You catch chance sights here and there, of the 
 blue-eyed Madge : you see her, in her mother's house 
 hold, the earnest, and devoted daughter, gliding 
 gracefully about her mother's cottage, the very type of 
 gentleness, and of duty. Yet withal, there are sparks 
 of spirit in her, that pique your pride, lofty as it is. 
 You offer flowers, which she accepts with a kind 
 smile ; not of coquetry but of simplest thankfulness. 
 She is not the girl to gratify your vanity with any 
 half-show of tenderness. And if there lived ever in 
 her heart an old girlish liking for the school-boy 
 Clarence, it is all gone before the romantic lover of the 
 elegant Laura ; or at most, it lies in some obscure 
 corner of her soul, never to be brought to light. 
 
 You enter upon the new pursuits, which your father 
 has advised, with a lofty consciousness, not only of the 
 strength of your mind, but of your heart. You relieve 
 your opening professional study, with long letters to 
 
A BROKEN HOPE. 189 
 
 Miss Dalton, full of Shakspearean compliments, and 
 touched off with, very dainty elaboration. And you 
 receive pleasant, gossipping notes in answer, full of 
 quotations, but meaning very little. 
 
 Youth is in a grand flush, like the hot days of 
 ending summer ; and pleasant dreams thrall your spirit, 
 like the smoky atmosphere that bathes the landscape of 
 an August day. Hope rides high in the Heavens, as 
 when the summer sun mounts nearest to the zenith. 
 Youth feels the fullness of maturity, before the second 
 season of life is ended : yet is it a vain maturity, and 
 all the glow is deceitful. Those fruits that ripen in 
 summer do not last. They are sweet ; they are 
 glowing with gold; but they melt with a luscious 
 softness upon the lip. They do not give that 
 strength, and nutriment, which will bear a man bravely 
 through the coming chills of winter. 
 
 The last scene of summer changes now to tho 
 cobwebbed ceiling of an attorney's office. Books of 
 law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow, speak dully to 
 the flush of your vanities. You are seated at your side 
 desk, where you have wrought at those heavy, mechanic 
 labors of drafting, which go before a knowledge of 
 your craft. 
 
 A letter is by you, which you regard with strange 
 feelings : it is yet unopened. It comes from Laura. It 
 
190 DRE A M-L i F E. 
 
 is in reply to one which has cost you very much of 
 exquisite elaboration. You have made your avowal 
 of feeling, as much like a poem, as your education 
 would admit. Indeed, it was a pretty letter, pro 
 mising, not so much the trustful love of an earnest, and 
 devoted heart, as the fervor of a passion which 
 consumed you, and glowed like a furnace through the 
 lines of your letter. It was a confession, in which your 
 vanity of intellect had taken very entertaining part ; and 
 in which, your judgment was too cool to appear at all. 
 
 She must needs break out into raptures at such a 
 letter ; and her own, will doubtless be tempered with 
 even greater passion. 
 
 It is well to shift your chair somewhat, so that 
 the clerks of the office may not see your emotion as 
 you read. It would be silly to manifest your exuber 
 ance in a dismal, dark office of your instructing attorney. 
 One sighs rather for woods, and brooks, and sunshine, 
 in whose company, the hopes of youth stretch into 
 fulfillment. 
 
 We will look only at a closing passage : 
 
 "My friend Clarence will I trust believe me, 
 
 when I say that his letter was a surprise to me. To 
 say that it was very grateful, would be what my 
 womanly vanity could not fail to claim. I only wish 
 that 1 was equal to the flattering portrait which he has 
 
A BROKEN HOPE. 191 
 
 drawn. I even half fancy that he is joking me, and can 
 hardly believe that my matronly air should have quite 
 won his youthful heart. At least I shall try not to 
 believe it ; and when I welcome him one day, the husband 
 of some fairy, who is worthy of his love, we win smile 
 together at the old lady, who once played the Circe 
 to his senses. Seriously, my friend Clarence, I know 
 your impulse of heart has carried you away : and that 
 in a year's time, you will smile with me, at your old 
 penchant for one so much your senior, and so ill-suited 
 to your years, as your true friend, LAURA." 
 
 Magnificent Miss Dalton ! 
 
 Read it again. Stick your knife in the desk : tut ! 
 you will break the blade ! Fold up the letter care 
 fully, and toss it upon your pile of papers. Open 
 Chitty again ; pleasant reading is Chitty ! Lean upon 
 your hand your two hands ; so that no one will 
 catch sight of your face. Chitty is very interesting ; 
 how sparkling and imaginative what a depth and 
 flow of passion in Chitty ! 
 
 The office is a capital place so quiet and sunny. 
 Law is a delightful study so captivating, and such 
 stores of romance ! And then those trips to the Hall 
 offer such relief and variety; especially just now. 
 It would be well not to betray your eagerness to go. 
 You can brush your hat a round or two, and take a 
 
192 DREAM -LIFE. 
 
 peep into the broken bit of looking-glass, over the 
 wash-stand. 
 
 You lengthen your walk, as you sometimes do, by a 
 stroll, upon the Battery though rarely, upon such 
 a blustering November day. You put your hands 
 in your pockets, and look out upon the tossing sea. 
 
 It is a fine sight very fine. There are few finer 
 bays in the world than New York bay ; either to look 
 at, or for that matter to sleep in. The ships ride 
 up thickly, dashing about the cold spray delightfully ; 
 the little cutters gleam in the November sunshine, like 
 white flowers shivering in the wind. 
 
 The sky is rich all mottled with cold, gray streaks 
 of cloud. The old apple-women, with their noses frost 
 bitten, look cheerful, and blue. The ragged immi 
 grants in short-trowsers, and bell-crowned hats, stalk 
 about with a very happy expression, and very short 
 stemmed pipes; their yellow-haired babies look com 
 fortably red, and glowing. And the trees with their 
 scant, pinched foliage, have a charming, summer-like 
 effect 1 
 
 Amid it all, the thoughts of the boudoir, and 
 harpsichord, and gold-finches, and Axminster carpets, 
 and sunshine, and Laura, are so very very pleasant ! 
 How delighted you would be to see her married to the 
 stout man in the red cravat, who gave her bouquets, 
 and strolled with her on the deck of the steamer upon 
 
A BROKEN HOPE. 193 
 
 the St. Lawrence ! What a jaunty, self-satisfied ah- he 
 wore ; and with what considerate forbearance he treated 
 you calling you once or twice Master Clarence ! 
 It never occurred to you before, bow much you must 
 be indebted to that pleasant, stout man. 
 
 You try sadly to be cheerful ; you smile oddly ; 
 your pride comes strongly to your help, but yet helps 
 you very little. It is not so much a broken heart, that 
 you have to mourn over, as a broken dream. You 
 seem to see in a hundred ways that had never occurred 
 to you before, the marks of her superior age. Abovo 
 all, it is manifest in the cool, and unimpassioned tone 
 of her letter. Yet, how kindly, withal ! It would be 
 a relief to be angry. 
 
 New visions come to you, wakened by the broken 
 fancy which has just now eluded your grasp. You 
 will make yourself, if not old, at least, gifted with the 
 force and dignity of age. You will be a man ; and 
 build no more castles, until you can people them with 
 men. In an excess of pride, you even take umbrage 
 at the sex ; they can have little appreciation of that 
 engrossing tenderness, of which you feel yourself to be 
 capable. Love shall henceforth be dead, and you 
 will live boldly without it. 
 
 Just so, when some dark, eastern cloud-bank 
 
 shrouds for a morning, the sun of later August, we say 
 
 in our shivering pride the winter is come early! 
 9 
 
194 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 But God manages the seasons better tlian we; and 
 in a day, or an hour perhaps, the cloud will pass, and 
 the heavens glow again upon our ungrateful heads. 
 
 Well, it is even so, that the passionate dreams 
 of youth break up, and wither. Vanity becomes 
 tempered with wholesome pride ; and passion yields to 
 the riper judgment of manhood ; even as the August 
 heats pass - on, and over, into the genial glow of a 
 September sun. There is a strong growth in the 
 struggles against mortified pride ; and then only, does 
 the youth get an ennobling consciousness of that 
 manhood which is dawning hi him, when he has fairly 
 surmounted those punv vexations, which a wounded 
 vanity creates. 
 
 Now, your heart is driven home ; and that cherished 
 place, where, so little while ago, you wore your vanities 
 with an air, that mocked even your grief, and that 
 subdued your better nature, seems to stretch toward 
 you, over long miles of distance, its wings of love ; 
 and to welcome back to the sister's, and the father's 
 heart not the self-sufficient, and vaunting youth, 
 but the brother and son, the school-boy, Clarence. 
 Like a thirsty child, jou stray in thought, to that 
 fountain of cheer ; and live again, your vanity crushed, 
 your wild hope broken, in the warm, and natural 
 affections of the boyish home. 
 
A BROKEN HOPE. 195 
 
 Clouds weave the SUMMER into the season of 
 
 A.UTUMN : and YOUTH rises from dashed hopes, into 
 the stature of a MAN. 
 
Qttttmmt ; 
 
 <Dr, 
 
 ?Brcam0 of Jflanl)oob 
 
DREAMS OF MANHOOD. 
 
 AUTUMN. 
 
 rTlHERE are those who shudder at the approach 
 JL. of Autumn ; and who feel a light grief stealing 
 over their spirits, like an October haze, as the evening 
 shadows slant sooner, and longer, over the face of an 
 ending August day. 
 
 But is not Autumn the Manhood of the year ? Is 
 it not the ripest of the seasons ? Do not proud flowers 
 blossom ; the golden rod, the orchis, the dahlia, 
 and the bloody cardinal of the swamp-lands ? 
 
 The fruits too are golden, hanging heavy from the 
 tasked trees. The fields of maize show weeping 
 spindles, and broad rustling leaves, and ears, half 
 glowing with the crowded corn ; the September wind 
 whistles over their thick-set ranks, with whispers of 
 
200 DREAM-LIFE 
 
 plenty. The staggering stalks of the buck- wheat, grow 
 red with ripeness ; and tip their tops with clustering, 
 tri-cornered kernels. 
 
 The cattle loosed from the summer's yoke, grow 
 strong upon the meadows, new starting from the 
 scythe. The lambs of April, rounded into fullness 
 of limb, and gaming day by day their woolly cloak, 
 bite at the nodding clover-heads ; or, with their noses 
 to the ground, they stand in solemn, circular conclave, 
 under the pasture oaks, while the noon sun beats with 
 the lingering passion of July. 
 
 The Bob-o'-Lincolns have come back from their 
 Southern rambles among the rice, all speckled with 
 gray ; and singing no longer as they did in Spring, 
 they quietly feed upon the ripened reeds, that straggle 
 along the borders of the walls. The larks, with their 
 black and yellow breast-plates, and lifted heads, stand 
 tall upon the close-mown meadow ; and at your 
 first motion of approach, spring up, and soar away, 
 and light again ; and with their lifted heads, renew 
 the watch. The quails, in half-grown coveys, saunter 
 hidden, through the underbrush that skirts the wood ; 
 and only when you are close upon them, whir away, 
 and drop scattered under the coverts of the forest. 
 
 The robins, long ago deserting the garden neighbor 
 hood, feed at eventide, in flocks, upon the bloody 
 berries of the sumac ; and the soft-eyed pigeons 
 
AUTUMN. 201 
 
 dispute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter 
 at sun-rise, and gnaw off the full-grown burs of the 
 chesnuts. The lazy black-birds skip after the loitering 
 cow, watchful of the crickets, that her slow steps start 
 to danger. The crows, in companies, caw aloft ; 
 and hang high over the carcase of some slaughtered 
 sheep, lying ragged upon the hills. 
 
 The ash trees grow crimson in color, and lose their 
 summer life in great gouts of blood. The birches touch 
 then* frail spray with yellow ; the chesnuts drop down 
 their leaves in brown, twirling showers. The beeches 
 crimped with the frost, guard their foliage, until each 
 leaf whistles white, in the November gales. The 
 bitter-sweet hangs its bare, and leaf-less tendrils from 
 rock to tree, and sways with the weight of its brazen 
 berries. The sturdy oaks, unyielding to the winds, 
 and to the frosts, struggle long against the approaches 
 of the winter ; and in their struggles, wear faces of 
 orange, of scarlet, of crimson, and of brown; and 
 finally, yielding to swift winds, as youth's pride yields 
 to manly duty, strew the ground with the scattered 
 glories of their summer strength ; and warm, and feed 
 the earth, with the debris of their leafy honors. 
 
 The maple, in the low-lands, turns suddenly its 
 
 silvery greenness into orange scarlet ; and in the 
 
 coming chilliness of the Autumn eventide, seems to 
 
 catch the glories of the sunset ; and to wear them 
 
 9* 
 
202 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 as a sign of God's ;ld promise in Egypt, like a pillar 
 of cloud, by day, and of fire, by night. 
 
 And when all these are done ; and in the paved, 
 and noisy aisles of the city, the ailanthus, with all its 
 greenness gone, lifts up its skeleton fingers to the 
 God of Autumn and of storms, the dog-wood still 
 guards its crown; and the branches which stretched 
 their white canvass in April, now bear up a spire of 
 bloody tongues, that lie against the leafless woods, like 
 a tree on fire. 
 
 Autumn brings to the home, the cheerful glow 
 of 'first fires.' It withdraws the thoughts from the 
 wide and joyous landscape of summer, and fixes them 
 upon those objects which bloom, and rejoice within 
 the household. The old hearth that has rioted the 
 summer through with boughs and blossoms, gives 
 up its withered tenantry. The fire-dogs gleam kindly 
 upon the evening hours ; and the blaze wakens those 
 sweet hopes, and prayers, which cluster around the 
 fireside of home. 
 
 The wanton and the riot of the season gone, are 
 softened in memory, and supply joys to the season 
 to come; just as youth's audacity and pride, give 
 a glow to the recollections of our manhood. 
 
 At mid-day, the air is mild and soft ; a warm, blue 
 smoke lies in the mountain gaps ; the tracery of distant 
 woods upon the upland, hangs in the haze, with 
 
AUTUMN. 203 
 
 a dreamy gorgeousness of coloring. The river runs 
 low with August drought ; and frets upon the pebbly 
 bottom, with a soft, low murmur, as of joyousness 
 gone by. The hemlocks of the river bank, rise in 
 tapering sheens, and tell tales of Spiing. 
 
 As the sun sinks, doubling h'^ disc in the October 
 smoke, the low, south wind creeps over the withered 
 tree-tops, and drips the leaves upon the land. The 
 windows that were wide open at noon, are closed; 
 and a bright blaze to drive off the Eastern dampness, 
 that promises a storm, flashes lightly, and kindly, 
 over the book-shelves and busts, upon my wall. 
 
 As the sun sinks lower, and lower, his red beams 
 die in a sea of great, gray clouds. Slowly, and quietly, 
 they creep up over the night-sky. Venus is shrouded. 
 The Western stars blink faintly, then fade in the 
 mounting vapors. The vane points East of South. 
 The constellations in the Zenith, struggle to be seen ; 
 but presently give over, and hide their shining. 
 
 By late lamp-light, the sky is all gray and dark : the 
 vane has turned two points nearer East. The clouds 
 spit fine rain-drops, that you only feel, with your face 
 turned to the heavens. But soon, they grow thicker 
 
 and heavier ; and, as I sit, watching the blaze, and 
 
 dreaming they patter thick and fast under the 
 
 driving wind, upon the window, like the swift tread 
 of an army of MEN ! 
 
PRIDE OF MANLINESS. 
 
 AND has manhood no dreams ? Does the soul 
 wither at that Rubicon, which lies between the 
 Gallic country of youth, and the Rome of manliness ? 
 Does not fancy still love to cheat the heart, and weave 
 gorgeous tissues to hang upon that horizon, which lies 
 along the years that are to come ? Is happiness so 
 exhausted, that no new forms of it lie in the mines of 
 imagination, for busy hopes to drag up to-day ? 
 
 Where then would live the motives to an upward 
 looking of the eye, and of the soul ; where, the 
 beckonings that bid us ever onward ? 
 
 But these later dreams, are not the dreams of fond 
 boyhood, whose eye sees rarely below the surface of 
 things ; nor yet the delicious hopes of sparkling- 
 
PRIDE OF MANLINESS. 205 
 
 blooded youth : they are dreams of sober trustfulness, 
 of practical results, of hard-wrought world-success, and 
 may be of Love and of Joy. 
 
 Ambitious forays do not rest, where they rested 
 once : hitherto, the balance of youth has given you, in 
 all that you have dreamed of accomplishment, a 
 strong vantage against age : hitherto, in all your 
 estimates, you have been able to multiply them by that 
 access of thought, and of strength, which manhood 
 would bring to you. Now, this is forever ended. 
 
 There is a great meaning in that word manhood. 
 It covers all human growth. It supposes no extensions, 
 or increase; it is integral, fixed, perfect the whole. 
 There is no getting beyond manhood ; it is much 
 to live up to it ; but once reached, you are all that 
 a man was made to be, in this world. 
 
 It is a strong thought that a man is perfected,' 
 so far as strength goes ; that he will never be abler 
 to do his work, than under the very sun which is now 
 shining on him. There is a seriousness, that few call 
 to mind, in the reflection, that whatever you do in this 
 age of manhood, is an unalterable type of your whole 
 bigness. You may qualify particulars of your char 
 acter, by refinements, by special studies, and practice ; 
 but, once a man, and there is no more manliness to 
 be lived for. 
 
 This thought kindles your soul to new, and swifter 
 
206 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 dreams of ambition than belonged to youth. They 
 were toys ; these are weapons. They were fancies ; 
 these are motives. The soul begins to struggle with 
 the dust, the sloth, the circumstance, that beleaguer 
 humanity, and to stagger into the van of action. 
 
 Perception, whose limits lay along a narrow horizon, 
 now tops that horizon, and spreads, and reaches toward 
 the heaven of the Infinite. The mind feels its birth, 
 and struggles toward the great birth-master. The 
 heart glows: its humanities even, yield and crimple 
 under the fierce heat of mental pride. Vows leap 
 upward, and pile rampart upon rampart, to scab 
 all the degrees of human power. 
 
 Are there not times in every man's life when there 
 flashes on him a feeling nay, more, an absolute 
 conviction, that this soul is but a spark belonging 
 to some upper fire ; and that by as much as we 
 draw near by effort, by resolve, by intensity of 
 endeavor, to that upper fire, by so much, we draw 
 nearer to our home, and mate ourselves with angels ? 
 Is there not a ringing desire in many minds to seize 
 hold of what floats above us in the universe of 
 thought, and drag down what shreds we can, to 
 scatter to the world? Is it not belonging to great 
 ness, to catch lightning, from the plains where lightning 
 lives, and curb it, for the handling of men ? 
 
 Resolve is what makes a man manliest ; not puny 
 
PRIDE OP MANLINESS. 207 
 
 resolve, not crude determination, not errant purpose, 
 but that strong, and indefatigable will, which treads 
 down difficulties and danger, as a boy treads down 
 the heaving frost-lands of winter; which kindles his 
 eye and brain, with a proud pulse-beat toward the 
 unattainable. Will makes men giants. It made 
 Napoleon an Emperor of kings, Bacon a fathomer 
 of nature, Byron a tutor of passion, and the martyrs, 
 masters of Death. 
 
 In this age of manhood, you look back upon the 
 dreams of the years that are past ; they glide to the 
 vision in pompous procession ; they seem bloated with 
 infancy. They are without sinew or bone. They 
 do not bear the hard touches of the man's hand. 
 
 It is not long, to be sure, since the summer of life 
 ended with that broken hope ; but the few years that 
 lie between have given long steps upward. The little 
 grief that threw its shadow, and the broken vision 
 that deluded you, have made the passing years long, 
 in such feeling as ripens manhood. Nothing lays 
 the brown of autumn upon the green of summer, so 
 quick as storms. 
 
 There have been changes too in the home scenes ; 
 these graft age upon a man. Nelly your sweet Nelly 
 of childhood, your affectionate sister of youth, has 
 grown out of the old brotherly companionship into the 
 new diginty of a household. 
 
208 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 The fire flames and flashes upon the accustomed 
 hearth. The father's chair is there in the wonted 
 corner; he himself we must call him the old man 
 now, though his head shows few white honors wears 
 a calmness and a trust that light the failing eye. 
 Nelly is not away ; Nelly is a wife ; and the husband 
 yonder, as you may have dreamed, your old friend 
 Frank. 
 
 Her eye is joyous ; her kindness to you is unabated ; 
 her care for you is quicker and wiser. But yet the 
 old unity of the household seems broken ; nor can all 
 her winning attentions bring back the feeling which 
 lived in Spring, under the garret roof. 
 
 The isolation, the unity, the integrity of manhood, 
 make a strong prop for the mind ; but a weak one for the 
 heart. Dignity can but poorly fill up that chasm of 
 the soul, which the home affections once occupied. 
 Life's duties, and honors press hard upon the bosom, 
 that once throbbed at a mother's tones, and that 
 bounded in a mother's smiles. 
 
 In such home, the strength you boast of, seems a 
 weakness ; manhood leans into childish memories, and 
 melts as Autumn frosts yield to a soft, south wind, 
 coming from a Tropic spring. You feel in a desert 
 where you once felt at home in a bounded landscape, 
 that was once the world. 
 
 The tall sycamores have dwindled to paltry trees: 
 
PRIDE OF MANLINESS. 209 
 
 the hills that were so large, and lay at such grand 
 distance to the eye of childhood, are now near by, and 
 have fallen away to mere rolling waves of upland. 
 The garden fence that was so gigantic, is now only 
 a simple paling : its gate that was such a cumbrous 
 affair reminding you of Gaza you might easily lift 
 from its hinges. The lofty dovecote, which seemed to 
 rise like a monument of art, before your boyish vision, 
 is now only a flims TT box upon a tall spar of hemlock. 
 
 The garret even, with its lofty beams, its dark stains, 
 and its obscure corners, where the white hats, and coats 
 hung ghost-like, is but a low loft, darkened by age, 
 hung over with cobwebs, dimly lighted with foul 
 windows, its romping Charlie, its glee, its swing, 
 its joy, its mystery, all gone forever. 
 
 The old gallipots, and retorts are not anywhere to he 
 seen in the second story window of the brick school. 
 Dr. Bidlow is no more ! The trees that seemed so 
 large, the gymnastic feats that were so extra .ordinary, 
 the boy that made a snapper of his handkerchief, 
 have all lost their greatness, and their dread. Even 
 the springy usher, who dressed his hair with the ferule, 
 has become the middle-aged father of five curly-headed 
 boys, and has entered upon what once seemed the 
 gigantic commerce of * stationery and account books.' 
 
 The marvellous labyrinth of closets, at the old 
 mansion where you once paid a visit in a coach is 
 
210 DREAM- LIFE. 
 
 all dissipated. They have turned out to be the meres* 
 cupboards in the wall. Nat, who had travelled, and 
 seen London, is by no means so surprising a fellow to 
 your manhood, as he was to the boy. He has grown 
 spare, and wears spectacles. He is not so famous as he 
 was. You would hardly think of consulting him now 
 about your marriage ; or even about the price of goats 
 upon London bridge. 
 
 As for Jenny your first, fond flame ! lively, 
 romantic, black-eyed Jenny, the reader of Thaddeus 
 of Warsaw, who sighed and wore blue ribbons on her 
 bonnet, who wrote love notes, who talked so tenderly 
 of broken hearts, who used a glass seal with a cupid 
 and a dart, dear Jenny, she is now the plump, and 
 thriving wife of the apothecary of the town ! She 
 sweeps out every morning at seven, the little entiy of 
 the apothecary's house : she buys a * joint ' twice a 
 week from the butcher, and is particular to have the 
 * knuckle ' thrown in, for soups : she wears a sky blue 
 calico gown, and dresses her hair in three little flat 
 quirls on either side of her head each one pierced 
 through with a two-pronged hair-pin. 
 
 She does :ot read Thaddeus of Warsaw, now. 
 
n. 
 
 MAN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 FEW persons live through, the first periods of 
 manhood, without strong temptations to be 
 counted ' men of the world.' The idea looms grandly 
 among those vanities, that hedge a man's approach to 
 maturity. 
 
 Clarence is in good training for the acceptance of 
 this idea. The broken hope which clouded his closing 
 youth, shoots over its influence upon the dawn of 
 manhood. Mortified pride had taught as it always 
 teaches not caution only, but doubt, distrust, indiffer 
 ence. A new pride grows up on the ruins of the old, 
 weak, and vain pride of youth. Then, it was a pride 
 of learning, or of affection ; now, it is a pride of indif 
 ference. Then, the world proved bleak, and cold, as 
 
212 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 contrasted with his shining dreams ; and now, he 
 accepts the proof, and wins from it what he can. 
 
 The man of the world puts on the method, and 
 measure of the world : he studies its humors. He 
 gives up the boyish notion of a sincerity among men, 
 like that of youth : he lives, to seem. He conquers 
 such annoyances as the world may thrust upon him, in 
 the shape of grief, or losses, like a practised athlete of 
 the ring. He studies moral sparring. 
 
 With somewhat of this strange vanity growing on 
 you, you do not suffer the heart to wake into life, except 
 in such fanciful dreams as tempt you back to the sunny 
 slopes of childhood. 
 
 In this mood, you fall in with Dalton, who has just 
 returned from a year passed in the French Capital. 
 There is an easy suavity, and graceful indifference in his 
 manner that chimes admirably with your humor. Ho 
 is gracious, without needing to be kind. He is a friend, 
 without any challenge or proffer of sincerity. He is 
 an adept in those world tactics, which match 
 him with all men, but which link him to none. He has 
 made it his art to be desired, and admired, but rarely to 
 be trusted. You could not have a better teacher. 
 
 Under such instruction, you become disgusted for the 
 time, with any effort, or pulse of affection, which does 
 not have immediate and practical bearing upon that 
 success in life, by which you measure your hopes. The 
 
MAN OF THE WORLD. 213 
 
 dreams of love, of romantic adventure, of placid joy, 
 have all gone out, with the fantastic images, to which 
 your passionate youth had joined them. The world is 
 now regarded as a tournament, where the gladiator- 
 ship of life is to be exhibited at your best endeavor. 
 Its honors and joy, lie in a brilliant pennant, and a 
 plaudit. 
 
 Dalton is learned in those arts which make of action 
 not a duty, but a conquest ; and sense of duty has 
 expired in you, with those romantic hopes, to which 
 you bound it, not as much through sympathy, as 
 ignorance. It is a cold, and a bitterly selfish work that 
 lies before you, to be covered over with such borrowed 
 show of smiles, as men call affability. The heart wears 
 a stout, brazen screen ; its inclinations grow to the 
 habit of your ambitious projects. 
 
 In such mood come swift dreams of wealth ; not 
 of mere accumulation, but of the splendor, and parade, 
 which in our western world are, alas, its chiefest attrac 
 tions. You grow observant of markets, and estimate 
 per centages. You fondle some speculation in your 
 thought, until it grows into a gigantic scheme of profit ; 
 and if the venture prove successful, you follow the tide 
 tremulously, until some sudden reverse throws you 
 back upon the resources of your professional employ. 
 
 But again, as you see this and that one wearing the 
 blazonry which wealth wins, and which the man of the 
 
214 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 world is sure to covet, your weak soul glows again 
 with the impassioned desire ; and you hunger, with 
 brute appetite, and bestial eye for riches. You see 
 the mania around you ; and it is relieved of odium, by 
 the community of error. You consult some gray old 
 veteran in the war of gold, scarred with wounds, and 
 crowned with honors ; and watch eagerly for the words 
 and the ways, which have won him wealth. 
 
 Your fingers tingle with mad expectancies ; your 
 eyes roam lost in estimates. Your note-book shows 
 long lines of figures. Your reading of the news centres 
 in the stock list. Your brow grows cramped with the 
 fever of anxiety. Through whole church hours, your 
 dreams range over the shadowy transactions of the 
 week or the month to come. 
 
 Even with old religious habit clinging fast to your 
 soul, you dream now, only of nice conformity, comfort 
 able faith, high respectability ; there lies very little in 
 you of that noble consciousness of Duty performed, 
 of living up to the Life that is in you, of grasping 
 boldly, and stoutly, at those chains of Love which the 
 Infinite Power has lowered to our reach. You do not 
 dream of being, but of seeming. You spill the real 
 essence, and clutch at the vial which has only a label 
 of Truth. Great and holy thoughts of the Future, 
 shadowy, yet bold conceptions of the Infinite, float past 
 you dimly, and your hold is never strong enough to 
 
MAN OF THE WORLD. 215 
 
 grapple them to you. They fly, like eagles, too near 
 the sun ; and there lies game beJow, for your vulture 
 beak to feed upon. 
 
 [Great thoughts belong, only and truly, to him 
 whose mind can hold them. No matter who first puts 
 them in words ; if they come to a soul, and fill it, they 
 belong to it ; whether they floated on the voice of 
 others, or on the wings of silence, and the night.] 
 
 To be up with the fashion of the time, to be igno 
 rant of plain things and people, and to be knowing in 
 brilliancies, is a kind of Pelhamism, that is very apt to 
 overtake one in the first blush of manhood. To hold 
 a fair place in the after-dinner table-talk, to meet dis 
 tinction as a familiarity, to wear salon honors with 
 aplomb, to know affection so far as to wield it into 
 grace of language, are all splendid achievements with a 
 man of the world. Instruction is caught, without ask 
 ing it ; and no ignorance so shames, as ignorance of 
 those forms, by which natural impulse is subdued to 
 the tone of civilian habit. You conceal what tells of 
 the man ; and cover it with what smacks of the roue. 
 
 Perhaps, under such training, and with a slight 
 memory of early mortification to point your spirit, you 
 affect those gallantries of heart and action, which the 
 world calls flirtation. You may study brilliancies of 
 speech, to wrap their net around those susceptible 
 hearts, whose habit is too naive by nature, to wear the 
 
216 DRKAM LIFE. 
 
 leaden covering of custom. You win approaches by 
 artful counterfeit of earnestness ; and dash away any 
 naivete of confidence, with some brave sophism of the 
 world. A doubt or a distrust, piques your pride, and 
 makes attentions wear a humility that wins anew. An 
 indifference piques you more, and throws into your art 
 a counter indifference, lit up by bold flashes of feel 
 ing, sparkling with careless brilliancies, and crowned 
 with a triumph of neglect. 
 
 It is curious how ingeniously a man's vanity will 
 
 frame apologies for such action. It is pleasant to 
 
 give pleasure ; you like to see a joyous sparkle of the 
 eye, whether lit up by your presence, or by some buoy 
 ant fancy. It is a beguiling task to weave words into 
 some soft, meLodious flow, that shall keep the ear, and 
 kindle the eye ; and to strew it over with half-hidden 
 praises, so deftly couched in double terms, that their 
 aroma shall only come to the heart hours afterward ; 
 and seem to be the merest accidents of truth. It is 
 a happy art to make such subdued show of emotion, 
 as seems to struggle with pride ; and to flush the eye 
 with a moisture, of which you seem ashamed, and yet 
 are proud. It is a pretty practice, to throw an earnest 
 ness into look and gesture, that shall seem full of plead 
 ing, and yet ask nothing ! 
 
 And yet it is hard to admire greatly the reputation 
 of that man, who builds his triumphs upon womanly 
 
MAN OF THE WORLD. 217 
 
 weakness : that distinction is not over enduring, whose 
 chiefest merit springs out of the delusions of a too 
 trustful heart. The man who wins it, wins only a 
 poor sort of womanly distinction. Without power to 
 cope with men, he triumphs over the weakness of the 
 other sex, only by hypocrisy. He wears none of the 
 armor of Romans ; and he parleys with Punic faith. 
 
 Yet, even now, there is a lurking goodness 
 
 in you, that traces its beginnings to the old garret 
 home ; there is an air in the harvest heats, that whis 
 pers of the bloom of spring. 
 
 And over your brilliant career as man of the world, 
 however lit up by a morbid vanity, or galvanized by a 
 lascivious passion, there will come at times, the con 
 sciousness of a better heart struggling beneath your 
 cankered action, like the low Vesuvian fire, reeking 
 vainly under rough beds of tufa, and scoriated lava. 
 And as you smile in loge, or salon, with daring smiles ; 
 or press with villain fondness, the hand of those lady 
 votaries of the same god you serve, there will gleam 
 upon you, over the waste of rolling years, a memory 
 that quickens again the nobler, and bolder instincts of 
 the heart. 
 
 Childish recollections, with their purity, and earnest 
 ness, a sister's love, a mother's solicitude, will flood 
 your soul once more with a gushing sensibility that 
 
 yearns for enjoyment. And the consciousness of some 
 10 
 
218 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 lingering nobility of affection, that can only grow great, 
 in mating itself with nobility of heart, will sweep off 
 your puny triumphs, your Platonic friendships, your 
 dashing coquetries, like the foul smoke of a city, be 
 fore a fresh breeze of the country autumn. 
 
m. 
 
 MANLY HOPE. 
 
 YOU are at home again ; not your own home, 
 that is gone; but at the home of Nelly, and 
 of Frank. The city heats of summer drive you to the 
 country. You ramble, with a little kindling of old 
 desires and memories, over the hill sides that once 
 bounded your boyish vision. Here, you netted the 
 wild rabbits, as they came out at dusk, to feed ; there, 
 upon that tall chesnut, you cruelly maimed your first 
 captive squirrel. The old maples are even now scarred 
 with the rude cuts you gave them, in sappy March. 
 
 You sit down upon some height, overlooking the 
 valley where you were born; you trace the faint, 
 silvery line of river ; you detect by the leaning elm, 
 your old bathing place upon the Saturdays of Summer. 
 
220 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 Your eye dwells upon some patches of pasture wood, 
 which were famous for their nuts. Your rambling, 
 and saddened vision roams over the houses ; it traces 
 the familiar chimney-stacks; it searches out the low- 
 l}ing cottages ; it dwells upon the gray roof, sleeping 
 yonder under the sycamores. 
 
 Tears swell in your eye, as you gaze; you cannot 
 tell whence, or why they come. Yet they are tears 
 eloquent of feeling. They speak of brother children 
 of boyish glee, of the flush of young health, of a 
 mother's devotion, of the home affections, of the 
 vanities of life, of the wasting years, of the Death 
 that must shroud what friends remain, as it has 
 shrouded what friends have gone, and of that GREAT 
 HOPE, beaming on your sered manhood dimly, from 
 the upper world. 
 
 Your wealth suffices for all the luxuries of life : 
 there is no fear of coming want ; health beats strong 
 in your veins ; you have learned to hold a place in the 
 world, with a man's strength, and a man's confidence. 
 And yet in the view of those sweet scenes which 
 belonged to early days, when neither strength, con 
 fidence, nor wealth were yours, days never to come 
 again, a shade of melancholy broods upon your 
 spirit, and covers with its veil all that fierce pride 
 which your worldly wisdom has wrought. 
 
 You visit again, with Frank, the country homestead 
 
MANLY HOPE. 221 
 
 of his grandfather ; he is dead ; but the old lady still 
 lives ; and blind Fanny, now drawing toward woman 
 hood, weal's yet through her darkened life, the same 
 air of placid content, and of sweet trustfulness in 
 Heaven. The boys whom you astounded with your 
 stories of books are gone, building up now with steady 
 industry the queen cities of our new Western land. The 
 old clergyman is gone from the desk, and from under 
 his sounding board ; he sleeps beneath a brown stone 
 slab in the church yard. The stout deacon is dead ; 
 his wig and his wickedness rest together. The tall 
 chorister sings yet: but they have now a bass-viol 
 handled by a new schoolmaster, in place of his tuning 
 fork; and the years have sown feeble quavers in his 
 voice. 
 
 Once more you meet at the home of Nelly, the 
 blue eyed Madge. The sixpence is all forgotten ; you 
 cannot tell where your half of it is gone. Yet she is 
 beautiful just budding into the full ripeness of woman 
 hood. Her eyes have a quiet, still joy, and hope 
 beaming in them, like angel's looks. Her motions have 
 a native grace, and freedom, that no culture can 
 bestow. Her words have a gentle earnestness and 
 honesty, that could never nurture guile. 
 
 You had thought, after your gay experiences of the 
 world, to meet her with a kind condescension, as an 
 old friend of Nelly's. But there is that in her eye, 
 
222 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 which forbids all thought of condescension. There is 
 that in her air, which tells of a high womanly dignity, 
 which can only be met on equal ground. Your pride 
 is piqued. She has known she must know your 
 history ; but it does not tame her. There is no marked 
 and submissive appreciation of your gifts, as a man of 
 the world. 
 
 She meets your happiest compliments with a very 
 easy indifference ; she receives your elegant civilities 
 with a veiy assured brow. She neither courts your 
 society, nor avoids it. She does not seek to provoke 
 any special attention. And only when your old-self 
 glows in some casual kindness to Nelly, does her look 
 beam with a flush of sympathy. 
 
 This look touches you. It makes you ponder on 
 the noble heart that lives in Madge. It makes you 
 wish it were yours. But that is gone. The fervor 
 and the honesty of a glowing youth, is swallowed up 
 in the flash and splendor of the world. A half-regret 
 chases over you at night-fall, when solitude pierces you 
 with the swift dart of gone-by memories. But at 
 morning, the regret dies, in the glitter of ambitious 
 purposes. 
 
 The summer months linger; and still you linger 
 with them. Madge is often with Nelly ; and Madge 
 is never less than Madge. You venture to point your 
 attentions with a little more fervor ; but she meets the 
 
MANLY HOPE. 223 
 
 fervor with no glow. She knows too well the habit 
 of your life. 
 
 Strange feelings come over you ; feelings like half- 
 forgotten memories musical dreamy doubtful. You 
 have seen a hundred faces more brilliant than that 
 of Madge ; you have pressed a hundred jewelled hands 
 that have returned a half-pressure to yours. You do 
 not exactly admire; to love, you have forgotten; 
 you only linger ! 
 
 It is a soft autumn evening, and the harvest moon is 
 red and round over the eastern skirt of woods. You 
 are attending Madge to that little cottage home, where 
 lives that gentle and doting mother, who in^the midst 
 of comparative poverty, cherishes that refined delicacy 
 which never comes to a child, but by inheritance. 
 
 Madge has been passing the day with Nelly. Some 
 thing it may be the soft autumn air wafting toward 
 you the freshness of young days, moves you to speak, 
 as you have not ventured to speak, as your vanity 
 has not allowed you to speak before. 
 
 "You remember, Madge, (you have guarded this 
 sole token of boyish intimacy) our split sixpence ?" 
 
 " Perfectly :" it is a short word to speak, and there 
 is no tremor in her tone not the slightest. 
 
 " You have it yet T 
 
224 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 " I dare say, I have it somewhere :" no tremor now : 
 she is very composed. 
 
 " That was a happy time :" very great emphasis on 
 the word happy. 
 
 " Very happy :" no emphasis anywhere. 
 
 " I sometimes wish I might live it over again." 
 
 " Yes ?" inquiringly. 
 
 " There are after all no pleasures in the world like 
 
 " No ?" inquiringly again. 
 
 You thought you had learned to have language at 
 command : you never thought, after so many years 
 schooling of the world, that your pliant tongue would 
 play you truant. Yet now, you are silent. 
 
 The moon steals silvery into the light flakes of 
 cloud, and the air is soft as May. The cottage is in 
 sight. Again you risk utterance : 
 
 " You must live very happily here." 
 
 " I have very kind friends :" the very, is emphasized. 
 
 " I am sure Nelly loves you very much." 
 
 " Oh, I believe it !" with great earnestness. 
 
 You are at the cottage door : 
 
 " Good night, Maggie," very feelingly. 
 
 " Good night, Clarence," very kindly ; and she 
 draws her hand coyly, and half tremulously, from your 
 somewhat fevered grasp. 
 
 You stroll away dreamily, watching the moon, 
 
MANLY HOPE. 225 
 
 running over your fragmentary life; half moody, 
 half pleased, half hopeful. 
 
 You come back stealthily, and with a heart throbbing 
 with a certain wild sense of shame, to watch the light 
 gleaming in the cottage. You linger in the shadows 
 of the trees, until you catch a glimpse of her figure, 
 gliding past the window. You bear the image home 
 with you. You are silent on your return. You retire 
 early ; but you do not sleep early. 
 
 If you were only as you were : if it were not 
 
 too late ! If Madge could only love you, as you know 
 she will, and must love one manly heart, there would be 
 a world of joy opening before you. 
 
 You draw out Nelly to speak of Madge : Nelly is 
 very prudent. "Madge is a dear girl," she says. 
 Does Nelly even distrust you ? It is a sad thing to be 
 too much a man of the world. 
 
 You go back again to noisy, ambitious life : you try 
 to drown old memories in its blaze, and its vanities. 
 Your lot seems cast, beyond all change ; and you task 
 yourself with its noisy fulfilment. But amid the 
 silence, and the toil of your office hours, a strange 
 desire broods over your spirit ; a desire for more of 
 manliness, that manliness which feels itself a protector 
 of loving, and trustful innocence. 
 
 You look around upon the faces in which you have 
 smiled unmeaning smiles: there is nothing there to 
 10* 
 
226 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 feed your dawning desires. You meet with those ready 
 to court you by flattering your vanity by retailing the 
 praises of what you may do well, by odious familiarity, 
 by brazen proffer of friendship ; but you see in it 
 only the emptiness, and the vanity, which you have 
 studied to enjoy. 
 
 Sickness comes over you, and binds you for weary 
 days and nights ; in which life hovers doubtfully, and 
 the lips babble secrets that you cherish. It is aston 
 ishing how disease clips a man from the artificialities of 
 the world. Lymg lonely upon his bed, moaning, 
 writhing, suffering, his soul joins on to the universe of 
 souls by only natural bonds. The factitious ties of 
 wealth, of place, of reputation, vanish from his bleared 
 eyes ; and the earnest heart, deep under all, craves 
 only heartines. 
 
 The old yearning of the office silence comes back : 
 not with the proud wish only of being a protector, but 
 of being protected. And whatever may be the trust 
 in that beneficent Power, who * chasteneth whom he 
 loveth,' there is yet an earnest, human leaning toward 
 some one, whose love most, and whose duty least, 
 would call her to your side ; whose soft hands would 
 cool the fever of yours, whose step would wake a 
 throb of joy, whose voice would tie you to life, and 
 whose presence would make the worst of Death an 
 Adieu! 
 
MANLY HOPE. 22*7 
 
 As you gain strength once more, you go back to 
 Nelly's home. Her kindness does not falter ; every 
 care and attention belong to you there. Again your 
 eye rests upon that figure of Madge, and upon her face, 
 wearing an even gentler expression, as she sees you 
 sitting pale and feeble by the old hearth-stone. She 
 brings flowers for Nelly : you beg Nelly to place 
 them upon the little table at your side. It is as yet 
 the only taste of the country that you can enjoy. You 
 love those flowers. 
 
 After a time you grow strong, and walk in the fields. 
 You linger until nightfall. You pass by the cottage 
 where Madge lives. It is your pleasantest walk. The 
 trees are greenest in that direction ; the shadows are 
 softest ; the flowers are thickest. 
 
 It is strange this feeling in you. It is not the feel 
 ing you had for Laura Dalton. It does not even 
 remind of that. That was an impulse; but this is 
 growth. That was strong ; but this is strength. You 
 catch sight of her little notes to Nelly ; you read them 
 over and over ; you treasure them ; you learn them by 
 heart. There is something in the veiy writing, that 
 touches you. 
 
 You bid her adieu with tones of kindness that trem 
 ble; and that meet a half-trembling tone in reply. 
 She is very good. 
 
 If it were not too late I 
 
IV. 
 
 MANLY LOVE. 
 
 AND shall pride yielc 
 Pride! i 
 
 ND shall pride yield at length ? 
 
 -and what has love to do with 
 pride ? Let us see how it is. 
 
 Madge is poor ; she is humble. You are rich ; you 
 are a man of the world ; you are met respectfully by 
 the veterans of fashion ; you have gained perhaps a 
 kind of brilliancy of position. 
 
 Would it then be a condescension to love Madge ? 
 Dare you ask yourself such a question ? Do you not 
 know, in spite of your worldliness, that the man or 
 the woman who condescends to love, never loves in ear 
 nest? 
 
 But again, Madge is possessed of a purity, a delicacy, 
 and a dignity that lift her far above you, that make you 
 
MANLY LOVE. 229 
 
 feel your weakness, and your unworthiness ; and it is 
 the deep, and the mortifying sense of this unworthiness, 
 that makes you bolster yourself upon your pride. You 
 know that you do yourself honor, in loving such grace 
 and goodness ; you know that you would be honored 
 tenfold more than you deserve, in being loved by so 
 much grace, and goodness. 
 
 It scarce seems to you possible ; it is a joy too great 
 to be hoped for : and in the doubt of its attainment, 
 your old, worldly-vanity comes in, and tells you to 
 beware ; and to live on, in the splendor of your dissipa 
 tion, and in the lusts of your selfish habit. Yet still, 
 underneath all, there is a deep, low, heart-voice, 
 quickened from above, which assures you that you 
 are capable of better things ; that you are not wholly 
 lost ; that a mine of unstarted tenderness still lies 
 smouldering in your soul. 
 
 And with this sense quickening your better nature, 
 you venture the wealth of your whole heart-life, upon 
 the hope that now blazes on your path. 
 
 You are seated at your desk, working with such 
 
 zeal of labor, as your ambitious projects never could 
 command. It is a letter to Margaret Boyne, that so 
 tasks your love, and makes the veins upon your fore 
 head swell with the earnestness of the employ. 
 
 " DEAR MADGE, May I not call you thus, if 
 
230 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 only in memory of our childish affections ; and might 
 I dare to hope that a riper affection which your cha 
 racter has awakened, may permit me to call you thus, 
 always ? 
 
 " If I have not ventured to speak, dear Madge, will 
 you not believe that the consciousness of my own ill- 
 desert has tied my tongue ; will you not, at least, give 
 me credit for a little remaining modesty of heart ? You 
 know rny life, and you know my character what a 
 sad jumble of errors, and of misfortunes have belonged 
 to each. You know the careless, and the vain purposes 
 which have made me recreant to the better nature, 
 which belonged to that sunny childhood, when we 
 lived, and grew up together. And will you not be 
 lieve me when I say, that your grace of character, and 
 kindness of heart, have drawn me back from the follies 
 in which I lived ; and quickened new desires, which I 
 thought to be wholly dead ? Can I indeed hope that 
 you will overlook all that has gained your secret re 
 proaches ; and confide in a heart, which is made con 
 scious of better things, by the love you have in 
 spired ? 
 
 " Ah, Madge, it is not with a vain show of words, 
 or with any counterfeit of feeling, that I write now ; 
 you know it is not; you know that my heart is 
 leaning toward you, with the freshness of its noblest 
 instincts ; you know that I love you ! 
 
MANLY LOVE. 231 
 
 " Can I, dare I hope, that it is not spoken in vain ? 
 I had thought in my pride, never to make such avowal, 
 never again to sue for affection ; but your gentle 
 ness, your modesty, your virtues of life and heart, 
 have conquered me. I am sure you will treat me 
 with the generosity of a victor. 
 
 " You know my weaknesses ; I would not conceal 
 from you a single one, even to win you. I can offer 
 nothing to you, which will bear comparison in value, 
 with what is yours to bestow. I can only offer this 
 feeble hand of mine to guard you; and this poor 
 heart to love you ! 
 
 "Am I rash? Am I extravagant, in word, or in 
 hope? Forgive it then, dear Madge, for the sake 
 of our old childish affection ; and believe me, when I 
 say, that what is here written, is written honestly, and 
 tearfully. Adieu." 
 
 It is with no fervor of boyish passion, that you fold 
 this letter: it is with the trembling hand of eager, 
 and earnest manhood. They tell you that man is 
 not capable of love ; so, the September sun is not 
 capable of warmth. It may not indeed be so fierce 
 as that of July ; but it is steadier. It does not force 
 great flaunting leaves into breadth and succulence; 
 but it matures whole harvests of plenty. 
 
 There is a deep and earnest soul pervading the 
 
232 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 reply of Madge that makes it sacred; it is full of 
 delicacy, and full of hope. Yet it is not final. Her 
 heart lies entrenched within the ramparts of Duty 
 and of Devotion. It is a citadel of strength, in the 
 middle of the city of her affections. To win the way 
 to it, there must be not only earnestness of love, but 
 earnestness of life. 
 
 Weeks roll by; and other letters pass and are 
 answered, a glow of warmth beaming on either 
 side. 
 
 You are again at the home of Nelly ; she is very 
 joyous ; she is the confident of Madge. Nelly feels, 
 that with all your errors, you have enough inner good 
 ness of heart to make Madge happy ; and she feels 
 doubly that Madge has such excess of goodness as 
 will cover your heart with joy. Yet she tells you 
 very little. She will give you no full assurance of the 
 love of Madge ; she leaves that for yourself to win. 
 
 She will even tease you in her pleasant way, until 
 hope almost changes to despair ; and your brow grows 
 pale with the dread that even now, your unworthiness 
 may condemn you. 
 
 It is summer weather ; and you have been walking 
 over the hills of home with Madge, and Nelly. Nelly 
 has found some excuse to leave you, glancing at you 
 most teazingly, as she hurries away. 
 
 You are left sitting with Madge, upon a bank tufted 
 
MANLY LOVE. 233 
 
 with blue violets. You have been talking of the days 
 of childhood, and some word has called up the old 
 chain of boyish feeling, and joined it to your new 
 hope. 
 
 What you would say, crowds too fast for utterance ; 
 and you abandon it. But you take from your pocket 
 that little, broken bit of sixpence, which you have 
 found after long search, and without a word, but 
 with a look that tells your inmost thought, you lay 
 it in the half-opened hand of Madge. 
 
 She looks at you, with a slight suffusion of color, 
 seems to hesitate a moment, raises her other hand, 
 and draws from her bosom, by a bit of blue ribbon, a 
 little locket. She touches a spring, and there falls 
 beside your relique, another, that had once belonged 
 to it. 
 
 Hope glows now like the sun. 
 
 " And you have worn this, Maggie ?" 
 
 " Dear Madge !" 
 
 " Dear Clarence !" 
 
 And you pass your arm now, unchecked, around 
 
 that yielding, graceful figure; and fold her to your 
 bosom, with the swift, and blessed assurance, that your 
 fullest, and noblest dream of love, is won. 
 
V. 
 
 CHEER AND CHILDRUK 
 
 WHAT a glow there is to the swi! What 
 warmth yet it does not oppress you: what 
 coolness yet it is not too cool. The birds sing 
 sweetly ; you catch yourself watching to see what new 
 songsters they can be : they are only the old robins 
 and thrushes; yet what a new melody is in their 
 throats ! 
 
 The clouds hang gorgeous shapes upon the sky, 
 shapes they could hardly ever have fashioned before. 
 The grass was never so green, the butter-cups were 
 never so plenty; there was never such a life in the 
 leaves. It seems as if the joyousness in you, gave a 
 throb to nature, that made every green thing buoyant. 
 Faces too are changed : men look pleasantly : chil- 
 
CHEER AND CHILDREN. 235 
 
 dren are all charming children : even babies look ten 
 der and lovable. The street beggar at your door is 
 suddenly grown into a Belisarius, and is one of the 
 most deserving heroes of modern times. Your mind 
 is in a continued ferment ; you glide through your toil 
 dashing out sparkles of passion like a ship in the 
 sea. No difficulty daunts you : there is a kind of buoy 
 ancy in your soul, that rocks over danger or doubt, as 
 sea-waves heave calmly and smoothly, over sunken 
 rocks. 
 
 You grow unusually amiable and kind ; you are 
 earnest in your search of friends ; you shake hands 
 with your office boy, as if he were your second cousin. 
 You joke cheerfully with the stout washerwoman ; and 
 give her a shilling over-change, and insist upon her 
 keeping it ; and grow quite merry at the recollection 
 of it. You tap your hackman on the shoulder very 
 familiarly, and tell him he is a capital fellow ; and 
 don't allow him to whip his horses, except when driv 
 ing to the post-office. You even ask him to take a 
 glass of beer with you, upon some chilly evening. You 
 drink to the health of his wife. He says he has no 
 wife : whereupon you think him a very miserable 
 man ; and give him a dollar, by way of consolation. 
 
 You think all the editorials in the morning papers 
 are remarkably well-written, whether upon your side, 
 or upon the other. You think the stock-market has a 
 
236 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 very cheerful look, even with Erie of which you arc 
 a large holder down to seventy-five. You wonder 
 why you never admired Mrs. Hemans before, or Stod- 
 dard, or any of the rest. 
 
 You give a pleasant twirl to your fingers, as you 
 saunter along the street ; and say but not so loud as 
 to be overheard " She is mine she is mine !" 
 
 You wonder if Frank ever loved Nelly, one half as 
 well as you love Madge ? You feel quite sure he never 
 did. You can hardly conceive how it is, that Madge 
 has not been seized before now, by scores of enamored 
 men, and borne off, like the Sabine women in Romish 
 history. You chuckle over your future, like a boy who 
 has found a guinea, in groping for sixpences. You read 
 over the marriage service, thinking of the time when 
 you will take her hand, and slip the ring upon her fin 
 ger ; and repeat after the clergyman ' for richer for 
 poorer ; for better for worse.' A great deal of 
 * worse ' there will be about it, you think ! 
 
 Through all, your heart cleaves to that sweet image of 
 the beloved Madge, as light cleaves to day. The weeks 
 leap with a bound ; and the month only grow long, 
 when you approach that day which is to make her yours. 
 There are no flowers rare enough to make bouquets for 
 her ; diamonds are too dim for her to wear ; pearls are 
 tame. 
 
 And after marriage, the weeks are even shorter 
 
CHEER AND CHILDREN. 237 
 
 than before : you wonder why on earth all the single men 
 in the world, do not rush tumultuously to the Altar ; you 
 look upon them all, as a travelled man will look upon 
 some conceited Dutch boor, who has never been be 
 yond the limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, 
 on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers ; and 
 look upon their wives ugly as they may be as, bet 
 ter than none. 
 
 You blush a little, at first telling your butcher what 
 4 your wife ' would like ; you bargain with the grocer 
 for sugars and teas, and wonder if he knows that you 
 are a married man ? You practise your new way of 
 talk upon your office boy ; you tell him that ' your 
 wife' expects you home to dinner ; and are astonished 
 that he does not stare to hear you say it. 
 
 You wonder if the people in the omnibus know, 
 that Madge and you are just married ; and if the driver 
 knows, that the shilling you hand to him, is for ' self 
 and wife?' You wonder if any body was ever so 
 happy before, or ever will be so happy again ? 
 
 You enter your name upon the hotel books as 
 
 1 Clarence and Lady '; and come back to look at 
 
 it, wondering if any body else has noticed it, and 
 thinking that it looks remarkably well. You cannot 
 help thinking that eveiy third man you meet in the 
 hall, wishes he possessed your wife ; nor do you think 
 it very sinful in him, to wish it. You fear it is placing 
 
238 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 temptation in the way of covetous men, to put Madge's 
 little gaiters outside the chamber door, at night. 
 
 Your home, when it is entered, is just what it should 
 be : quiet, small, with everything she wishes, and 
 nothing more than she wishes. The sun strikes it 
 in the happiest possible way : the piano is the 
 sweetest-toned in the world the library is stocked to 
 a charm ; and Madge, thai blessed wife, is there, 
 adorning, and giving life to it all. To think, even, of 
 her possible death, is a suffering you class with the 
 infernal tortures of the Inquisition. You grow twain 
 of heart, and of purpose. Smiles seem made for 
 marriage ; and you wonder how you ever wore them 
 before. 
 
 So, a year and more wears off, of mingled home-life, 
 visiting, and travel. A new hope and joy lightens 
 home : there is a child there. 
 
 What a joy to be a father ! What new 
 
 emotions crowd the eye with tears, and make the hand 
 tremble ! What a benevolence radiates from you 
 toward the nurse, toward the physician toward 
 everybody ! What a holiness, and sanctity of love 
 grows upon your old devotion to that wife of your 
 bosom, the mother of your child ! 
 
 The excess of joy seems almost to blur the stories of 
 happiness which attach to heaven. You are now 
 
CHEER AND CHILDREN. 239 
 
 joined, as you were never joined before, to the great 
 family of man. Your name and blood will live after 
 you; nor do you once think (what father can?) but 
 that it wilMive honorably and well. 
 
 With what a new air you walk the streets ! With 
 what a triumph, you speak in you letter to Nelly, 
 of ' your family !' Who, that has not felt it, knows 
 what it is to be ' a man of family !' 
 
 How weak now, seem all the imaginations of your 
 single life : what bare, dry skeletons of the reality, they 
 furnished ! You pity the poor fellows who have no 
 wives or children, from your soul : you count their 
 smiles, as empty smiles, put on to cover the lack that is 
 in them. There is a free-masonry among fathers, that 
 they know nothing of. You compassionate them 
 deeply : you think them worthy objects of some 
 charitable association : you would cheerfully buy tracts 
 for them, if they would but read them, tracts on 
 marriage and children. 
 
 And then ' the boy' such a boy ! 
 
 There was a time, when you thought all babies very 
 
 much alike : alike ? Is your boy like anything, 
 
 except the wonderful fellow that he is ? Was there 
 ever a baby seen, or even read of, like that baby ! 
 
 Look at him : pick him up in his long, white 
 
 gown : he may have an excess of colour, but such 
 a pretty colour ! he is a little polity about the mouth 
 
240 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 but such a mouth ! His hair is a little scant, and 
 he is rather wandering in the eye ; but, Good 
 Heavens, what an eye ! 
 
 There was a time, when you thought it veiy absurd 
 for fathers to talk about their children ; but it does net 
 seem at all absurd now. You think, on the contrary, 
 that your old friends, who used to sup with you at the 
 club, would be delighted to know how your baby is 
 getting on, and how much be measures around the calf 
 of the leg ! iFthey pay you a visit, you are quite sure 
 they are in an agony to see Frank ; and you hold the 
 little squirming fellow in your arms, half conscience- 
 smitten, for provoking them to such envy, as they must 
 be suffering. You make a settlement upon the boy 
 with a chuckle, as if you were treating yourself to a 
 mint-julep, instead of conveying away a few thousands 
 of seven per cents. 
 
 Then the boy developes, astonishingly. What 
 
 a head what a foot, what a voice ! And ho 
 is so quiet withal ; never known to cry, except 
 under such provocation as would draw tears from 
 a heart of adamant ; in short, for the first six 
 months, he is never anything, but gentle, patient, 
 earnest, loving, intellectual, and magnanimous. You 
 are half afraid that some of the physicians will be 
 reporting the case, as one of the most remarkable 
 
CHEER AND CHILDREN. 241 
 
 instances of perfect moral and physical development, on 
 record. 
 
 But the years roll on, in the which your extravagant 
 fancies, die into the earnest maturity of a father's love. 
 You struggle gaily with the cares that life brings to 
 your door. You feel the strength of three beings in 
 your single arm ; and feel your heart warming toward 
 God and man, with the add^d warmth of two other 
 loving, and trustful beings. 
 
 How eagerly you watch the first tottering step of 
 that boy : how you riot in the joy and pride, that swell 
 in that mother's eyes, as they follow his feeble, stagger 
 ing motions ! Can God bless his creatu-33, more than 
 he has blessed that dear Madge, and you ? Has Heaven 
 even richer joys, than live in that homo of yours ? 
 
 By and by, he speaks ; and minds tie together by 
 language, as the hearts have long tied by looks. He 
 wanders with you, feebly, and with slow, wondering 
 paces, upon the verge of the great universe of thought. 
 His little eye sparkles with some vague fancy that 
 comes upon him first, by language. Madge teaches 
 him the words of affection, and of thankfulness ; and 
 she teaches him to lisp infant prayer ; and by secret 
 pains, (how could she be so secret ?) instructs him 
 in some little phrase of endearment, that she knows 
 will touch your heart ; and then, she watches your 
 cominor and the little fellow runs toward you, and 
 11 
 
242 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 warbles out his lesson of love, in tones that forbid you 
 any answer, save only those brimming eyes, turned 
 first on her, and then on him ; and poorly concealed, 
 by the quick embrace, and the kisses which you shower 
 in transport ! 
 
 Still slip on the years, like brimming bowls of 
 nectar. Another Madge is sister to Frank ; and a 
 little Nelly, is younger sister to this other Madge. 
 
 Three of them a charmed, and mystic 
 
 number ; which if it be broken in these young 
 days, as, alas, it may be ! will only yield a cherub 
 angel, to float over you, and to lloat over them to 
 wean you, and to wean them, from this world, where all 
 joys do perish, to that seraph world, where joys do 
 Lust forever. 
 
VI. 
 
 A DREAM OP DARKNESS. 
 
 IS our life a sun, that it should radiate light and 
 heat forever ? Do not the calmest, and brightest 
 days of autumn, show clouds that drift their ragged 
 edges over the golden disc ; and bear dov/n swift, with 
 their weight of vapors, until the whole sun's surface is 
 shrouded ; and you can see no shadow of tree, or 
 flower upon the land, because of the greater, and 
 gulphing shadow of the cloud ? 
 
 Will not life bear me out ; will not truth, earnest 
 and stern, around me, make good the terrible imagi 
 nation that now comes swooping heavily, and darkly, 
 upon my brain ? 
 
 You are living in a little village, not far away from 
 the city. It is a graceful, and luxurious home that you 
 
244 DREAM -LIFE. 
 
 possess. The holly and the laurel gladden its lawn in 
 winter ; and bowers of blossoms sweeten it through all 
 the summer. You know, each day of your return from 
 the town, where first you will catch sight of that 
 graceful figure, flitting like a shadow of love, beneath 
 the trees : you know well, where you will meet the 
 joyous, and noisy welcome of stout Frank, and of 
 tottling Nelly. Day after day, and week after week, 
 they fail not. 
 
 A friend sometimes attends you ; and a friend to 
 you, is always a friend to Madge. In the city, you fall 
 in once more with your old acquaintance Dalton ; 
 the graceful, winning, yet dissolute man that his youth 
 promised. He wishes to see your cottage home. 
 Your heart half hesitates : yet it seems folly to cherish 
 distrust of a boon companion, in so many of your 
 revels. 
 
 Madge receives him with that sweet smile, which 
 welcomes all your friends. He gains the heart of 
 Frank, by talking of his toys, and of his pigeons ; and 
 he wins upon the tenderness of the mother, by his 
 attentions to the child. Even you, repent of your 
 passing shadow of dislike, and feel your heart warming 
 toward him, as he takes little Nelly in his arms, and 
 provokes her joyous prattle. 
 
 Madge is unbounded in her admiration of your 
 friend : he renews, at your solicitation, his visit : he 
 
A. DREAM OF DARKNESS. 245 
 
 proves kinder than ever ; and you grow ashamed of 
 your distrust. 
 
 Madge is not learned in the arts of a city life : 
 the accomplishments of a man of the world are 
 almost new to her : she listens with eagerness to 
 Dalton's graphic stories of foreign fetes, and luxury : 
 she is charmed with his clear, bold voice, and with his 
 manly execution of little operatic airs. 
 
 She is beautiful that wife who has made your 
 
 heart whole, by its division fearfully beautiful. And 
 she is not cold, or impassive : her heart though fond, 
 and earnest, is yet human : we are all human. The 
 accomplishments and graces of the world must needs 
 take hold upon her fancy. And a fear creeps over you, 
 that you dare not whisper, that those graces may 
 cast into the shade, your own yearning, and silent 
 tenderness. 
 
 But this is a selfish fear, that you think you have no 
 right to cherish. She takes pleasure in the society 
 of Dalton, what right have you, to say her nay ? 
 His character indeed is not altogether such as you could 
 wish ; but will it not be selfish to tell her even this ? 
 Will it not be even worse, and show taint of a lurking 
 suspicion, which you know would wound her grievously ? 
 You struggle with your distrust, by meeting him more 
 kindly than ever : yet, at times, there will steal over 
 you a sadness, which that dear Madge detects, and 
 
246 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 sorrowing in her turn, tries to draw away from you by 
 the touching kindness of sympathy. Her look, and 
 manner kill all your doubt ; and you show that it 
 is gone, and piously conceal the cause, by welcoming in 
 gayer tones than ever, the man who has fostered it, by 
 his presence. 
 
 Business calls you away to a great distance from 
 home : it is the first long parting of your real man 
 hood. And can suspicion, or a fear, lurk amid those 
 tearful embraces ? Not one, thank God, not one ! 
 
 Your letters, frequent and earnest, bespeak your in 
 creased devotion ; and the embraces you bid her give 
 to the sweet ones of your little flock, tell of the calm 
 ness, and sufficiency of your love. Her letters too, are 
 running over with affection : what though she men 
 tions f he frequent visits of Dalton, and tells stories of 
 his kindness and attachment? You feel safe in her 
 strength : and yet yet there is a brooding terror that 
 rises out of your knowledge of Dalton's character. 
 
 And can you tell her this ; can you stab her fondness, 
 now that you are away, with even a hint of what would 
 crush her delicate nature ? 
 
 What you kiiow to be love, and what you fancy to 
 be duty, struggle long : but love conquers. And with 
 sweet trust in her, and double trust in God, you await 
 your return. That return will be speedier than you 
 think. 
 
A DUE AM OF DARKNESS. 247 
 
 You receive one day a letter : it is addressed in tho 
 hand of a friend, who is often at the cottage, but who 
 Las rarely written to you. What can have tempted 
 him now ? Has any harm come near your home ? 
 No wonder your hands tremble at the opening of that 
 
 sheet ; no wonder that your eyes run like lightning 
 
 over the hurried lines. Yet there is little in them 
 very little. The hand is stout and fair. It is a calm 
 letter, a friendly letter ; but it is short terribly short. 
 It bids you come home * at once /* 
 
 And you go. It is a pleasant country you have 
 
 to travel through ; but you see very little of the country. 
 It is a dangerous voyage perhaps, you have to make ; 
 but you think very little of the danger. The creaking 
 of the timbers, and the lashing of the waves, are quiet 
 ing music, compared with the storm of your raging 
 fears. All the while, you associate Dalton with the 
 terror that seems to hang over you; and yet, your 
 trust in Madge, is true as Heaven I 
 
 At length you approach that home; there lies 
 your cottage lying sweetly upon its hill-side ; and the 
 autumn winds are soft ; and the maple-tops sway 
 gracefully, all clothed in the scarlet of their frost-dress. 
 Once again, as the sun sinks behind the mountain with 
 a trail of glory, and the violet haze tints the grey 
 clouds, like so many robes of angels, you take heart 
 and courage ; and with firm reliance on the Providence 
 
248 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 that fashions all forms of beauty, whether in Heaven 
 or in heart, your fears spread out, and vanish with 
 the waning twilight. 
 
 She is not at the cottage door to meet you ; she 
 does not expect you ; and yet your bosom heaves, and 
 your breathing is quick. Your friend meets you, and 
 
 shakes your hand. " Clarence," he says, with the 
 
 tenderness of an old friend, " be a man !" 
 
 Alas, you are a man ; with a man's heart, and a 
 man's fear, and a man's agony ! Little Frank comes 
 bounding toward you joyously yet under traces of 
 tears : " Oh, Papa, Mother is gone !" 
 
 " Gone !" And you turn to the face of your 
 
 friend ) it is well he is near by, or you would have 
 fallen. 
 
 He can tell you very little; he has known the 
 character of Daltou ; he has seen with fear his assi 
 duous attentions tenfold multiplied since your leave. 
 He has trembled for the issue : this very morning he 
 observed a travelling carriage at the door ; they drove 
 away together. You have no strength to question him. 
 You see that he fears the worst : he does not know 
 Madge, so well as you. 
 
 And can it be? Are you indeed widowed 
 
 with that most terrible of widowhoods ? Is your wife 
 living, and yet lost ! Talk not to such a man of 
 
A DREAM OF DARKNESS. 249 
 
 the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death ; he will 
 laugh at your mimicry of grief* 
 
 All is blackness ; whichever way you turn, it is 
 
 the same ; there is no light ; your eye is put out ; 
 your soul is desolate forever. The heart, by which 
 you had grown up into the full stature of joy, and bless 
 ing, is rooted out of you, and thrown like something 
 loathsome, at which the carrion dogs of the world 
 scent, and snuffle ! 
 
 They will point at you, as the man who has lost all 
 that he prized ; and she has stolen it, whom he prized 
 more than what was stolen. And he, the accursed 
 
 miscreant But no, it can never be. Madgo 
 
 is as true as Heaven ! 
 
 Yet she is not there : whence comes the light that 
 is to cheer you ? 
 
 Your children ? 
 
 Aye, your children, your little Nelly, your noble 
 Frank, they are yours ; doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, 
 now that she, their mother, is a mother no more to 
 them, forever ! 
 
 Aye, close your doors ; shut out the world ; draw 
 close your curtains ; fold them to your heart, your 
 crushed, bleeding, desolate heart. Lay your forehead 
 to the soft cheek of your noble boy ; beware, beware 
 how you dampen that damask cheek with your scald- 
 Ing tears : yet you cannot help it ; they fall great 
 
250 DREAM- LIFE. 
 
 drops, a river of tears, as you gather him convulsively 
 to your bosom ! 
 
 " Father, why do you cry so ?" says Frank, with the 
 tears of dreadful sympathy starting from those eyes of 
 childhood. 
 
 " Why, Papa?" mimes little Nelly. 
 
 Answer them if you da:te ! Try it ; what 
 
 words blundering, weak words, choked with agony, 
 leading no where, ending in new, and convulsive 
 clasps of your weeping, motherless children. 
 
 Had she gone to her grave, there would have been 
 a holy joy a great, and swelling grief indeed, but 
 your poor heart would have found a rest in the quiet 
 churchyard ; and your feelings rooted in that cherished 
 grave, would have stretched up toward Heaven their 
 delicate leaves, and caught the dews of His grace, who 
 watclieth the lilies. But noy?, with your heart cast 
 under foot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world, 
 
 finding no shelter, and no abiding place alas, we 
 
 do guess at infinitude, only by suffering. 
 
 Madge, Madge ! can this be so ? Are you not 
 
 still the same, sweet, guileless child of Heaven ? 
 
vn. 
 
 PEACE. 
 
 IT is a dream ; fearful to be sure, but only a 
 dream. Madge is true. That soul is honest ; it 
 could not be otherwise. God never made it to be 
 false ; He never made the sun for darkness. 
 
 And before the evening has waned to midnight, 
 sweet day has broken on your gloom; Madge is 
 folded to your bosom ; sobbing fearfully : not for 
 guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she 
 reads upon your brow, and in your low sighs. 
 
 The mystery is all cleared by a few lightning words 
 from her indignant lips ; and her whole figure trembles, 
 as she shrinks within your embrace, with the thought 
 of that great evil, that seemed to shadow you. The 
 villain has sought by every art, to beguile her into ap- 
 
252 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 pearance which should compromise her character, and 
 so wound her delicacy, as to take away the courage for 
 return : ho has even wrought upon her affection for 
 you, as his master-weapon : a skilfully-contrived story 
 of some accident that had befallen you, had wrought 
 upon her to the sudden, and silent leave of home. 
 But he has failed. At the first suspicion of his falsity, 
 her dignity and virtue shivered all his malice. Sho 
 shudders at the bare thought of that fiendish scheme, 
 which has so lately broken on her view. 
 
 " Oh, Clarence, Clarence, could you for one moment 
 believe this of me ?" 
 
 " Dear Madge, forgive me, if a dreamy horror did 
 for an instant palsy my better thought; it is gone 
 utterly ; it will never never come again !" 
 
 And there she leans, with her head pillowed on 
 your shoulder, the same sweet angel, that has led 
 you in the way of light ; and who is still your Messing, 
 and your pride. 
 
 Ho and you forbear to name his name is gone ; 
 ilying vainly from the consciousness of guilt, with the 
 curse of Cain upon him, hastening toward the day, 
 when Satan shall clutch his own. 
 
 A heavenly peace descends upon you that night ; 
 all the more sacred and calm, for the fearful agony 
 that has gone before. A Heaven that seemed lost, is 
 yours. A love that you had almost doubted, is beyond 
 
PEACE. 253 
 
 all suspicion. A heart that in the madness of your 
 frenzy, you had dared to question, you worship now, 
 with Washes of shame. You thank God, for this great 
 goodness, as you never thanked him for any earthly 
 blessing before ; and with this twin gratitude lying on 
 your hearts, and clearing your face to smiles, you live 
 09 together the old life of joy, and of affection. 
 
 Agitin with brimming nectar, the years fill up their 
 vases. Your children grow into the same earnest 
 joyousness, and with the same home faith, which 
 lightened upon your young dreams ; and toward which, 
 you seem to go back, as you riot with them in their 
 Christmas joys, or upon the velvety lawn of June. 
 
 Anxieties indeed overtake you; but they are those 
 anxieties which only the selfish would avoid anxieties 
 that better the heart, with a great weight of tenderness. 
 It may be, that your mischievous Frank runs wild 
 with the swift blood of boyhood, and that the hours 
 are long, which wait his coming. It may be that 
 your heart echoes in silence, the mother's sobs, as she 
 watches his fits of waywardness, and showers upon his 
 very neglect, excess of love. 
 
 Danger perhaps creeps upon little, joyous Nelly, 
 which makes you tremble for her life ; the mother's 
 tears are checked that she may not deepen your grief; 
 and her care guards the little sufferer, like a Provi- 
 
254 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 dence. The nights hang long and heavy ; dull, stifled 
 breathing wakes the chamber with ominous sound ; 
 the mother's eye scarce closes, but rests with fond 
 sadness upon the little struggling victim of sickness ; 
 her hand rests like an angel touch upon the brow, 
 all beaded with the heats of fever ; the straggling, 
 gray light of morning breaks through the crevices 
 of the closed blinds, bringing stir, and bustle to the 
 world, but, in your home, lighting only the dark 
 ness. 
 
 Hope sinking in the mother's heart, takes hold on 
 Faith in God ; and her prayer, and her placid look 
 of submission, more than all your philosophy, add 
 strength to your faltering courage. 
 
 But little Nelly brightens; her faded features take 
 on bloom again; she knows you; she presses your 
 hand; she draws down your cheek to her parched 
 lip ; she kisses you, and smiles. The mother's brow 
 loses its shadow ; day dawns within, as well as without; 
 and on bended knees, God is thanked ! 
 
 Perhaps poverty faces you; your darling schemes 
 break down. One by one, .vith failing heart, you 
 strip the luxuries from life. But the sorrow which 
 oppresses you, is not the selfish sorrow which the 
 lone man feels ; it is far nobler ; its chiefest mourning 
 is over the despoiled home. Frank must give up his 
 promised travel ; Madge must lose her favorite pony; 
 
PEACE. 255 
 
 Nelly must be denied her little fete upon the lawn. 
 The home itself, endeared by so many scenes of 
 happiness, and by so many of suffering must be 
 given up. It is hard very hard to tear away your 
 wife, from the flowers, the birds, the luxuries, that she 
 has made so dear. 
 
 Now, she is far stronger than you. She contrives 
 new joys; she wears a holy calm; she cheers by 
 a new hopefulness ; she buries even the memory of 
 luxury, in the riches of the humble home, that her 
 wealth of heart endows. Her soul, catching radiance 
 from that Heavenly world, where her hope lives, 
 kindles amid the growing shadows, and sheds bairn 
 upon the little griefs, 'like the serene moon, slanting 
 the dead sun's life, upon the night. 
 
 Courage wakes in the presence of those dependent 
 on your toil. Love arms your hand, and quickens 
 your brain. Resolutions break large from the swelling 
 soul. Energy leaps into your action, like light. Grad 
 ually you bring back into your humble home, a 
 few traces of the luxury that once adorned it. That 
 wife whom it is your greatest pleasure to win to 
 smiles, wears a half sad look, as she meets these 
 proofs of love ; she fears that you are perilling too 
 much, for her pleasure. 
 
 For the first time in life you deceive her. You 
 
 have won wealth again ; you now step firmly upon your 
 
256 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 new-gained sandals of gold. But you conceal it from 
 her. You contrive a little scheme of surprise, with 
 Frank alone, in the secret. 
 
 You purchase again the old home ; you stock it, as 
 far as may be, with the old luxuries ; a now harp is in 
 the place of that one which beguiled so many hours of 
 joy ; new and cherished flowers bloom again upon the 
 window ; her birds hang, and warble their melody, where 
 they warbled it before. A pony like as possible to 
 the old is there for Madge ; a fete is secretly con 
 trived upon the lawn. You even place the old, familiar 
 books, upon the parlor table. 
 
 The birth-day of your own Madge, is approaching : 
 a fete you never pass by, without home-rejoicings. 
 You drive over with her, upon that morning, for ano 
 ther look at the old place ; a cloud touches her brow, 
 but she yields to your wish. An old servant, whom 
 you had known in better days throws open the gates, 
 
 "It is too too sad," says Madge "let us go 
 
 back, Clarence, to our own home; we are happy 
 there." 
 
 " A little farther, Madge." 
 
 The wife steps slowly over what seems the sepulchre 
 of so many pleasures ; the children gambol as of old, 
 and pick flowers. But the mother checks them. 
 
 " They are not ours now, my children !" 
 
 You stroll to the very door; the goldfinches are 
 
PEACE. 257 
 
 hanging upon the wall ; the rnignionette is in the win 
 dow. You feel the hand of Madge trembling upon 
 your arm ; she is struggling with her weakness. 
 
 A tidy waiting woman shows you into the old par 
 lor : there is a harp ; and there too, such books as 
 
 we loved to read. 
 
 Madge is overcome ; now, she entreats : " Let us 
 go away, Clarence !" and she hides her face. 
 
 " Never, dear Madge, never ! it is yours all 
 
 yours !" 
 
 She looks up in your face ; she sees your look of 
 triumph ; she catches^ sight of Frank bursting in at the 
 old hall-door, all radiant with joy. 
 
 " Frank ! Clarence !" the tears forbid any 
 
 more. 
 
 " God bless you, Madge ! God bless you !" 
 
 And thus, in peace and in joy, MANHOOD passes on 
 into the third season of our life even as golden 
 AUTUMN, sinks slowly into the tomb of WINTER. 
 
iDintcr ; 
 
 r 
 
 l)e Dreams of 
 
DEEAMS OF AGE. 
 
 WINTER. 
 
 SLOWLY, thickly, fastly, fall the snow flakes, like 
 the seasons upon the life of man. At the first, 
 they lose themselves in the brown mat of herbage, or 
 gentry melt, as they fall upon the broad stepping stone 
 at the door. But as hour after hour passes, the 
 feathery flakes stretch their white cloak plainly on the 
 meadow, and chilling the doorstep with their multitude, 
 cover it with a mat of pearl. 
 
 The dried grass tips pierce the mantle of white, like 
 BO many serried spears ; but as the storm goes softly 
 on, they sink one by one to their snowy tomb ; and 
 presently show nothing of all their army, save one or 
 two straggling banners of blackened and shrunken 
 daisies. 
 
262 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 Across the wide meadow that stretches from my 
 window, I can see nothing of those hills which were so 
 green in summer : between me and them, lie only the 
 soft, slow moving masses, filling the air with whiteness. 
 I catch only a glimpse of one gaunt, and bare-armed 
 oak, looming through the feathery multitude, like a tall 
 ship's spars breaking through fog. 
 
 The roof of the barn is covered ; and the leaking 
 eaves show dark stains of water, that trickle down the 
 weather-beaten boards. The pear-trees that wore such 
 weight of greenness in the leafy June, now stretch their 
 bare arms to the snowy blast, and carry upon each tiny 
 bough, a narrow burden of winter. 
 
 The old house dog marches stately through the 
 strange covering of earth, and seems to ponder on the 
 welcome he will show, and shakes the flakes from his 
 long ears, and with a vain snap at a floating feather, he 
 stalks again to his dry covert in the shed. The lambs 
 that belonged to the meadow flock, with their feeding 
 ground all covered, seem to wonder at their losses ; but 
 take courage from the quiet air of the veteran sheep, 
 and gambol after them, as they move sedately toward 
 the shelter of the barn. 
 
 The cat, driven from the kitchen door, beats a coy 
 retreat, with long reaches of her foot, upon the yielding 
 surface. The matronly hens saunter out, at a little 
 lifting of the storm ; and eye curiously, with heads 
 
WINTER. 2C3 
 
 half turned, their sinking steps ; and then fall back with 
 a quiet cluck of satisfaction, to the wholesome gravel by 
 the stable door. 
 
 By and by, the snow flakes pile more leisurely : they 
 grow large and scattered, and come more slowly than 
 before. The hills that were brown, heave into sight 
 great, rounded billows of white. The gray woods 
 look shrunken to half their height, and stand wading 
 in the storm. The wind freshens, and scatters the 
 light flakes that crown the burden of the snow ; and 
 as the day droops, a clear, bright sky of steel color, 
 cleaves the land, and clouds, and sends down a chilling 
 wind to bank the walls, and to freeze the storm. The 
 moon rises full and round, and plays with a joyous 
 chill, over the glistening raiment of the land. 
 
 I pile my fire with the clean cleft hickory ; and mus 
 ing over some sweet stoiy of the olden time, I wander 
 into a rich realm of thought, until my eyes grow dim, 
 and dreaming of battle and of prince, I fall to sleep in 
 my old farm chamber. 
 
 At morning, I find my dreams all written on the 
 window, in crystals of fairy shape. The cattle, one by 
 one, with ears frost-tipped, and with frosted noses, wend 
 their way to the watering-place in the meadow. One 
 by one they drink, and crop at the stunted herbage, 
 which the warm spring keeps green and bare. 
 
 A hound bays in the distance ; the sinoke of cot- 
 
264 DREAM- LIFE, 
 
 tages rises straight toward Heaven ; a lazy jingle of 
 sleigh-bells, wakens the quiet of the high-road; and 
 upon the hills, the leafless woods stand low, like 
 crouching armies, with guns and spears in rest ; iind 
 among them, the scattered spiral pines rise like banner- 
 men, uttering with their thousand tongues of gr<;en, 
 the proud war-cry ' God is with us !' 
 
 But, the sky of winter is as capricious as the sky of 
 spring even as the old wander in thought, like the 
 vagaries of a boy. 
 
 Before noon, the heavens are mantled with a leaden 
 gray ; the eaves that leaked in the glow of the sun, 
 now tell their tale of morning's warmth, in crystal 
 ranks of icicles. The cattle seek their shelter ; the 
 few, lingering leaves of the white oaks, rustle dismally ; 
 the pines breathe sighs of mourning. As the night 
 darkens, and deepens the storm, the house dog bays ; 
 the children crouch in the wide chimney corners ; the 
 sleety rain comes in sharp gusts. And, as T sit by the 
 light leaping blaze in my chamber, the scattered hail- 
 drops beat upon my window, like the tappings of an 
 OLD MAN'S cane. 
 
I. 
 
 WHAT is GONE. 
 
 GONE ! Did it ever strike you, my reader, how much 
 meaning lies in that little monosyllable gone ? 
 Say it to yourself at nightfall, when the sun has 
 sunk under the hills, and the crickets chirp 'gone.' 
 Say it to yourself, when the night is far over, and you 
 wake with some sudden start, from pleasant dreams, 
 
 * gone.' Say it to yourself in some country church 
 yard, where your father, or your mother, sleeps under 
 the blooming violets of spring ' gone.' Say it, in 
 your sobbing prayer to Heaven, as you cling lovingly, 
 but oh, how vainly, to the hand of your sweet wife 
 
 * gone 1' 
 
 Aye, is there not meaning in it ? And now, what is 
 gone -or rather, what is not gone ? Childhood is 
 12 
 
266 DREAM LIFE. 
 
 gone with all its blushes, and fairness, with all its 
 health and wanton, with all its smiles, like glimp&es 
 of heaven ; and all its tears, which were but the suffu 
 sion of joy. 
 
 Youth is gone ; bright, hopeful youth, when you 
 counted the years with jewelled numbers, and hung 
 lamps of ambition at your path, which lighted the 
 palace of renown; when the days were woven into 
 weeks of blithe labor, and the weeks were rolled into 
 harvest months of triumph, and the months were 
 bound into golden sheaves of years all, gone ! 
 
 The strength and pride of manhood is gone ; your 
 heart and soul have stamped their deepest dye ; the 
 time of power is past; your manliness has told its 
 
 tale ; henceforth your career is down ; hitherto, 
 
 you have journeyed up. You look back upon a 
 decade, as you once looked upon a half score of 
 months ; a year has become to your slackened memory, 
 and to your dull perceptions, like a week of childhood. 
 Suddenly arid swiftly, come past you, great whirls of 
 gone-by thought, and wrecks of vain labor, eddying 
 upon the stream that rushes to the grave. The sweep 
 ing outlines of life, that lay once before the vision- 
 rolling into wide billows of years, like easy lifts of a 
 broad mountain-range, now seem close-packed to 
 gether, as with a Titan hand ; and you see only 
 
WHAT is GONE. 267 
 
 crowded, craggy heights, like Alpine fastnesses parted 
 with glaciers of grief, and leaking abundant tears. 
 
 Your friends are gone ', they who counselled and 
 advised you, and who protected your weakness, will 
 guard it no more forever. One by one, they have 
 dropped away as you have journeyed on ; and yet your 
 journey does not seem a long one. Life, at the longest, 
 is but a bubble that bursts, so soon as it is rounded. 
 
 Nelly, your sweet sister, to whom your heart clung 
 so fondly in the young days, and to whom it has clung 
 ever since, in the strongest bonds of companionship, 
 is gone, with the rest. 
 
 Your thought, wayward now, and flickering, runs 
 over the old days with quick, and fevered step ; it 
 brings back, faintly as it may, the noisy joys, and the 
 safety, that belonged to the old garret roof ; it figures 
 again the image of that calm-faced futher, long since 
 sleeping beside your mother ; it rests like a shadow, 
 upon the night when Charlie died ; it grasps the old 
 figures of the school-room, and kindles again (how 
 strange is memory), the fire that shed its lustre upon 
 the curtains, and the ceiling, as you lay groaning with 
 your first hours of sickness. 
 
 Your flitting recollection brings back with gushes of 
 exultation, the figure of that little, blue-eyed hoyden, 
 Madge, as she came with her work, to pass the long 
 evenings with Nelly ; it calls again the shy glances that 
 
268 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 you cast upon her, and your naive ignorance of all the 
 little counter-play, that might well have passed between 
 Frank and Nelly. Your mother's form too, clear and 
 distinct, comes upon the wave of your rocking thought ; 
 her smile touches you now in age, as it never touched 
 you in boyhood. 
 
 The image of that fair Miss Dalton, who led your 
 fancy into such mad captivity, glides across your vision 
 like the fragment of a crazy dream long gone by. 
 The country-home, where lived the grandfather of 
 Frank, gleams kindly in the sunlight of your memory ; 
 and still, poor, blind Fanny, long since gathered to 
 that rest, where her closed eyes will open upon visions 
 of joy, draws forth a sigh of pity. 
 
 Then, comes up that sweetest, and brightest vision 
 of love, and the doubt and care which ran before it, 
 when your hope groped eagerly through your pride, 
 and worldliness, toward the sainted purity of her, 
 whom you know to be all too good ; when you 
 trembled at the thought of your own vices, and black- 
 nesr>, in the presence of her, who seemed virtue's self. 
 And even now, your old heart bounds with joy, as you 
 recal the first timid assurance, that vou were blessed 
 in the possession of her love, and that you might live 
 in her smiles. 
 
 Your thought runs like floating melody, over the calm 
 joy that followed you through so many years to the 
 
WHAT is GONE. 269 
 
 prattling children, who were there to bless your path 
 How poor, seem now your transports, as you met their 
 childish embraces, and mingled in their childish em 
 ploy ; how utterly weak, the actual, when compared 
 with that glow of affection, which memory lends to the 
 scene ! 
 
 Yet all this is gone; and the anxieties are gone, 
 which knit your heart so strongly to those children, 
 and to her the mother ;- -anxieties which distressed 
 you, which you would eagerly have shunned ; yet, 
 whose memory you would not now bargain away, for a 
 king's ransom. What wjre the sunlight worth, if 
 clouds did not sometimes hide its brightness ; what 
 were the spring, or the summer, if the lessons of the 
 chilling winter did not teach us the stoiy of their 
 warmth ? 
 
 The days are gone too, in which you may have 
 lingered under the sweet suns OL Italy, with the 
 cherished one beside you, and the eager children, learn 
 ing new prattle, in the soft language of those Eastern 
 lands. The evenings are gone, in which you loitered 
 under the trees, with those dear c es, under the light 
 of a harvest moon, and talked of your blooming hopes, 
 and of the stirring plans of your manhood. There are 
 no more amb'tious hopes no more sturdy plans ! 
 Life's work has -ounded into the evening that shortens 
 labor. 
 
270 DREAM -LiFE. 
 
 And as you loiter in dreams over the wide waste of 
 wh?' u is gone, a mingled array of griefs and of joys 
 of failures, and of triumphs, you bless God, that there 
 has been so much of joy, belonging to your shattered 
 life ; and you pray God, with the vain fondness that 
 belongs to a parent's heart, that more of joy, and less 
 of toil, may come near to the cherished ones, who bear 
 up your hope and name. 
 
 And with your silent prayer, come back the old 
 teachings, and vagaries of the boyish heart, in its 
 reaches toward Heaven. You recal the old church- 
 reckoning of your goodness : is there much more of it 
 now, than then ? Is not Heaven just as high, and the 
 world as sadly broad ? 
 
 Alas, for the poor tale of goodness, which age brings 
 to the memory ! There may be crowning acts of 
 benevolence, shining here and there ; but the margin 
 of what has not been done, is very broad. How weak 
 and insignificant, seems the story of life's gcodness, and 
 profit, when Death begins to slant his shadow upon our 
 souls ! How infinite, in the comparison, seems that 
 Eternal goodness, which is crowned with mercy. How 
 self vanishes, like a blasted thing ; and only lives 
 if it lives at all, in the glow of that redeeming light, 
 which radiates from the CROSS, and the THRONE. 
 
 > 
 
n. 
 
 WHAT is LEFT. 
 
 BUT much as there is gone of life, and of its 
 joys, very much remains; very much in 
 earnest, and very much more in hope. Still, you see 
 visions, and you dream dreams, of the times that are 
 to come. 
 
 Your home, and heart are left ; within that home, 
 the old Bible holds its wonted place, which was the 
 monitor of your boyhood ; and now, more than ever, 
 it prompts those reverent reaches of the spirit, which 
 go beyond even the track of dreams. 
 
 That cherished Madge, the partner of your life and 
 joy, still lingers, though her step is feeble, and her eyes 
 are dimmed; not, as once, attracting you by any 
 outward show of beauty ; your heart glowing through 
 
272 D RE AM-LlFE 
 
 the memory of a life of joy, needs no such stimulant 
 to the affections. Your hearts are knit together by a 
 habit of growth, and a unanimity of desire. There 
 is less to remind of the vanities of earth, and more to 
 quicken the hopes of a time, when body yields to 
 spirit. 
 
 Your own poor, battered hulk, wants no jaunty- 
 trimmed craft for consort ; but twin of heart, and soul, 
 as you are twin of years, you float tranquilly toward 
 that haven, which lies before us all. 
 
 Your children, now almost verging on maturity, 
 bless your hearth, and home. Not one is .gone. 
 Frank indeed, that wild fellow of a youth, who has 
 wrought your heart into perplexing anxieties again and 
 again, as you have seen the wayward dashes of his 
 young blood, is often away. But his heart yet 
 centres, where yours centres ; and his absence . is only 
 a nearer, and bolder strife, with that fierce world, 
 whose circumstances, every man of force, and energy, 
 is born to conquer. 
 
 His return, from time to time, with that proud 
 figure of opening manliness, and that full flush of health, 
 speaks to your affections, as you could never have 
 believed it would. It is not for a man, who is the 
 fath r of a man, to show any weakness of the heart, 
 or any over-sensitiveness, in those ties which bind him 
 to his kin. And yet yet, as you sit by ^Diir fire-side 
 
WHAT is LEFT. 273 
 
 with your clear, gray eye, feasting in its feebleness on 
 that proud figure of a man, who calls you ' father,' 
 and as you see his fond, and loving attentions to 
 that one, who has been your partner in all anxieties, 
 and joys, there is a throbbing within your bosom 
 that makes you almost wish him young again: 
 that you might embrace him now, as when he warbled 
 
 in your rejoicing ear, those first words of love. Ah, 
 
 how little does a son know the secret and craving 
 tenderness of a parent ; how little conception has he, 
 of those silent bursts of fondness, and of joy, which 
 attend his coming, and which crown his parting ! 
 
 There is young Madge too, dark-eyed, tall, with a 
 pensive shadow resting on her face, the very image 
 of refinement, and of delicacy. She is thoughtful; 
 not breaking out, like the hoyden, flax-haired Nelly, 
 into bursts of joy, and singing, but stealing upon 
 your heart, with a gentle and quiet tenderness, that 
 diffuses itself throughout the household, like a soft 
 zephyr of summer. 
 
 There are friends too yet left, who come in upon 
 your evening hours ; and light up the loitering time 
 with dreamy story of the years that are gone. How 
 eagerly you listen to some gossipping veteran friend, 
 who with his deft words, calls up the thread of some 
 bye-gone years of life ; and with what a careless, yet 
 grateful recognition, you lapse, as it were, into the 
 12* 
 
274 DREAJI-LIFE. 
 
 current of the past; and live over again, by /our 
 hospitable blaze, the stir, the joy, and the pride of your 
 lost manhood. 
 
 The children of friends too, have grown upon your 
 march ; and come to welcome you with that reverent 
 deference, which always touches the heart of age. 
 That wild boy Will., the son of a dear friend who 
 but a little while ago, was worrying you with his 
 boyish pranks, has now shot up into tall, and graceful 
 youth; and evening after evening, finds him making 
 part of your little household group. 
 
 Does the fond old man think that he is all the 
 
 attraction ! 
 
 It may be that in your dreamy speculations, about 
 the future of your children (for still you dream) you 
 think that WilL, may possibly become the husband 
 of the sedate and kindly Madge. It worries you to 
 find Xelly teasing him as she does ; that mad hoyden 
 will never be quiet; she provokes you excessively; 
 and yet, she is a dear creature ; there is no meeting 
 those laughing blue eyes of hers, without a smile, and 
 an embrace. 
 
 It pleases you however to see the winning frankness, 
 with which Madge always receives Will. And with a 
 little of your old vanity of observation, you trace out 
 the growth of their dawning attachment. It provokes 
 you, to find Nelly breaking up their quiet ttte~a-tefes 
 
WHAT is LEFT. 275 
 
 with her provoking sallies; and drawing away Will. 
 to some saunter in the garden, or to some mad gallop 
 over the hills. 
 
 At length, upon a certain summer's day, Will, asks 
 to see you. He approaches with a doubtful, and dis 
 turbed look ; you fear that wild Nell has been teasing 
 him with her pranks. Yet he wears, not so much an 
 offended look, as one of fear. You wonder if it ever 
 happened to you, to carry your hat in just that timid 
 manner, and to wear such a shifting expression of the 
 eye, as poor Will, wears just now ? You wonder if it 
 ever happened to you, to begin to talk with an old 
 friend of your father's, in just that abashed way ? Will. 
 
 must have fallen into some sad scrape. "Well, he is 
 
 a good fellow, and you will help him out of it. 
 
 You look up as he goes on with his story ; you 
 grow perplexed yourself; you scarce believe your own 
 ears. 
 
 " Nelly ?" Is Will, talking of Nelly ? 
 
 Yes, sir Nelly." 
 
 " What ! and you have told all this to Nelly 
 
 that you love her ?" 
 
 " I have, sir." 
 
 " And she says " 
 
 " That I must speak with you, sir." 
 
 " Bless my soul ! But she's a good girl ;" and the 
 old man wipes his eyes. 
 
276 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 " Nell ! are you there ?" 
 
 And she comes, blushing, lingering, yet smiling 
 through it all. 
 
 " And you could deceive your old father, Nell 
 
 " (very fondly.) 
 
 Nelly only clasps your hand in both of hers. 
 
 " And so you loved Will., all the while ?" 
 
 Nelly only stoops, to drop a little kiss of plead 
 ing on your forehead. 
 
 "Well, Nelly" (it is hard to speak roundly), 
 
 " give me your hand ; here Will., take it : she's a 
 wild girl ; be kind to her, Will. ?" 
 
 " God bless you, sir !" 
 
 And Nelly throws herself, sobbing, upon your bosom. 
 
 " Not here, not here, now, Nell ! Will, is 
 
 yonder !" 
 
 Sobbing, sobbing still. Nelly, Nelly, who 
 
 would have thought that your merry face, covered such 
 heart of tenderness ! 
 
in. 
 
 GRIEF AND JOY OF AGE. 
 
 THE winter lias its piercing storms, even as 
 Autumn hath. Hoary age, crowned with hctior, 
 and with years, bears no immunity from suffering. It 
 is the common heritage of us all : if it come not in the 
 spring, or in the summer of our day, it will surely find 
 us in the autumn, or amid the frosts of winter. It is 
 the penalty humanity pays for pleasure ; human joys 
 will have their balance. Nature never makes false 
 weight. The east wind is followed by a wind from the 
 west ; and every smile, will have its equivalent in a 
 tear. 
 
 You have lived long, and joyously, with that dear 
 one, who has made your life a holy pilgrimage. She 
 has seemed to lead you into ways of pleasantness, and 
 
278 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 has kindled in you as the damps oi the world came 
 near to extinguish them, those hopes and aspirations, 
 which rest not in life, but soar to the rt aim of spirits. 
 
 You have sometimes shuddered with the thought of 
 parting ; you have trembled even at the leave-taking 
 of a year, or of months ; and have suffered bitterly, 
 as some danger threatened a parting forever. That 
 danger threatens now. Nor is it a sudden fear, to 
 startle you into a paroxysm of dread nothing of this. 
 Nature is kinder, or, she is less kind. 
 
 It is a slow, and certain approach of danger, which 
 you read in the feeble step, in the wan eye, lighting 
 up from time to time, into a brightness that seems no 
 longer of this world. You read it in the new, and 
 ceaseless attentions of the fond child who yet blesses 
 your home ; and who conceals from you the bitterness 
 of the coming grief. 
 
 Frank is away over seas ; and as the mother men 
 tions that name with a tremor of love, and of regret, 
 that he is not now with you all, you recal that other 
 death, when you too, were not there. Then you 
 knew little of a parent's feeling ; now, its intensity is 
 present ! 
 
 Day after day, as summer passes, she is ripening for 
 that world where her faith, and her hope, have so long 
 lived. Her pressure of your hand at some casual part- 
 
GRIEF AND JOT OF AGE. 279 
 
 ing for a day, is full of a gentle warning as if she 
 said prepare for a longer adieu ! 
 
 Her language too, without direct mention, steeps 
 your thought in the bitter certainty that she foresees 
 her approaching doom ; and that she dreads it, only so 
 far as she dreads the grief, that will be left in her 
 broken home. Madge the daughter, glides through 
 the duties of that household, like an angel of mercy : 
 she lingers at the sick bed blessing, and taking bless 
 ings. 
 
 The sun shines warmly without ; and through the 
 open casement, beats warmly upon the floor within. 
 The birds sing in the joyousness of full-robed summer ; 
 the drowsy hum of the bees, stealing sweets from the 
 honeysuckle that bowers the window, lulls the air to a 
 gentle quiet. Her breathing scarce breaks the summer 
 stillness. Yet, she knows it is nearly over. Madge, 
 too, with features saddened, yet struggling against 
 grief, feels that it is nearly over. 
 
 It is very hard to think it ; how much harder to 
 know it ! But there is no mistaking her look now so 
 placid, so gentle, so resigned ! A.nd her grasp of your 
 hand so warm so full of meaning ! 
 
 " Madge, Madge, must it be ?" And a pleasant 
 
 smile lights her eye ; and her grasp is warmer ; and 
 her look is upward. 
 
280 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 " Must it, must it be, dear Madge V A 
 
 holier smile, loftier, lit up of angels, beams on her 
 faded features. The hand relaxes its clasp ; and you 
 cling to it faster harder ; joined close to the frail 
 wreck of your love ; -joined tightly but oh, how far 
 apart ! 
 
 She is in Heaven ; and you, struggling against the 
 grief of a lorn, old man ! 
 
 But sorrow, however great it be, must be subdued in 
 
 the presence of a child. Its fevered outbursts must be 
 
 kept for those silent hours, when no young eyes are 
 
 watching, and no young hearts will " catch the trick of 
 
 "grief." 
 
 When the household is quiet, and darkened ; when 
 Madge is away from you, and your boy Frank slumber 
 ing as youth slumbers upon sorrow ; when you are 
 alone with God, and the night, in that room so long 
 hallowed by her presence, but now deserted silent ; 
 then you may yield yourself to such frenzy of tears, 
 as your strength will let you. And in your solitary 
 rambles through the churchyard, you can loiter of a 
 summer's noon, over her fresh-made grave, and let your 
 pent heart speak, and your spirit lean toward the Rest, 
 where her love has led you. 
 
 Thornton the clergyman, whose prayer over the 
 dead, has dwelt with you, comes from time to time, to 
 
GRIEF AND JOT OF AGE. 281 
 
 light up your solitary hearth, wit n his talk of the Rest 
 for all men. He is young, but his earnest, and gentle 
 speech, win their way to your heart, and to your under 
 standing. You love his counsels ; you make of him a 
 friend, whose visits are long, and often repeated. 
 
 Frank only lingers for a while ; and you bid him 
 again adieu. It seems to you that it may well be 
 the last ; and your blessing trembles on your lip. Yet 
 you look not with dread, but rather, with a firm trust 
 fulness toward the day of the end. For your darling 
 Madge, it is true, you have anxieties ; you fear to leave 
 her lonely in the world, with no protector save the 
 wayward Frank. 
 
 It is later August, when you call to Madge one day, to 
 bring you the little escritoire, in which are your cherished 
 papers ; among them is your last will and testament. 
 Thornton has just left you ; and it seems to you that 
 his repeated kindnesses are deserving of some substantial 
 mark of your regard. 
 
 " Mao-gie" you say, " Mr. Thornton has been very 
 k nd to me." 
 
 " Very kind, father." 
 
 " I mean to leave him here, some little legacy, Mag 
 gie." 
 
 " I would not, father." 
 
 " But Madge, my daughter !" 
 
282 D R E A M - L I F E . 
 
 " He is not looking for such return, father." 
 
 " But he has been very kind, Madge ; I must show 
 him some strong token of my regard. What shall it 
 be, Maggie ?" 
 
 Madge hesitates ; Madge blushes ; Madge stoops 
 to her father's ear, as if the very walls might catch the 
 secret of her heart ; " Would you give me to him, 
 father ?" 
 
 "But my dear Madge has he asked this?" 
 
 " Eight months ago, papa." 
 
 " And you told him " 
 
 " That I would never leave you, so long as you 
 lived !" 
 
 "My own dear Madge, come to me, kiss 
 
 me 1 And you love him, Maggie ?" 
 
 " With all my heart, sir." 
 
 " So like your mother, the same figure, the 
 
 same true honest heart ! It shall be as you wish, dear 
 Madge. Only, you will not leave me in my old age ; 
 Eh, Maggie ?" 
 
 " Never, father, never." 
 
 And there she leans upon his chair ; her 
 
 arm around the old man's neck, her other hand 
 clasped in his ; and her eyes melting with tenderness, 
 as she gazes upon his aged face, all radiant with joy, 
 and with hopo. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE END OF DREAMS. 
 
 A FEEBLE old man, and a young lady, who is just 
 XJL now blooming into the maturity of womanhood, 
 are toiling up a gentle slope, where the spring sun lies 
 warmly. The old man totters, though he leans heavily 
 upon his cane ; and he pants, as he seats himself upon 
 a mossy rock, that crowns the summit of the slope. 
 As he recovers breath, he draws the hand of the lady in 
 his, and with a trembling eagerness he points out an 
 old mansion that lies below under the shadow of tall 
 
 sycamores ; and he says feebly and brokenly, 
 
 " That is it, Maggie, the .old home, the sycamores, 
 the garret, Charlie, Nelly" 
 
 The old man wipes his eyes. Then his hand shifts : 
 
284 DREAM- LIFE. 
 
 he seems groping in darkness ; but soon it rests upon a 
 Jttle cottage below, heavily overshadowed : 
 
 " That was it, Maggie : Madge lived there sweet 
 Madge, your mother," 
 
 Again the old man wipes his eyes, and the lady 
 turns away. 
 
 Presently they walk down the hill together. They 
 cross a little valley, with slow, faltering steps. The lady 
 guides him carefully, until they reach a little grave 
 yard. 
 
 "This must be it, Maggie, but the fence is new. 
 There it is Maggie, under the willow, my poor 
 mother's grave !" 
 
 The lady weeps. 
 
 " Thank you, Madge : you did not know her, but 
 you weep for me : God bless you !" 
 
 The old man is in the midst of his household. It is 
 some festive day. He holds feebly his place, at the 
 head of the board. He utters in feeble tones a 
 Thanksgiving. 
 
 His married Nelly is there, with two blooming 
 children. Frank is there, with his bride. Madge 
 dearest of all, is seated beside the old man, watchful 
 of his comfort, and assisting him, as, with a shadowy 
 dignity, he essays to do the honors of the board. 
 The children prattle merrily : the elder ones talk of the 
 
THE END OF DREAMS. 285 
 
 days gone by; and the old man enters feebly yet 
 with floating glimpses of glee, into the cheer, and the 
 rejoicings. 
 
 Poor old man, he is near his tomb ! Yet his 
 
 calm eye, looking upward, seems to show no fear. 
 
 The same old man is in his chamber : he cannot 
 leave his chair now. Madge is beside him : Nelly 
 is there too, with her eldest-born. Madge has been 
 reading to the old man : it was a passage of promise 
 of the Bible promise. 
 
 " A glorious promise," says the old man feebly. 
 
 " A promise to me, a promise to her poor 
 
 Madge !" 
 
 " Is her picture there, Maggie ?" 
 
 Madge brings it to him : he turns his head ; but the 
 light is not strong. They wheel his chair to the 
 window. The sun is shining brightly : still the old 
 man cannot see. 
 
 " It is getting dark, Maggie." 
 
 Mcidge looks at Nelly wistfully sadly. 
 
 The old man murmurs something ; and Madge 
 stoops : " Coming," he says " coming !" 
 
 Nelly brings the little child to take his hand. 
 Perhaps it will revive him. She lifts her boy to kiss 
 his cheek. 
 
286 DREAM-LIFE. 
 
 The old man does not stir : his eyes do not move : 
 they seem fixed above. The child cries as his lips 
 
 touch the cold cheek: It is a tender SPRING 
 
 flower, upon the bosom of the dying WINTER ! 
 
 The old man is gone: his dream life is 
 
 ended. 
 
 THE END. 
 
ft 
 
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 RECALL 
 
 LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS 
 
 Book Slip-Series 458 
 
820442 
 
 Mitchell, D.G. 
 Dream life. 
 
 PS2404 
 D7 
 
 LI BR ARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS