*
 
 VERIES 
 
 A BACHELOR. 
 
 OR 
 
 OF THE HEART. 
 
 BY IK MARVEL. 
 
 It is worth the labor saith Plotinus to consider well of Love, whether 
 & be a God., or a diveli, or passion of the minde, or partly God, partly diveli' 
 partly passion. BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, Part III. Sec. i. 
 
 A NEW EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
 
 Entered according to Act of CougrtoB, in the year 1863, l*> 
 
 CHAKLES ScRiBNEtt, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 STIKIOTYPID AND PRINTED B 
 H. HOU4HTON AMD COMPANY
 
 TO 
 
 ONE AT HOME, 
 
 IK WHOM ARE MET SO MANY OF THE GRACES AND 
 THE VIRTUES, OF WHICH AS BACHELOR 
 
 I DREAMED, 
 THIS yew BDmoy OF JTY BOO* 
 
 IS DEDICA.TBD.
 
 A NEW PREFACE. 
 
 MY publisher has written me that the old type of 
 this book of the Reveries are so far worn and 
 battered, that they will bear no further usage ; and, in 
 view of a new edition, he asks for such revision of the 
 text as I may deem judicious, and for a few lines in way 
 of preface. 
 
 I began the revision. I scored out word after word ; 
 presently I came to the scoring out of paragraphs ; and 
 before I had done, I was making my scores by the page. 
 
 It would never do. It might be the better, but it 
 would not be the same. I cannot lop away those twelve 
 swift, changeful years that are gone. 
 
 Middle age does not look on life like youth ; we can 
 not make it. And why mix the years and the thoughts ? 
 Let the young carry their own burdens, and banner ; 
 and we ours. 
 
 I have determined not to touch the book. A race 
 has grown up which may welcome its youngness, and 
 find a spirit or a sentiment in it that cleaves to them, 
 and cheers them, and is true. I hope they will. 
 
 For me those young years are gone. I cannot go
 
 6 A NEW PREFACE. 
 
 back to that tide. I hear the rush of it in quiet hours, 
 like the murmur of lost music. The companions who 
 discussed with me these little fantasies as they came 
 reeking from the press, and suggested how I might 
 have mended matters by throwing in a new light here, 
 or deepening the shadows there, are no longer within 
 ear-shot. If living, they are widely scattered ; heads 
 of young families, maybe, who will bring now to the 
 re-reading of passages they thought too sombre, the light 
 of such bitter experience as, ten years since, neither 
 they nor I had fathomed. Others are dapper, elderly 
 bachelors, coquetting with the world in the world's 
 great cities, brisk in their step, coaxing all the 
 features of youth to stay by them, brushing their hair 
 with needless and nervous frequency over the growing 
 spot of baldness, perversely reckoning themselves 
 still proper mates for girlhood, dreaming yet (as we 
 once dreamed together) of an Elysium in store, and of 
 a fairy future, where only roses shall bloom. 
 
 The houses where I was accustomed to linger show 
 
 O 
 
 other faces at the windows, bright and cheery faces, it 
 is true, but they are looking over at a young fellow 
 upon the other side of the way. 
 
 The children who sat for my pictures are grown ; the 
 boys I watched at their game of taw, and who clapped 
 their hands gleefully at a good shot, are buttoned 
 into natty blue frocks, and wear little lace-bordered 
 bands upon their shoulders; and over and over, as J 
 read my morning paper, I am brought to sudden pause,
 
 A NEW PREFACE. " 
 
 mid a strange electric current thrills me, as I come upon 
 their boy-names printed in the dead-roll of the war. 
 
 The girls who wore the charming white pinafores, and 
 a wild tangle of flaxen curls, have now netted up all 
 those clustering tresses into a stately Pompadour head 
 dress ; and they rustle past me in silks, and do not know 
 me. 
 
 The elderly friends who cheered me with kindly ex 
 pressions of look and tongue I am compelled to say 
 now trip in their speech ; and I observe a little mo 
 rocco case at their elbows for eye-glasses. 
 
 And as they put them on, to read what I may be say 
 ing now, let them keep their old charity, and think as 
 well of me as they can. 
 
 EnoiwooD. 1862.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 TUIIS book is neither more nor less than it pretends 
 to be : it is a collection of those floating Reveries 
 which have, from time to time, drifted across my brain. 
 I never yet met with a bachelor who had not his share 
 of just such floating visions ; and the only difference 
 between us lies in the fact that I have tossed them from 
 me in the shape of a Book. 
 
 If they had been worked over with more unity of 
 design, I dare say I might have made a respectable 
 novel ; as it is, I have chosen the honester way of setting 
 them down as they came seething from my thought, with 
 all their crudities and contrasts, uncovered. 
 
 As for the truth that is in them, the world may be 
 lieve what it likes ; for having written to humor the 
 world, it would be hard if I should curtail any of its. 
 privileges of judgment. I should think there was as 
 much truth in them as in most Reveries. 
 
 The first story of the book has already had some 
 publicity ; and the criticisms upon it have amused and 
 pleased me. One honest journalist avows that it could 
 never have been written by a bachelor. I thank him
 
 10 PREFACE. 
 
 for thinkiug so well of me, and heartily wish that hia 
 thought were as true as it is kind. 
 
 Yet I am inclined to think that bachelors are the only 
 safe and secure observers of all the phases of married 
 life. The rest of the world have their hobbies, and by 
 law, as well as by immemorial custom, are reckoned 
 unfair witnesses in everything relating to their matri 
 monial affairs. 
 
 Perhaps I ought however to make an exception in 
 favor of spinsters, who, like us, are independent spec 
 tators, and possess just that kind of indifference to the 
 marital state which makes them intrepid in their obser 
 vations, and very desirable for authorities. 
 
 As for the style of the book, I have nothing to say for 
 it, except to refer to my title. These are not sermons, 
 nor essays, nor criticisms ; they are only Reveries. 
 And if the reader should stumble upon occasional mag 
 niloquence, or be worried with a little too much of sen 
 timent, pray let him remember that I am dreaming 
 
 But while I say this in the hope of nicking off the 
 wiry edge of my reader's judgment, I shall yet stand up 
 boldly for the general tone and character of the book. 
 Tf there is bad feeling in it, or insincerity, or shallow 
 sentiment, or any foolish depth of affection betrayed, 
 I am responsible ; and the critics may expose it to their 
 heart's content 
 
 I have moreover a kindly feeling for these Reveries 
 from their very private character : they consist mainly
 
 PREFACE. 11 
 
 of just such whiniseys, and reflections, as a great manj 
 brother bachelors are apt to indulge in, but which they 
 are too cautious, or too prudent, to lay before the world. 
 As I have in this matter shown a frankness and naivete 
 which are unusual, I shall ask a corresponding frankness 
 in my reader ; and I can assure him safely that this is 
 eminently one of those books which were " never in 
 tended for publication." 
 
 In the hope that this plain avowal may quicken the 
 reader's charity, and screen me from cruel judgment. 
 I remain, with sincere good wishes, 
 
 IK MABVEL, 
 
 Niw YCBK, Nov. 1850
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FIRST REVERIE. 
 
 Rft0B 
 
 'Jrrm. A Wooo-FiM . r 
 
 L SMOU aGximve Door ... 
 
 IL BLAZK sicjonrraa f^*mmm .... JC 
 
 HI. 
 
 SECOND REVERIE. 
 BY A Crrr GKITB ......... U 
 
 L SKA-COAL ....... D 
 
 IL AjnvKAOOK . .... 
 
 THIRD REVERIE. 
 
 DTK* HIS CIG AX tt 
 
 L LIGHTED WITH A COAL ...... 99 
 
 D. LIGHTED WITH A Wur or PAHS IU 
 
 ILL Luamro WITH A MATOP UK 
 
 FOURTH REVERIE. 
 
 ., Soon, ASTD EwKimu . .... 141 
 
 SCBOOb-IkATS ...... . . 157 
 
 THK SKA 
 
 AEoouji Gn. .si 
 
 THX ATULUJOB ...... 194 
 
 EMMA i
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 MM 
 
 IL NOOS WHICH IS THE PRESEJJT .... 210 
 
 EARLY FRIENDS 212 
 
 SCHOOL REVISITED 220 
 
 COLLEGE 225 
 
 THE PACKET OF BELLA. ... > 233 
 
 III, EVEXING WHICH IS THE FUTURE .... 241 
 
 CARRY , 245 
 
 THE LETTER . 253 
 
 NEW TRAVEL 169 
 
 Eoau . .....
 
 FIRST REVERIE. 
 SMOKE, FLAME, AND ASHES.
 
 OVER A WOOD-FIRE. 
 
 1 HAVE got a quiet farm-house in the country, a verj 
 *- humble place to be sure, tenanted by a worthy 
 enough man, of the old New-England stamp, where I 
 sometimes go for a day or two in the winter, to look 
 over the farm accounts, and to see how the stock is 
 thriving on the winter's keep. 
 
 One side the door, as you enter from the porch, is a 
 little parlor, scarce twelve feet by ten, with a cosy-look 
 ing fireplace, a heavy oak floor, a couple of arm-chairs, 
 and a brown table with carved lions' feet. Out of this 
 room opens a little cabinet, only big enough for a broad 
 bachelor bedstead, where I sleep upon feathers, and 
 wake in the morning with my eye upon a saucy colored 
 lithographic print of some fancy " Bessy." 
 
 It happens to be the only house in the world of 
 which I m bona-fide owner ; and I take a vast deal of 
 comfort in treating it just as I choose. I manage tc 
 break some article of furniture almost every time I pay 
 it a visit ; and if I cannot open the window readilv of a
 
 18 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 morning, to breathe the fresh air, I knock out a pane 01 
 two of glass with my boot. I lean against the walls in 
 a very old arm-chair there is on the premises, and scarce 
 ever fail to worry such a hole in the plastering as would 
 set me down for a round charge for damages in town, 01 
 make a prim housewife fret herself into a raging fever, 
 I laugh out loud with myself, in my big arm-chair, when 
 1 think that I am neither afraid of one nor the other. 
 
 As for the fire, I keep the little hearth so hot as to 
 warm half the cellar below, and the whole space be 
 tween the jambs roars for hours together with white 
 flame. To be sure, the windows are not very tight, be 
 tween broken panes and bad joints, so that the fire, 
 large as it is, Is by no means an extravagant comfort. 
 
 As night approaches, I have a huge pile of oak and 
 hickory placed beside the hearth ; I put out the tallow 
 candle on the mantel, (using the family snuffers, with 
 one leg broke,) then, drawing my chair directly in front 
 of the blazing wood, and setting one foot on each of 
 the old iron fire-dogs, (until they grow too warm,) I dis 
 pose myself for an evening of such sober and thought 
 ful quietude, as I believe, on my soul, that very few of 
 my fellow-men have the good fortune to enjoy. 
 
 My tenant, meantime, in the other room, I can hear 
 iow and then, though there is a thick stone chimney 
 and broad entry between, multiplying contrivances with 
 his wife to put two babies to <jleep This occupies
 
 OVER A WOOD-FIRE. 19 
 
 diem, I should say, usually an hour; though my only 
 measure of time (for I never carry a watch into the 
 country) is the blaze of my fire. By ten, or there 
 abouts, my stock of wood is nearly exhausted ; I pile 
 upon' the hot coals what remains, and sit watching how 
 it kindles, and blazes, and goes out, even like our 
 joys ! and then slip by the light of the embers into 
 my bed, where I luxuriate in such sound and healthful 
 slumber as only such rattling window-frames, and coun 
 try air, can supply. 
 
 But to return. The other evening, it happened to 
 be on my last visit to my farm-house, when I had 
 exhausted all the ordinary rural topics of thought, had 
 formed all sorts of conjectures as to the income of the 
 year ; had planned a new wall around one lot, and the 
 clearing up of another, now covered with patriarchal 
 wood ; and wondered if the little rickety house would 
 not be after all a snug enough box to live and to die 
 in. I fell on a sudden into such an unprecedented line 
 of thought, which took such deep hold of my sympathies 
 sometimes even starting tears that I determined, 
 the next day, to set <vs inch of it as I could recall, ou 
 paper. 
 
 Something it may have been the home-looking 
 blaze, (I am a bachelor of say six and twenty,) or 
 possibly a plaintive cry of the baby in my tenant's 
 room had suggested to me the thought of Mar 
 riage.
 
 20 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I piled upon the heated fire-d^gs the last armful of 
 my wood ; and now, said I, bracing myself courageously 
 between the arms of my chair, I '11 not flinch ; I '11 pur 
 sue the thought wherever it leads, though it lead me to 
 
 the d , (I am apt to be hasty,) at least, continued 
 
 I, softening, until my fire is out. 
 
 The wood was green, and at first showed no disposi 
 lion to blaze. It smoked furiously. Smoke, thought I. 
 always goes before blaze ; and so does doubt go before 
 decision : and my Reverie, from that very starting point 
 slipped into this shape :
 
 Smoke Signifying Doubt. 
 
 \ WIFE ? thought I ; yes, a wife ! 
 ^-^- And why ! 
 
 And pray, my dear sir, why not why ? Why not 
 iloubt ; why not hesitate ; why not tremble ? 
 
 Does a man buy a ticket in a lottery a poor man, 
 whose whole earnings go in to secure the ticket 
 without trembling, hesitating, and doubting ? 
 
 Can a man stake his bachelor respectability, his 
 independence and comfort, upon the die of absorbing, 
 unchanging, relentless marriage, without trembling at 
 the venture ? 
 
 Shall a man who has been free to chase his fancies 
 over the wide world, without let or hindrance, shut 
 himself up to marriage-ship, within four walls called 
 Home, that are to claim him, his time, his trouble, and 
 his tears, thenceforward forevermore, without doubts 
 thick, and thick-coming as Smoke ? 
 
 Shall he who has been hitherto a mere observer of 
 other men's cares and business, moving off where
 
 22 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 they made him sick of heart, approaching whenever 
 and wherever they made him gleeful, shall he now 
 undertake administration of just such cares and busi 
 ness, without qualms ? Shall he, whose whole life has 
 been but a nimble succession of escapes from trifling 
 difficulties, now broach without doublings that Matri 
 mony, where if difficulty beset him, there is no escape . 
 Shall this brain of mine, careless-working, never tired 
 with idleness, feeding on long vagaries and high gigan 
 tic castles, dreaming out beatitudes hour by hour, 
 turn itself at length to such dull task-work, as thinking 
 out a livelihood for wife and children ? 
 
 Where thenceforward will be those sunny dreams in 
 which I have warmed my fancies and my heart, and 
 lighted my eye with crystal ? This very marriage, 
 which a brilliant working imagination has invested time 
 and again with brightness and delight, can serve nc 
 longer as a mine for teeming fancy : all, alas ! will be 
 gone reduced to the dull standard of the actual ! 
 \o more room for intrepid forays of imagination no 
 n ore gorgeous realm-making all will be over ! 
 
 Why not, I thought, go on dreaming ? 
 
 Can any wife be prettier than an after-dinner fancy, 
 idle and yet vivid, can paint for you ? Can any chil 
 dren make less noise than the little, rosy-cheeked ones, 
 who have no existence except in the omnium gatherum 
 of your own brain ? Can any housewife be more unex
 
 SMOKE SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 28 
 
 leptiouable than she who goes sweeping daintily the cob 
 webs that gather in your dreams ? Can any domestic 
 larder be better stocked than the private larder of 
 your head dozing on a cushioned chair-back at Del- 
 monico's ? Can any family purse be better filled thai 
 the exceeding plump one you dream of, after reading 
 such pleasant books as Munchhausen, or Typee? 
 
 But if, after all, it must be, duty, or what-not, mak 
 ing provocation, what then ? And I clapped my feet 
 hard against the fire-dogs, and leaned back, and turned 
 my face to the ceiling, as much as to say, And where 
 on earth, then, shall a poor devil look for a wife ? 
 
 Somebody says, Lyttleton or Shaftesbury I think, 
 that " marriages would be happier if they were all 
 arranged by the Lord Chancellor." Unfortunately, we 
 have no Lord Chancellor to make this commutation of 
 our misery. 
 
 Shall a man then scour the country on a mule's 
 back, like Honest Gil Bias of Santillane ; or shall he 
 make application to some such intervening providence 
 as Madame St. Marc, who, as I see by the Presse, 
 manages these matters to one's hand for some five per 
 lent on the fortunes of the parties? 
 
 I have trouted, when the brook was so low, and the 
 ky so hot, that I might as well have thrown my fly 
 ipon the turnpike ; and I have hunted hare at noon, 
 and woodcock in snow-time, never despairing, scarce
 
 21 ZSVER1ES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 doubting j but for a poor hunter of his kind, without 
 traps or snares, or any aid of police or constabulary, 
 to traverse the world, where are swarming, on a mod 
 erate computation, some three hundred and odd mill 
 ions of unmarried women, for a single capture irre 
 mediable, unchangeable and yet a capture which, by 
 gtrange metonymy not laid down in the books, is very 
 apt to turn captor into captive, and make game of 
 hunter, all this, surely, surely may make a man shrug 
 with doubt ! 
 
 Then, again, there are the plaguey wife's rela 
 tions. Who knows how many third, fourth, or fifth 
 cousins will appear at careless complimentary intervals, 
 long after you had settled into the placid belief that 
 all congratulatory visits were at an end? How many 
 twisted-headed brothers will be putting in their advice, 
 as a friend to Peggy ? 
 
 How many maiden aunts will come to spend a month 
 or two with their " dear Peggy," and want to know 
 every tea-time " if she is n't a dear love of a wife ? " 
 Then, dear father-in-law will beg (taking dear Peggy's 
 hand in his) to give a little wholesome counsel ; and 
 will be very sure to advise just the contrary of what 
 you had determined to undertake. And dear mamma- 
 in-law must set her nose into Peggy's cupboard, and 
 insist upon having the key to your own private lockei 
 ji the wainscot.
 
 SMOKE SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 26 
 
 Then, perhaps, there is a little bevy of dirty nosed 
 nephews who come to spend the holidays, and eat up 
 your East India sweetmeats; and who are forever 
 tramping over your head, or raising the old Harry be- 
 low, while you are busy with your clients. Last, and 
 worst, is some fidgety old uncle, forever too cold or too 
 hot, who vexes you with his patronizing airs, and impu 
 dently kisses his little Peggy ! 
 
 That could be borne, however ; for perhaps he 
 
 has promised his fortune to Peggy. Peggy, then, will 
 be rich : (and the thought made me rub my shins, 
 which were now getting comfortably warm upon the 
 fire-dogs.) Then, she will be forever talking of her 
 fortune ; and pleasantly reminding you, on occasion 
 of a favorite purchase, how lucky that she had the 
 means ; and dropping hints about economy ; and buy 
 ing very extravagant Paisleys. 
 
 She will annoy you by looking over the stock-list at 
 breakfast-time ; and mention quite carelessly to your 
 clients that she is interested in such or such a specu 
 lation. 
 
 She will be provokingly silent when you hint to a 
 tradesman that you have not the money by you foi 
 his small bill ; in short, she will tear the life out of 
 you, making you pay in righteous retribution of annoy 
 ance, grief, vexation, shame, and sickness of heart, foi 
 the superlative folly of " marrying rich."
 
 iitf REVERlbb Ob A BACHhLOti. 
 
 But if not rich, then poor. Bah ! the thought 
 
 made me stir the coals ; but there was still no blaze. 
 The paltry earnings you are able to wring out of clients 
 by the sweat of your brow, will now be all our income ; 
 you will be pestered for pin-money, and pestered with 
 your poor wife's relations. Ten to one, she will stickle 
 about taste, " Sir Visto's," and want to make this 
 so pretty, and that so charming, if she only had the 
 means ; and is sure Paul (a kiss) can't deny his little 
 Peggy such a trifling sum, and all for the common 
 benefit. 
 
 Then she, for one, means that her children sha'n't 
 go a-begging for clothes, and another pull at the 
 purse. Trust a poor mother to dress her children in 
 finery ! 
 
 Perhaps she is ugly ; not noticeable at first, but 
 growing on her, and (what is worse) growing faster 
 on you. You wonder why you did n't see that vulgar 
 nose long ago ; and that lip it is very strange, you 
 think, that you ever thought it pretty. And then, to 
 come to breakfast, with her hair looking as it does, 
 and you not so much as daring to say, " Peggy, do 
 brush your hair ! " Her foot too not very bad when 
 decently chaussee but now since she 's married she 
 does wear such infernal slippers ! And yet for all this, 
 to be prigging up for an hour when any of my old 
 shums come to dine with me !
 
 SMOKE SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 27 
 
 ' Bless your kind hearts my dear fellows," said I 
 thrusting the tongs into the coals, and speaking out 
 loud, as if my voice could reach from Virginia to Paris : 
 '' not married yet ! " 
 
 Perhaps Peggy is pretty enough, only shrewish. 
 
 No matter for cold coffee ; you should have been 
 
 np before. 
 
 What sad, thin, poorly cooked chops, to eat with youi 
 rolls! 
 
 She thinks they are very good, and wonders how 
 
 you can set such an example to your children. 
 
 The butter is nauseating. 
 
 She has no other, and hopes you '11 not raise 
 
 i storm about butter a little turned. I think I see 
 myself, ruminated I, sitting meekly at table, scarce dar 
 ing to lift up my eyes, utterly fagged out with some 
 quarrel of yesterday, choking down detestably sour 
 muffins, that my wife thinks are "delicious," slipping in 
 dried mouthfuls of burnt ham off the side of my fork 
 tines, slipping off my chair sideways at the end, and 
 slipping out, with my hat between my knees, to business, 
 and never feeling myself a competent, sound-minded 
 man, till the oak door is between me and Peggy. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! not yet," said I ; and in so earnest a 
 
 tone that my dog started to his feet, cocked his eye to 
 have a good look into my face, met my smile of tri 
 umph with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled up 
 igain in the corne-
 
 28 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild 
 enough, only she does n't care a fig for you. She lias 
 married you because father or grandfather thought the 
 match eligible, and because she did n't wish to disoblige 
 them. Besides, she did n't positively hate you, and 
 thought you were a respectable enough young person ; 
 she has told you so repeatedly at dinner. She wonders 
 you like to read poetry ; she wishes you would buy her 
 a good cook-book, and insists upon your making your 
 will at the birth of the first baby. 
 
 She thinks Captain So-and-So a splendid-looking 
 fellow, and wishes you would trim up a little, were i* 
 only for appearance' sake. 
 
 You need not hurry up from the office so early at 
 night : she, bless her dear heart ! does not feel lonely 
 You read to her a love-tale : she interrupts the pathetic 
 parts with directions to her seamstress. You read of 
 marriages : she sighs, and asks if Captain So-and-So 
 aas left town ! She hates to be mewed up in a cottage, 
 or between brick walls ; she does so love the Springs ! 
 
 But, again, Peggy loves you ; at least she swears it, 
 with her hand on the " Sorrows of Werther." She has 
 pin-money which she spends for the " Literary World " 
 and the " Friends in Council." She is not bad-looking 
 save a bit too much of forehead ; nor is she sluttish, 
 unless a neglige till three o'clock, and an ink-stain on 
 die forefinger be sluttish ; but then she is such a sad 
 tfae!
 
 SMOKE SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 29 
 
 You never fancied, when you saw her buried in a 
 ihree-volume novel, that it was anything more than a 
 girlish vagary ; and when she quoted Latin, you thought 
 innocently that she had a capital memory for her sam 
 plers. 
 
 But to be bored eternally about divine Dante and 
 funny Goldoni, is too bad. Your copy of Tasso, a 
 treasure print of 1 680, is all bethumbed and dogs-eared, 
 and spotted with baby-gruel. Even your Seneca an 
 Elzevir is all sweaty with handling. She adores La 
 Fontaine, reads Balzac with a kind of artist-scowl, and 
 will not let Greek alone. 
 
 You hint at broken rest and an aching head at break 
 fast, and she will fling you a scrap of Anthology, in lieu 
 of the camphor-bottle, or chant the alal, alal, of tragic 
 chorus. 
 
 The nurse is getting dinner; you are holding 
 
 the baby ; Peggy is reading Bruyere. 
 
 The fire smoked thick as pitch, and puffed out little 
 clouds over the chimney-piece. I gave the fore-stick a 
 kick, at the thought of Peggy, baby, and Bruyere. 
 
 Suddenly the flame flickered bluely athwart the 
 
 iinoke, caught at a twig below, rolled round the mossy 
 jak stick, twined among the crackling tree - limbs-, 
 mounted, lit up the whole body of smoke, and blazed 
 :it cheerily and bright. Doubt vanished with Smoke 
 und Hope began with Flame.
 
 II. 
 
 Blaze Siym/ying Cheer. 
 
 I PUSHED my chair back ; drew up another 
 *- stretched out my feet cosily upon it, rested my 
 elbows on the chair-arms, leaned my head on one hand, 
 und looked straight into the leaping and dancing flame 
 
 Love is a flame, ruminated I ; and (glancing 
 
 round the room) how a flame brightens up a man's hab 
 itation. 
 
 
 " Carlo," said I, calling up my dog into the light ; 
 " good fellow, Carlo ! " and I patted him kindly ; and he 
 wagged his tail, and laid his nose across my knee, and 
 looked wistfully up in my face ; then strode away, turned 
 to look again, and lay down to sleep. 
 
 " Pho, the brute ! " said I ; "it is not enough, after 
 aJl, to like a dog." 
 
 If now in that chair yonder, not the one your 
 
 foet lie upon, but the other, beside you, closer yet, 
 were seated a sweet-faced girl, with a pretty little foot 
 Tying out upon the hearth, a bit of lace running round 
 the swelling throat, the hair parted to a charm over n
 
 BLAZE SIGNIFYING CHEER. 3J 
 
 forehead fair as any of your dreams, and if you could 
 reach an arm round that chair-back, without fear of 
 giving offence, and suffer, your fingers to play idly with 
 those curls that escape down the neck, and if you 
 could clasp with your other hand those little, white, 
 taper fingers of hers, which lie so temptingly within 
 reach, and so, talk softly and low in presence of the 
 blaze, while the hours slip without knowledge, and the 
 winter winds whistle uncared for, if, in short, you 
 were no bachelor, but the husband of some such sweet 
 image, (dream, call it rather,) would it not be far pleas- 
 anter than this cold, single, night-sitting, counting the 
 sticks, reckoning the length of the bla/.e, and the height 
 of the falling snow ? 
 
 And if, some or all of those wild vagaries that grow 
 on your fancy at such an hour, you could whisper into 
 listening because loving ears, ears not tired with lis 
 tening, because it is you who whisper, ears ever in 
 dulgent, because eager to praise, and if your darkest 
 fancies were lit up, not merely with bright wood-fire, 
 but with a ringing laugh of that sweet face turned up 
 in fond rebuke, how far better, than to be waxing 
 black and sour over pestilential humors, alone, your 
 fery dog asleep ? 
 
 And if, when a glowing thought comes into youi 
 Drain, quick and sudden, you could tell it over as to a 
 tecond self, to that sweet creature, who is not away
 
 32 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 because she loves to be there ; and if you could watch 
 the thought catching that girlish mind, illuming that 
 fair brow, sparkling in those pleasantest of eyes, how 
 far better than to feel it slumbering, and going out, 
 heavy, lifeless, and dead, in your own selfish fancy. 
 And if a generous emotion steals over you, coming 
 you know not whither, would there not be a richef 
 charm in lavishing it in caress, or endearing word, 
 upon that fondest and most dear one, than in patting 
 your glossy coated dog, or sinking lonely to smiling 
 slumbers ? 
 
 How would not benevolence ripen with such monitor 
 to task it ! How would not selfishness grow faint and 
 dull, leaning ever to that second self, which is the 
 loved one ! How would not guile shiver, and grow 
 weak, before that girl-brow, and eye of innocence ! 
 How would not all that boyhood prized of enthusiasm, 
 and quick blood, and life, renew itself in such pres 
 ence ! 
 
 The fire was getting hotter, and I moved into the 
 uiiddle of the room. The shadows the flames made 
 were playing like fairy forms over floor, and wall, and 
 ceiling. 
 
 My fancy would surely quicken, thought I, if such 
 being were in attendance. Surely imagination would 
 be stronger and purer, if it could have the playful 
 fancies of dawning womanhood to delight it. All toil
 
 BLAZE SIGNIFYING CHEER. 33 
 
 ttould be torn from mind-labor, if but another heart 
 grew into this present soul, quickening it, warming it 
 cheering it, bidding it ever God speed ! 
 
 ffer face would make a halo, rich as a rainbow, atop 
 of all such noisome things as we loneiy souls call 
 trouble. Her smile would illumine the blackest of 
 crowding cares : and darkness that now seats you de 
 spondent in your solitary chair for days together, 
 weaving bitter fancies, dreaming bitter dreams, would 
 grow light and thin, and spread and float away, chased 
 by that beloved smile. 
 
 Your friend poor fellow ! dies : never mind, that 
 gentle clasp of her fingers, as she steals behind you, 
 telling you not to weep, it is worth ten friends ! 
 
 Your sister, sweet one, is dead buried. The worms 
 tre busy with all her fairness. How it makes you think 
 earth nothing but a spot to dig graves upon ! 
 
 It is more. She, she says, will be a sister ; and 
 
 the waving curls, as she leans upon your shoulder, touch 
 your cheek, and your wet eye turns to meet those other 
 eyes God has sent his angel, surely ! 
 
 Your mother, alas for it, she is gone ! Is there any 
 bUterness to a youth, alone and homeless, like this ! 
 
 But you are not homeless ; you are not alone : she 
 is there ; her tears softening yours, her smile lighting 
 yours, her grief killing yours ; and you live again, to 
 
 assuage that kind sorrow of hers. 
 3*
 
 B4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Then, those children, rosy, fair-haired ; no, they do 
 not disturb you with their prattle now ; they are yours ! 
 Toss away there on the greensward ; never mind the 
 hyacinths, the snowdrops, the violets, if so be any are 
 there : the perfume of their healthful lips is worth all 
 the flowers of the world. No need now to gathei 
 srild bouquets to love and cherish: flower, tree, gun, 
 are all dead things ; things livelier hold your soul. 
 
 And she, the mother, sweetest and fairest of all, 
 watching, tending, caressing, loving, till your own heart 
 grows pained with tenderest jealousy, and cures itself 
 with loving. 
 
 You have no need now of any cold lecture to teach 
 thankfulness : your heart is full of it No need now, 
 as once, of bursting blossoms, of trees taking leaf and 
 greenness, to turn thought kindly and thankfully ; for 
 ever beside you there is bloom, and ever beside you 
 there is fruit, for which eye, heart, and soul are full of 
 unknown and unspoken, because unspeakable, thank- 
 offering. 
 
 And if sickness catches you, binds you, lays you 
 down : no lonely moanings, and wicked curses at care 
 less stepping nurses. The step is noiseless, and yet 
 distinct beside you. The white curtains are drawn, or 
 withdrawn, by the magic of that other presence ; and 
 l jhe soft, cool hand is upon your brow. 
 
 No cold comfortings of friend-watchers, merely com
 
 BLAZE --SIGNIFYING CHEER. 85 
 
 in to steal a word away from that outer world which 
 is pulling at their skirts ; but, ever, the sad, shaded 
 brow of her, whose lightest sorrow for your sake is 
 rour greatest grief, if it were not a greater joy. 
 
 The blaze was leaping light and high, and the wood 
 ailing under the growing heat. 
 
 So, continued I, this heart would be at length 
 
 self; striving with everything gross, even now as it 
 ' Vugs to grossness. Love would make its strength 
 i ative and progressive. Earth's cares would fly. Joys 
 would double. Susceptibilities be quickened ; Love 
 master self; and having made the mastery, stretch on 
 ward, and upward toward Infinitude. 
 
 And if the end came, and sickness brought that fol 
 lower Great Follower which sooner or later is sure 
 to come after, then the heart, and the hand of Love, 
 ever near, are giving to your tired soul, daily and 
 hourly, lessons of that love which consoles, which tri 
 umphs, which circleth all, and centreth in all, Love 
 Infinite and Divine ! 
 
 Kind Hands none but hers will smooth the hair 
 upon yov r brow as the chill grows damp and heavy on 
 it ; and KM fingers none but hers will lie in youra 
 is the washed flesh stiffens, and hardens for the ground. 
 Her tears - you could feel no others, if oceans fell 
 yill warm y *ur drooping features once more to life ; 
 ;nce more y^rs -eye, lighted in joyous triumph, kindle 
 a her smile, a: 4 -\ "hen
 
 36 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 The fire fell upon the hearth ; the blaze gave a last 
 leap, a flicker, then another, caught a little remaining 
 twig, blazed up, wavered, went out. 
 
 There was nothing but a bed of glowing embers, 
 Dver which the white ashes gathered fast I nras aJone, 
 urith only my dog for company.
 
 111. 
 
 Ashes Signifying Desolation. 
 
 A FTER all, thought I, ashes follow blaze, inevi- 
 tably as Death follows Life. Misery treads on 
 the heels of Joy ; Anguish rides swift after Pleasure. 
 
 " Come to me again, Carlo," said I to my dog ; and 
 I patted him fondly once more, but now only by the 
 light of the dying embers. 
 
 It is very little pleasure one takes in fondling brute 
 favorites ; but it is a pleasure that when it passes 
 leaves no void. It is only a little alleviating redun 
 dance in your solitary heart-life, which, if lost, another 
 can be supplied. 
 
 But if your heart not solitary, not quieting its hu 
 mors with mere love of chase or dog, not repressing 
 year after year its earnest yearnings after something 
 better and more spiritual has fairly linked itself by 
 bonds strong as life to another heart, is the casting off 
 easy, then ? 
 
 Is it then only a little heart-redundancy cut off, 
 vhich the next bright sunset will fill up?
 
 38 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 And my fancy, as it had painted doubt under the 
 smoke, and cheer under warmth of the blaze, so now 
 it began, under the faint light of the smouldering em 
 bers, to picture heart-desolation. 
 
 What kind, congratulatory letters, hosts of them, 
 
 coming from old and half-forgotten friends, now thai 
 your happiness is a year, or two years old ! 
 
 Beautiful." 
 
 Aye, to be sure beautiful ! 
 
 Rich." 
 
 Pho, the dawdler ! how little he knows of heart 
 
 treasure who speaks of wealth to a man who loves his 
 wife as a wife only should be loved ! 
 
 "Young." 
 
 Young indeed ; guileless as infancy ; charming 
 
 as the morning. 
 
 Ah, these letters bear a sting : they bring to mind, 
 with new and newer freshness, if it be possible, the 
 ralue of that which you tremble lest you lose. 
 
 How anxiously you watch that step, if it lose not its 
 buoyancy ; how you study the color on that cheek, if 
 it grow not fainter ; how you tremble at the lustre in 
 those eyes, if it be not the lustre of Death ; how you 
 totter under the weight of that muslin sleeve a phan 
 torn weight ! How you fear to do it, and yet press 
 forward, to note if that breathing be quickened, as you 
 ascend the home-heights, to look off on sunset lighting 
 the plain.
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 89 
 
 Is your sleep quiet sleep, after that she has whis 
 pered to you her fears, and in the same breath soft 
 as a sigh, sharp as an arrov bid you bear it bravely ? 
 
 Perhaps the embers were now glowing fresher, a 
 little kindling, before the ashes she triumphs over 
 disease. 
 
 But Poverty, the world's almoner, has come to you 
 with ready, spare hand. 
 
 Alone, with your dog living on bones, and you on 
 hope kindling each morning, dying slowly each night, 
 this could be borne. Philosophy would bring home 
 its stores to the lone man. Money is not in his hand, 
 but Knowledge is in his brain ! and from that brain 
 he draws out faster, as he draws slower from his pocket. 
 He remembers : and on remembrance he can live for 
 days, and weeks. The garret, if a garret covers him, 
 is rich in fancies. The rain, if it pelts, pelts only him 
 used to rain-peltings. And his dog crouches not in 
 dread, but in companionship. His crust he divides 
 with him, and laughs. He crowns himself with glori 
 ous memories of Cervantes, though he begs : if he 
 nights it under the stars, he dreams heaven-sent dreams 
 of the prisoned and homeless Galileo. 
 
 He hums old sonnets, and snatches of poor Jonson's 
 plays. He chants Dryden's odes, and dwells on Otway's 
 rhyme. He reasons with Bolingbroke or Diogenes, as 
 (he humor takes him ; and laughs at the world : for the 
 vorld, thank Heaven, has left him alone !
 
 40 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Keep your money, old misers, and your palaces, old 
 princes, the \vorld is mine ! 
 
 " I care not, Fortune, what you me deny. 
 You cannot rob me of free nature's grace, 
 
 You cannot shut the windows of the sky, 
 Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ; 
 You cannot bar my constant feet to trace 
 
 The woods and lawns, by living streams, at eve. 
 Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, 
 
 And I their toys to the great children leave: 
 Of Fancy, Reason, Virtue, naught can me bereave! " 
 
 But if not alone ? 
 
 If she is clinging to you for support, for consolation, 
 for home, for life, she, reared in luxury perhaps, is 
 faint for bread ? 
 
 Then, the iron enters the soul ; then the nights darken 
 under any sky-light. Then the days grow long, even in 
 the solstice of winter. 
 
 She may not complain ; what then ? 
 
 Will your heart grow strong, if the strength of her 
 love can dam up the fountains of tears, and the tied 
 tongue not tell of bereavement ? Will it solace you to 
 find her parting the poor treasure of food you have 
 stolen for her, with begging, foodless children ? 
 
 But this ill, strong hands, and Heaven's help, will put 
 Jown. Wealth again ; Flowers again ; Patrimonial 
 acres again ; Brightness again. But your little Bessy, 
 pour favorite child, is pining. 
 
 Would to God ! you say in agony, that wealth could
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 41 
 
 bring fulness again into that blanched cheek, or round 
 those little thin lips once more ; but it cannot. Thin 
 ner and thinner they grow ; plaintive and more plain 
 tive her sweet voice. 
 
 " Dear Bessy " and your tones tremble ; you feel 
 that she is on the edge of the grave ? Can you pluck 
 her back ? Can endearments stay her? Business is 
 heavy, away from the loved child ; home you go, to 
 fondle while yet time is left ; but this time you are too 
 late. She is gone. She cannot hear you : she cannot 
 thank you for the violets you put within her stiff white 
 hand. 
 
 And then the grassy mound the cold shadow of 
 the headstone ! 
 
 The wind, growing with the night, is rattling at the 
 window-panes, and whistles dismally. I wipe a tear 
 and, in the interval of my Reverie, thank God that I 
 am no such mourner. 
 
 But gayety, snail-footed, creeps back to the house 
 hold. All is bright again ; 
 
 the violet bed 's not sweeter 
 Than the delicious breath marriage sends forth. 
 
 Her lip is rich and full ; her cheek delicate as a 
 8ower. Her frailty doubles your love. 
 
 And the little one she clasps frail too too frail 
 (.he boy you had set your hopes and heart on. You 
 4ave watched him growing, ever prettier, ever winning
 
 42 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 more and more upon your soul. The love you bore lo 
 him when he first lisped names your name and hers 
 
 has doubled in strength, now that he asks innocently 
 to be taught of this or that, and promises you, by that 
 quick curiosity that flashes in his eye, a mind full of 
 ntelligence. 
 
 And some hair-breadth escape by sea or flood, that 
 he perhaps may have had, which unstrung your soul 
 to such tears as you pray God may be spared you again, 
 
 has endeared the little fellow to your heart a thou 
 sand-fold. 
 
 And now, with his pale sister in the grave, all that 
 love has come away from the mound, where worms feast, 
 and centres on the boy. 
 
 How you watch the storms lest they harm him ! 
 How often you steal to his bed late at night, and lay 
 your hand lightly upon the brow, where the curls clus 
 ter thick, rising and falling with the throbbing temples, 
 and watch, for minutes together, the little lips half 
 parted, and listen your ear close to them if th 
 Breathing be regular and sweet ! 
 
 But the day comes the night rather when you 
 can catch no breathing. 
 
 Aye, put your hair away; compose yourself; listen 
 again. 
 
 No, there is nothing ! 
 
 Put your hand now to his brow, damp, indeed
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 48 
 
 bat not with healthful night-sleep ; it is not your hand, 
 no, do not deceive yourself, it is your loved boy's fore 
 head that is so cold ; and your loved boy will never 
 speak to you again never play again he is dead ! 
 
 Oh, the tears the tears; what blessed things are 
 tears ! Never fear now to let them fall on his fore 
 head, or his lip, lest you waken him ! Clasp him 
 clasp him harder ; you cannot hurt, you cannot waken 
 him ! Lay him down, gently or not, it is the same ; he 
 is stiff; he is stark and cold. 
 
 But courage is elastic ; it is our pride. It recovers 
 itself easier, thought I, than these embers will get into 
 blaze again. 
 
 But courage, and patience, and faith, and hope have 
 their limit Blessed be the man who escapes such trial 
 as will determine limit ! 
 
 To a lone man it comes not near ; for how can trial 
 take hold where there is nothing by which to try ? 
 
 A funeral ? You reason with philosophy. A grave 
 yard ? You read Hervey, and muse upon the wall. A 
 friend dies ? You sigh, you pat your dog ; it is over. 
 Losses ? You retrench ; you light your pipe ; it is for 
 gotten. Calumny? You laugh you sleep. 
 
 But with that childless wife clinging to you in love 
 ind sorrow what then ? 
 
 Can you take down Seneca now, and coolly blow the 
 dust from the leaf-tops ? Can you crimp vour lip witl
 
 44 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Voltaire? Can you smoke idly, your feet dangling 
 with the ivies, your thoughts all waving fancies upon a 
 churchyard wall, a wall that borders the grave of 
 your boy ? 
 
 Can you amuse yourself by turning stinging Martial 
 into rhyme ? Can you pat your dog, and seeing him 
 wakeful and kind, say " It is enough " ? Can you sneer 
 at calumny, and sit by your fire dozing ? 
 
 Blessed, thought I again, is the man who escapes such 
 trial as will measure the limit of patience and the limit 
 of courage ! 
 
 But the trial comes : colder and colder were grow 
 ing the embers. 
 
 That wife, over whom your love broods, is fading. 
 Not beauty fading ; that, now that your heart is wrapped 
 in her being, would be nothing. 
 
 She sees with quick eye your dawning apprehension, 
 and she tries hard to make that step of hers elastic. 
 
 Your tiials and your loves together have centred 
 your affections. They are not now as when you were 
 
 lone man, widespread and superficial. They have 
 caught from domestic attachments a finer tone and 
 touch. They cannot shoot out tendrils into barren 
 world-soil, and suck up thence strengthening nutriment 
 They ha ir e grown under the forcing-glass of home-roof 
 fhey w : Jl not now bear exposure. 
 
 You do not now look men in the face as if a heart-
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 46 
 
 bond was linking you as if a community of feelinp 
 lay between. There is a heart-bond that absorbs all 
 others ; there is a community that monopolizes your 
 feeling. When the heart lay wide open, before it had 
 grown upon and closed around particular objects, it 
 could take strength and cheer from a hundred connec 
 tions that now seem colder than ice. 
 
 And now those particular objects, alas for you ! are 
 failing. 
 
 What anxiety pursues you ! How you struggle to 
 fancy there is no danger ; how she struggles to per 
 suade you there is no danger ! 
 
 How it grates now on your ear the toil and turmoil 
 of the city ! It was music when you were alone ; it was 
 pleasant even, when from the din you were elaborating 
 comforts for the cherished objects, when you had such 
 sweet escape as evening drew on. 
 
 Now it maddens you to see the world careless while 
 you are steeped in care. They hustle you in the street ; 
 they smile at you across the table ; they bow carelessly 
 over the way ; they do not know what canker is at youi 
 heart. 
 
 The undertaker comes with his bill for the dead boy's 
 funeral. He knows your grief; he is respectful. Yot 
 bless him in your soul. You wish the laughing street- 
 goers were all undertakers. 
 
 Your eye follows the physician as he leaves you?
 
 46 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 house: is he wise? you ask yourself; is he prudent? \& 
 he the best ? Did he neN'er fail ; is he never forgetful ? 
 
 And now the hand that touches yours is it no thin 
 ner, no whiter than yesterday ? Sunny days come when 
 he revives ; color comes back ; she breathes freer ; she 
 picks flowers ; she meets you with a smile: hope Jivefl 
 again. 
 
 But the next day, of storm she is fallen. She cannot 
 talk even ; she presses your hand. 
 
 You hurry away from business before your time. 
 What matter for clients ; who is to reap the rewards ? 
 What matter for fame ; whose eye will it brighten ? 
 What matter for riches; whose is the inheritance? 
 
 You find her propped with pillows ; she is looking 
 over a little picture-book bethumbed by the dear boy 
 she has lost. She hides it in her chair ; she has pity 
 on you. 
 
 Another day of revival, when the spring sun 
 
 shines, and flowers open out-of-doors ; she leans on your 
 arm, and strolls into the garden where the first birds 
 are singing. Listen to them with her ; what memories 
 are in bird-songs ! You need not shudder at her tears; 
 they are tears of Thanksgiving. Press the hand that 
 lies light upon your arm, and you, too, thank God, 
 nrhile yet you may ! 
 
 You are early home, mid-afternoon. Your step is not 
 ight ; it is heavy, terrible.
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 43 
 
 They have sent for you. 
 
 She is lying down, her eyes half closed, her breathing 
 
 ng and interrupted. 
 She hears you ; her eye opens ; you put your hand 
 
 in hers ; yours trembles ; hers does not. Her lips move 
 
 it is your name. 
 
 " Be strong," she says ; " God will help you." 
 
 She presses harder your hand : "Adieu ! " 
 
 A long breath, another ; you are alone again. No 
 
 tears now ; poor man ! You cannot find them ! 
 
 Again home early. There is a smell of varnish 
 
 in your house. A coffin is there ; they have clothed the 
 body in decent grave-clothes, and the undertaker is 
 screwing down the lid, slipping round on tiptoe. Does 
 he fear to waken her ? 
 
 He asks you a simple question about the inscription 
 upon the plate, rubbing it with his coat-cuff. You look 
 him straight in the eye ; you motion to the door ; you 
 dare not speak. 
 
 He takes up his hat, and glides out stealthful as a cat 
 
 The man has done his work well for all. It is a nice 
 coffin, a very nice coffin. Pass your hand over it ; ho* 
 smooth ! 
 
 Some sprigs of mignonette are lying carelessly hi a 
 little gilt-edged saucer. She loved mignonette, 
 
 It is a good stanch table the coffin rests OD; it ! 
 wwr table ; you are a housekeeper, a man of family
 
 18 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Aye, of family ! keep down outcry, or the nurse will 
 be in. Look over at the pinched features ; is this :J] 
 that is left of her ? And where is your heart now ? 
 No, don't thrust your nails into your hands, nor mangle 
 your lip, nor grate your teeth together. If you could 
 only weep ! 
 
 Another day. The coffin is gone out. The 
 
 stupid mourners have wept what idle tears ! She 
 with your crushed heart, has gone out. 
 
 Will you have pleasant evenings at your home now ? 
 
 Go into your parlor that your prim housekeeper has 
 made comfortable with clean hearth and blaze of sticks. 
 
 Sit down in your chair ; there is another velvet-cush 
 ioned one, over against yours, empty. You press your 
 fingers on your eyeballs, as if you would press out 
 something that hurt the brain ; but you cannot. Your 
 head leans upon your hand ; your eye rests upon the 
 flashing blaze. 
 
 Ashes always come after blaze. 
 
 Go now into the room where she was sick, softh 
 lest the prim housekeeper come after. 
 
 They have put new dimity upon her chair ; they have 
 hung new curtains over the bed. They have removed 
 from the stand its phials, and silver bell ; they have put 
 a little vase of flowers in their place ; the perfume will 
 Dot offend the sick sense now. They have half opened 
 the window, that the room so long closed may have air 
 It will not be too cold.
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 49 
 
 She is not there. 
 
 Oh God ! thou who dost temper the wind to the 
 
 shorn lamb, be kind ! 
 
 The embers were dark ; I stirred them ; there was no 
 sign of life. My dog was asleep. The clock in rny 
 tenant's chamber had struck one. 
 
 I dashed a tear or two from my eyes ; how they came 
 there I know not. I half ejaculated a prayer of thanks 
 that such desolation had not yet come nigh me, and a 
 prayer of hope that it might never come. 
 
 In a half hour more I was sleeping soundly. Mj 
 -cverie was ended. 
 8
 
 SECOND REVERIE. 
 
 SEA-GOAL AND ANTHRACITE
 
 BY A CITY GRATE. 
 
 1 ) LESS ED b(i letters! they are the monitors, they 
 -*-* are also the comforters, and they are the only true 
 heart-talkers ! Your speech, and their speeches, are 
 conventional ; they are moulded by circumstance ; they 
 are suggested by the observation, remark, and influence 
 of the parties to whom the speaking is addressed, or by 
 whom it may be overheard. 
 
 Your truest thought is modified half through its 
 utterance by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is 
 not individual : it is not integral : it is social and 
 mixed, half of you, and half of others. It bends, it 
 sways, it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the 
 talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens. 
 
 But it is not so of Letters. There you are, wit! 
 only the soulless pen, and the snow-white, virgin paper 
 Your soul is measuring itself by itself, and saying its 
 own sayings : there are no sneers to modify its utter 
 ance, no scowl to scare ; nothing is present but you 
 ind your thought.
 
 64 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Utter it then freely ; write it down ; stamp it ; burn 
 ft in the ink ! There it is, a true soul-print ! 
 
 Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter 1 
 I 4 is worth all the lip-talk in the world. Do you say, 
 it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, ar 
 tistic? 
 
 Let me see it then ; let me run it over ; tell me age, 
 sex. circumstance, and I will tell you if it be studied or 
 real, if it be the merest lip-slang put into words, or 
 heart -talk blazing on the paper. 
 
 I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with 
 narrow crimson ribbon, now soiled with frequent hand 
 ling, which far into some winter's night I take down 
 from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and 
 run over, with such sorrow and such joy, such tears 
 and such smiles, as I am sure make me for weeks aftei 
 a kinder and holier man. 
 
 There are in this little packet, letters in the familiar 
 hand of a mother ; what gentle admonition ; what 
 tender affection ! God have mercy on him who out 
 lives the tears that such admonitions and such affection 
 call up to the eye ! There are others in the budget, in 
 the delicate and unformed hand of a loved and lost sis 
 ter, written when she and you were full of glee, and 
 the best mirth of youthfulness ; does it harm you to 
 recall that mirthfulness ? or to trace again, for the hun 
 dredth time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom,
 
 BY A CITY GRATE. 66 
 
 frith its t's so carefully dotted, and its gigantic fs so 
 carefully crossed, by the childish hand of a little 
 brother ? 
 
 I have added latterly to that packet of letters. I 
 almost need a new and longer ribbon ; the old one is 
 getting too short. Not a few of these new and cher 
 ished letters a former Reverie * has brought to me ; not 
 letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully 
 executed, prettily imagined ; no such thing : but let 
 ters of sympathy of sympathy which means sympa 
 thy the TTcuB-rj^i and the o-w. 
 
 It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them ; 
 I am too selfish for that. It is enough to say that they, 
 the kind writers, have seen a heart in the Reverie, 
 have felt that it was real, true. They know it ; a secret 
 influence has told it. What matters it, pray, if literally 
 there was no wife, and no dead child, and no coffin, in 
 the house ? Is not feeling, feeling ; and heart, heart ? 
 Are not these fancies thronging on my brain, bringing 
 tears to my eyes, bringing joy to my soul, as living as 
 anything human can be living ? What if they have no 
 material type no objective form ? All that is crude 
 a mere reduction of ideality to sense, a transfor 
 mation of the spiritual to the earthy, a levelling of 
 soul to matter. 
 
 * The first Reverie Smoke, Flame, and Ashes was published 
 months previous to this, in the Southern Literary Messenger.
 
 66 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Are we not creatures of thought and passion ? la 
 anything about us more earnest than that same thought 
 and passion ? Is there anything more real, more 
 characteristic of that great and dim destiny to which we 
 are born, and which may be written down in that terri 
 ble word Forever ? 
 
 Let those who will, then, sneer at what in their wis- 
 lom they call untruth, at what is false, because it has 
 no material presence : this does not create falsity ; 
 would to Heaven that it did ! 
 
 And yet, if there was actual, material truth, super 
 added to Reverie, would such objectors sympathize the 
 more ? No ! a thousand times, no ; the heart that 
 has no sympathy with thoughts and feelings that scorch 
 the soul, is dead also whatever its mocking tears and 
 gestures may say to a coffin or a grave ! 
 
 Let them pass, and we will come back to these cher 
 ished letters. 
 
 A mother, who has lost a child, has, she says, shed a 
 tear not one, but many over the dead boy's cold 
 ness. And another, who has not lost, but who trembles 
 lest she lose, has found the words failing as she read, 
 nd a dim, sorrow-borne mist spreading over the page. 
 
 Another, yet rejoicing in all those family ties that 
 make life a charm, has listened nervously to careful 
 reading, until the husband is called home, and the coffin 
 w in the house. " Stop ! " she says ; and a gush of tears 
 the rest.
 
 BY A CITY GRATE. 67 
 
 Yet the cold critic will say, " It was artfully done." A 
 jurse on him ! it was not art : it was nature. 
 
 Another, a young, fresh, healthful girl-mind, has seen 
 something in the love-picture albeit so weak ol 
 truth ; and has kindly believed that it must be earnest 
 Aye, indeed is it, fair and generous one, earnest as life 
 and hope ! Who, indeed, with a heart at all, that has 
 not yet slipped away irreparably and forever from the 
 shores of youth, from that fairy land which young 
 enthusiasm creates, and over which bright dreams hover, 
 but knows it to be real ? And so such things will 
 be real till hopes are dashed, and Death is come. 
 
 Another, a father, has laid down the book in tears. 
 
 God bless them all ! How far better this than 
 the cold praise of newspaper paragraphs, or the criti 
 cally contrived approval of colder friends ! 
 
 Let me gather up these letters carefully, to be read 
 K'hen the heart is faint and sick of all that there is 
 unreal and selfish in the world. Let me tie them to 
 gether with a new and longer bit of ribbon ; not by a 
 love-knot, that is too hard ; but by an easy slipping knot, 
 that so I may get at them the better. And now they 
 are all together, a snug packet, and we will label them, 
 not sentimentally (I pity tne one who thinks it!) but 
 sarucstly, and in the best meaning of the term, 
 SOUVENIRS no Cffiun. 
 
 Thanks to my first Reverie, which has added to suck 
 ft treasure ! 3 *
 
 C>5 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 And now to my SECOND REVERIE. 
 
 I am no longer in the country. The fields, the trees, 
 the brooks are far away from me, and yet they are verj 
 present. A letter from my tenant how different from 
 those other letters ! lies upon my table, telling me 
 what fields he has broken up for the autumn grain, and 
 how many beeves he is fattening, and how the potatoes 
 are turning out. 
 
 But I am in a garret of the city. From my window 
 I look over a mass of crowded house-tops, moralizing 
 often upon the scene, but in a strain too long and som 
 bre to be set down here. In place of the wide country 
 chimney, with its iron fire-dogs, is a snug grate, where 
 the maid makes me a fire in the morning, and rekindles 
 it in the afternoon. 
 
 I am usually fairly seated in my chair a cosily 
 stuffed office-chair by five or six o'clock of the even 
 ing. The fire has been newly made, perhaps an hour 
 before : first, the maid drops a withe of paper in the 
 bottom of the grate, then a stick or two of pine-wood, 
 and after it a hod of Liverpool coal ; so that by the 
 time I am seated for the evening, the sea-coal is fairly 
 In a blaze. 
 
 When this has sunk to a level with the second ba 
 of the grate, the maid replenishes it with a hod of A.n 
 thracite ; and I sit musing and reading, while the new 
 coal warms and kindles ; not leaving my pls.ee, until if
 
 BY A CITY GRATE. 59 
 
 was sunk to the third bar of the grate, which marks my 
 bedtime. 
 
 I love these accidental measures of the hours, which 
 belong to you, and your life, and not to the world. A 
 watch is no more the measure of your time than of 
 the time of your neighbors ; a church-clock is as pub 
 lic and vulgar as a church-warden. I would as soon 
 think of hiring the parish sexton to make my bed, as 
 to regulate my time by the parish clock. 
 
 A shadow that the sun casts upon your carpet, or a 
 streak of light on a slated roof yonder, or the burning 
 of your fire, are pleasant time-keepers, full of pres 
 ence, full of companionship, and full of the warning 
 time is passing ! 
 
 In the summer season I have even measured my 
 reading, and my night-watch, by the burning of a 
 taper; and I have scratched upon the handle to the 
 little bronze taper-holder that meaning passage of the 
 New Testament, Nv yap cpxerai, the night cometh ! 
 
 But T must get upon my Reverie. It was a drizzly 
 evening ; I had worked hard during the day, and had 
 drawn my boots, thrust my feet into slippers, thrown 
 on a Turkish loose dress and Greek cap, souvenirs to 
 me of other times and other places, and sat watch 
 ing the lively, uncertain yellow play of the bituminous 
 flame.
 
 L 
 
 Sea-Coal. 
 
 I T is like a flirt, mused I : lively, uncertain, bright. 
 *- colored, waving here and there, melting the coal 
 into black, shapeless mass ; making foul, sooty smoke, 
 and pasty, trashy residuum ! Yet withal, pleasantly 
 sparkling, dancing, prettily waving, and leaping Uke a 
 roebuck from point to point. 
 
 How like a flirt ! And yet is not this tossing caprice 
 of girlhood, to which I liken my sea-coal flame, a na 
 tive play of life, and belonging by nature to the play 
 time of life ? Is it not a sort of essential fire-kindling 
 to the weightier and truer passions, even as Jenny 
 puts the soft coal first, the better to kindle the anthra 
 cite? Is it not a sort of necessary consumption of 
 young vapors, which float in the soul, and which is left 
 thereafter the purer ? Is there not a stage somewhere 
 in every man's youth for just such waving, idle heart- 
 blaze, which means nothing, yet which must be got 
 over? 
 
 Lamartine says somewhere, very prettily, that there 
 \s more of quick-running sap and floating shade in v
 
 SEA-COAL. 61 
 
 young tree, but more of fire in the heart of a sturdy 
 oak : ' II y a plus de skve folle et d? ombre floltante dans 
 les jeunes plants de la foret ; il y a plus de feu dans la 
 vieux c&ur du chene" 
 
 Is Lamartine playing off his prettiness of expression 
 dressing up with his poetry, making a good con 
 science against the ghost of some accusing Graziella, 
 or is there truth in the matter ? 
 
 A man who has seen sixty years, whether widower 
 or bachelor, may well put such sentiment into words : it 
 feeds his wasted heart with hope ; it renews the exul 
 tation of youth by the pleasantest of equivocation, and 
 the most charming of self-confidence. But, after all, 
 is it not true ? Is not the heart like new blossoming 
 field-plants, whose first flowers are half-formed, one 
 sided perhaps, but by-and-by, in maturity of season, 
 putting out wholesome, well-formed blossoms, that will 
 hold their leaves long and bravely ? 
 
 Bulwer, in his story of the Caxtons, has counted first 
 heart-flights mere fancy passages, a dalliance with the 
 breezes of love, which pass, and leave healthful heart 
 appetite. Half the reading world has read the story 
 of Trevanion and Pisistratus. But Bulwer is past 
 his heart-life is used up epuise. Such a man can very 
 afely rant about the cool judgment of after-years. 
 
 Where does Shakspeare put the unripe heart-age? 
 Ml of it before the ambition, that alone makes the
 
 52 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 hero-soul. The Shakspeare man "sighs like a fur 
 aace," before he stretches his arm to achieve the " bau 
 ble, reputation." 
 
 Yet Shakspeare has meted a soul-love, mature and 
 ripe, without any young furnace-sighs, to Desdemona 
 and Othello. Cordelia, the sweetest of his play-crea 
 tions, loves without any of the mawkish matter which 
 makes the whining love of a Juliet. And Florizel, in 
 the " Winter's Tale," says to Perdita, in the true spirit 
 f a most sound heart, 
 
 " My desires 
 
 Run not before mine honor, nor my lusts 
 Burn hotter than my faith." 
 
 How is it with Hector and Andromache ? No sea-coal 
 blaze, but one that is constant, enduring, pervading : a 
 pair of hearts full of esteem and best love, good, 
 honest, and sound. 
 
 Look now at Adam and Eve, in God's presence, with 
 Milton for showman. Shall we quote by this sparkling 
 blaze, a gem from the " Paradise Lost " ? We will hum 
 It to ourselves, what Raphael sings to Adam, a 
 classic song : 
 
 " Him, serve and fear! 
 Of other creatures, as Him pleases best 
 Wherever placed, let Him dispose; joy thou 
 In what he gives to thee. thi? Paradise 
 And thy fair Eve !"
 
 SEA-COAL. 68 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Love refines 
 
 The thoughts and heart enlarges: hath his seat 
 
 In reason, and is judicious: is the scale 
 
 By which to Heavenly love thou mayst ascend ! " 
 
 None of the playing sparkle in this love, which be 
 tongs to the flame of my sea-coal fire, that is now danc 
 ing, lively as a cricket. But on looking about my gar 
 ret-chamber, I can see nothing that resembles the arch 
 angel Raphael, or "thy fair Eve." 
 
 There is a degree of moisture about the sea-coal 
 flame, which, with the most earnest of my musing, I 
 find it impossible to attach to that idea of a waving, 
 sparkling heart which my fire suggests. A damp heart 
 must be a foul thing to be sure ! But whoever heard 
 jf one ? 
 
 Wordsworth, somewhere in the " Excursion," says : 
 
 14 The good die first, 
 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 Burn to the socket ! " 
 
 What, in the name of Rydal Mount, is a dry heart ? 
 A. dusty one, I can conceive of: a bachelor's heart 
 must be somewhat dusty, as he nears the sixtieth sum 
 mer of his pilgrimage ; and hung over with cobwebs 
 in which sit such watchful gray old spiders as Avarice 
 *nd Selfishness, forever on the look-out for such bottle 
 tjreen flies as Lust. 
 
 tt I wilJ never," said I, griping at the elbows of mj
 
 64 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 chair, " live a bachelor till sixty : never, so surely as 
 there is hope in man, or charity in woman, or faith in 
 both ! " 
 
 And with that thought, my heart leaped about in 
 playful coruscations, even like the flame of the sea- 
 coal : rising and wrapping round old and tender 
 memories, and images that were present to me, trying 
 to cling, and yet no sooner fastened than off; dancing 
 again, riotous in its exultation, a succession of heart- 
 sparkles, blazing, and going out ! 
 
 And is there not, mused I, a portion of this world 
 forever blazing in just such lively sparkles, waving 
 here and there as the air-currents fan them ? 
 
 Take, for instance, your heart of sentiment and quick 
 sensibility, a weak, warm-working heart, flying off in 
 tangents of unhappy influence, unguided by prudence, 
 and perhaps virtue. There is a paper by Mackenzie 
 in the Mirror for April, 1780, which sets this untoward 
 sensibility in a strong light. 
 
 And the more it is indulged, the more strong and 
 binding such a habit of sensibility becomes. Poor 
 Mackenzie himself must have suffered thus ; you can 
 not read his books without feeling it ; your eye, in spit 
 Df you, runs over with his sensitive griefs, while you are 
 half ashamed of his success at picture-making. It is 
 a terrible inheritance, and one that a strong man or 
 voman will study to subdue ; it is a vain sea-coal spark
 
 SEA-COAL. 65 
 
 fing, which will count no good. The world is made of 
 much hard, flinty substance, against which your bettei 
 and holier thoughts will be striking fire : see to it that 
 the sparks do not burn you ! 
 
 But what a happy careless life belongs to this Bach 
 elorhood, in which you may strike out boldly right and 
 eft ! Your heart is not bound to another which maj 
 be full of only sickly vapors of feeling ; nor is it frozen 
 to a cold man's heart under a silk bodice, knowing noth 
 ing of tenderness but the name, to prate of; and nothing 
 of soul-confidence, but clumsy confession. And if, in 
 your careless out-goings of feeling, you get here only a 
 little lip vapidity in return, be sure that you will find 
 elsewhere a true heart utterance. This last you will 
 cherish in your inner soul, a nucleus for a new group 
 of affections ; and the other will pass with a whiff of 
 your cigar. 
 
 Or if your feelings are touched, struck, hurt, who is 
 the wiser, or the worse, but you only ? And have you 
 not the whole skein of your heart-life in your own 
 fingers, to wind or unwind in what shape you please? 
 Shake it, or twine it, or tangle it, by the light of your 
 fire, as you fancy best. He is a weak man who canno 
 rwist and weave the threads of his feeling howevei 
 tine, however tangled, however strained, or however 
 strong into the great cable of Purpose, by which he 
 ies moored to his life of Action.
 
 66 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Reading is a great and happy disentangler of all 
 those knotted snarls those extravagant vagaries, 
 which belong to a heart sparkling with sensibility ; but 
 the reading must be cautiously directed. There is old 
 placid Burton, when your soul is weak and its diges 
 tion of life's humors is bad ; there is Cowper, when 
 your spirit runs into kindly, half-sad, religious musing 
 there is Crabbe, when you would shake off vagary, by a 
 little handling of sharp actualities. There is Voltaire, 
 a homoeopathic doctor, whom you can read when you 
 want to make a play of life, and crack jokes at Nature, 
 and be witty with Destiny; there is Rousseau, when 
 you want to lose yourself in a mental dream-land, and 
 be beguiled by the harmony of soul-music and soul- 
 culture. 
 
 And when you would shake off this, and be sturdiest 
 among the battlers for hard world-success, and be fore 
 warned of rocks against which you must surely smite, 
 read Bolingbroke ; run over the letters of Lyttleton ; 
 read, and think of what you read, in the cracking lines 
 Df Rochefoucauld. How he sums us up in his sting- 
 tog words! how he puts the scalpel between th< 
 erves ! yet he never hurts, for he is dissecting dead 
 natter. 
 
 If you are in a genial, careless mood, who is bettei 
 flian such extemporizers of feeling and nature good 
 hearted fellows as Sterne and Fielding ?
 
 SEA-COAL. 67 
 
 And then again, there are Milton and Isaiah, to lift 
 ap one s soul until it touches cloud-land, and you wan 
 der with their guidance, on swift feet, to the very gates 
 of heaven. 
 
 But this sparkling sensibility to one struggling under 
 infirmity, or with grief or poverty, is very dreadful 
 The soul Is too nicely and keenly hinged to be wrenched 
 without mischief. How it shrinks, like a hurt child, 
 from all that is vulgar, harsh, and crude ! Alas, for 
 such a man ! he will be buffeted from beginning to 
 end ; his life will be a sea of troubles. The poor vic 
 tim of his own quick spirit, he wanders with a great 
 shield of doubt hung before him, so that none, not even 
 friends, can see the goodness of such kindly qualities 
 as belong to him. Poverty, if it conies upon him, he 
 wrestles with in secret, with strong, frenzied struggles. 
 He wraps his scant clothes about him to keep him from 
 the cold ; and eyes the world as if every creature in it 
 was breathing chill blasts at him from every opened 
 mouth. He threads the crowded ways of the city, 
 proud in his griefs, vain in his weakness, not stopping 
 to do good. Bulwer, in the " New Timon," has painted, 
 in a pair of stinging Pope-like lines, this feeling in a 
 u Oman : 
 
 " What had been pride, a kind of madness grown, 
 She hugged her wrongs, her sorrow was her throne ! " 
 
 Cold picture ! yet the heart was sparkling under it,
 
 88 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 like my sea-coal fire, lifting and blazing, and lighting 
 and falling, but with no object, and only such little 
 heat as begins and ends within. 
 
 Those fine sensibilities, ever active, are chasing and 
 observing all ; they catch a hue from what the dull and 
 callous pass by unnoticed because unknown. They 
 blunder at the great variety of the world's opinions 
 they see tokens of belief where others see none. That 
 delicate organization is a curse to a man ; and yet, poor 
 fool, he does not see where his cure lies ; he wonders 
 at his griefs, and has never reckoned with himself their 
 source. He studies others, without studying himself. 
 He eats the leaves that sicken, and never plucks up the 
 root that will cure. 
 
 With a woman it is worse : with her, this delicate 
 susceptibility is like a frail flower, that quivers at every 
 rough blast of heaven ; her own delicacy wounds her ; 
 her highest charm is perverted to a curse. 
 
 She listens with fear ; she reads with trembling ; she 
 
 looks with dread. Her sympathies give a tone, like the 
 
 harp of ^Eolus, to the slightest breath. Her sensibility 
 
 ights up, and quivers and falls, like the flame of a sea- 
 
 >al fire. 
 
 if she loves, (and may not a Bachelor reason on 
 ais daintiest of topics,) her love is a gushing, wavy 
 tame, lit up with hope, that has only a little kindling 
 tnatter to light it; and this soon burns out. Yet in
 
 SEA-COAL. 69 
 
 teuse sensibility will persuade her that the flame stil. 
 scorches. She will mistake the annoyance of affection 
 unrequited for the sting of a passion that she fancies 
 still burns. She does not look deep enough to see that 
 the passion is gone, and the shocked sensitiveness emits 
 only faint, yellowish sparkles in its place ; her high 
 wrought organization makes those sparks seem a veri 
 table flame. 
 
 With her, judgment, prudence, and discretion are cold, 
 measured terms, which have no meaning, except as they 
 attach to the actions of others. Of her own acts, she 
 never predicates them ; feeling is much too high, to al 
 low her to submit to any such obtrusive guides of con 
 duct. She needs disappointment to teach her truth, 
 to teach that all is not gold that glitters, to teach that 
 all warmth does not blaze. But let her beware how she 
 sinks under any fancied disappointments : she who sinks 
 under real disappointment lacks philosophy ; but she 
 who suiks under a fancied one lacks purpose. Let her 
 flee as the plague such brooding thoughts as she will 
 love to cherish ; let her spurn dark fancies as the visit 
 ants of hell ; let the soul rise with the blaze of new- 
 kindled, active, and world-wide emotions, and so brighten 
 into steady and constant flame. Let her abjure sucl 
 poets as Cowper, or Byron, or even Wordsworth ; and 
 
 she must poetize, let her lay her mind to such manlj 
 \rse as Pope's, or to such sound and ringing organr; 
 %s Comus.
 
 ;o 
 
 My fire was getting dull, and I thrust in the poker 
 it started up on the instant into a hundred little angry 
 tongues of flame. 
 
 Just so, thought I, the over-sensitive heart, once 
 cruelly disturbed, will fling out a score of flaming pas- 
 Bions, darting here and darting there, half smoke, half 
 flame, love and hate, canker and joy, wild in its 
 madness, not knowing whither its sparks are flying. 
 Once break roughly upon the affections, or even the 
 fancied affections of such a soul, and you breed a tor 
 nado of maddened action, a whirlwind of fire that 
 hisses, and sends out jets of wild, impulsive combustion, 
 that make the bystanders, even those most friendly, 
 stand aloof until the storm is past. 
 
 But this is not all that the dashing flame of my sea- 
 coal suggests. 
 
 How like a flirt! mused I again, recurring to 
 
 my first thought : so lively, yet uncertain ; so bright, 
 yet so flickering ! Your true flirt plays with sparkles ; 
 her heart, much as there is of it, spends itself in 
 sparkles ; she measures it to sparkle, and habit grows 
 into nature, so that anon it can only sparkle. How 
 Carefully she cramps it, if the flames show too great a 
 heat ; how dexterously she flings its blaze here and 
 there ; how coyly she subdues it ; how winningly she 
 ights it ! 
 
 All this is the entire reverse of the unpremeditated
 
 SEA-COAL. 71 
 
 V 
 
 iartings of the soul at which I have been looking ; sen 
 sibility scorns heart-curbings and heart-teachings ; sen 
 sibility inquires not, how much ? but only, where ? 
 
 Your true flirt has a coarse-grained soul ; well mod 
 ulated and well tutored, but there is no fineness in it 
 All its native fineness is made coarse by coarse efforti 
 of the will. True feeling is a rustic vulgarity the flirt 
 does not tolerate ; she counts its healthiest and most 
 honest manifestation all sentiment. Yet she will play 
 you off a pretty string of sentiment which she has gath 
 ered from the poets ; she adjusts it prettily as a Gobelin 
 weaver adjusts, the colors in his tapis. She shades it off 
 delightfully ; there are no bold contrasts, but a most 
 artistic mellow of nuances. 
 
 She smiles like a wizard, and jingles it with a laugh, 
 such as tolled the poor home-bound Ulysses to the Cir- 
 cean bower. She has a cast of the head, apt and artful 
 as the most dexterous cast of the best trout-killing rod. 
 Her words sparkle, and flow hurriedly, and with the 
 prettiest doubleness of meaning. Naturalness she cop 
 ies, and she scorns. She accuses herself of a single 
 expression or regard, which nature prompts. She 
 prides herself on her schooling. She measures her wit 
 by the triumphs of her art ; she chuckles over her own 
 falsity to herself. And if by chance her soul such 
 erm as is left of it betrays her into untoward confi 
 dence, she condemns herself, as if she had committed 
 crime.
 
 72 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 She is always gay, because she has no depth of feel 
 ing to be stirred. The brook that runs shallow ovei 
 hard, pebbly bottom always rustles. She is light- 
 hearted, because her heart floats in sparkles, like my 
 sea-coal fire. She counts on marriage, not as the great 
 absorbent of a heart's-love, and life, but as a happy, 
 feasible, and orderly conventionality, to be played with, 
 and kept at distance, and finally to be accepted as a 
 cover for the faint and tawdry sparkles of an old and 
 cherished heartlessness. 
 
 She will not pine under any regrets, because she has 
 no appreciation of any loss ; she will not chafe at indif 
 ference, because it is her art ; she will not be worried 
 with jealousies, because she is ignorant of love. With 
 no conception of the soul in its strength and fulness, 
 she sees no lack of its demands. A thrill she does not 
 know ; a passion she cannot imagine ; joy is a name ; 
 grief is another ; and Life, with its crowding scenes of 
 love and bitterness, is a play upon the stage. 
 
 I think it is Madame Dudevant who says, in some 
 thing like the same connection : " Les hiboux ne con- 
 naissent pas le chemin par ou les aigles vont au soleil" 
 
 Poor Ned ! mused I, looking at the play of the 
 
 6re, was a victim and a conqueror. He was a man of a 
 full, strong nature, not a little impulsive, with action 
 bo full of earnestness for most of men to see its drift 
 He had known little of what is called the world : he
 
 SEA-COAL. 78 
 
 wras fresh in feeling and high of hope ; he had beec 
 encircled always by friends who loved him, and who, 
 maybe, flattered him. Scarce had he entered upon 
 the tangled life of the city, before he met with a spark 
 ling face and an airy step, that stirred something in 
 poor Ned that he had never felt before. With him, to 
 feel was to act. He was not one to be despised ; for 
 notwithstanding he wore a country air, and the awk 
 wardness of a man who has yet the bienseance of social 
 life before him, he had the soul, the courage, and the 
 talent of a strong man. Little gifted in the knowledge 
 of face-play, he easily mistook those coy manoeuvres of 
 a sparkling heart for something kindred to his own true 
 emotions. 
 
 She was proud of the attentions of a man who carried 
 a mind in his brain, and flattered poor Ned almost into 
 servility. Ned had no friends to counsel him ; or if he 
 had them, his impulses would have blinded him. Never 
 was dodger more artful at the Olympic Games than the 
 Peggy of Ned's heart-affection. He was charmed, be 
 guiled, entranced. 
 
 When Ned spoke of love, she staved it off with the 
 prettiest of sly looks that only bewildered him the 
 more. A charming creature to be sure ; coy as a dove 
 
 So he went on, poor fool, until one day he told me 
 of it with the blood mounting to his temples, and his 
 aye shooting flame he suffered his feelings to nn out
 
 74 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 in passionate avowal. entreaty, everything. Sb 
 gave a pleasant, noisy laugh, and manifested such 
 pretty surprise ! 
 
 He was looking for the intense glow of passion ; and 
 lo ! there was nothing but the shifting sparkle of a sea- 
 coal flame. 
 
 I wrote him a letter of condolence, for I was his sen 
 for by a year. " My dear fellow," said I, " diet your 
 self: you can find greens at the up-town market; eat 
 a little fish with your dinner : abstain from heating 
 drinks ; don't put too much butter to your cauliflower ; 
 read one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons, and translate all 
 the quotations at sight ; run carefully over that exqui 
 site picture of Geo. Danclin in your Moliere, and my 
 word for it, in a week you will be a sound man." 
 
 He was too angry- to renlv ; but eighteen months 
 
 O *' I K O 
 
 thereafter I got a thick, three-sheeted letter, with a 
 dove upon the seal, telling me that he was as happy as 
 a king. He said he had married a good-hearted, domes 
 tic, loving wife, who was as lovely as a June-day ; and 
 that their baby, not three months old, was as bright as 
 a spot of June-day sunshine on the grass. 
 
 What a tender, delicate, loving wife, mused I. 
 inch flashing, flaming flirt must in the end make; the 
 prostitute of fashion ; the bauble of fifty hearts idle as 
 hers ; the shifting makepeace of a stage-scene ; the 
 ictress, now in peasant, and now in princely petticoats
 
 SEA-COAL. 75 
 
 How it would cheer an honest soul to call her his . 
 WTiat a culmination of his heart-life ; what a rick 
 dream-lar d to be realized ! 
 
 Bah ! and I thrust the poker into the clotted 
 
 mass of fading coal ; just such, and so worthless, is the 
 used heart of a city flirt ; just so the incessant sparkle 
 of her life, and frittering passions, fuses all that is 
 sound and combustible into black, sooty, shapeless 
 residuum. 
 
 When I marry a flirt, I will buy second-hand clothes 
 of the Jews. 
 
 Still, mused I, as the flame danced again, there is 
 a distinction between coquetry and flirtation. 
 
 A coquette sparkles, but it is more the sparkle of a 
 harmless and pretty vanity than of calculation. It is 
 the play of humors in the blood, and not the play of 
 purpose at the heart. It will flicker around a true sou. 
 like the blaze around an omelette au rhum, leaving th 
 kernel sounder and warmer. 
 
 Coquetry, with all its pranks and teasings, makes the 
 spice to your dinner the mulled wine to your supper. 
 It will drive you to desperation, only to bring you back 
 hotter to the fray. Who would boast a victory that 
 cost no strategy, and no careful disposition of the forces ; 
 Who would bulletin such success as my Uncle Toby's, 
 'n a back-garden, with only the Corporal Trim fo* 
 assailant? But let a man be very sure that the city is 
 worth the siege !
 
 f6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Coquetry whets the appetite ; flirtation depraves it 
 Coquetry is the thorn that guards the rose, easily 
 trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is like the 
 slime on water-plants, making them hard to handle, 
 and when caught, only to be cherished in slimy waters. 
 
 And so, with my eye clinging to the flickering blaze 
 I see in my reverie a bright one dancing before me 
 with sparkling, coquettish smile, teasing me with the 
 prettiest graces in the world ; and I grow maddened 
 between hope and fear, and still watch with my whole 
 soul in my eyes ; and see her features by-and-by relax 
 to pity, as a gleam of sensibility comes stealing over her 
 spirit ; and then to a kindly, feeling regard : presently 
 she approaches, a coy and doubtful approach, and 
 throws back the ringlets that lie over her cheek, and 
 lays her hand a little bit of white hand timidly 
 upon my strong fingers, and turns her head daintily 
 to one side, and looks up in my eyes as they rest on 
 the playing blaze ; and my fingers close fast and pas 
 sionately over that little hand, like a swift night-cloud 
 shrouding the pale tips of Dian ; and my eyes draw 
 nearer and nearer to those blue, laughing, pitying, teas 
 ing eyes, and my arm clasps round that shadowy form, 
 and my lips feel a warm breath growing warmer 
 ind warmer 
 
 Just here the maid conies in, and throws upon the 
 fire a panful of Anthracite, and my sparkling sea-coaj 
 *everie is ended.
 
 n. 
 
 Anthracite. 
 
 f~T does not burn freely, so I put on the blower 
 
 -*- Quaint and good-natured Xavier de Maistre * would 
 have made, I dare say, a pretty epilogue about a sheet- 
 iron blower ; but I cannot. 
 
 I try to bring back the image that belonged to the 
 lingering bituminous flame, but with my eyes on that 
 dark blower how can I? 
 
 It is the black curtain of destiny which drops down 
 before our brightest dreams. How often the phantoms 
 of joy regale us. and dance before us, golden-winged, 
 angel-faced, heart-warming, and make an Elysium in 
 which the dreaming soul bathes, and feels translated 
 to another existence ; and then sudden as night, or 
 a cloud a word, a step, a thought, a memory will 
 rhase them away, like scared deer vanishing over a 
 gray horizon of moor-land ! 
 
 J know not justly, if it be a weakness or a sin to 
 
 * Voyage attt&ur de Ma Chambre.
 
 78 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 create these phantoms that we love, and to group thtna 
 into a paradise soul-created. But if it is a sin, it is 
 a sweet and enchanting sin ; and if it is a weakness, it 
 is a strong and stirring weakness. If this heart is sick 
 of the falsities that meet it at every hand, and is eager 
 to spend that power which nature has ribbed it with 
 on some object worthy of its fulness and depth, shall 
 t not feel a rich relief, nay more, an exercise in keep 
 ing with its end, if it flow out, strong as a tempest, wild 
 as a rushing river, upon those, ideal creations which 
 imagination invents, and which are tempered by our 
 best sense of beauty, purity, and grace ? 
 
 Useless, do you say ? Aye, it is as useless as 
 
 the pleasure of looking hour upon hour over bright 
 landscapes : t is as useless as the rapt enjoyment of 
 listening, with heart full and eyes brimming, to such 
 music as the Miserere at Rome ; it is as useless as the 
 ecstasy of kindling your soul into fervor and love and 
 madness, over pages that reek with genius. 
 
 There are indeed base-moulded souls who know noth 
 ing of this : they laugh ; they sneer ; they even affect to 
 pity. Just so the Huns under the avenging Attila, who 
 had been used to foul cookery and steaks stewed under 
 their saddles, laughed brutally at the spiced banquets 
 jf an Apicius ! 
 
 No, this phantom-making is no sin ; or if it be, 
 
 t is sinning with a soul so full, so earnest, that it can
 
 ANTHRACITE. 79 
 
 cry to Heaven cheerily, and sure of a gracious hearing, 
 pecaavi misericorde ! 
 
 But my fire is in a glow, a pleasant glow, throwing a 
 tranquil, steady light to the farthest corner of my gar 
 ret How unlike it is t3 the flashing play of the sea- 
 coal ! unlike as an unsteady, uncertain -working heart 
 to the true and earnest constancy of one cheerful and 
 right 
 
 After all, thought I, give me such a heart ; not bent 
 on vanities, not blazing too sharp with sensibility, not 
 throwing out coquettish jets of flame, not wavering, 
 and meaningless with pretended warmth, but open, 
 glowing, and strong. Its dark shades and angles it 
 may have ; for what is a soul worth that does not take 
 a slaty tinge from those griefs that chill the blood ? 
 Yet still the fire is gleaming ; you see it in the crev- 
 \ces ; and anon it will give radiance to the whole mass. 
 
 It hurts the eyes, this fire; and I draw up a 
 
 screen painted over with rough but graceful figures. 
 
 The true heart wears always the veil of modesty, (not 
 if prudery, which is a dingy, iron, repulsive screen.) 
 . t will not allow itself to be looked on too near, it 
 might scorch ; but through the veil you feel the warmth 
 ind through the pretty figures that modesty will robe 
 itself in, you can see all the while the golden outlines, 
 And by that token you know that it is glowing and 
 burning with a pure and steady flame.
 
 BO REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 "With such a heart the mind fuses naturally, a holj 
 and heated fusion ; they work together like twins-born. 
 With such a heart, as Raphael says to Adam, 
 
 " Love hath his seat 
 In reason, and is judicious." 
 
 But let me distinguish this heart from your clay-cold, 
 iiikewarm, half-hearted soul ; considerate, because ig 
 norant ; judicious, because possessed of no latent fires 
 that need a curb ; prudish, because with no warm blood 
 to tempt. This sort of soul may pass scatheless through 
 the fiery furnace of life ; strong only in its weakness ; 
 pure, because of its failings ; and good only by nega 
 tion. It may triumph over love, and sin, and death ; 
 but it will be a triumph of the beast, which has neither 
 passions to subdue, or energy to attack, or hope to 
 quench. 
 
 Let us come back to the steady and earnest heart, 
 glowing like my anthracite coal. 
 
 I fancy I see such a one now ; the eye is deep, and 
 reaches back to the spirit ; it is not the trading ey, 
 weighing your purse ; it is not the worldly eye, weigh 
 ing position ; it is not the beastly eye, weighing you 
 appearance ; it is the heart's eye, weighing your soul ! 
 
 It is full of deep, tender, and earnest feeling. It 
 fe an eye which, looked on once, you long to look OB 
 igain it is an eye which will haunt your dreams, an
 
 ANTHRACITE. 81 
 
 eye which will give a color, in spite of you, to all youi 
 reveries. It is an eye which lies before you in your 
 future, like a star in the mariner's heaven ; by it, un 
 consciously, and from force of deep soul-habit, you take 
 all your observations. It is meek and quiet ; but it is 
 full, as a spring that gushes in flood ; an Aphrodite and 
 a Mercury a Vaucluse and a Clitumnus. 
 
 The face is an angel face : no matter for curious lines 
 
 O 
 
 of beauty ; no matter for popular talk of prettiness ; no 
 matter for its angles or its proportions ; no matter for 
 its color or its form, the soul is there, illuminating 
 every feature, burnishing every point, hallowing every 
 surface. It tells of honesty, sincerity, and worth ; it 
 tells of truth and virtue ; and you clasp the image 
 to your heart, as the received ideal of your fondest 
 dreams. 
 
 The figure may be this or that, it may be tall or short ; 
 t matters nothing, the heart is there. The talk may 
 be soft or low, serious or piquant, a free and honest 
 boul is warming' and softening it all. As you speak, it 
 speaks back again ; as you think, it thinks again, (not 
 vn conjunction, but in the same sign of the Zodiac ;) as 
 you love, it loves in return. 
 
 It is the heart for a sister, and happy is the man 
 
 who can claim such ! The warmth that lies in it is nol 
 >nly generous, but religious, genial, devotional, tende* 1 
 self-sacrificing, and looking heavenward 
 
 4*
 
 82 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 A man without some sort of religion is at best a poor 
 reprobate, the foot-ball of destiny, with no tie linking 
 him to infinity and the wondrous eternity that is begun 
 with him ; but a woman without it is even worse, a 
 flame without heat, a rainbow without color, a flower 
 without perfume ! 
 
 A. man may in some sort tie his frail hopes and honor 
 with weak, shifting ground-tackle to business, or to the 
 world ; but a woman without that anchor which they call 
 Faith, is adrift and a-wreck ! A man may clumsily con 
 trive a kind of moral responsibility out of his relations 
 to mankind ; but a woman in her comparatively isolated 
 sphere, where affection and not purpose is the control 
 ling motive, can find no basis for any system of right 
 action but that of spiritual faith. A man may craze 
 his thought and his brain to trustfulness in such poor 
 harborage as Fame and Reputation may stretch before 
 him ; but a woman where can she put her hope in 
 storms, if not in Heaven ? 
 
 And that sweet trustfulness, that abiding love, that 
 enduring hope, mellowing every page and scene of life, 
 Mghting them with pleasantest radiance, when the 
 world-storms break like an army with smoking cannon, 
 what can bestow it all but a holy soul-tie to what is 
 above the storms, and to what is stronger than an army 
 with cannon ? Who that has enjo^ ed the counsel and 
 Jie love of a Christian mother, but will echo the
 
 ANTHRA CITE. 88 
 
 thought with energy, and hallow it with a tear ? * 
 9ioi,je pleurs f 
 
 My fire is now a mass of red-hot coal. The whoU 
 atmosphere of my room is warm. The heart that with 
 its glow can light up and warm a garret with loose 
 casements and shattered roof, is capable of the best 
 love, domestic love. I draw farther off, and the 
 images upon the screen change. The warmth, the 
 hour, the quiet, create a home feeling ; and that feel 
 ing, quick as lightning, has stolen from the world of 
 fancy (a Promethean theft) a home object, about which 
 ray musings go on to drape themselves in luxurious 
 reverie. 
 
 There she sits, by the corner of the fire, in a 
 
 neat home dress of sober, yet most adorning color. A 
 little bit of lace ruffle is gathered about the neck by a 
 blue ribbon ; and the ends of the ribbon are crossed 
 under the dimpling chin, and are fastened neatly by a 
 simple, unpretending brooch, your gift. The arm, a 
 pretty taper arm, lies over the carved elbow of the 
 oaken chair ; the hand, white and delicate, sustains a 
 little home volume that hangs from her fingers. The 
 forefinger is between the leaves, and the others lie iu 
 relief upon the dark embossed cover. She repeats, in 
 a silver voice, a line that has attracted her fancy ; and 
 i'ou listen, or, at any rate, you seem to listen, with 
 your eyes now on the lips, now on the forehead, and
 
 B4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 now on the finger, where glitters like a star the mar 
 riage-ring little gold band, at which she does not 
 chafe that tells you she is yours ! 
 
 Weak testimonial, if that were all that told it ! 
 
 The eye, the voice, the look, the heart, tells you stronger 
 and better, that she is yours. And a feeling within, 
 where it lies you know not, and whence it comes you 
 now not, but sweeping over heart and brain like a 
 fire-flood, tells you too, that you are hers ! Irremedi 
 ably bound as Hortensio in the play : 
 
 " I am subject to another's will, and can 
 Nor speak, nor do, without permission from her! " 
 
 The fire is warm as ever : what length of heat in this 
 hard burning anthracite ! It has scarce sunk yet to the 
 second bar of the grate, though the clock upon the 
 church-tower has tolled eleven. 
 
 Aye, mused I, gayly, such a heart does not grow 
 faint, it does not spend itself in idle puffs of blaze, it 
 does not become chilly with the passing years ; but it 
 gains and grows in strength and heat, until the fire of 
 life is covered over with the ashes of death. Strong 
 or hot as it may be at the first, it loses nothing. It 
 may not, indeed, as time advances, throw out, like the 
 coal-fire, when new-lit, jets of blue sparkling flame ; it 
 may not continue to bubble, and gush like a fountain 
 *t its source, but it will become a strong river of flow 
 ug charities.
 
 ANTHRACITE, 85 
 
 Clitumnus breaks from under the Tuscan mountains,, 
 almost a flood. On a glorious spring day I leaned down 
 and tasted the water, as it boiled from its sources. The 
 little temple of white marble, the mountain sides gray 
 
 with olive orchards, the white streak of road, the taU 
 
 i 
 
 poplars of the river margin were glistening in the 
 bright Italian sunlight around me. Later, I saw it 
 when it had become a river, still clear and strong, 
 flowing serenely between its prairie banks, on which the 
 white cattle of the valley browsed ; and still farther 
 down, I welcomed it, where it joins the Arno, flowing 
 slowly under wooded shores, skirting the fair Florence, 
 and the bounteous fields of the blight Cascino, gath 
 ering strength and volume, till between Pisa and Leg 
 horn, in sight of the wondrous Leaning Tower, and the 
 ship-masts of the Tuscan port, it gave its waters to its 
 life's grave the sea. 
 
 The recollection blended sweetly now with my mus 
 ings over my garret-grate, and offered a flowing image, 
 to bear along upon its bosom the affections that were 
 grouping in my Reverie. 
 
 It is a strange force of the mind and of the fancy 
 that can set the objects which are closest to the hear 
 far down the lapse of time. Even now, as the fire fades 
 slightly, and sinks slowly towards the bar, which is the 
 Mai of my hours, I seem to see that image of love which 
 has played about the fire-glow of my grate, years hence
 
 86 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 It still covers the same warm, trustful, religious heart 
 Trials have tried it ; afflictions have weighed upon it 
 danger has scared it, and death is coining near to sub 
 due it ; but still it is the same. 
 
 The fingers are thinner ; the face has lines of care 
 and sorrow, crossing each other in a web - work that 
 makes the golden tissue of humanity. But the heart is 
 fond and steady ; it is the same dear heart, the same 
 Belf-sacrificing heart, warming, like a fire, all around it 
 Affliction has tempered joy, and joy adorned affliction 
 Life and all its troubles have become distilled into an 
 holy incense, rising ever from your fireside an offer 
 ing to your household gods. 
 
 Your dreams of reputation, your swift determination, 
 your impulsive pride, your deep-uttered vows to win a 
 name, have all sobered into affection, have all blended 
 into that glow of feeling which finds its centre and hope 
 and joy in HOME. From my soul I pity him whose 
 soul does not leap at the mere utterance of that name. 
 
 A home ! it is the bright, blessed, adorable phantom 
 which sits highest on the sunny horizon that girdeth 
 Life ! When shall it be reached ? When shall it cease 
 lo be a glittering day-dream, and become fully and 
 fairly yours ? 
 
 It is not the house, though that may have its 
 charms; nor the fields carefully tilled, and streaked 
 writh your own footpaths ; nor the trees, though their
 
 ANTHRA CITE. 87 
 
 , hadow be to you like that of a great rock in a wearj 
 I And ; nor yet is it the fireside, with its sweet blaze- 
 p'ay ; nor the pictures which tell of loved ones ; nor 
 tl e cfterished books ; but more far than all these, it 
 is the PRESENCE. The Lares of your worship are there ; 
 thn altar of your confidence is there ; the end of your 
 worldly faith is there ; and adorning it all, and sending 
 your blood in passionate flow, is the ecstasy of the con 
 viction that there at least you are beloved ; that there 
 you are understood ; that there your errors will meet 
 ever with gentlest forgiveness ; that there your troubles 
 will be smiled away ; that there you may unburden your 
 soul, fearless of harsh, unsympathizing ears ; and that 
 there you may be entirely and joyfully yourself. 
 
 There may be those of coarse mould and I have 
 seen such, even in the disguise of women who will 
 reckon these feelings puling sentiment. God pity them ! 
 as they have need of pity. 
 
 That image by the fireside, calm, loving, joyful. 
 
 is there still ; it goes not, however my spirit tosses, be 
 cause my wish and every will keep it there unerring. 
 
 The fire shows through the screen, yellow and warm 
 *s a harvest sun. It is in its best age, and that age is 
 ipeness. 
 
 A ripe heart ! now I know what Wordsworth meant 
 
 Then he said, 
 
 " The good die first, 
 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 Burn to the socket ! "
 
 88 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 The town-clock is striking midnight. The cold of 
 the night wind is urging its way in at the door and win 
 dow crevice ; the fire has sunk almost to the third bar 
 of the grate. Still my dream tires not, but wraps fondly 
 round that image, now in the far-off, chilling mists of 
 age, growing sainted. Love has blended into rever 
 ence ; passion has subsided into joyous content. 
 
 And what if age conies ? said I, in a new flush 
 
 of excitation, what else proves the wine ? What else 
 gives inner strength, and knowledge, and a steady pilot- 
 hand, to steer your boat out boldly upon that shoreless 
 sea where the river of life is running ? Let the white 
 ashes gather ; let the silver hair lie where lay the au 
 burn ; let the eye gleam farther back, and dimmer ; it 
 is but retreating toward the pure sky-depths, an usher 
 to the land where you will follow after. 
 
 It is quite cold, and I take away the screen alto 
 gether ; there is a little glow yet, but presently the coal 
 slips down below the third bar, with a rumbling sound, 
 like that of coarse gravel falling into a new-dug grave. 
 
 She is gone ! 
 
 Well, the heart has burned fairly, evenly, generously 
 while there was mortality to kindle it; eternity wil 
 surely kindle it better. 
 
 Tears indeed ! but they are tears of thanksgiv 
 
 'ug, of resignation, and of hope. 
 
 And the eyes full of those tears which ministering
 
 ANTHRACITE. 89 
 
 angels bestow climb with quick vision upon the an 
 gelic ladder, and open upon the futurity where she has 
 entered, and upon the country which she enjoys. 
 
 It is midnight, and the sounds of life are dead. 
 
 You are in the death-chamber of life ; but you are 
 also in the death-chamber of care. The world seem 
 sliding backward ; and hope and you are sliding for 
 ward. The clouds, the agonies, the vain expectancies 
 the braggart noise, the fears, now vanish behind the cur 
 tain of the Past, and of the Night. They roll from your 
 soul like a load. 
 
 In the dimness of what seems the ending Present, 
 you reach out your prayerful hands toward that bound 
 less Future, where God's eye lifts over the horizon like 
 sunrise on the ocean. Do you recognize it as an ear 
 nest of something better ? Aye, if the heart has been 
 pure and steady, burning like my fire, it has learned 
 it without seeming to learn. Faith has grown upon it 
 as the blossom grows upon the bud, or the flower upon 
 the slow-lifting stalk. 
 
 Cares cannot come into the dream-land where I live. 
 They sink with the dying street noise, and vanish with 
 the embers of my fire. Even Ambition, with its hot and 
 shifting flame, is all gone out The heart in the dimness 
 of the fading fire-glow is all itself. The memory of 
 what good things have come over it in the troubled 
 fouth life bear it up, and hope and faith bear it on
 
 90 REVERJES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Ihere is no extravagant pulse-glow ; there is no mad 
 fever of the brain; bat only die soul, forgetting, for 
 ace, all, save its destinies and its capacities for good. 
 And it mounts higher and higher on these wings of 
 thought ; and hope burns stronger and stronger out of 
 die ashes of decaying life, until die sharp edge of die 
 grave seems but a foot-scraper at die wicket of Elyshnu 
 
 But what is paper; and what are words? Tain 
 tilings! The soul leaves diem behind; die pen stag 
 gers Eke a starveling cripple, and your heart is leaving 
 h a whole length of die fife-course behind. The soul's 
 mortal longings, its poor baffled hopes, are dim now in 
 die light of those infinite longings which spread over it. 
 oft and holy as day-dawn. Eternity has stretched a 
 corner of its mantle toward you, and die breath of its 
 waving fringe is like a gale of Araby. 
 
 A little rumbling, and a last plunge of die cinders 
 within my grate starded me, and dragged back my fancy 
 from my flower chase, beyond die Phlegethon, to die 
 white ashes that were now thick all over die darkened 
 
 And this, mused I, is only a bachelor - drean 
 
 about a pure and loving heart ! And to-morrow comes 
 cankerous fife again : is it wished for ? or. if not wished 
 tor, is die not wishing wicked ? 
 
 Will dreams satisfy, reach high as diey can ? Are we 
 aot, after all, poor, groveffing mortals, tied to earth and
 
 ANTHRACITE. 91 
 
 to each other? Are there not sympathies, and hopes, 
 and affections which can only find their issue and Mess 
 ing in fellow absorption ? Does not the heart, steady 
 and pure as it may be, and mounting on soul-flights 
 often as it dare, want a human sympathy perfectly in 
 dulged to make it healthful ? Is there not a fount of 
 love for this world, as there is a fount of love for the 
 other? Is there not a certain store of tenderness 
 cooped in this heart, which must and tciU be lavished 
 before the end comes? Does it not plead with die 
 judgment, and make issue with prudence, year after 
 year? Does it not dog your steps all through your 
 social pilgrimage, setting up its cl*g in forms fresh 
 and odorous as new-blown heath-bells, saying. Come 
 away from the heartless, the factitious, the vain, and 
 measure your heart, not by its constraints, but by its fid- 
 Bess and by its depth ? Let it run and be joyous ! 
 
 Is there no demon that comes to your harsh night- 
 dreams, like a taunting fiend, whispering, Be satisfied ; 
 keep your heart from running over ; bridle those affec 
 tions ; there is nothing worth loving ? 
 
 Does not some sweet being hover over your spirit of 
 reverie like a beckoning angel, crowned with halo, say- 
 ng. Hope on, hope ever ; the heart and I are kindred 
 DOT mission wfll be fulfilled ; nature shall accomplish hi 
 purpose ; the soul shall have its paradise ? 
 
 1 threw myself upon my bed ; and as mj
 
 92 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 thoughts ran over the definite, sharp business of the 
 morrow, my Reverie, and its glowing images that made 
 my heart bound, swept away like those fleecy rain- 
 clouds of August, on which the sun paints rainbows, 
 driving southward, by a cool, rising wind from the 
 north. 
 
 1 wonder, thought I, as I dropped asleep, if a 
 
 married man with his sentiment made actual, is, after 
 all, as happy as we poor fellows in our dreams ?
 
 THIRD REVERIE. 
 
 A CIGAR THREE TIMES LIGHTED.
 
 OVER HIS CIGAR. 
 
 I DO not believe that there was ever an Aunt Tabith y 
 who could abide cigars. My Aunt Tabithy hated 
 them with a peculiar hatred. She was not only insen 
 sible to the rich flavor of a fresh, rolling volume of 
 smoke, but she could not so much as tolerate the sight 
 of the rich russet color of a Havana-labelled box. 
 It put her out of all conceit with Guava jelly, 10 find 
 it advertised in the same tongue, and with the same 
 Cuban coarseness of design. 
 
 She could see no good in a cigar. 
 
 " But by your leave, my aunt," said I to her, the 
 other morning, " there is very much that is good in a 
 cigar." 
 
 My aunt, who was sweeping, tossed her head, and 
 with it her curls done up in paper. 
 
 " It is a very excellent matter," continued I, puffing. 
 
 "It is dirty," said my aunt. 
 
 " It is clean and sweet," said I ; " and a most pleas 
 ant soother of disturbed feelings ; and a capital com 
 nanion ; and a comforter " and I stopped to puff.
 
 96 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 u You know it is a filthy abomination," said my aunt , 
 " and you ought to be " and she stopped to put up 
 one of her curls, which, with the energy of her gestic 
 ulation, had fallen out of place. 
 
 " It suggests quiet thoughts," continued I ; " and 
 makes a man meditative ; and gives a current to his 
 habits of contemplation, as I can show you," said I, 
 warming with the theme. 
 
 My aunt, still fingering her papers, with the pin 
 in her mouth, gave a most incredulous shrug. 
 
 " Aunt Tabithy," said I, and gave two or three violent, 
 consecutive puffs, "Aunt Tabithy, I can make up such 
 a series of reflections out of my cigar, as would do 
 your heart good to listen to ! " 
 
 k ' About what, pray ? " said my aunt, contemptuously. 
 
 " About love," said I, " which is easy enough lighted, 
 but wants constancy to keep it in a glow. Or about 
 matrimony, which has a great deal of fire in the begin 
 ning, but it is a fire that consumes all that feeds the 
 blaze. Or about life," continued I, earnestly, " which at 
 the first is fresh and odorous, but ends shortly in a 
 withered cinder, that is fit only for the ground." 
 
 My aunt, who was forty and unmarried, finished her 
 curl with a flip of. the fingers, resumed her hold of the 
 broom, and leaned her chin upon one end of it, with 
 in expression of some wonder, some curiosity, and a 
 great deal of expectation.
 
 OVER HIS CIGAR. 97 
 
 1 could have wished my aunt had been a little less 
 curious, or that I had been a little less communicative; 
 for though it was all honestly said on my part, yet my 
 contemplations bore that vague, shadowy, and delicious 
 sweetness, that it seemed impossible to put them into 
 words, least of all, at the bidding of an old lady 
 leaning on a broom-handle. 
 
 " Give me time, Aunt Tabithy," said I, " a good din 
 ner, and after it a good cigar, and I will serve you such 
 a sunshiny sheet of reverie, all twisted out of the 
 smoke, as will make your kind old heart ache ! " 
 
 Aunt Tabithy, in utter contempt, either of my men 
 tion of the dinner, or of the smoke, or of the old heart, 
 commenced sweeping furiously. 
 
 " If I do not," continued I, anxious to appease her, 
 ' if I do not, Aunt Tabithy, it shall be my last cigar ; 
 (Aunt Tabithy stopped sweeping ;) and all my tobacco 
 money (Aunt Tabithy drew near me) shall go to buy 
 ribbons for my most respectable and worthy Aunt 
 Tabithy ; and a kinder person could not have them ; or 
 one," continued I, with a generous puff, " whom they 
 would more adorn." 
 
 My Aunt Tabithy gave me a half-playful, half-thank 
 ful nudge. 
 
 It was in this way that our bargain was struck ; my 
 part of it is already stated. On her part, Aunt Tabithy 
 was to allow me. in case of my success, an evening
 
 98 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 cigar unmolested, upon the front porch, underneath her 
 favorite rose-tree. It was concluded, I say, as I sat; 
 the smoke of my cigar rising gracefully around my 
 Aunt Tabithy's curls ; our right hands joined ; my 
 left was holding my cigar, while in hers was tightly 
 grasped her broomstick. 
 
 And this Reverie, to make the matter short, is \vhat 
 came of the contract
 
 Lighted with a Coal. 
 
 TAKE up a coal with the tongs, and setting the 
 *- end of my cigar against it, puff and puff again 
 but there is no smoke. There is very little hope of 
 lighting from a dead coal; no more hope, thought I, 
 than of kindling one's heart into flame by contact with 
 a dead heart. 
 
 To kindle, there must be warmth and life ; and I 
 sat for a moment, thinking even before I lit my 
 cigar on the vanity and folly of those poor, pur 
 blind fellows, who go on puffing for half a lifetime 
 against dead coals. It is to be hoped that Heaven, in 
 its mercy, has made their senses so obtuse, that they 
 know not when their souls are in a flame, or when they 
 are dead. I can imagine none but the most moderate 
 satisfaction, in continuing to love what has got no 
 ember of love within it. The Italians have a very 
 sensible sort of proverb, amare, e non essere amato, t 
 tempo perduto, to love, and not be loved, is time lost. 
 
 I take a kind of rude pleasure in flinging down t> 
 coal that has no life in it And it seemed to me
 
 100 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 and may Heaven pardon the ill-nature that belongs 
 to the thought that there would be much of the 
 same kind of satisfaction in dashing from you a hike 
 warm, creature, covered over with the yellow ashes of 
 old combustion, that with ever so much attention, and 
 the nearest approach of the lips, never shows signs 
 of fire. May Heaven forgive me again, but J should 
 long to break away, though the marriage bonds held 
 me, and see what liveliness was to be found elsewhere. 
 I have seen before now a creeping vine try to grow 
 up against a marble wall ; it shoots out its tendrils in 
 all directions, seeking for some crevice by which to 
 fasten and to climb, looking now above and now 
 below, twining upon itself, reaching farther up, but 
 after all finding no good foothold, and falling away as 
 if in despair. But nature is not unkind ; twining 
 things were made to twine. The longing tendrils take 
 new strength in the sunshine and in the showers, and 
 shoot out toward some hospitable trunk. They fasten 
 easily to the kindly roughness of the bark, and stretch 
 up, dragging after them the vine ; which by-and-by, 
 from the topmost bough, will nod its blossoms over at 
 the marble wall that refused it succor, as if it said, 
 Stand there in your pride, cold, white wall ! we, the 
 iree and I, are kindred ; it the helper, and I the helped ; 
 and, bound fost together, we riot in the sunshine and iu 
 gladness.
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 101 
 
 Flie thought of this image made me search for a new 
 coal that should have some brightness in it. There 
 may be a white ash over it, indeed, as you will find 
 tender feelings covered with the mask of courtesy, or 
 with the veil of fear, but with a breath it all flies ofij 
 and exposes the heat and the glow that you are seeking 
 
 At the first touch, the delicate edges of the cigai 
 crimple, a thin line of smoke rises, doubtfully for a 
 while, and with a coy delay ; but after a hearty respi 
 ration or two, it grows strong, and my cigar is fairly 
 lighted. 
 
 That first taste of the new smoke and of the fragrant 
 leaf is very grateful ; it has a bloom about it that you 
 wish might last. It is like your first love, fresh, gen 
 ial, and rapturous. Like that, it fills up all the craving 
 of your soul ; and the light, blue wreaths of smoke, like 
 the roseate clouds that hang around the morning of 
 your heart-life, cut you off from the chill atmosphere 
 of mere worldly companionship, and make a gorgeous 
 firmament for your fancy to riot in. 
 
 I do not speak now of those later and manlier pas 
 sions, into which judgment must be thrusting its cold 
 tones, and when all the sweet tumult of your heart has 
 mellowed into the sober ripeness of affection. But I 
 mean that boyish burning which belongs to every poor 
 nortal's lifetime, and which bewilders him with the 
 thought that he has reached the highest point of hu-
 
 102 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 man joy, before he has tasted any of that bitterness 
 from which alone our highest human joys have spring. 
 I mean the time when you cut initials with your jack- 
 knife on the smooth bark of beech-trees; and went 
 moping under the long shadows at sunset ; and thought 
 Louise the prettiest name in the wide world ; and 
 picked flowers to leave at her door ; and stole out at 
 night to watch the light in her window ; and read such 
 novels as those about Helen Mar, or Charlotte, to give 
 some adequate expression to your agonized feelings. 
 
 At such a stage, you are quite certain that you are 
 deeply and madly in love ; you persist, in the face of 
 heaven and earth. You would like to meet the, indi 
 vidual who dared to doubt it. 
 
 You think she has got the tidiest and jauntiest little 
 figure that ever was seen. You think back upon some 
 time when, in your games of forfeit, you gained a kiss 
 from those lips ; and it seems as if the kiss was hanging 
 on you yet, and warming you all over. And then again, 
 it seems so strange that your lips did really touch hers ! 
 You half question if it could have been actually so, 
 uid how you could have dared ; and you wonder if you 
 would have courage to do the same thing again ? and 
 upon second thought are quite sure you would, and snap 
 your fingers at the thought of it. 
 
 What sweet little hats she does wear ; and in the 
 school -room, when the hat is hung up, what curls
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL 103 
 
 golden curls, worth a hundred Golcondas ! How bravely 
 you study the top lines of the spelling-book, that your 
 eyes may run over the edge of the cover without the 
 schoolmaster's notice, and feast upon her ! 
 
 You half wish that somebody would run away with 
 her, as they did with Amanda, in the " Children of the 
 Abbey"; and then you might ride up on a splendid 
 black horse, and draw a pistol or blunderbuss, and shoot 
 the villains, and carry her back, all in tears, fainting 
 and languishing upon your shoulder, and have her fa 
 ther (who is Judge of the County Court) take your 
 hand in both of his, and make some eloquent remarks. 
 A great many such recaptures you run over in your 
 mind, and think how delightful it would be to peril your 
 life, either by flood or fire, to cut off your arm, or 
 your head, or any such trifle, for your dear Louise. 
 
 You can hardly think of anything more joyous in 
 life than to live with her in some old castle, very far 
 away from steamboats and post-offices, and pick wild 
 geraniums for her hair, and read poetry with her under 
 ie shade of very dark ivy vines. And you would have 
 such a charming boudoir in some corner of the old ruin, 
 Tith a harp in it, and books bound in gilt, with cupids 
 )n the cover, and such a fairy couch, with the curtains 
 lung as you have seen them nung in some illustrated 
 Arabian stories upon a pair of carved doves ! 
 
 And when they laugh at you about it, you turn it off
 
 104 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 perhaps, with saying, " It is n't so ; " but afterward, in 
 your chamber, or under the tree where you have cut 
 her name, you take Heaven to witness that it is so, and 
 think, What a cold world it is, to be so careless about 
 such holy emotions ! You perfectly hate a certain stou. 
 boy in a green jacket, who is forever twitting you, and 
 calling her names ; but when some old maiden aunt 
 teases you in her kind, gentle way, you bear it very 
 proudly, and with a feeling as if you could bear a great 
 deal more for her sake. And when the minister reads 
 off marriage announcements in the church, you think 
 how it will sound, one of these days, to have your name 
 and hers read from the pulpit ; and how the people will 
 all look at you, and how prettily she will blush ; and 
 how poor little Dick who you know loves her, but is 
 afraid to say so will squirm upon his bench. 
 
 Heigho ! mused I, as the blue smoke rolled 
 
 up around my head, these first kindlings of the love 
 that is in one are very pleasant ! but will they last ? 
 
 You love to listen to the rustle of her dress, as she 
 ttirs about the room. It is better music than grown-up 
 ladies will make upon all their harpsichords, in the 
 years that are to come. But this, thank Heaven, you 
 do not know. 
 
 You think you can trace her footmark, on your way 
 to the school ; and what a dear little footmark it is ! 
 4nd from that single point, if she be out of your sight
 
 105 
 
 for days, you conjure up the whole image : the elastic, 
 lithe little figure, the springy step, the dotted mus 
 lin, so light and flowing, the silk kerchief, with its 
 most tempting fringe playing upon the clear white of 
 her throat ; how you envy that fringe ! And her chin 
 is as round as a peach ; and the lips, such lips ! and 
 you sigh, and hang your head, and wonder when you 
 shall see her again ! 
 
 You would like to write her a letter ; but then, people 
 would talk so coldly about it ; and, beside, you are not 
 quite sure you could write such billets as Thaddeus of 
 Warsaw used to write, and anything less warm or ele 
 gant would not do at all. You talk about this one or 
 that one, whom they call pretty, in the coolest way in 
 the world : you see very little of their prettiness ; they 
 ure good girls, to be sure ; and you hope they will get 
 good husbands some day or other ; but it is not a mat 
 ter that concerns you very much. They do not live in 
 your world of romance ; they are not the angels of that 
 sky which your heart makes rosy, and to which I have 
 likened the blue waves of this rolling smoke. 
 
 You can even joke as you talk of others ; you can 
 smile as you think very graciously ; you can say 
 laughingly that you are deeply in love with them, and 
 u ,hink it a most capital joke ; you can touch their hands, 
 r steal a kiss from them in your games, most imper- 
 Oirbably ; they are very dead coals. 
 5*
 
 106 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 But the live one is very lively. When you take the 
 name on your lip, it seems, somehow, to be made o' dif 
 ferent materials from the rest ; you cannot half so easily 
 separate it into letters ; write it, indeed, you can, for 
 you have had practice, very much private practice on 
 odd scraps of paper, and on the fly-leaves of geogra 
 phies, and of your natural philosophy. You know per 
 fectly well how it looks ; it seems to be written, indeed 
 somewhere behind your eyes, and in such happy posi 
 tion, with respect to the optic nerve, that you see it all 
 the time, though you are looking in an opposite direc 
 tion, and so distinctly, that you have great fears lest 
 people looking into your eyes should see it too. 
 
 For all this, it is a far more delicate name to handle 
 than most that you know of. Though it is very cool 
 and pleasant on the brain, it is very hot and difficult to 
 manage on the lip. It is not, as your schoolmaster 
 would say, a name, so much as it is an idea ; not a 
 noun, but a verb, an active, and transitive verb ; 
 and yet a most irregular verb, wanting the passive 
 roice. 
 
 It is something against your schoolmaster's doctrine, 
 to find warmth in the moonlight ; but with that soft 
 hand it is very soft lying within your arm, there 
 is a great deal of warmth, whatever the philosophers 
 may say, even in pale moonlight. The beams, too, 
 breed sympathies, very close-running sympathies, not
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 107 
 
 talked about in the chapters cm optics, and altogether 
 too fine for language. And, under their influence, you 
 retain the little hand that you had not dared retain so 
 long before ; and her struggle to recover it if indeed 
 it be a struggle is infinitely less than it was ; nay 
 it is a kind of struggle, not so much against you, as 
 between gladness and modesty. It makes you as bold 
 as a lion ; and the feeble hand, like a poor lamb in tin 
 lion's clutch, is powerless, and very meek ; and failing 
 of escape, it will sue for gentle treatment, and will 
 meet your warm promise with a kind of grateful press 
 ure, that is but half acknowledged by the hand that 
 makes it. 
 
 My cigar is burning with wondrous freeness ; and 
 from the smoke flash forth images bright and quick as 
 lightning, with no thunder but the thunder of the pulse. 
 But will it all last ? Damp will deaden the fire of a 
 cigar ; and there are hellish damps alas ! too many 
 that will deaden the early blazing of the heart. 
 
 She is pretty, growing prettier to your eye the 
 more you look upon her, and prettier to your ear the 
 more you listen to her. But you wonder who the tall 
 boy was, whom you saw walking with her two days ago. 
 [Ie was not a bad-looking boy; on the contrary, you 
 think (with a grit of your teevh) that he was infernally 
 handsome. You look at him very shyly and very closely 
 srhen you pass him, and turn to see how he walks, and
 
 108 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 to measure his shoulders, and are quite disgusted witn 
 the very modest and gentlemanly way with which he 
 carries himself. You think you would like to have a 
 fisticuff with him, if you were only sure of having the 
 best of it. You sound the neighborhood coyly, to find 
 out who the strange boy is, and are half ashamed of 
 vourself for doing it. 
 
 You gather a magnificent bouquet to send her, and 
 tie it with a green ribbon and love-knot ; and get a 
 little rose-bud in acknowledgment. That day you pass 
 the tall boy with a very patronizing look, and wonder if 
 he would not like to have a sail in your boat? 
 
 But by-and-by you find the tall boy walking with her 
 again ; and she looks sideways at him, and with a kind 
 of grown-up air that makes you feel very boylike, and 
 humble, and furious. And you look daggers at him 
 when you pass, and touch your cap to her with quite 
 uncommon dignity, and wonder if she is not sorry, 
 ;,nd does not feel very badly, to have got such a look 
 from you ? 
 
 On some other day, however, you meet her alone ; 
 *nd the sight of her makes your face wear a genial, 
 sunny air ; and you talk a little sadly about your fears 
 ind your jealousies. She seems a little sad and a little 
 rlad, together, and is sorry she has made you feel 
 badly, and you are sorry too. And with this pleas- 
 <mt twin sorrow you are knit together again closei
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. IOC 
 
 than ever. That one little tear of hers has been worth 
 more to you than a thousand smiles. Now you love 
 her madly ; you could swear it, swear it to her, or 
 swear it to the universe. You even say as much to 
 some kind old friend at nightfall ; but your mention of 
 Inn is tremulous and joyful, with a kind of bound in 
 your speech, as if the heart worked too quick for the 
 tongue, and as if the lips were ashamed to be passing 
 over such secrets of the soul to the mere sense of hear 
 ing. At this stage you cannot trust yourself to speak 
 her praises ; or if you venture, the expletives fly away 
 with your thought before you can chain it into lan 
 guage ; and your speech, at your best endeavor, is but a 
 succession of broken superlatives that you are ashamed 
 of. You strain for language that will scald the thought 
 of her ; but hot as you can make it, it falls back upon 
 your heated fancy like a cold shower. 
 
 Heat so intense as this consumes very fast ; and the 
 matter it feeds fastest on is judgment; and with judg 
 ment gone, there is room for jealousy to creep in. You 
 grow petulant at another sight of that tall boy ; and the 
 )ne tear, which cured your first petulance, will not cure 
 it now. You let a little of your fever break out in 
 speech a speech which you go home to mourn over. 
 But she knows nothing of the mourning, while she 
 knows very much of the anger. Vain tears are very 
 apt to breed pride ; and when you go a^ain with v o\a
 
 110 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR 
 
 petulance, you will find your rosy-lipped girl taking her 
 first studies in dignity. 
 
 You will stay away, you say : poor fool, you are feed 
 ing on what your disease loves best ! You wonder if 
 she is not sighing for your return, and if your name is 
 not running in her thought, and if tears of regret are 
 not moistening those sweet eyes. 
 
 And wondering thus, you stroll moodily and 
 
 hopefully toward her father's home ; you pass the door 
 once, twice ; you loiter under the shade of an old tree 
 where you have sometimes bid her adieu ; your old fond 
 ness is struggling with your pride, and has almost made 
 the mastery ; but in the very moment of victory you see 
 yonder your hated rival, and beside him, looking very 
 gleeful and happy, your perfidious Louise. 
 
 How quick you throw off the marks of your struggle, 
 and put on the boldest air of boyhood ; and what a dex 
 terous handling to your knife, and a wonderful keenness 
 to the edge, as you cut away from the bark of the beech- 
 tree all trace of her name ! Still, there is a little silent 
 relenting, and a few tears at night, and a little tremor of 
 die hand, as you tear out, the next day, every fly-leaf 
 lhat bears her name. But at sight of your rival look 
 ing so jaunty, and in such capital spirits you put on 
 the proud man again. You may meet her, but you say 
 nothing of your struggles ; oh, no ! not one word of 
 that; but you talk with amazing rapidity about youi
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 
 
 games, or what not ; and you never never give her 
 another peep into your boyish heart 
 
 For a week, you do not see her, nor foi' a month, 
 nor two months, nor three. 
 
 Puff, puff, once more. There is only a littl< 
 
 nauseous smoke ; and now my cigar is gone out alto 
 get her. I must lignt again.
 
 With a Wisp of 
 
 fl^HERE are those who throw away a cigar wher 
 *- once gone out ; they must needs have plenty more 
 But nobody that I ever heard of keeps a cedar box of 
 hearts labelled at Havana. Alas ! there is but one to 
 light ! 
 
 But can a heart once lit be lighted again ? Authority 
 on this point is worth something ; yet it should be impar 
 tial authority. I should be loth to take in evidence for 
 the fact however it should tally with my hope the 
 affidavit of some rakish old widower, who had cast his 
 weeds before the grass had started on the mound of his 
 affliction ; and I should be as slow to take, in way of 
 rebutting testimony, the oath of any sweet young girl 
 just becoming conscious of her heart's existence by 
 its loss. 
 
 Very much, it seems to me, depends upon the quality 
 if the fire ; and I can easily conceive of one so pure, so 
 constant, so exhausting, that, if it were once gone out, 
 rhether in the chills of death, or under the blasts of 
 pitiless fortune, there would be no rekindling, simply
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 113 
 
 Decausc there would be nothing left to kindle. And ] 
 can imagine, too. a fire so earnest and so true, that, what 
 ever malice might urge, or a devilish ingenuity devise, 
 there could no other be found, high or low, far or near, 
 which should not so contrast with the first as to make 
 it seem cold as ice. 
 
 I remember, in an old play of Davenport's, the hero 
 is led to doubt his mistress ; he is worked upon by slan 
 ders to quit her altogether, though he has loved, and 
 does still love passionately. She bids him adieu, with 
 large tears dropping from her e>'es ; (and I lay down my 
 cigar, to recite it aloud, fancying all the while, with a 
 varlet impudence, that some Abstemia is repeating it to 
 me:) 
 
 " Farewell, Lorenzo, 
 
 Whom my soul doth love ; if you ever marry, 
 May you meet a good -wife ; so good, that yon 
 May not suspect her, nor may she be worthy 
 Of your suspicion : and if you bear hereafter 
 That I am dead, inquire but my last words, 
 And you shall know that to the last I loved yo*. 
 And when you walk forth with your second choice 
 Into the pleasant fields, and by chance talk of me, 
 Imagine that you see me lean and pale, 
 Strewing your paths with flowers ! " * 
 
 Poor Abstemia ! Lorenzo never could find sticfi 
 
 mother : there never could be such another, for such 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 JT* City mg*l-Ccp, Act ii. 8c- .
 
 114 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 To blaze anew, it is essential that the old fire be ut 
 terly gone ; and can any truly-lighted soul ever gro\ 
 cold, except the grave cover it ? The poets all say no 
 Othello, had he lived a thousand years, would not have 
 loved again ; nor Desdemona, nor Andromache, 
 nor Medea, nor Ulysses, nor Hamlet. But in the 
 cool wreaths of the pleasant smoke, let us see wha 
 truth is in the poets. 
 
 What is love, mused I, at the first, but a mere 
 
 fancy ? There is a prettiness that your soul cleaves to, 
 as your eye to a pleasant flower, or your ear to a soft 
 melody. Presently, admiration comes in, as a sort of 
 balance-wheel for the eccentric revolutions of your 
 fancy, and your admiration is touched off' with such neat 
 quality as respect. Too much of this, indeed, they say, 
 deadens the fancy, and so retards the action of the 
 heart-machinery. But with a proper modicum to serve 
 as a stock, devotion is grafted in ; and then; by an agree 
 able and confused mingling, all these qualities and af 
 fections of the soul become transfused into that vital 
 feeling called Love. 
 
 Your heart seems to have gone over to another and 
 better counterpart of your humanity ; what is left of you 
 seems the mere husk of some kernel that has been 
 stolen. It is not an emotion of yourts, which is making 
 very easy voyages towards another soul, that may be 
 shortened or lengthened at will ; but it is a passion that
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 115 
 
 Is only yours because it is there; the more it lodges 
 there, the more keenly you feel it to be yours. 
 
 The qualities that feed this passion may, indeed, be 
 long to you, but they never gave birth to such an one 
 before, simply because there was no place in which it 
 could grow. Nature is very provident in these matters. 
 The chrysalis does not burst until there is a wing to 
 help the gauze-fly upward. The shell does not bieak 
 until the bird can breathe ; nor does the swallow quit 
 its nest until its wings are tipped with the airy oars. 
 
 This passion of love is strong, just in proportion as 
 the atmosphere it finds is tender of its life. Let that 
 atmosphere change into too great coldness, and the pas 
 sion becomes a wreck, not yours, because it is not 
 worth your having, nor vital, because it has lost the 
 soil where it grew. But is it not laying the reproach in 
 a high quarter, to say that those qualities of the heart, 
 which begot this passion, are exhausted, and will not 
 thenceforth germinate through all of your lifetime ? 
 
 Take away the worm-eaten frame from youi 
 
 arbor plant, and the wrenched arms of the despoiled 
 climber will not, at the first, touch any new trellis ; they 
 cannot in a day change the habit of a year. But let the 
 Dew support stand firmly, and the needy tendrils will 
 presently lay hold upon the stranger ; and your plant will 
 regain its pride and pomp, cherishing, perhaps, in its 
 Dent figure, a memento of the Old, but in its more ear-
 
 116 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 aest and abounding life mindful only of its sweet de 
 pendence on the New. 
 
 Let the poets say what they will, these affections of 
 ours are not blind, stupid creatures, to starve under 
 polar snows, when the very breezes of Heaven are the 
 appointed messengers to guide them toward warmth 
 and sunshine ! 
 
 And with a little suddenness of manner I tea. 
 
 off a wisp of paper, and holding it in the blaze of my 
 lamp, relight my cigar. It does not burn so easily, per 
 haps, as at first ; it wants warming before it will catch ; 
 but presently it is in a broad, full glow, that throws 
 light into the corners of my room. 
 
 Just so, thought I, the love of youth, which suc 
 ceeds the crackling blaze of boyhood, makes a broader 
 flame, though it may not be so easily kindled. A mere 
 dainty step, or a curling lock, or a soft blue eye, are not 
 enough ; but in her who has quickened the new blaze 
 there is a blending of all these, with a certain sweetnebs 
 of soul that finds expression in whatever feature or 
 motion you look upon. Her charms steal over you 
 gently, and almost imperceptibly. You think that she 
 is a pleasant companion, nothing more ; and you find 
 the opinion strongly confirmed day by day, so wel 
 confirmed, indeed, that you begin to wonder why it is 
 that she is such a delightful companion ? It cannot be 
 her eye, for you have seen eyes almost as pretty as
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 117 
 
 Nelly's ; nor can it be her mouth, though Nelly's mouth 
 is certainly very sweet. And you keep studying what 
 on earth it can be that makes you so earnest to be near 
 her, or to listen to her voice. The study is pleasant 
 you do not know any study that is more so, or which 
 you accomplish with less mental fatigue. 
 
 Upon a sudden, some fine day, when the air is balmy 
 and the recollection of Nelly's voice and manner more 
 balmy still, you wonder if you are in love ? When a 
 man has such a wonder, he is either very near love, or 
 he is very far away from it ; it is a wonder that is either 
 suggested by his hope, or by that entanglement of feel 
 ing which blunts all his perceptions. 
 
 But if not in love, you have at least a strong fancy ; 
 so strong, that you tell your friends carelessly that she 
 is a nice girl, nay, a beautiful girl ; and if your educa 
 tion has been bad, you strengthen the epithet on your 
 own tongue with a very wicked expletive, of which the 
 mildest form would be " deuced fine girl ! " Pres 
 ently, however, you get beyond this, and your compan 
 ionship and your wonder relapse into a constant, quiet 
 habit of unmistakable love, not impulsive, quick, 
 and fiery, like the first, but mature and calm. It is as 
 if it were born with your soul ; and the recognition o~ 
 t was rather an old remembrance than a fresh passion. 
 It does not seek to gratify its exuberance and force with 
 SUCH relief as night-serenades, or any Jacques-like med
 
 1.18 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 itations in the forest ; but it is a quiet, still joy, that 
 Hoats on your hope into the years to come, making the 
 prospect all sunny and joyful. 
 
 It is a kind of oil and balm for whatever was stormy 
 or harmful ; it gives a permanence to the smile of ex 
 istence. It does not make the sea of your life turbulent 
 with high emotions, as if a strong wind were blowing, 
 but it is as if an Aphrodite had broken on the surface, 
 and .the ripples were spreading with a sweet, low sound, 
 and widening far out to the very shores of Time. 
 
 There is no need now, as with the boy, to bolster up 
 your feelings with extravagant vows ; even should you 
 try this in her presence, the words are lacking to put 
 such vows in. So soon as you reach them, they fail 
 you ; and the oath only quivers on the lip, or tells its 
 story by a pressure of the fingers. You wear a brusque, 
 pleasant air with your acquaintances, and hint with 
 a sly look at possible changes in your circumstances. 
 Of an evening, you are kind to the most unattractive of 
 the wall-flowers, if only your Nelly is away ; and you 
 nave a sudden charity for street-beggars with pale chil 
 dren. You catch yourself taking a step in one of 
 the new polkas, upon a country walk ; and wonder im 
 niensely at the number of bright days which succeed 
 each other, without leaving a single stormy gap for your 
 ild melancholy moods. Even the chambermaids at your 
 lotel never did their duty one half so well : and as foi
 
 WITH A WISP JF PAPER. 119 
 
 your man Tom, he is become a perfect pattern of a 
 fellow. 
 
 My cigar is in a fine glow ; but it has gone out onco, 
 and it may go out again. 
 
 You begin to talk of marriage ; but some obsti 
 nate papa or guardian uncle thinks that it will neve 
 do, that it is quite too soon, or that Nelly is a mer6 
 girl. Or some of your wild oats quite forgotten by 
 yourself shoot up on the vision of a staid mamma, and 
 throw a very damp shadow on your character. Or the 
 old lady has an ambition of another sort, which you, a 
 simple, earnest, plodding bachelor, can never gratify ; 
 being of only passable appearance, and unschooled in 
 the fashions of the world, you will be eternally rubbing 
 the elbows of the old lady's pride. 
 
 All this will be strangely afflictive to one who has 
 been living for quite a number of weeks or months in 
 a pleasant dream-land, where there were no five per 
 cents, or reputations, but only a very full and delirious 
 Row of feeling. What care you for any position, except 
 n position near the being that you love ? What wealth 
 io you prize, except a wealth of heart that shall never 
 know diminution ; or for reputation, except that of truth 
 and of honor ? How hard it would break upon these 
 pleasant idealities to have a weazen-faced old guardian 
 let his arm in yours, and tell you how tenderly he has 
 it heart the happiness of his niece ; and reason with
 
 120 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 you about your very small and sparse dividends, and 
 your limited business ; and caution you for he has a 
 lively regard for your interests about continuing your 
 addresses ? 
 
 The kind old curmudgeon ! 
 
 Your man Tom has grown suddenly a very stupid 
 fellow ; and all your charity for withered wall-flowers is 
 gone. Perhaps, in your wrath, the suspicion comes over 
 you that she too wishes you were something higher, or 
 more famous, or richer, or anything but what you are ! 
 a very dangerous suspicion ; for no man with any true 
 nobility of soul can ever make his heart the slave of 
 another's condescension. 
 
 But no ! you will not, you cannot believe this of Nelly. 
 That face of hers is too mild and gracious ; and her 
 manner, as she takes your hand after your heart is made 
 sad, and turns away those rich blue eyes, shadowed more 
 deeply than ever by the long and moistened fringe, 
 and the exquisite softness and meaning of the pressure 
 of those little fingers, and the low, half sob, and 
 the heaving of that bosom in its struggles between love 
 and duty, all forbid. Nelly, you could swear, is ten 
 derly indulgent like the fond creature that she is 
 toward all your shortcomings, and would not barter 
 your strong love and your honest heart for the great 
 est magnate in the land. 
 
 What a spur to effort is the confiding love of a true
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 121 
 
 hearted woman ! That last fond look of hers, hopeful 
 and encouraging, has more power within it to nerve 
 your soul to high deeds than all the admonitions of all 
 your tutors. Your heart, beating large with hope, quick 
 ens the flow upon the brain, and you make wild vows to 
 win greatness. But alas ! this is a great world very 
 full and very rough, 
 
 " all up-hill work when we would do ; 
 All down-hill, when we suffer." * 
 
 Hard, withering toil only can achieve a name ; and 
 long days and months and years must be passed in the 
 chase of that bubble reputation ; which, when once 
 grasped, breaks in your eager clutch into a hundred 
 lesser bubbles that soar above you still. 
 
 A clandestine meeting from time to time, and a note 
 or two tenderly written, keep up the blaze in your heart. 
 But presently the lynx-eyed old guardian so tender 
 of your interests and hers forbids even this irregular 
 and unsatisfying correspondence. Now you can feed 
 yourself only on stray glimpses of her figure, as full of 
 sprightliness and grace as ever ; and that beaming face, 
 you are half sorry to see from time to time, still beau 
 tiful. You struggle with your moods of melancholy 
 and wear bright looks yourself, bright to her, and 
 very bright to the eye of the old curmudgeon who has 
 
 6 Fettui.
 
 122 REVERIES OF 'A BACHELOR. 
 
 snatched your heart away- It will never do to show 
 your weakness to a man. 
 
 At length, on some pleasant morning, you learn that 
 she is gone, too far away to be seen, too closely 
 guarded to be reached. For a while you throw down 
 your books, and abandon your toil in despair, thinking 
 very bitter thoughts, and making very hopeless resolves. 
 
 My cigar is still burning ; but it will require constan 
 and strong respiration to keep it in a glow. 
 
 A letter or two, dispatched at random, relieve the 
 excess of your fever, until, with practice, these random 
 letters have even less heat in them than the heat of 
 your study or of your business. Grief, thank God ! is 
 not so progressive or so cumulative as joy. For a time 
 there is a pleasure in the mood with which you recall 
 your broken hopes, and with which you selfishly link 
 hers to the shattered wreck ; but absence and ignorance 
 tame the point of your woe. You call up the image of 
 Nelly adorning other and distant scenes. You see the 
 tearful smile give place to a blithesome cheer ; and the 
 thought of you, that shaded her fair face so long, fades 
 i nder the sunshine of gayety ; or, at best, it only seems 
 to cross that white forehead like a playful shadow that 
 a fleecy cloud-remnant will fling upon a sunny lawn. 
 
 As for you, the world, with its whirl and roar, is deaf 
 euing the sweet, distant notes that come up through old, 
 choked channels of the affections. Life is calling foi
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 128 
 
 earnestness, and not for regrets. So the monihs and 
 the years slip by ; your bachelor habit grows easy and 
 light with wearing ; you have mourned enough to smile 
 at the violent mourning of others ; and you have en 
 joyed enough to sigh over their little eddies of delight 
 Dark shades and delicious streaks of crimson and gold 
 color lie upon your life. Your heart, with all its weight 
 of ashes, can yet sparkle at the sound of a fairy step, 
 and your face can yet open into a round of joyous 
 smiles that are almost hopes in the presence of 
 some bright-eyed girl. 
 
 But amid this there will float over you, from time to 
 time, a midnight trance, in which you will hear again 
 with a thirsty ear the witching melody of the days that 
 are gone ; and you will wake from it with a shudder 
 into the cold resolves of your lonely and manly life. 
 But the shudder passes as easy as night from morning. 
 Tearful regrets, and memories that touch to the quick, 
 are dull weapons to break through the panoply of your 
 seared eager, and ambitious manhood. They only 
 venture out, like timid, white-winged flies, when night is 
 come ; and at the first glimpse of the dawn they shrivel 
 up, and lie without a flutter in some corner of your 
 soul. 
 
 And when, years after, you learn that she has re 
 turned a woman, there is a slight glow, but no tumult 
 uous bound of the heart. Life and time have worried
 
 124 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 you down like a spent hound. The world has givec 
 you a habit of easy and unmeaning smiles. You half 
 accuse yourself of ingratitude and forgetfulness ; but 
 the accusation does not oppress you. It does not even 
 distract your attention from the morning journal. You 
 cannot work yourself into a respectable degree of iii- 
 lignation against the old gentleman her guardian. 
 
 You sigh poor thing ! and in a very flashy waist 
 coat you venture a morning call. 
 
 She meets you kindly, a comely, matronly dame 
 in gingham, with her curls all gathered under a high- 
 topped comb ; and she presents to you two little boys 
 in smart crimson jackets dressed up with braid. And 
 you dine with Madame a family party ; and the 
 weazen-faced old gentleman meets you with a most 
 pleasant shake of the hand, hints that you were 
 *mong his niece's earliest friends, and hopes that you 
 tire getting on well. 
 
 Capitally well ! 
 
 And the boys toddle in at dessert, Dick, to get a 
 plum from your own dish ; Tom, to be kissed by his 
 osy-faced papa. In short, you are made perfectly at 
 home ; and you sit over your wine for an hour, in a 
 viosy smoke with the gentlemanly uncle, and with the 
 very courteous husband of your second flame. 
 
 It is all very jovial at the table ; for good wine is, I 
 ind, a great strengthener of the bachelor heart. But
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 125 
 
 afterward, when night has fairly set in, and the blaze 
 of your fire goes flickering over your lonely quarters, 
 you heave a deep sigh. And as your thought runs 
 back to the perfidious Louise, and calls up the married 
 and matronly Nelly, you scb over that poor dumb heart 
 within you, which craves so madly a free and joyous 
 utterance ! And as you lean over, with your forehead 
 in your hands, and your eyes fall upon the old hound 
 slumbering on the rug, the tears start, and you wish 
 that you had married years ago, and that you too had 
 your pair of prattling boys, to drive away the loneliness 
 of your solitary hearth-stone. 
 
 My cigar would not go ; it was fairly out. But, 
 
 with true bachelor obstinacy, I vowed that I would 
 light again.
 
 m. 
 
 I/ifjhted with a Match. 
 
 IT HATE a match. I feel sure that brimstone 
 matches were never made in heaven ; and it is 
 sad to think that, with few exceptions, matches are all 
 of them tipped with brimstone. 
 
 But my taper having burned out, and the coals 
 being all dead upon the hearth, a match is all that is 
 left to me. 
 
 All matches will not blaze on the first trial ; and 
 there are those that, with the most indefatigable coax 
 ings, never show a spark. They may indeed leave in 
 their trail phosphorescent streaks, but you can no 
 more light your cigar at them than you can kindle 
 your heart at the covered wife-trails which the infer 
 nal, gossiping, old match-makers will lay in your 
 path. 
 
 Was there ever a bachelor of seven-and-twenty, I 
 wonder, who has not been haunted by pleasant old 
 ladies, and trim, excellent, good-natured married friends 
 who talk to him about nice matches " very nicr 
 matches," matches which never go off? And \vh.
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 127 
 
 pray, has not had some kind old uncle to fill two sheets 
 for him (perhaps in the time of heavy postages) about 
 some most eligible connection " of highly respectable 
 parentage ! " 
 
 What a delightful thing, surely, for a withered bach 
 elor, to bloom forth in the dignity of an ancestral tree 
 What a precious surprise for him, who has ail his life 
 worshipped the wing-heeled Mercury, to find on a sud 
 den a great stock of preserved and most respectable 
 Penates ! 
 
 In God's name, thought I, puffing vehemently, 
 
 what is a man's heart given him for, if not to choose 
 where his heart's blood, every drop of it, is flowing ? 
 Who is going to dam these billowy tides of the soul, 
 whose roll is ordered by a planet greater than the 
 moon, and that planet Venus? Who is going to 
 shift this vane of my desires, when every breeze that 
 passes in my heaven is keeping it all the more strongly 
 to its fixed bearings ? 
 
 Besides this, there are the money-matches, urged 
 upon you by disinterested bachelor friends, who would 
 be very proud to see you at tbe head of an establish 
 tnent. And I must confess that this kind of talk has 
 a pleasant jingle about it, and is one of the cleverest 
 aids to a bachelor's day-dreams that can well be im- 
 tgined. And let not the pouting lady condemn me 
 srithout a hearing.
 
 128 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 It is certainly cheerful to think for a contemplative 
 bachelor that the pretty ermine which so sets off the 
 transparent hue of your imaginary wife, or the lace 
 which lies so bewitchingly upon the superb roundness 
 of her form, or the graceful bodice, trimmed to a 
 line, which is of such exquisite adaptation to her lithe 
 figure, will be always at her command ; nay, that these 
 are only units among the chameleon hues, under which 
 you shall feed upon her beauty ! I want to know if it 
 is not a pretty cabinet picture for fancy to luxuriate 
 upon that of a sweet wife, who is cheating hosts of 
 friends into love, sympathy, and admiration, by the 
 modest munificence of her wealth? Is it not rather 
 agreeable to feed your hopeful soul upon that abun 
 dance, which, while it supplies her need, will give a 
 range to her loving charities ; which will keep from her 
 brow tbe shadows of anxiety, and will sublime her 
 gentle nature, by adding to it the grace of an angel of 
 mercy ? 
 
 Is it not rich, in those days when the pestilent humors 
 of bachelorhood hang heavy on you, to foresee in that 
 shadowy realm, where hope is a native, the quiet of a 
 home made splendid with attractions, and made real 
 by the presence of her who bestows them ? Upon my 
 word, thought I, as I continued puffing, such a 
 match must make a very grateful lighting of one's 
 'nner sympathies; nor am I prepared to say that such
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 129 
 
 associations would not add force to the most abstract 
 love imaginable. 
 
 Think of it for a moment : what is it that we poor 
 fellows love ? We love if one may judge for himself, 
 over his cigar gentleness, beauty, refinement, gener 
 osity, and intelligence, and far above these, a return 
 ing love, made up of all these qualities, and gaining 
 upon your love, day by day and month by month, like 
 a sunny morning gaining upon the frosts of night. 
 
 But wealth is a great means of refinement ; and it is 
 a security for gentleness, since it removes disturbing 
 anxieties ; and it is a pretty promoter of intelligence, 
 since it multiplies the avenues for its reception ; and it 
 is a good basis for a generous habit of life : it even 
 equips beauty, neither hardening its hand with toil, nor 
 tempting the wrinkles to come early. But whether it 
 provokes greatly that returning passion, that abnega 
 tion of soul, that sweet trustfulness and abiding affec 
 tion which are to clothe your heart with joy, is far 
 
 * 
 more doubtful. Wealth, while it gives so much, asks 
 
 much in return ; and the soul that is grateful to mam 
 mon is not over-ready to be grateful for intensity of 
 tove. It is hard to gratify those who have nothing left 
 \o gratify. 
 
 Heaven help the man, who, having wearied his soul 
 with delays and doubts, or exhausted the freshness 
 ind exuberance of his youth by a hundred little dally- 
 6*
 
 130 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 ings of love, consigns himself at length to the issues of 
 what people call a nice match, whether of money, 01 
 of a family ! 
 
 Heaven help you (I brushed the ashes from my cigar) 
 when you begin to regard marriage as only a respect 
 able institution, and under the advices of staid old 
 friends begin to look about you for some very respect 
 able wife. You may admire her fig~ure, and her family, 
 and bear pleasantly in mind the very casual mention 
 which has been made by some of your penetrating 
 friends that she has large expectations. You think 
 that she would make a very capital appearance at the 
 head of your table ; nor, in the event of your coming to 
 any public honor, would she make you blush for her 
 breeding. She talks well, exceedingly well ; and her 
 face has its charms, especially under a little excitement 
 Her dress is elegant and tasteful, and she is constantly 
 remarked upon by all your friends as a " nice person." 
 Some good old lady, in whose pew she occasionally sits 
 on a Sunday, or to whom she has sometimes sent a 
 vapier-mache card-case for the show-box of some Dor 
 cas benevolent society, thinks, with a sly wink, that she 
 would make a fine wife for somebody. 
 
 She certainly has an elegant figure, and the mar 
 riage of some half-dozen of your old flames warn you 
 that time is slipping and your chances failing. And in 
 lie pleasant warmth of some after-dinner mood yo.i
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 131 
 
 resolve with her image in her prettiest pelisse drift 
 ing across your brain that you will marry. Now 
 comes the pleasant excitement of the chase ; and what 
 ever family dignity may surround her, only adds to the 
 pleasurable glow of the pursuit. You give an hour 
 more to your toilette, and a hundred or two more a 
 year to your tailor. All is orderly, dignified, and gra 
 cious. Charlotte is a sensible woman, everybody says ; 
 and you believe it yourself. You agree in your talk 
 about books, and churches, and flowers. Of course she 
 has good taste for she accepts you. The acceptance 
 is dignified, elegant, and even courteous. 
 
 You receive numerous congratulations ; and your old 
 friend Tom writes you that he hears you are going to 
 marry a splendid woman ; and all the old ladies say 
 what a capital match ! And your business partner, 
 who is a married man and something of a wag, " sym 
 pathizes sincerely." Upon the whole, you feel a little 
 proud of your arrangement. You write to an old friend 
 in the country that you are to marry presently Miss 
 Charlotte of such a street, whose father was something 
 very fine in his way, and whose father before him was 
 rery distinguished ; you add, in a postscript, that she 
 is easily situated, and has " expectations." Your friend, 
 tfho has a wife that he loves and that loves him. writes 
 back kindly, " hoping you may be happy ; " and hop- 
 .ng so yourself, you light your cigar one of your las! 
 bachelor cigars with the margin of his letter.
 
 132 REVERIES OF 4 BACHELOR. 
 
 The match goes off with a brilliant marriage, at 
 which you receive a very elegant welcome from your 
 wife's spinster cousins, and drink a great deal of cham 
 pagne with her bachelor uncles. And as YOU take the 
 dainty hand of your bride, very magnificent under 
 that bridal wreath, and with her face lit up by a brill 
 iant glow, your eye and your soul for the first time 
 grow full. And as your arm circles that elegant figure, 
 and you draw her toward you, feeling that she is yours, 
 there is a bound at your heart that makes you think 
 your soul-life is now whole and earnest. All your early 
 dreams and imaginations come flowing on your thought 
 like bewildering music ; and as you gaze upon her, 
 the admiration of that crowd, it seems to you that all 
 that your heart prizes is made good by the accident of 
 marriage. 
 
 Ah, thought I, brushing off the ashes again, bridal 
 pictures are not home pictures, and the hour at the 
 altar is but a poor type of the waste of years ! 
 
 Your household is elegantly ordered ; Charlotte has 
 secured the best of housekeepers, and she meets the 
 compliments of your old friends, who come to dine with 
 you, with a suavity that is never at fault. And they 
 tell you after the cloth is removed, and you sit quietly 
 smoking in memory of the olden times that she is a 
 splendid Avoman. Even the old ladies who come for 
 xxasional charities, think Madame a pattern of a
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 138 
 
 ady ; and so think her old admirers, whom sho re 
 ceives still with an easy grace that half puzzles you, 
 And as you stand by the ballroom door, at two of the 
 morning, with your Charlotte's shawl upon your arm. 
 Borne little panting fellow will confirm the general opin 
 ion by telling you that Madame is a magnificent dancer ; 
 and Monsieur le Comte will praise extravagantly her 
 French. You are grateful for all this ; but you have 
 an uncommonly serious way of expressing your grati 
 tude. 
 
 You think you ought to be a very happy fellow ; and 
 yet long shadows do steal over your thought, and you 
 wonder that the sight of your Charlotte in the dress 
 you used to admire so much does not scatter them to 
 the winds ; but it does not. You feel coy about putting 
 your arm around that delicately robed figure, you 
 might derange the plaitings of her dress. She is civil 
 towards you, and tender towards your bachelor friends. 
 She talks with dignity, adjusts her lace cape, and 
 hopes you will make a figure in the world, for the sake 
 of the family. Her cheek is never soiled with a tear 
 and her smiles are frequent, especially when you have 
 some spruce young fellows at your table. 
 
 You catch sight of occasional notes perhaps, whose 
 superscription you do not know ; and some of her ad 
 mirers' attentions become so pointed and constant that 
 Four pride is stirred. It would be silly to show jeai
 
 134 REVERIES Or A BACHELOR. 
 
 Dusy ; but you suggest to your " dear " as you sip 
 your tea the slight impropriety of her action. 
 
 Perhaps you fondly long for some little scene, as a 
 proof of wounded confidence ; but no nothing of that ; 
 she trusts (calling you " my dear ") that she knows how 
 to sustain the dignity of her position. 
 
 You are too sick at heart for comment, or for reply. 
 
 And is this the intertwining of soul, of which 
 
 you had dreamed in the days that are gone ? Is this 
 the blending of sympathies that was to steal from life 
 its bitterness, and spread over care and suffering the 
 sweet ministering hand of kindness and of love ? Aye, 
 you may well wander back to your bachelor club, and 
 make the hours long at the journals, or at play, kill 
 ing the flagging lapse of your life ! Talk sprightly with 
 your old friends, and mimic the joy you have not, or 
 you will wear a bad name upon your hearth, and head. 
 Never suffer your Charlotte to catch sight of the tears 
 which in bitter hours may start from your eye ; or to 
 hear the sighs which in your times of solitary musings 
 may break forth sudden and heavy. Go on counter 
 feiting your life as you have begun. It was a nice 
 match ; and you are a nice husband ! 
 
 But you have a little boy, thank God ! toward whom 
 your heart runs out freely ; and you love to catch him 
 f n his respite from your well-ordered nursery and the 
 of his teachers alone ; and to spend upon bin-
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 135 
 
 * little of that depth of feeling which through so many 
 years has scarce been stirred. You play with him at 
 his games ; you fondle him ; you take him to your 
 bosom. 
 
 But papa, he says, see how you have tumbled my 
 collar. What shall I tell mamma ? 
 
 Tell her, my boy, that I love you ! 
 
 Ah ! thought I, (my cigar was getting dull and nause 
 ous,) is there not a spot in your heart that the gloved 
 hand of your elegant wife has never reached, that you 
 wish it might reach ? 
 
 You go to see a far-away friend : his was not a " nice 
 match " ; he was married years before you, and yet the 
 beaming looks of his wife, and his lively smile, are as 
 fresh and honest as they were years ago ; and they make 
 you ashamed of your disconsolate humor. Your stay 
 is lengthened, but the home letters are not urgent for 
 your return ; yet they are marvellously proper letters, 
 and rounded with a French adieu. You could have 
 wished a little scrawl from your boy at the bottom, in 
 the place of the postscript which gives you the names 
 of a new opera troupe, and you hint as much, a very 
 bold stroke for you. 
 
 Ben, she says, writes too shamefully. 
 
 And at your return there is no great anticipation of 
 itlight ; in contrast with the old dreams that a pleasant 
 summers journey has called up, your parlor, as you
 
 186 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 inter it, so elegant, so still, so modish, seems the 
 harnel-house of your heart 
 
 By-and-by you fall into weary days of sickness ; you 
 have capital nurses, nurses highly recommended, nurses 
 who never make mistakes, nurses who have served long 
 in the family. But alas for that heart of sympathy, and 
 for that sweet face shaded with your pain, like a sol 
 Undscape with flying clouds, you have none of them 
 Your pattern wife may come in, from time to time, to 
 look after your nurse, or to ask after your sleep, and 
 glide out, her silk dress rustling upon the door, like 
 dead leaves in the cool night-breezes of winter. Or 
 perhaps, after putting this chair in its place, and adjust 
 ing to a more tasteful fold that curtain, she will ask you, 
 with a tone that might mean sympathy if it were not a 
 stranger to you, if she can do anything more. 
 
 Thank her, as kindly as you can, and close your eyes, 
 and dream ; or rouse up, to lay your hand upon the head 
 of your little boy, to drink in health and happiness 
 lYom his earnest look, as he gazes strangely upon your 
 pale and shrunken forehead. Your smile even, ghastly 
 with long suffering, disturbs him ; there is no interpreter 
 save the heart, between you 
 
 Your parched lips feel strangely, to his flushed, health 
 ful face ; and he steps about on tiptoe, at a motion from 
 the nurse, to look at all those rosy-colored medicines 
 ipon the table ; and he takes your cane from the corner
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 181 
 
 and passes his hand over the smooth ivory head ; and 
 he runs his eye along the wall, from picture to picture, 
 till it rests on one he knows, a figure in bridal dress, 
 beautiful, almost fond, and he forgets himself, and 
 says aloud, " There 's mamma ! " 
 
 The nurse puts her finger to her lip ; you waken from 
 your doze to see where your eager boy is looking ; and 
 your eyes too take in as much as they can of that fig 
 ure, now shadowy to your fainting vision doubly 
 shadowy to your fainting heart ! 
 
 From day to day you sink from life : the physician 
 says the end is not far off; why should it be ? There is 
 very little elastic force within you to keep the end away. 
 Madame is called, and your little boy. Your sight is 
 dim, but they whisper that she is beside your bed ; and 
 you reach out your .hand both hands. You fancy you 
 hear a sob: a strange sound! It seems as if it came from 
 distant years, a confused, broken sigh, sweeping over 
 the long stretch of your life ; and a sigh from your 
 heart, not audible, answers it. 
 
 Your trembling fingers clutch the hand of your little 
 boy, and you drag him toward you, and move your lips 
 5is if you would speak to him ; and they place his head 
 near you, so that you feel his fine hair brushing your 
 c-heek. My boy, you must love your mother ! 
 
 Your other hand feels a quick, convulsive grasp, and 
 something like a tear drops upon your face. Good God 
 Can it be indeed a tear?
 
 138 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 You strain your vision, and a feeble smile flits ovet 
 your features as you seem to see her figure the figure 
 of the painting bending over you ; and you feel a 
 bound at your heart, the same bound that you felt on 
 your bridal morning, the same bound which you used to 
 feel in the spring-time of your life. 
 
 Only one rich, full bound of the heart : 
 
 that is all! 
 
 My cigar was out I could not have lit it again, 
 
 if I would. It was wholly burned. 
 
 " Aunt Tabithy," said I, as I finished reading, " ma^ 
 I smoke now under your rose-tree ? " 
 
 Aunt Tabithy, who had laid down her knitting to hear 
 me, smiled, brushed a tear from her old eyes, said, u Yes, 
 Isaac;" and having scratched the back of her heal with 
 the disengaged needle, resumed her knitting.
 
 FOURTH REVERIE. 
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING.
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. 
 
 FT is a spring day under the oaks, the loved oaks of 
 *- a once cherished home, now, alas ! mine no longer. 
 
 I had sold the old farm-house, and the groves, and 
 the cool springs where I had bathed mj head in the 
 heats of summer; and with the first warm days of May 
 they were to pass from me forever. Seventy years they 
 had been in the possession of my mother's family ; for 
 seventy years they had borne the same name of propri 
 etorship ; for seventy years the flares of our country 
 home often neglected, almost forgotten, yet bright 
 ened from time to time by gleams of heart-worship 
 had held their place in the sweet valley of Elmgrove. 
 
 And in this changeful, bustling, American life of 
 ours, seventy years is no child's holiday. The hurry of 
 action and progress may pass over it with quick step 
 but the footprints are many and deep. You surely will 
 not wonder that it made me sad and thoughtful to break 
 the chain of years that bound to my heart the oaks, the 
 Hills, the springs, the valley, and such a valley ! 
 
 A wild stream runs through it, large enough tc
 
 142 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 make a river for English landscape, winding between 
 rich banks, where in summer-time the swallows build 
 their nests, and brood by myriads. 
 
 Tall elms rise here and there along the margin, and 
 with their uplifted anus and leafy spray throw great 
 patches of shade upon the meadow. Old lion-like oaks, 
 too, where the meadow-soil hardens into rolling upland, 
 fasten to the ground with their ridgy roots, and with 
 their gray, scraggy limbs make delicious shelter for the 
 panting workers, or for the herds of August. 
 
 Westward of the stream where I am lying the 
 banks roll up swiftly into sloping hills covered with 
 groves of oaks, and green pasture lands dotted with 
 mossy rocks. And farther on, where some wood has 
 been swept down, some ten years gone, by the axe, the 
 new growth, heavy with the luxuriant foliage of spring, 
 covers wide spots of the slanting land ; while some dead 
 tree in the midst still stretches out its bare arms to the 
 blast, a solitary mourner over the wreck of its forest 
 brothers. 
 
 Eastward, the ridgy bank passes into wavy meadows, 
 upon whose farther edge you see the roofs of an old 
 mansion, with tall chimneys, and taller elm-trees shading 
 it. Beyond, the hills rise gently, and sweep away into 
 wood-crowned heights that are blue with distance. At 
 the upper end of the valley the stream is lost to the eye 
 m a wide swamp wood, which in the autumn-time is
 
 OfORNlNG, NOON, AND EVENING. 143 
 
 covered with a scarlet sheet, blotched here and there 
 by the dark crimson stains of the ash-tops. Farther on, 
 the hills crowd close to the brook, and come down with 
 granite boulders, and scattered birch-trees and beeches, 
 under which, upon the smoky mornings of May, I 
 have time and again loitered, and thrown my line into 
 the pools, which curl, dark and 'still, under their tanglet' 
 roots. 
 
 Below, and looking southward, through the openings 
 of the oaks that shade me, I see a broad stretch of 
 meadow, with glimpses of the silver surface of the 
 stream, and of the giant solitary elms, and of some old 
 maple that has yielded to the spring-tides, and now 
 clips its lower boughs in the insidious current ; and 
 of clumps of alders, and willow-tufts, above which 
 even now the black-and-white-coated Bob-o'-Lincoln is 
 wheeling his musical flight, while his quieter mate sits 
 swaying on the topmost twigs. 
 
 A quiet road passes within a short distance of me, 
 and crosses the brook by a rude timber bridge ; beside 
 the bridge is a broad, glassy pool, shaded by old maples 
 and hickories, where the cattle drink each morning on 
 their way to the hill-pastures. A step or two beyond 
 *iie stream, a lane branches across the meadows to the 
 mansion with the tall chimneys. I can just remember 
 now the stout, broad-shouldered old gentleman with 
 bis white hat, his long white hair, and his white-headed
 
 144 REVERIES OF -A BACHELOR. 
 
 5ane who built the house, and who farmed the whole 
 valley around me. He is gone long since ; and lies in a 
 ^rave-yard looking upon the sea ! The elms that he 
 planted shake their weird arms over the mouldering 
 roofs ; and his fruit-garden shows only a battered pha 
 lanx of mossy limbs, which will scarce tempt the July 
 marauders. 
 
 In the other direction, upon this side the brook, the 
 road is lost to view among the trees ; but if I were to 
 follow the windings upon the hill-side, it would bring 
 me shortly upon the old home of my grandfather: there 
 is no pleasure in wandering there now. The woods, that 
 sheltered it from the northern winds, are cut down ; the 
 tall cherries, that made the yard one leafy bower, are 
 dead. The cornice is straggling from the eaves ; the 
 porch has fallen ; the stone chimney is yawning with 
 wide gaps. Within, it is even worse : the floors sway 
 upon the mouldering beams; the doors all sag from 
 their hinges ; the rude frescos upon the parlor-wall are 
 peeling off; all is going to decay. And my grand 
 father sleeps in a little grave-yard, by the garden-wall. 
 
 A lane branches from the country road within a few 
 yards of me, and leads back, along the edge of the 
 meadow, to the homely cottage which has been my spe 
 cial care. Its gray porch and chimney are thrown into 
 rich relief by a grove of oaks that skirts the hill behind 
 it; and the doves are flying uneasily about the open
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. 146 
 
 ioors of the granary and barns. The morning sun 
 shines pleasantly on the gray group of buildings ; and 
 the lowing of the cows, not yet driven a-field, adds to 
 the charming homeliness of the scene. But alas for the 
 poor azalias, and laurels, and vines, that I had put out 
 upon the little knoll before the cottage-door ! they are 
 all of them trodden down ; only one poor creeper hangs 
 its loose tresses to the lattice, all dishevelled and for 
 lorn ! 
 
 This by - lane, which opens upon my farm - house, 
 leaves the road in the middle of a grove of oaks ; the 
 brown gate swings upon an oak-tree, the brown gate 
 closes upon an oak-tree. There is a rustic seat, built 
 between two veteran trees that rise from a little hillocl 
 near by. Half a century ago, there was a rustic seat on 
 the same hillock, between the same veteran trees. I can 
 trace marks of the old blotches upon the bark, and the 
 scars of the nails upon the scathed trunks. Time and 
 time again it has been renewed. This, the last, was 
 built by my own hands, a cheerful and a holy duty. 
 
 Sixty years ago, they tell me, my grandfather used to 
 loiter here with his gun, while his hounds lay around 
 under the scattered oaks. Now he sleeps, as I said, ir 
 the little graveyard yonder, where I can see one or two 
 white tablets glimmering through the foliage. I never 
 new him ; he died, as the brown stone table says, aged 
 twenty-six. Yesterday I climbed the wall that skirts
 
 146 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 the yard, and plucked a flower from his tomb. T take 
 out now from my pocket-book that flower, a frail 
 first-blooming violet, and write upon the slip of paper 
 into which I have thrust its delicate stem : " From n - y 
 grandfather's tomb : 1850." 
 
 But other feet have trod upon this knoll far more 
 lear to me. The old neighbors have sometimes told 
 me how they have seen, forty years ago, two rosy-faced 
 girls idling on this spot under the shade, and gathering 
 acorns, and making oak-leaved garlands for their fore 
 heads. Alas, alas ! the garlands they wear now are not 
 earthly garlands. 
 
 Upon that spot, and upon that rustic seat, I am lying 
 this May morning. I have placed my gun against a 
 tree ; my shot-pouch I have hung upon a broken limb. 
 I have thrown my feet upon the bench, and lean against 
 one of the gnarled oaks between which the seat is built. 
 My hat is off; my book and paper are beside me ; and 
 my pencil trembles in my fingers as I catch sight of 
 those white marble tablets gleaming through the trees, 
 from the height above me, like beckoning angel-faces. 
 If they were alive ! two more near and dear friends, 
 in a world where we count friends by units ! 
 
 It is morning a bright spring morning under the 
 wiks these loved oaks of a once cherished home. 
 Last night I slept in yonder mansion under the elms. 
 Phe cattle going to the pasture are drinking in the poo
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. 147 
 
 by the bridge ; the boy, who drives them, is making his 
 ghrill halloo echo against the hills. The sun has risen 
 fairly over the eastern heights, and shines brightly upon 
 the meadow land, and brighfy upon a bend of the brook 
 below me. The birds the bluebirds sweetest and 
 noisiest of all are singing over me in the branches. 
 A. woodpecker is hammering at a dry limb aloft ; ar.d 
 Carlo pricks up his ears and listens, and looks at me, 
 then stretches out his head upon his paws, in a warm 
 bit of the sunshine, and sleeps. 
 
 Morning brings back to me the Past ; and the past 
 brings up not only its actualities, not only its events 
 and memories, but stranger still what might have 
 been. Every little circumstance, which dawns on the 
 awakened memory, is traced not only to its actual, but 
 to its possible issues. 
 
 What a wide world that makes of the I'ast ! a great 
 and gorgeous, a rich and holy world ! Your fancy fills 
 it up artist-like ; the darkness is mellowed off into soft 
 shades ; the bright spots are veiled in the sweet atmos 
 phere of distance ; and fancy and memory together 
 make up a rich dream-land of the past. 
 
 And now, as I go on to trace upon paper some of 
 die visions that float across that dream-land of the 
 Morning, I will not I cannot say, how much comes 
 fancy-wise, and how much from this vaulting memory 
 Of this the kind reader shall himself be judge.
 
 The Morning. 
 
 FSABEL and I she is my cousin, and is seven 
 years old, and I am ten are sitting together on 
 the bank of the stream, under an oak-tree that leans 
 half-way over to the water. I am much stronger than 
 she, and taller by a head. I hold in my hands a little 
 alder-rod, with which I am fishing for the roach and 
 minnows that play in the pool below us. 
 
 She is watching the cork tossing on the water, or 
 playing with the captured fish that lie upon the bank. 
 She has auburn ringlets that fall down upon her 
 shoulders ; and her straw hat lies back upon them, held 
 only by the strip of ribbon that passes under her chin. 
 But the sun does not shine upon her head, for the oak- 
 tree above us is full of leaves ; and only here and there 
 % dimple of the sunlight plays upon the pool where 
 ;im fishing. 
 
 Her eye is hazel, and bright ; and now and then she 
 turns it on me with a look of girlish curiosity, as I lift 
 up my rod, and again in playful menace, as she grasps 
 (n her little fingers one of the dead fish, and threatens 
 U) throw it back upon the stream. Her little feet hang
 
 THE MORNING. 
 
 Dver the edge of the bank, and from time to time she 
 reaches down to dip her toe in the water, and laughs 
 a girlish laugh of defiance, as I scold her for frighten 
 ing away the fishes. 
 
 " Bella," I say, " what if you should tumble in the 
 -ivur ?" 
 
 " Kut I won't." 
 
 " Yes, but if you should ? " 
 
 " Why then you would pull me out." 
 
 " But if I would n't pull you out ? " 
 
 " But I know you would; would nt you, Paul?" 
 
 * What makes you think so, Bella?" 
 
 " Because you love Bella." 
 
 " How do you know I love Bella ? " 
 
 " Because once you told me so ; and because you 
 pick flowers for me that I cannot reach ; and because 
 jrou let me take your rod when you have a fish upon it" 
 
 " But that 's no reason, Bella." 
 
 " Then what is, Paul ? " 
 
 " I 'm sure I don't know, Bella." 
 
 A little fish has been nibbling for a long time at the 
 bait ; the cork has been bobbing up and down ; and 
 oow he is fairly hooked, and pulls away toward the 
 bank, and you cannot see the cork. 
 
 "Here, Bella, quick!" and she springs eagerly 
 to clasp her little hands around the rod. But the fish 
 aas dragged it away on the other side of me ; and as
 
 160 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 she reaches farther and farther, she slips, cries " Oh 
 Paul ! " and falls into the water. 
 
 The stream they told us, when we came, was over a 
 man's head: it is surely over little Isabel's. I fling 
 down the rod, and thrusting one hand into the roots 
 that support the overhanging bank, I grasp at her hat 
 as she comes up; but the ribbons give way, and I see 
 the terribly earnest look upon her face as she goes 
 down again. Oh, my mother ! thought I, if you were 
 only here ! 
 
 But she rises again ; this time I thrust my hand into 
 her dress, and struggling hard keep her at the top, until 
 I can place my foot down upon a projecting root ; and 
 so bracing myself. I drag her to the bank, and having 
 climbed up, take hold of her belt firmly with both 
 hands, and drag her out ; and poor Isabel, choked, 
 chilled, and wet, is lying upon the grass. 
 
 I commence crying aloud. The workmen in the 
 *ields hear me. and come down. One takes Isabel in 
 his arms, and I follow on foot to our uncle's home upon 
 the hill. 
 
 " Oh, my children ! " says my mother ; and she 
 takes Isabel in her arms ; and presently, with dry 
 clothes, and blazing wood-fire, little Bella smiles again 
 I am at my mother's knee. 
 
 " I told you so, Paul," says Isabel. " Aunty, does n 
 Paul love me ? "
 
 THE MORNING. 161 
 
 u I hope so, Bella," said my mother. 
 
 " I know so," said I ; and kissed her cheek. 
 
 And how did I know it ? The boy does not ask , the 
 man does. Oh, the freshness, the honesty, the vigoi 
 of a boy's heart ! how the memory of it refreshes 
 like the first gush of spring, or the break of an Apiil 
 shower ! 
 
 But boyhood has its Pride, as well as its Loves. 
 
 My uncle is a tall, hard-faced man. I fear him, when 
 be calls me " child " ; I love him, when he calls me 
 " Paul." He is almost always busy with his books ; and 
 when I steal into the library-door, as I sometimes do, 
 with a string of fish, or a heaping basket of nuts, to 
 show to him, he looks for a moment curiously at them, 
 sometimes takes them in his fingers, gives them back 
 to me, and turns over the leaves of his book. You 
 are afraid to ask him, if you have not worked bravely ; 
 yet you want to do so. 
 
 You sidle out softly, and go to your mother. She 
 scarce looks at your little stores ; but she draws you to 
 her with her arm, and prints a kiss upon your forehead. 
 Now your tongue is unloosed ; that kiss and that action 
 have done it ; you will tell what capital luck you have 
 had, and you hold up your tempting trophies; "Are 
 they not greit, mother?" B-it she is looking in your 
 face, and not at your prize. 
 
 " Take them, mother ; " and you lay the basket upon 
 r lap.
 
 152 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 " Thank yon, Paul, I do not wish them ; but you must 
 give some to Bella." 
 
 And away you go to find laughing, playful cousin Isa- 
 bel. And we sit down together on the grass, and I pour 
 out my stores between us. " You shall take, Bella, whai 
 you wish in your apron, and then, when study-hours are 
 over, we will have such a time down by the big rock in 
 the meadow ! " 
 
 " But I do not know if papa will let me," says Isabel. 
 
 " Bella," I say, " do you love your papa ? " 
 
 Yes," says Bella ; " why not? " 
 
 " Because he is so cold ; he does not kiss you, Bella, 
 so often as my mother does ; and besides, when he for 
 bids your going away, he does not say, as mother does, 
 ' My little girl will be tired, she had better not go ; ' but 
 he says only, ' Isabel must not go.' I wonder what 
 makes him talk so ? " 
 
 " Why, Paul, he is a man, and does n't At any 
 rate, I love him, Paul. Besides, my mother is sick, you 
 know." 
 
 " But Isabel, my mother will be your mother too. 
 Come, Bella, we will go ask her if we may go." 
 
 And there I am, the happiest of boys, pleading with 
 the kindest of mothers. And the young heart leans 
 into that mother's heart ; none of the void now that 
 wrill overtake it like an opening Korah gulf in the years 
 ihat are to come. It is joyous, full, and running over
 
 THE MORNING. 15b 
 
 * You may go," she says, " if your uncle is willing." 
 
 " But mamma, I am afraid to ask him ; I do not be- 
 neve he loves me." 
 
 ' Don't say so, Paid ; " and she draws you to her side, 
 as if she would supply by her own love the lacking love 
 of a universe. 
 
 " Go with your cousin Isabel, and ask him kindly 
 and if he says No, make no reply." 
 
 And with courage we go hand-in-hand, and steal in 
 at the library-door. There he sits I seem to see him 
 now in the old wainscoted room covered over with 
 books and pictures ; and he wears his heavy-rimmed 
 spectacles, and is poring over some big volume full of 
 hard words that are not in any spelling-book. We 
 step up softly, and Isabel lays her little hand upon 
 his arm ; and he turns and says, " Well, my little 
 daughter ? " 
 
 I ask if we may go down to the big rock in the 
 meadow ? 
 
 He looks at Isabel, and says he is afraid, " we cannot 
 
 go-" 
 
 " But why, uncle ? It is only a little way, and we will 
 be very careful." 
 
 " I am afraid, my children. Do not say any more 
 Y"ou can have the pony and Tray, and play at home." 
 
 " But, uncle " 
 
 " You need say no more, my child.'' 
 
 7*
 
 L&4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I pinch the hand of little Isabel, and look in 
 my own half-filling with tears. I feel that my forehead 
 is flushed, and I hide it behind Bella's tresses, whisper 
 ing to her at the same time, " Let us go." 
 
 " What, sir," says my uncle, mistaking my meaning 
 do you persuade her to disobey ? " 
 
 Now I am angry, and say blindly, " No, sir, I did n't ! 
 And then my rising pride will not let me say that I 
 wished only Isabel should go out with me. 
 
 Bella cries ; and I shrink out, and am not easy until 
 I have run to bury my head in my mother's bosom. 
 Alas ! pride cannot always find such covert. There 
 will be times when it will harass you strangely ; when 
 it will peril friendships will sever old, standing inti 
 macy ; and then no resource but to feed on its own 
 bitterness. Hateful pride ! to be conquered as a man 
 would conquer an enemy, or it will make whirlpools in 
 the current of your affections, nay, turn the whole tide 
 pf the heart into rough and unaccustomed channels. 
 
 But boyhood has its Grief too, apart from Pride. 
 
 You love the old dog Tray ; and Bella loves him a 
 well as you. He is a noble old fellow, with shaggy hair 
 and long ears, and big paws that he will put up into 
 vour hand, if you ask him. And he never gets angry 
 when you play with him, and tumble him over in the 
 .ong grass, and pull his silken ears. Sometimes, to be 
 Hire, he will open his mouth as if he would bite, but
 
 THE MORNING. 166 
 
 when he gets your hand fairly in his jaws, he will scarne 
 leave the print of his teeth upon it. He will swim, too, 
 bravely, and bring ashore all the sticks you throw upon 
 the water ; and when you fling a stone to tease him, he 
 swims round and round, and whines and looks sorry that 
 e cannot find it. 
 
 He will carry a heaping basket full of nuts, too, in 
 nis mouth, and never spill one of them ; and when you 
 come out to your uncle's home in the spring, after stay 
 ing a whole winter in the town, he knows you old 
 Tray does ! And he leaps upon you, and lays his paws 
 on your shoulder, and licks your face, and is almost as 
 glad to see you as cousin Bella herself. And when you 
 put Bella on his back for a ride, he only pretends to 
 bite her little feet ; but he would n't do it for the world. 
 Aye, Tray is a noble old dog ! 
 
 But one summer the farmers say that some of their 
 sheep are killed, and that the dogs have worried them ; 
 and one of them comes to talk with my uncle about it 
 
 But Tray never worried sheep ; you know he never 
 aid ; and so does nurse ; and so does Bella ; for in the 
 spring she had a pet lamb, and Tray never worried 
 ittle Fidele. 
 
 And one or two of the dogs that belong to the neigh 
 bors are shot ; though nobody knows who shot them , 
 and you have great fears about poor Tray ; and try tc 
 keep him at home, and fondle him more than ever. Bui
 
 156 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Fray will sometimes wander off; till, finally, one aftei 
 aeon he comes back whining piteously, and with hia 
 shoulder all bloody. 
 
 Little Bella cries loud ; and you almost cry, as nurse 
 dresses the wound ; and poor old Tray whines very 
 *aJly. You pat his head, and Bella pats him ; and you 
 sit clowr together by him on the floor of the porch, and 
 bring a rug for him to lie upon, and try and tempt him 
 with a little milk ; and Bella brings a piece of cake for 
 him, but he will eat nothing. You sit up till very 
 late, long after Bella has gone to bed, patting his head, 
 and wishing you could do something for poor Tray ; 
 but he only licks your hand, and whines more piteously 
 than ever. 
 
 In the morning you dress early, and hurry down 
 stairs ; but Tray is not lying on the rug ; and you run 
 through the house to find him, and whistle and call 
 Tray ! Tray ! At length you see him lying in his old 
 place out by the cherry-tree, and you run to him. but 
 he does not start ; and you lean down to pat him, but 
 he is cold, and the dew is wet upon him. Poor Tray is 
 .lead ! 
 
 You take his head upon your knees, and pat again 
 those glossy ears, and cry ; but you cannot bring him to 
 .'ife. And Bella comes and cries with you. You can 
 hardly bear to have him put in the ground ; but uncle 
 says he must be buried. So one of the workmen digi
 
 THE MORNING. 157 
 
 a grave vinder the cherry-tree where he died, - a deep 
 grave ; and they round it over with earth, and smooth 
 the sods upon it ; even now I can trace Tray'g 
 grave. 
 
 You and Bella together put up a little slab for a 
 tombstone ; and she hangs flowers upon it, and tie* 
 them there with a bit of ribbon. You can scarce plaj 
 all that day ; and afterward, many weeks later, when 
 you are rambling over the fields, or lingering by the 
 brook, throwing off sticks into the eddies, you think of 
 old Tray's shaggy coat, and of his big paw, and of his 
 honest eye ; and the memory of your boyish grief comes 
 upon you, and you say, with tears, " Poor Tray ! " And 
 Bella too, in her sad, sweet tones, says, " Poor old Tray, 
 he is dead ! " 
 
 School-Days. 
 
 THE morning was cloudy and threatened rain ; be 
 sides, it was autumn weather, and the winds were getting 
 harsh, and rustling among the tree-tops, that shaded 
 the house, most dismally. I did not dare to listen. If 
 indeed I were to stay by the bright fires of home, and 
 gather the nuts as they fell, and pile up the falling 
 .eaves, to make great bonfires with Ben and the rest 
 jf the boys, I should have liked to listen, and would 
 have braved the dismal morning with the cheerfulles*
 
 168 REVERIhz OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 of them all. For it would have been a capital time U> 
 light a fire in the little oven we had built under the 
 wall ; it would have been so pleasant to warm our 
 fingers at it, and to roast the great russets on the flat 
 stones that made the top. 
 
 But this was not in store for me. I had bid the town- 
 boys good-bye the day before ; my trunk was all packed 
 I was to go away to school. The little oven would go 
 to ruin I knew it would. I was to leave my home. 
 I was to bid my mother good-bye, and Lilly, and Isabel, 
 and all the rest ; and was to go away from them so far 
 that I should only know what they were all doing in 
 letters. It was sad. And then to have the clouds come 
 over on that morning, and the winds sigh so dismally ; 
 oh, it was too bad, I thought ! 
 
 It comes back to me, as I lie here this bright spring 
 morning, as if it were only yesterday. I remember that 
 the pigeons skulked under the eaves of the carriage- 
 house, and did not sit, as they used to do in summer, 
 upon the ridge ; and the chickens huddled together 
 about the stable-doors as if they were afraid of the cold 
 autumn. And in the garden the white hollyhocks stood 
 shivering, and bowed to the wind, as if their time had 
 some. The yellow muskmelons showed plain among 
 'he frost-bitten vines, and looked cold and uncomfort 
 able. 
 
 Then they were all so kind in-doors ! The
 
 THE MORNING 159 
 
 made such nice things for my breakfast, because 
 little master was going ; Lilly would give me her seat by 
 the fire, and would put her lump of sugar in my cup ; 
 and my mother looked so smiling and so tenderly, that 
 I thought I loved her more than I ever did before. 
 Little Ben was so gay too ; and wanted me to take his 
 jackknife, if I wished it, though he knew that I had 
 a bran new one in my trunk. The old nurse slipped a 
 little purse into my hand, tied up with a green ribbon, 
 with money in it, and told me not to show it to Beu 
 or Lilly. 
 
 And cousin Isabel, who was there on a visit, would 
 come to stand by my chair when my mother was talking 
 to me, and put her hand in mine, and look up into my 
 tace ; but she did not say a word. I thought it was 
 /ery odd ; and yet it did not seem odd to me that I 
 jould say nothing to her. I dare say we felt alike. 
 
 At length Ben came running in, and said the coach 
 had come ; and there, sure enough, out of the window 
 we saw it, a bright yellow coach, with four whitg 
 horses, and bandboxes all over the top, with a great 
 pile of trunks behind. Ben said it was a grand coach, 
 and that he should like a ride in it ; and the old nurse 
 came to the door, and said I should have a capita 
 time ; but somehow I doubted if the nurse was talking 
 lonestly. I believe she gave me an honest kiss though 
 and such a hug !
 
 160 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 But it was nothing to my mother's. Tom told me 
 to De a man, and study like a Trojan ; but I was not 
 thinking about study then. There was a tall boy in 
 the coach, and I was ashamed to have him see me cry ; 
 so I did n't at first But I remember, as I looked back 
 and saw little Isabel run out into the middle of the 
 street to see the coach go off, and the curls floatin 
 behind her as the wind freshened, I felt my heart leap 
 ng into my throat, and the water coming into my eyes, 
 and how just then I caught sight of the tall boy glanc 
 ing at me, and how I tried to turn it off by looking 
 to see if I could button up my great-coat a great deal 
 lower down than the button-holes went. 
 
 But it was of no use. I put my head out of the coach- 
 window, and looked back as the little figure of Isabel 
 faded, and then the house, and the trees; and the 
 tears did come ; and I smuggled my handkerchief out 
 side without turning, so that I could wipe my eyes 
 before the tall boy should see me. They say that 
 these shadows of morning fade as the sun brightens 
 into noonday ; but they are very dark shadows for all 
 that! 
 
 Let the father or the mother think long before they 
 send away their boy, before they break the homo 
 ties that make a web of infinite fineness and soft silken 
 uieshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the 
 Voy-world, where be must struggle up, amid bickerings
 
 THE MORNING. 161 
 
 aiid quarrels, into his age of youth ! There are boys 
 indeed with little fineness in the texture of their hearts, 
 and with little delicacy of soul, to whom the school in 
 a distant village is but a vacation from home, and with 
 whom a return revives all those grosser affections which 
 alone existed before ; just as there are plants which will 
 bear all exposure without the wilting of a leaf, and will 
 return to the hot-house liie as strong and as hopeful as 
 ever. But there are others, to whom the severance 
 from the prattle of sisters, the indulgent fondness of a 
 mother, and the unseen influences of the home altar, 
 gives a shock that lasts forever ; it is wrenching with 
 cruel hand what will bear but little roughness ; and the 
 sobs with which the adieus are said are sobs that may 
 come back in the after-years strong and steady and 
 terrible. 
 
 God have mercy on the boy who learns to sob early ! 
 Condemn it as sentiment, if you will ; talk as you will 
 of the fearlessness and strength of the boy's heart, 
 yet there belong to many tenderly strung chords of affec 
 tion which give forth low and gentle music that con- 
 Boles and ripens the ear for all the harmonies of life. 
 These chords a little rude and unnatural tension will 
 break, and break forever. Watch your boy then, if so 
 be he will bear the strain ; try his nature if it be rude or 
 lelicate ; and if delicate, in God's name, do not, as you 
 <alue your peace and his, bre\jd a harsh youth-spirit }c
 
 162 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 him that shall take pride in subjugating and forgetting 
 the delicacy and richness of his finer affections ! 
 
 1 see now, looking into the past, the troops of 
 
 boys who were scattered in the great play-ground as 
 the coach drove up at night. The school was in a tall, 
 stately building, with a high cupola on the top, where 
 thought I would like to go up. The schoolmaster, the 
 told me at home, was kind ; he said he hoped I woul 
 be a good boy, and patted me on the head ; but he did 
 not pat me as my mother used to do. Then there 
 was a woman whom they called the Matron, who had 
 a great many ribbons in her cap, and who shook my 
 hand, but so stiffly, that I did n't dare to look up ii 
 her face. 
 
 One boy took me down to see the school-room, which 
 was in the basement, and the walls were all mouldy, 
 I remember ; and when we passed a certain door, he 
 said there was the dungeon ; how I felt ! I hated 
 that boy ; but I believe he is dead now. Then the 
 matron took me up to my room, a little corner-room, 
 with two beds and two windows, and a red table, and 
 closet; and my chum was about my size, and wort a 
 queer roundabout jacket with big bell buttons ; and he 
 called the schoolmaster " Old Crikey," and kept me 
 nwake half the night, telling me how he whipped the 
 icholars, and how they played tricks upon him. ) 
 hought my chum was a very uncommon boy.
 
 THE MORNING. 163 
 
 For a day or two the lessons were easy, and it was 
 sport to play with so many " fellows." But soon I be 
 gan to feel lonely at night, after I had gone to bed. I 
 used to wish I could have my mother come and kiss me 
 after school, too, I wished 1 could step in and tell Isabel 
 how bravely I had got my lessons. When I told niy 
 chum this, he laughed at me, and said that was no place 
 for "homesick, white-livered chaps." I wondered if my 
 chum had any mother. 
 
 We had spending-money once a week, with which we 
 used to go down to the village store, and club our funds 
 together to make great pitchers of lemonade. Some 
 boys would have money besides, though it was against 
 the rules ; and one, I recollect, showed us a five-dollar 
 bill in his wallet, and we all thought he must be very 
 rich. 
 
 We marched in procession to the village church on 
 Sundays. There were two long benches in the galleries, 
 reaching down the sides of the meeting-house, and on 
 these we sat. At the first I was among the smallest 
 boys, and took a place close to the wall against the pul 
 pit ; but afterward, as I grew bigger, I was promoted to 
 the lower end of the first bench. This I never liked, 
 because it was close by one of the ushers, and because 
 it brought me next to some countrywomen who worr 
 stiff bonnets, and ate fennel, and sung with the choir 
 But ther was a little black-eyed girl, who sat over be
 
 164 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 nind the choir, that I thought handsome. 1 used to l>ok 
 at her very often, but was careful she should never catch 
 my eye. 
 
 There was another down below, in a corner-pew, who 
 was pretty, and who wore a hat in the winter trimmed 
 with fur. Half the boys in the school said they would 
 marry her some day or other. One's name was Jane 
 and that of the other Sophia ; which we thought pretty 
 names, and cut them on the ice in skating-time. But J 
 did n't think either of them so pretty as Isabel. 
 
 Once a teacher whipped me. I bore it bravely in 
 the school ; but afterward, at night, when my chum was 
 asleep, I sobbed bitterly as I thought of Isabel, and Ben, 
 and my mother, and how much they loved me ; and lay 
 ing my face in my hands, I sobbed myself to sleep. In 
 the morning I was calm enough : it was another of the 
 heart-ties broken, though I did not know it then. li 
 lessened the old attachment to home, because that home 
 could neither protect me nor soothe me with its sympa 
 thies Memory, indeed, freshened and grew strong, but 
 strong in bitterness and in regrets. The boy whose love 
 you cannot feed by daily nourishment will find pride 
 self-indulgence, and an iron purpose coming in to fur 
 nish other supply for the soul that is in him. If he can 
 not shoot his branches into the sunshine, he will become 
 acclimated to the shadow, and indifferent to such stray 
 gleams of sunshine as his fortune may vouchsafe.
 
 MORNING. 16 
 
 Hostilities would sometimes threaten between the 
 school and the village boys ; but they usually passed off 
 with such loud and harmless explosions as belong to the 
 wars of our small politicians. The village champion? 
 were a hatter's apprentice and a thick-set fellow who 
 worked in a tannery. We prided ourselves especially 
 on one stout boy, who wore a sailor's monkey-jacket. ] 
 cannot but think how jaunty that stout boy looked in 
 that jacket, and what an Ajax cast there was to his 
 countenance ! It certainly did occur to me to compare 
 him with "William Wallace, (Miss Porter's William Wal 
 lace,) and I thought how I would have liked to have 
 seen a tussle between them. Of course we, who were 
 small boys, limited ourselves to indignant remarks, and 
 thought " we should like to see them do it " ; and pre 
 pared clubs from the wood-shed, after a model suggested 
 by a New- York boy who had seen the clubs of the po 
 licemen. 
 
 There was one scholar poor Leslie who had 
 friends in some foreign country, and who occasionally 
 received letters bearing a foreign postmark. What an 
 extraordinary boy that was ; what astonishing letters 
 what extraordinary parents! I wondered if I should 
 ever receive a letter from "foreign parts." I wondered 
 if I should ever write one; but this was too much. 
 too absurd ! As if I, Paul, wearing a blue jacket with 
 gilt buttons, and number-four boots, should ever visit
 
 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 those countries spoken of in the geographies and b) 
 learned travellers ! No, no ; this was too extravagant ; 
 but I knew what I would do if I lived to come of age, 
 and I vowed that I would I would go to New York ! 
 
 Number Seven was the hospital, and forbidden ground; 
 we had all of us a sort of horror of Number Seven. A 
 boy died there once, and oh ! how he moaned ; and what 
 a time there was when the father carne ! 
 
 A scholar by the name of Tom Belton. who wore lin 
 sey gray, made a dam across a little brook by the school 
 and whittled out a saw-mill that actually sawed : he had 
 genius. I expected to see him before now at the head 
 of American mechanics, but I learn with pain that he i? 
 keeping a grocery-store. 
 
 At the close of all the terms we had exhibitions, to 
 which all the townspeople came, and among them the 
 black-eyed Jane, and the pretty Sophia with fur around 
 her hat. My great triumph was when I had the part 
 of one of Pizarro's chieftains, the evening before I left 
 the school. How I did look ! I had a moustache put 
 on with burnt cork, and whiskers very bushy indeed ; 
 and T had the militia coat of an ensign in the town 
 company, with the skirts pinned up ; and a short sword, 
 very dull and crooked, which belonged to an old gentle 
 man who was said to have got it from some privateer's- 
 man, who was said to have taken it from some great 
 British admiral in the old wars ; and the way T carriec 1
 
 THE MORN IX G. 167 
 
 that sword upon the platform, and the way I jerked it 
 out when it came to my turn to say, " Battle ! battle ! 
 then death to the armed, and chains for the defence 
 less ! " was tremendous. 
 
 The morning after, in our dramatic hats, black felt, 
 with turkey feathers, we took our place upon the top 
 of the coach to leave the school. The head master, in 
 green spectacles, came out to shake hands with us, a 
 very awful shaking of hands. Poor gentleman ! he is 
 in his grave now. 
 
 We gave three loud hurrahs " for the old school," as 
 the coach started ; and upon the top of the hill that 
 overlooks the village we gave another round, and still 
 another for the crabbed old fellow whose apples we had 
 so often stolen. I wonder if old Bulkeley is living yet ? 
 
 As we got on under the pine-trees, I recalled the im 
 age of the black-eyed Jane, and of the other little girl 
 in the corner-pew, and thought how I would come back 
 after the college-days were over, a man, with a beaver 
 hat and a cane, and with a splendid barouche ; and how 
 I would take the best chamber at the inn, and astonish 
 the old schoolmaster by giving him a familiar tap on the 
 shoulder ; and how I would be the admiration and the 
 wonder of the pretty girl in the fur-trimmed hat! Alas! 
 bow our thoughts outrun our deeds. 
 
 For long long years I saw no more of my old 
 ichool ; and when at length the new view came, great
 
 Ifi8 AEVERIES OP A BACHELOR. 
 
 changes, crashing like tornadoes, had swept over my 
 path. I thought no more of startling the villagers or 
 astonishing the black-eyed girl. No. no ! I was content 
 to slip quietly through the little town, with only a tear 
 or two, as I recalled the dead ones and mused upon the 
 emptiness of life. 
 
 The Sea. 
 
 As I look back, boyhood with its griefs and cares van 
 ishes into the proud stateliness of youth. The ambition 
 and the rivalries of the college-life, its first boastful im 
 portance as knowledge begins to dawn on the wakened 
 mind, and the ripe and enviable complacency of its 
 senior dignity, all scud over my memory like this 
 morning breeze along the meadows, and like that, too, 
 bear upon their wing a dullness as of distant ice-banks. 
 
 Ben has grown almost to manhood ; Lilly is living in 
 a distant home ; and Isabel is just blooming into that 
 sweet age where womanly dignity waits her beauty, 
 an age that sorely puzzles one who has grown up beside 
 her, making him slow of tongue, but very quick of heart! 
 
 As for the rest let us pass on. 
 
 The sea is around me. The last headlands have 
 gone down under the horizon, like the city steeples, as 
 you lose yourself in the calm of the country, or like 
 the great thoughts of genius, as you slip from the 
 yf poets into your own quiet
 
 THE MORX1XG. 169 
 
 Hie waters skirt me right and left ; there is nothing 
 but water before, and only water behind. Above me 
 are sailing clouds, or the blue vault, which we call, with 
 childish license, heaven. The sails white and full, 
 like helping friends, are pushing me on ; and night and 
 day are distent with the winds which come and go 
 none know whence, and none know whither. A land- 
 bird flutters aloft, weary with long flying, and lost in a 
 world where are no forests but the careening masts, 
 and no foliage but the drifts of spray. It cleaves a while 
 to the smooth spars, still urged by some homeward 
 yearning ; it bears off in the face of the wind, and sinks 
 and rises over the angry waters, until its strength is 
 gone, and the blue waves gather the poor flutterer to 
 their cold and glassy bosom. 
 
 All the morning I see nothing beyond me but the 
 waters, or a tossing company of dolphins ; all the noon, 
 unless some white sail, like a ghost, stalks the horizon, 
 there is still nothing but the rolling seas ; all the even 
 ing, alter the sun has grown big and sunk under the 
 water-line, and the moon risen white and cold to glim 
 mer across the tops of the surging ocean, there is noth 
 ing but the sea and the sky to lead off* thought, or to 
 crush it with their greatness. 
 
 Hour after hour as I sit in the moonlight upon the 
 aflrail, the great waves gather far back and break, 
 *nd gather nearer, and break louder, and gather
 
 170 REVERIES Ob A BAuHL'LOR. 
 
 igain, and roll down swift and terrible under the creak 
 ing ship, and heave it up lightly upon their swelling 
 surge, and drop it gently to their seething and yeasty 
 cradle, like an infant in the swaying arms of a mother, 
 or like a shadowy memory upon the billows of manly 
 thought. 
 
 Conscience wakes in the silent nights of ocean ; life 
 lies open like a book, and spreads out as level as the 
 sea. Regrets and broken resolutions chase over the 
 soul like swift-winged night-birds ; and all the unsteady 
 heights and the wastes of action lift up distinct and 
 clear from the uneasy but limpid depths of memory. 
 
 Yet within this floating world I am upon, sympathies 
 are narrowed down ; they cannot range, as upon the 
 land, over a thousand objects. You are strangely at 
 tracted toward some frail girl, whose pallor has now 
 given place to the rich bloom of the sea-life. You listen 
 eagerly to the chance-snatches of a song from below in 
 the long morning watch. You love to see her small 
 feet tottering on the unsteady deck ; and you love 
 greatly to aid her steps, and feel her weight upon your 
 arm, as the ship lurches to a heavy sea. 
 
 Hopes and fears knit together pleasantly upon the 
 ocean. Each day seems to revive them ; your morning 
 salutation is like a welcome after absence upon the 
 shore, and each " good-night " has the depth and ful- 
 oess of a land " farewell." And beauty grows upon
 
 THE MORNING. 171 
 
 the ocean; you cannot certainly say that the face of 
 (.he fair girl-voyager is prettier than that of Isabel ; oh. 
 no ! but you are certain that you cast innocent and 
 honest glances upon her, as you steady her walk upon 
 the deck, far oftener than at first ; and ocean life and 
 sympathy makes her kind ; she does not resent your 
 rudeness one half so stoutly as she might upon the 
 shore. 
 
 She will even linger of an evening pleading first 
 witli the mother, and, standing beside you, her white 
 hand not very far from yours upon the rail, look down 
 where the black ship flings off with each plunge whole 
 garlands of emeralds ; or she will look up (thinking 
 perhaps you are looking the same way) into the skies 
 in search of some stars which were her neighbors at 
 home. And bits of old tales will come up as if they 
 rode upon the ocean quietude ; and fragments of half 
 forgotten poems, tremulously uttered, either by reason 
 of the rolling of the ship, or some accidental touch of 
 k hat white hand. 
 
 But ocean has its storms, when fear will make strange 
 and holy companionship ; and even here my memory 
 shifts swiftly and suddenly. 
 
 It is a dreadful night. The passengers are 
 
 Clustered, trembling, below. Everj plank shakes ; and 
 ihe oak ribs groan as if they suffered with their toil 
 Vhe hands are all aloft ; the captain is forward shouting
 
 172 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 to the mate in the cross-trees, and I am clinging to ;>ne 
 of the stanchions by the binnacle. The ship is pitch 
 ing madly, and the waves are toppling up sometimes as 
 high as the yard-arm, and then dipping away with a 
 whirl under our keel, that makes every timber in the 
 vessel quiver. The thunder is roaring like a thousand 
 cannons ; and at the moment the sky is cleft with a 
 stream of fire that glares over the tops of the waves, 
 and glistens on the wet decks and the spars, lighting 
 up all so plain, that I can see the men's faces in the 
 main-top, and catch glimpses of the reefers on the 
 yard-arm, clinging like death; then all is horrible 
 darkness. 
 
 The spray spits angrily against the canvas ; the waves 
 crash against the weather-bow like mountains ; the wind 
 howls through the rigging, or, as a gasket gives way, 
 the sail, bellying to leeward, splits like a crack of a 
 musket. I hear the captain in the lulls screaming out 
 orders; and the mate in the rigging screaming them 
 over, until the lightning comes, and the thunder, dead 
 ening their voices as if they were chirping sparrows. 
 
 In one of the flashes I see a hand upon the yard-arm 
 lose his foothold as the ship gives a plunge ; but his 
 arms are clenched around the spar. Before I can sea 
 any more, the blackness comes, and the thunder, with 
 a crash that half deafens me. I think I hear a low 
 :ry, as the mutterings die away in the distance ; and at
 
 THE MORNING. 178 
 
 the next flash of lightning, which comes in an instant, ] 
 see upon the top of one of the waves alongside the 
 poor reefer who has fallen. The lightning glares upon 
 his face. 
 
 But he has caught at a loose bit of running rigging 
 as he fell ; and 1 see it slipping off the coil upon the 
 deck. I shout madly, " Man overboard ! " and catch 
 the rope, when I can see nothing again. The sea is 
 too high, and the man too heavy for me. I shout, and 
 shout, and shout, and feel the perspiration starting in 
 great beads from my forehead as the line slips through 
 my fingers. 
 
 Presently the captain feels his way aft and takes hold 
 with me ; and the cook comes as the coil is nearly spent, 
 and we pull together upon him. It is desperate work 
 for the sailor ; for the ship is drifting at a prodigious 
 rate ; but he clings like a dying man. 
 
 By-and-by at a flash we see him on a crest two oars' 
 lengths away from the vessel. 
 
 a Hold on, my man ! " shouts the captain. 
 
 " For God's sake, be quick ! " says the poor fellow 
 :ud he goes down in the trough of the sea. We pul 
 the harder, and the captain keeps calling to him to keep 
 up courage and hold strong. But in the hush we can 
 near him say, "I can't hold out much longer ; I 'm 
 most gone ! " 
 
 Presently we have brought the man where we car
 
 174 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 lay hold of him, and are only waiting for a good lift of 
 the sea to bring him up, when the poor fellow groana 
 out, " It 's of no use I can't good-bye ! " And a 
 wave tosses the end of the rope clean upon the bul 
 warks. 
 
 At the next flash I see him going down under the 
 water. 
 
 I grope my way below, sick and faint at heart ; and 
 wedging myself into my narrow berth, I try to sleep. 
 But the thunder and the tossing of the ship, and the 
 face of the drowning man as he said good-bye, peer 
 ing at me from every corner, will not let me sleep. 
 
 Afterward come quiet seas, over which we boom 
 along, leaving in our track at night a broad path of 
 phosphorescent splendor. The sailors bustle around the 
 decks as if they had lost no comrade ; and the voyagers, 
 losing the pallor of fear, look out earnestly for the land. 
 
 At length my eyes rest upon the coveted fields of 
 Britain ; and in a day more the bright face, looking out 
 beside me, sparkles at sight of the sweet cottages which 
 lie along the green Essex shores. Broad-saned yachts, 
 .ooking strangely yet beautifully, glide upon the waters 
 of the Thames like swans ; black, square-rigged colliers 
 from the Tyne lie grouped in sooty cohorts ; and heavy, 
 throe-decked Jndiamen of which I had read in story- 
 hooks drift slowly down with the tide. Dingy steam 
 ers with white pipes and with red pipes, whiz past us t
 
 THE MORNING. 176 
 
 flie sea ; and now my eye rests on the groat palace of 
 Greenwich ; I see the wooden-legged pensioners smok 
 Ing under the palace-walls, and above them upon the 
 hill as Heaven is true that old fabulous Greenwich, 
 the great centre of school-boy Longitude. 
 
 Presently, from under a cloud of murky smoke heaves 
 up the vast dome of St Paul's, and the tall Column of 
 the Fire, and the white turrets of London Tower. Our 
 ship glides through the massive dock -gates, and is 
 moored amid the forest of masts which bears golden 
 fruit for Britons. 
 
 That night I sleep far away from " the old school," 
 and far away from the valley of Hillfarm. Long and late 
 I toss upon my bed, with sweet visions in my mind of 
 London Bridge, and Temple Bar, and Jane Shore, and 
 Falstaff, and Prince Hal, and King Jamie. And when 
 at length I fall asleep, my dreams are very pleasant, but 
 they carry me across the ocean, away from the ship, 
 away from London, away even from the fair voyager, 
 *x> the old oaks, and to the brooks, and to thy side, 
 sweet Isabel ! 
 
 The Father-Land. 
 
 THERE is a great contrast between the easy deshabilU 
 if the ocean life and the prim attire and conventional 
 ipirit of the land In the first there are but few (x -
 
 176 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 please, and these few are known, and they know us , 
 upon the shore there is a world to humor, and a world 
 of strangers. In a brilliant drawing-room looking out 
 upon the site of old Charing Cross, and upon the one- 
 armed Nelson standing aloft at his coil of rope, I take 
 leave of the fair voyager of the sea. Her white negligt 
 has given place to silks ; and the simple, careless coiffe 
 i>f the ocean is replaced by the rich dressing of a mo 
 diste. Yet her face has the same bloom upon it ; and 
 her eye sparkles, as it seems to me. with a higher pride ; 
 and her little hand has, I think, a tremulous quiver in 
 it (I am sure my own has) as I bid her adieu, and take 
 up the trail of my wanderings into the heart of Eng 
 land. 
 
 Abuse her as we will, pity her starving peasantry 
 as we may, smile at her court pageantry as much as 
 we like, old England is dear old England still. Her 
 cottage- homes, her green fields, her castles, her blazing 
 firesides, her church-spires are as old as song ; and by 
 song and story we inherit them in our hearts. This joy 
 ous boast was, I remember, upon my lip as I first trod 
 ijion the rich meadow of Runnymede, and recalled that 
 Great Charter wrested from the king, which made 
 the first stepping-stone toward the bounties of our west- 
 srn freedom. 
 
 It is a strange feeling that comes over the western 
 Saxon as he strolls first along the green by-lanes of
 
 THE MORNING. 177 
 
 England, and scents the hawthorn in its April bluom, 
 and lingers at some quaint stile to watch the rooks 
 wheeling and cawing around some lofty elm-tops, and 
 traces the carved gables of some old country mansion 
 that lies in their shadow, and hums some fragment of 
 charming English poesy that seems made for the scene 
 This is not sight-seeing nor travel ; it is dreaming sweet 
 dreams that are fed with the old life of Books. 
 
 I wander on, fearing to break the dream by a swift 
 step ; and, winding and rising between the blooming 
 hedgerows, I come presently to the sight of some sweet 
 valley below me, where a thatched hamlet lies sleeping 
 in the April sun as quietly as the dead lie in history 
 no sound reaches me save the occasional clink of the 
 smith's hammer, or the hedgeman's billhook, or the 
 ploughman's " ho-tup ! " from the hills. At evening, lis 
 tening to the nightingale, I stroll wearily into some close- 
 nestled village that I had seen long ago from a rolling 
 height. It is far away from the great lines of travel ; 
 and the children stop their play to have a look at me. 
 %nd the rosy-faced girls peep from behind half-opened 
 doors. 
 
 Standing apart, and with a bench on either side of 
 the entrance, is the inn of the Eagle and the Falcon, 
 which guardian birds some native Dick Tinto has pict 
 ured upon the swinging sign-board at the corner. The 
 hostess is half ready to embrace me, and treats me like 
 
 8
 
 17b RETER1ES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 a prince in disguise. She shows me through the tap 
 room into a little parlor with white curtains, and with 
 neatly framed prints of the old patriarchs. Here, alone, 
 beside a brisk fire kindled with furze, I watch the white 
 flame leaping playfully through the black lumps of coal, 
 and enjoy the best fare of the Eagle and the Falcon. 
 If too late or too early for her garden-stock, the hostess 
 bethinks herself of some small pot of jelly in an out- 
 of-the-way cupboard of the house, and setting it tempt 
 ingly in her prettiest dish, she coyly slips it upon the 
 white cloth, with a modest regret that it is no better, and 
 a little evident satisfaction that it is so good. 
 
 I muse for an hour before the glowing fire, as quiet 
 as the cat that has come in to bear me company ; and at 
 bedtime I find sheets as fresh as the air of the moun 
 tains. 
 
 At another time, and many months later, I am walk 
 ing under a wood of Scottish firs. It is near nightfall, 
 and the fir-tops are swaying, and sighing hoarsely in the 
 cool wind of the Northern Highlands. There is none 
 of the smiling landscape of England about me ; and 
 the crags of Edinburgh and Castle Stirling, and sweet 
 Perth, in its silver valley, are far to the southward. The 
 iarches of Athol and Bruar Water, and that highland 
 gem, Dunkeld, are passed. I am tired with a morn 
 ing's tramp over Culloden Moor ; and from the edge of 
 toe wood there stretch before me, in the cool gray twi
 
 THE MORNING. ITS 
 
 light, broad fields of heather. In the middle there rise 
 against the night-sky the turrets of a castle ; it is Castlt 
 Cavvdor, where King Duncan was murdered by Mac 
 beth. 
 
 The sight of it lends a spur to my weary step ; and 
 emerging from the wood, I bound over the springy 
 heather. In an hour I clamber a broken wall, and come 
 under the frowning shadows of the castle. The ivy 
 clambers up here and there, and shakes its uncroppecl 
 branches and its dried berries over the heavy portal. 7. 
 cross the moat, and my step makes the chains of the 
 drawbridge rattle. All is kept in the old state ; only 
 in lieu of the warder's horn I pull at the warder's bell. 
 The echoes ring and die in the stone courts ; but there 
 is no one astir, nor is there a light at any of the castle- 
 windows. I ring again and the echoes come and blend 
 with the rising night-wind that sighs around the turrets 
 us they sighed that night of murder. I fancy it must 
 oe a fancy that I hear an owl scream ; I am sure that 
 [ hear the crickets cry. 
 
 I sit down upon the green bank of the moat ; a little 
 dark water lies in the bottom. The walls rise from it 
 gray and stern in the deepening shadows. I hum 
 chance passages of Macbeth, listening for the echoes, 
 echoes from the wall, and echoes from that far awaj 
 time when I stole the first reading of the tragic story.
 
 180 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 " Didst thou not hear a noise? 
 I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry. 
 Did not you speak ? 
 
 When? 
 
 Now. 
 
 As I descended ? 
 Ay. 
 
 Hark ! " 
 
 And the sharp echo comes back " hark ! " And at 
 dead of night, in the thatched cottage under the castle- 
 walls, where a dark-faced Gaelic women in plaid turban 
 is my hostess, I wake, startled by the wind, and my 
 trembling lips say involuntarily " hark ! " 
 
 Again, three months later, I am in the sweet county 
 of Devon. Its valleys are like emerald ; its threads of 
 waters, stretched over the fields by their provident hus 
 bandry, glisten in the broad glow of summer like skeins 
 of silk. A bland old farmer, of the true British stamp, 
 is my host. On market-days he rides over to the old 
 town of Totness in a trim, black farmer's cart ; and he 
 wears glossy topped boots and a broad-brimmed white 
 hat. I take a vast deal of pleasure in listening to his 
 honest, straightforward talk about the improvements of 
 the day and the state of the nation. I sometimes get 
 upon one of his nags, and ride off with him over his 
 fields, or visit the homes of the laborers, which show 
 their gray roofs in every charming nook of the land 
 scape. At the parish-church I doze; against the higb 
 Tew-backs as I listen to the seesaw tones of the drawl
 
 THE MORNING. 181 
 
 ing curate ; and in my half-wakeful moments the with 
 ered holly-sprigs (not removed since Easter) grow upou 
 my vision into Christmas boughs, and preach sermons 
 to me of the days of old. 
 
 Sometimes I wander far over the hills into a neigh 
 boring park, and spend hours on hours under the sturdy 
 oaks, watching the sleek fallow deer gazing at me with 
 their soft, liquid eyes. The squirrels, too, play above 
 me with their daring leaps, utterly careless of my pres 
 ence, and the pheasants whir away from my very feet. 
 
 On one of these random strolls, I remember it very 
 well, when I was idling along, thinking of the broad 
 reach of water that lay between me and that old forest 
 home, and beating off the daisy heads with my cane, I 
 heard the tramp of horses coming up one of the forest 
 avenues. The sound was unusual, for the family, I had 
 been told, was still in town, and no right of way lay 
 through the park. There they were, however ; I was 
 sure it must be the family, from the careless way in 
 which they came sauntering up. 
 
 First there was a noble hound that came bounding 
 toward me, gazed a moment, and turned to watch the 
 approach of the little cavalcade. Next was an elderly 
 gentleman mounted upon a spirited hunter, attended by 
 a boy of some dozen years, who managed his pony with 
 i grace that is a part of the English boy's education 
 Then followed two older lads, and a travelling phaeton
 
 J82 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 in which sat a couple of elderly ladies. But what most 
 ''rew my attention was a girlish figure that rode beyond 
 the carriage upon a sleek - limbed gray. There was 
 something in the easy grace of her attitude and the rich 
 glow that lit up her face heightened, as it was, by the 
 little black riding-cap relieved with a single flowing 
 plume that kept my eye. It was strange, but 1 
 thought that I had seen such a figure before, and such 
 a face, and such an eye ; and as I made the ordinary 
 salutation of a stranger, and caught her smile, I could 
 have sworn that it was she my fair companion of the 
 ocean. The truth flashed upon me in a moment. She 
 was to visit, she had told me, a friend in the south of 
 England ; and this was the friend's home ; and one of 
 the ladies in the carriage was her mother, and one of 
 the lads the school-boy brother who had teased her on 
 the sea. 
 
 I recall now perfectly her frank manner as she un 
 gloved her hand to bid me welcome. I strolled beside 
 them to the steps. Old Devon had suddenly renewed 
 its beauties for me. I had much to tell her of the little 
 outlying nooks which my wayward feet had led me to ; 
 and she as much to ask. My stay with the bland old 
 farmer lengthened ; and two days' hospitalities at the 
 Park ran over into three, and four. There was hard 
 galloping down those avenues ; and new strolls, not at 
 til lonely, under the sturdy oaks. The long summe*
 
 THE MORN1NU. 188 
 
 twilight of England used to find a very happy felloe 
 lingering on the garden - terrace, looking now at the 
 rookery, where the belated birds quarrelled for a rest 
 ing-place, and now down the long forest vista, gray with 
 distance, and closed with the white spire of Madbury 
 church. 
 
 English country life gains fast upon one very fast 
 and it is not so easy as in the drawing-room of Char 
 ing Cross, to say adieu ! But it is said very sadly 
 said ; for God only knows how long it is to last. And 
 as I rode slowly down toward the lodge after my leave- 
 taking, I turned back again, and again, and again. I 
 thought I saw her standing still upon the terrace, though 
 it was almost dark ; and I thought it could hardly 
 have been an illusion that I saw something white 
 waving from her hand. 
 
 Her name as if I could forget it was Caroline ; 
 her mother called her Carry. I wondered how it 
 would seem for me to call her Carry ! I tried it : it 
 sounded well. I tried it over and over, until I came 
 too near the lodge. There I threw a half-crown to the 
 woman who opened the gate for me. She curtsied low, 
 and said, " God bless you, sir ! " 
 
 I liked her for it ; I would have given a guinea for 
 it ; and that night whether it was the old woman's 
 oenediction or the waving scarf upon the terrace, I do 
 uot know, but there was a charm upon my thought 
 ind my hope, as if an angel had been near me.
 
 184 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 It passed away, though, in my dreams ; for I dreamed 
 that I saw the sweet face of Bella in an English park, 
 and that she wore a black velvet riding-cap with a 
 plume ; and I came up to her and murmured, very 
 sweetly, I thought, " Carry, dear Carry ! " and she 
 started, looked sadly at me, and turned away. I ran 
 after her to kiss her as I did when she sat upon my 
 mother's lap, on the day when she came near drowning 
 I longed to tell her, as I did then, I do love you. Bui 
 she turned her tearful face upon me, I dreamed ; and 
 then I saw no more. 
 
 A Roman Girl. 
 
 I REMEMBER the very words, ' Non park 
 
 Francese, Siffnore, I do not speak French, Signor," 
 said the stout lady ; " but my daughter, perhaps, will 
 understand you." 
 
 And she called, "Enrico ! Enrica ! venite, subito ! c' i 
 in forestiere" 
 
 And the daughter came, her light-brown hair falling 
 carelessly over her shoulders, her rich hazel eye twin 
 kling and full of life, the color coming and going upon 
 her transparent cheek, and her bosom heaving with her 
 quick step. "With one hand she put back the scattered 
 locks that had fallen over her forehead, while she laid 
 toe other gently upon the arm of her mother, and
 
 THE MORNING. 186 
 
 %sked in that sweet music of the south, "Cosa volete^ 
 mamma f " 
 
 It was the prettiest picture I had seen in many a day ; 
 and this notwithstanding I was in Rome, and had come 
 that very morning from the Palace of Borghese. 
 
 The stout lady was my hostess, and Enrica so fair, 
 so young, so unlike in her beauty to other Italian beau 
 ties was my landlady's daughter. The house was one 
 of those tall houses very, very old which stand 
 along the eastern side of the Corso, looking out upon 
 the Piazzo di Colonna. The staircases were very tall 
 and dirty, and they were narrow and dark. Four flights 
 of stone steps led up to the corridor where they lived. 
 A little trap was in the door, and there was a bell-rope, 
 at the least touch of which I was almost sure to hear 
 tripping feet run along the stone floor within, and then 
 to see the trap thrown slyly back, and those deep hazel 
 eyes looking out upon me ; and then the door woulo 
 open, and along 'the corridor, under the daughter's guid 
 ance, (until I had learned the way,) I passed to my Ro 
 man home. I was a long time learning the way. 
 
 My chamber looked out upon the Corso, and I coul 1 
 catch from it a glimpse of the top of the tall column of 
 Antoninus, and of a fragment of the palace of the Gov 
 srnor. My parlor, which was separated from the apart 
 ments of the family by a narrow corridor, looked upoc 
 i small cmrt hung around with balconies. From th*
 
 186 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 upper one a couple of black-eyed girls are occasionally 
 looking out, and they can almost read the title of my 
 book when I sit by the window. Below are three or 
 four blooming ragazze, who are dark-eyed, and have Ro 
 man luxuriance of hair. The youngest is a friend of 
 our Enrica, and is of course frequently looking up, with 
 all the innocence in the world, to see if Enrica ma 
 be looking out. 
 
 Night after night a bright blaze glows upon inj 
 hearth, of the alder fagots which they bring from the 
 Alban hills. Night after night, too, the family come 
 in, to aid my blundering speech, and to enjoy the rich 
 sparkling of my fagot-fire. Little Cesare, a dark-faced 
 Italian boy, takes up his position with pencil and slate, 
 and draws by the light of the blaze genii and castles. 
 The old one-eyed teacher of Enrica lays his snuffbox 
 upon the table, and his handkerchief across his lap, and 
 with his spectacles upon his nose, and his big fingers on 
 the lesson, runs through the French tenses of the verb 
 amare. The father, a sallow-faced, keen-eyed man with 
 true Italian visage, sits with his arms upon the elbows 
 of his chair, and talks of the Pope, or of the weather. 
 A spruce count, from the Marches of Ancona, wears 
 heavy watch-seal, and reads Dante with furore. The 
 uother, with arms akimbo, looks proudly upon her 
 daughter, and counts her, as well she may, a gem among 
 <he Roman beauties.
 
 THE MORNING. 187 
 
 The table was round, with the fire blazing on one 
 side ; there was scarce room for but three upon the 
 other. Signor il maestro was one ; then Enrica ; and 
 next how well I remember it came myself. For I 
 could sometimes help Enrica to a word of French ; and 
 faroftener she could help me to a word of Italian. Her 
 face was rich and full of feeling ; I used greatly to love 
 to watch the puzzled expressions that passed over her 
 forehead as the sense of some hard phrase escaped her ; 
 and, better still, to see the happy smile as she caught 
 at a glance the thought of some old scholastic French 
 man, and transferred it into the liquid melody of her 
 speech. 
 
 She had seen just sixteen summers, and only that 
 very autumn was escaped from the thraldom of a con 
 vent upon the skirts of Rome. She knew nothing of 
 life but the life of feeling, and all thoughts of happiness 
 lay as yet in her childish hopes. It was pleasant to look 
 upon her face, and it was still more pleasant to listen to 
 *hat sweet Roman voice. What a rich flow of superla 
 tives and endearing diminutives from those vermilion 
 lips ! Who would not have loved the study ; and who 
 would not have loved without meaning it the 
 
 O 
 
 teacher ? 
 
 In those days I did not linger long at the tables of 
 'ame Pietro in the Via Condotti, but would hurry back 
 to my little Roman parlor the fire was so pleasaut
 
 188 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 And it was so pleasant to greet Enrica with her mothet 
 even before the one-eyed maestro had come in ; and il 
 was pleasant to unfold the book between us, and to 
 la} my hand upon the page a small page where 
 hers lay already. And when she pointed wrong, it was 
 pleasant to correct her, over and over, insisting that her 
 hand should be here, and not there, and lifting those 
 little fingers from one page, and putting them down 
 upon the other. And sometimes, half provoked with 
 my fault-finding, she would pat my hand smartly with 
 hers ; but when I looked in her face to know what that 
 could mean, she would meet my eye with such a kind 
 submission and half earnest regret, as made me not 
 only pardon the offence, but tempt me to provoke it 
 again. 
 
 Through all the days of Carnival, when I rode pelted 
 with confetti, and pelting back, my eyes used to wander 
 up, from a long way off, to that tall house upon the 
 Corso, where I was sure to meet, again and again, those 
 forgiving eyes, and that soft brown hair, all gathered 
 under the little brown sombrero, set off with one pure 
 white plume. And her hand full of bonbons she 
 would shake at me threateningly, and laugh a musi 
 cal laugh as I bowed my head to the assault, and 
 recovering from the shower of missiles, would turn to 
 throw my stoutest bouquet at her balcony. At night I 
 bear home to the Roman parlor my best troplrjf
 
 THE MORNING. 189 
 
 of the day, as a guerdon for Enrica ; and Enrica would 
 be sure to render in acknowledgment some carefully 
 bidder Tiowers, the prettiest that her beauty had won. 
 
 Sometimes upon those Carnival nights she arrays 
 herself in the costume of the Albanian water-carriers ; 
 and nothing, one would think, could be prettier than 
 the laced crimson jacket, and the strange head-gear 
 with its trinkets, and the short skirts leaving to view as 
 Jelicate an ankle as could be found in Rome. Upon 
 another night she glides into my little parlor, as we sit 
 by the blaze, in a close velvet bodice, and with a Swiss 
 hat caught up by a looplet of silver, and adorned with 
 u full-blown rose, nothing you think could be prettier 
 than this. Again, in one of her girlish freaks she robes 
 herself like a nun ; and with the heavy black serge for 
 dress, and the funereal veil, relieved only by the plain 
 white ruffle of her cap, you wish she were always a 
 nun. But the wish vanishes when you see her in a pure 
 white muslin, with a wreath of orange-blossoms abou^. 
 her forehead, and a single white rose-bud in her bosom. 
 
 Upon the little balcony Enrica keeps a pot or two of 
 flowers, which bloom all winter long ; and each morn 
 ing I find upon my table a fresh rose-bud ; each night 
 I bear back for thank-offering the prettiest bouquet that 
 can oe found in the Via Condo<ti. The quiet fireside 
 oveuings come back, in which my hand seeks its 
 wonted place upo her book ; and my other will creep
 
 I'.X) REVERIE b Of A BACHELOR. 
 
 around upon the back of Enrica's chair, and Enrics 
 will look indignant and then all forgiveness. 
 
 One day I received a large packet of letters. Ah, 
 what luxury to lie back in my big arn-chair, there 
 before the crackling fagots, with the pleasant rustle 
 of that silken dress beside me, and run over a second 
 aud a third time those mute paper missives, which bore 
 to me over so many miles of water the words of greet 
 ing and of love ! It would be worth travelling to the 
 shores of the ^Egean, to find one's heart quickened into 
 such life as the ocean letters will make. Enrica threw 
 down her book, and wondered what could be in them ? 
 and snatched one from my hand, and looked with sad 
 but vain intensity over that strange scrawl. " What 
 can it be ?" said she ; and she laid her finger upon the 
 little half line " Dear Paul." 
 
 I told her it was " Caro mic" 
 
 Enrica laid it upon her lap and looked in my face 
 ' It is from your mother ? " said she. 
 
 " No," said I. 
 
 " From your sister ? " said she. 
 
 " Alas, no ! " 
 
 " H vostro fratello, dunque ? " 
 
 " Nemmeno" said I, " not from a brother either." 
 
 She handed me the letter, and took up her book 
 (ud presently she laid the book down again, and looked 
 at the letter, and then at me, and went out.
 
 THE AiURXINv. IS! 
 
 She did not come in again that evening; in the 
 morning there was no rose-bud on my table. And 
 when I came at night, with a bouquet from Pietro's 
 at the corner, she asked me who had written my 
 letter 
 
 " A very dear friend," said I. 
 
 " A lady ? " continued she. 
 
 " A lady," said I. 
 
 " Keep this bouquet for her," said she, and put it in 
 my hands. 
 
 " But, Enrica, she has plenty of flowers : she lives 
 among them, and each morning her children gather 
 them by scores to make garlands of." 
 
 Enrica put her fingers within my hand to take again 
 the bouquet ; and for a moment I held both fingers and 
 flowers. 
 
 The flowers slipped out first. 
 
 I had a friend at Rome in that time, who afterward 
 died between Ancona and Corinth. We were sitting one 
 
 O 
 
 day upon a block of tufa in the middle of the Coliseum, 
 looking up at the shadows which the waving shrubs 
 upon the southern wall cast upon the ruined arcades 
 within, and listening to the chirping sparrows that lived 
 upon the wreck, when he said to me suddenly, " Paul, 
 you love the Italian girl." 
 
 " She is very beautiful," said I. 
 
 U I think she is beginning to love you," said hp, 
 soberly.
 
 192 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 u She has a very warm heart, I believe," said I. 
 
 " Aye," said he. 
 
 " But her feelings are those of a girl," continued I. 
 
 " They are not," said my friend ; and he laid his 
 hand upon my knee, and left off drawing diagrams with 
 his cane. " I have seen, Paul, more than you of this 
 southern nature. The Italian girl of fifteen is a woman, 
 an impassioned, sensitive, tender creature, yet stil' 
 a woman ; you are loving if you love a full-grown 
 heart; she is loving if she loves as a ripe heart 
 should." 
 
 " But I do not think that either is wholly true," 
 said I. 
 
 " Try it," said he, setting his cane down firmly, and 
 looking in my face. 
 
 " How ?" returned I. 
 
 " I have three weeks upon my hands," continued he. 
 " Go with me into the Apennines ; leave your home in 
 the Corso, and see if you can forget in the air of the 
 mountains your bright-eyed Roman girl ! " 
 
 I was pondering for an answer, when he went on, 
 u It is better so : love as you might, that southern 
 nature with all its passion is not the material to build 
 domestic happiness upon ; nor is your northern habit 
 whatever you may think at your time of life the one 
 to cherish always those passionate sympathies which 
 are bred by this atmosphere and their scenes."
 
 THE MORNING. 
 
 One moment my thought ran to my little parlor, and 
 to that fairy figure, and to that sweet angel-face ; and 
 then like lightning it traversed oceans, and fed upon 
 the old ideal of home, and brought images to my eye 
 of lost dead ones, who seemed to be stirring on 
 heavenly wings, in that soft Roman atmosphere, with 
 greeting and with beckoning. 
 
 " I will go with you," said I. 
 
 The father shrugged his shoulders when I told him I 
 was going to the mountains and wanted a guide. His 
 wife said it would be cold upon the hills, for the winter 
 was not ended. Enrica said it would be warm in the 
 valleys, for the spring was coming. The old man 
 drummed with his fingers on the table, and shrugged 
 his shoulders again, but said nothing. 
 
 My landlady said I could not ride. Cesare said it 
 would be hard walking. Enrica asked papa if there 
 would be any danger? And again the old man 
 shrugged his shoulders. Again I asked him if he knew 
 a man who would serve us as guide among the Apen 
 nines ; and finding me determined, he shrugged his 
 shoulders, and said he would find one the next day. 
 
 As I passed out at evening on my way to the Piazzo 
 near the Monte Citorio, where stand the carriages that 
 go out to Tivoli, Enrica glided up to me and whis- 
 ered, " Ah, mi displace tantc tarito, Signor ! "
 
 19-i REVERIE* OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 The Apennines. 
 
 I SHOOK her hand, and in an hour afterward was 
 passing with my friend by the Trajan forum, toward the 
 deep shadow of San Maggiore, which lay in our way to 
 the mountains. At sunset we were wandering over the 
 ruin of Adrian's villa, which lies upon the first step of 
 the Apennines. Behind us, the vesper-bells of Tivoli 
 were sounding, and their echoes floating sweetly under 
 the broken arches ; before us, stretching all the way to 
 the horizon, lay the broad Campagna ; while in the 
 middle of its great waves, turned violet-colored by the 
 hues of twilight, rose the grouped towers of the Eternal 
 City ; and lording it among them all, like a giant, stood 
 the black dome of St. Peter's. 
 
 Day after day we stretched on over the mountains, 
 leaving the Campagna far behind us. Rocks and 
 stones, huge and ragged, lie strewed over the surface 
 right and left ; deep yawning valleys lie in the shadows 
 of mountains that loom up thousands of feet, bearing 
 perhaps upon their tops old castellated towns perched 
 like birds'-nests. But mountain and valley are blasted 
 and scarred ; the forests even are not continuous, but 
 struggle for a livelihood ; as if the brimstone fire that 
 consumed Nineveh had withered their energies. Some 
 times our eyes rest on a great white scar of the broken 
 Calcareous rock, on which the moss car wot grow, and
 
 THE MORNING. 195 
 
 fhe lizards dare not creep. Then we see a cliff beet 
 ling far aloft, with the shining walls of some monasterj 
 of holy men glistening at its base. The wayside brooks 
 do not seem to be the gentle offspring of bountiful hills, 
 but the remnant* of something greater whose greatness 
 has expired ; they are turbid rills, rolling in the bottom 
 of yawning chasms. Even the shrubs have a look as 
 if the Volscian war-horse had trampled them down to 
 death ; and the primroses and the violets by the moun 
 tain-path alone look modestly beautiful amid the ruin. 
 
 Sometimes we loiter in a valley, above which the 
 goats are browsing on the cliffs, and listen to the sweel 
 pastoral pipes of the Apennines. We see the shepherds 
 in their rough skin-coats high over our heads. Their 
 herds are feeding, as it seems, on ledges of a hand's- 
 breadth. The sweet sound floats and lingers in the soft 
 atmosphere, without a breath of wind to bear it away, 
 or a noise to disturb its melody. The shadows slant 
 more and more as we linger ; and the kids begin to 
 group together. And as we wander on through the 
 stunted vineyards in the bottom of the valley, the sweet 
 sound flows after us like a river of song, nor leaves 
 us till the kids have vanished in the distance, and the 
 cliffs themselves become one dark wall of shadow. 
 
 At night, in some little meagre mountain town, we 
 stroll about in the narrow pass-ways, or wander under 
 4e heavy arches of the mountain churches. Shuf
 
 l!96 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR 
 
 fling old women grope in and out; dim lamps glim 
 mer faintly at the side-altars, shedding horrid light 
 upon painted images of the dying Christ. Or perhaps, 
 to make the old pile more solemn, there stands some 
 bier in the middle, with a figure or two kneeling at the 
 loot, and ragged boys move stealthily under the shadows 
 f the columns. Presently conies a young priest in 
 black robes, and lights a taper at the foot, and another 
 at the head, for there is a dead man on the bier ; and 
 the parched thin features look awfully under the yellow 
 light of the tapers, in the gloom of the great building 
 It is very, very damp in the church, and the body of 
 the dead man seems to make the air heavy, so we go 
 out into the starlight again. 
 
 In the morning, the western slopes wear broad 
 shadows, and the frosts crumple on the herbage to out 
 tread. Across the valley it is like summer; and the 
 birds for there are songsters in the Apennines 
 make summer music. Their notes blend softly with 
 the faint sounds of some far-off convent-bell tollin^ foi 
 
 o 
 
 morning mass, and strike the frosted and shaded moun 
 tain-side with a sweet echo. As we toil on, and the 
 shaded hills begin to glow in the sunshine, we pass a 
 train of mules loaded with wine. We have seen them 
 an hour before, little black dots twining along the 
 jdiite streak of footway upon the mountain above us. 
 We lost them as we began to ascend, until a wild snatch
 
 THE MORNING. 1^7 
 
 )f an Apennine song turned our eyes up, and there, 
 straggling through the brush, they appeared again ; a 
 foot-slip would have brought the mules and wine-cask^ 
 rolling upon us. We keep still, holding by the brush 
 wood, to let them pass. An hour more and we see 
 them toiling slowly, mule and muleteer, big dots 
 and little dots, far down where we have been before. 
 The sun is hot and smoking on them in the bare val 
 leys ; the sun is hot and smoking on the hillside, where 
 we are toiling over the broken stones. I thought of 
 little Enrica, when she said the spring was coming; 
 Time and again, we sit down together my friend 
 and I upon some fragment of rock, under the broad- 
 armed chestnuts that fringe the lower skirts of the 
 mountains, and talk through the hottest of the noon, of 
 the warriors of Sylla, and of the Sabine women, but 
 oftener of the pretty peasantry, and of the sweet-faced 
 Roman girl. He too tells me of his life and loves, and 
 of the hopes that lie misty and grand before him : 
 little did we think that in so few years his hopes would 
 be gone, and his body lying low in the Adriatic, or tost 
 with the drift upon the Dalmatian shores ! Little did 
 1 think that here under the ancestral wood still a 
 wishful and blundering mortal I should be gathering 
 up the shreds that memory can catch of our Apennine 
 wandering, and be weaving them into my bacheloi 
 ireams.
 
 198 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Away again upon the quick wing of thought, I follow 
 jur steps, as, after weeks of wandering, we gained once 
 more a height that overlooked the Campagna, and saw 
 the sun setting on its edge, throwing into relief the 
 dome of St. Peter's, and blazing in a red stripe upon 
 the waters of the Tiber. 
 
 Below us was Palestrina, the Praeneste of the poets 
 nnd philosophers, the dwelling-place of I know not 
 how many Emperors. We went straggling through 
 the dirty streets, searching for pome tidy-looking osteria. 
 At length we found an old lady, who could give us a 
 bed, but no dinner. My friend dropped in a chair dis 
 heartened. A snub-looking priest came out to condole 
 with us. 
 
 And could Palestrina, the frigidum Prceneste of 
 Horace, which had entertained over and over the 
 noblest of the Colonna, and the most noble Adrian, 
 could Palestrina not furnish a dinner to a tired trav 
 eller? 
 
 " Si, Signore" said the snub-looking priest 
 
 " Si, Signorino" said the neat old lady ; and away 
 we went upon a new search. And we found bright 
 and happy face^, especially the little girl of twelve 
 years, who came close by me as I ate, and after 
 vard strung a garland of marigolds, and put it on my 
 head. Then there was a bright-eyed boy of fourteen, 
 rho wrote his name and those of the whole family
 
 THE MORNING. 199 
 
 apon a fly-leaf of my book ; and a pretty, saucy-looking 
 girl of sixteen, who peeped a long time from behind the 
 kitchen-door, but before the evening was gone she was 
 in the chair beside me, and had written her name 
 Carlotta upon the first leaf of my journal. 
 
 When I woke, the sun was up. From my bed I could 
 see over the town the thin, lazy mists lying on the oil 
 camp-ground of Pyrrhus ; beyond it were the moun 
 tains which hide Frascati, and Monte-Cavi. There was 
 old Colonna, too, that, 
 
 " Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest 
 Of purple Apennine ' * 
 
 As the mist lifted and the sun brightened the plain, 
 I could see the road along which Sylla came fuming 
 and maddened after the Mithridatic war. I could see, 
 as I half-dreamed and half-slept, the frightened peas 
 antry whooping to their long -horned cattle, as they 
 drove them on tumultuously up through the gateways 
 of the town ; and women with babies in their arms, and 
 children scowling with fear and hate, all trooping fast 
 .ind madly to escape the hand of the Avenger ; alas 
 Ineffectually, for Sylla murdered them, and pulled down 
 ";he walls of their town the proud Palestrina ! 
 
 I had a queer fancy of seeing the nobles of Rome, led 
 n by tS/ofano Colonna, grouping along the plain, theii 
 
 * Macaulay's Horatitu.
 
 200 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 corselet sflashing jut of the mists, their pennons dashing 
 above it, coming up fast and still as the wind, to make 
 the Mural Praeneste their stronghold against the Last 
 of the Tribunes. And strangely mingling fiction with 
 fact, I saw the brother of Walter de Montreal, with his 
 noisy and bristling army, crowd over the Campugna, and 
 put up his white tents, and hang out his showy banners 
 on the grassy knolls that lay nearest my eye. 
 
 But the knolls were all quiet ; there was not so 
 
 much as a strolling contadino on them to whistle a mimic 
 fife-note. A little boy from the inn went with me upon 
 the hill, to look out upon the town and the wide sea of 
 land below ; and whether it was the soft, warm April 
 sun, or the gray ruins below me, or whether the won 
 derful silence of the scene, or some wild gush of mem 
 ory, I do not know, but something made me sad. 
 
 " Perche cosi penseroso ? Why so sad ? " said the 
 quick-eyed boy. " The air is beautiful, the scene is 
 beautiful ; Signore is young, why is he sad ? " 
 
 "And is Giovanni never sad ? " said I. 
 
 " Quasi mai" said the boy ; " and if I could travel as 
 Signore, and see other countries, I would be always 
 
 gay." 
 
 " May you be always that ! " said I. 
 
 The good wish touched him ; he took me by the arms 
 and said, " Go home with me, Signore ; you were happy 
 at the inn last night : go back, and we will make you 
 sjay again ! "
 
 THE MORNING. 201 
 
 If we could be always boys ! 
 
 I thanked him in a way that saddened him. We 
 passed out shortly after from the city gates, and strode 
 DD over the rolling plain. Once or twice we turned 
 back to look at the rocky heights beneath which lay the 
 ruined town of Palestrina, a city that defied Rome, 
 that had a king before a ploughshare had touched the 
 Capitoliue, or the Janiculan hill ! The ivy was covering 
 tip richly the Etruscan foundations, and there was a 
 juiet over the whole place. The smoke was rising 
 straight into the sky from the chimney-tops ; a peasant 
 or two were going along the road with donkeys ; beside 
 this, the city was to all appearance a dead city. And it 
 seemed to me that an old monk, whom I could see with 
 my glass near the little chapel above the town, might be 
 going to say mass for the soul of the dead city. 
 
 And afterward, when we came near to Rome, and 
 passed under the temple-tomb of Metella, my friend 
 said, "And will you go back now to your home? or will 
 you set off with me to-morrow for Ancona ? " 
 
 "At least I must say adieu," returned I. 
 
 " God speed you ! " said he ; and we parted upon the 
 Piazza di Venezia, he for his last mass at Ft. Peter's, 
 md I for the tall house upon the Corso. 
 9*
 
 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Enrica. 
 
 I HEAR her glancing feet the moment I have tinkled 
 the bell ; and there she is, with her brown hair gath 
 ered into braids, and her eyes full of joy and greeting. 
 And as I walk with the mother to the window, to look 
 at some pageant that is passing, she steals up behind, 
 and passes her arm around me with a quick, electric 
 motion, and a gentle pressure of welcome, that tells 
 more than a thousand words. 
 
 It is a pageant of death that is passing below. Far 
 down the street we see heads thrust out of the windows, 
 and standing in bold relief against the red torch-light 
 of the moving train. Below, dim figures are gathering 
 on the narrow side-ways to look at the solemn spectacle. 
 A hoarse chant rises louder and louder, and half dies 
 in the night-air, and breaks out again with new and 
 Jeep bitterness. 
 
 Now the first torch-light under us shines plainly on 
 faces in the windows, and on the kneeling women in the 
 street. First come old retainers of the dead one, bear 
 ing long, blazing flambeaux. Then comes a company 
 of priests, two by two, bareheaded, and every secouc 
 Due with a lighted torch, and all are chanting. 
 
 Next is a brotherhood of friars in brown cloaks, with 
 sandalled feet ; and the red light streams full upon their 
 grizzled heads. They add their heavy guttural voices to 
 \he chant, and pass slowly on.
 
 THE MORNING. 20S 
 
 Then comes a company of priests, in white muslin 
 oapes, and black robes, and black caps, bearing books 
 in their hands wide open, and lit up plainly by the 
 torches of churchly servitors who march beside them ; 
 and from the books the priests chant loud and solemnly 
 Now the music is loudest ; and the friars take up tint 
 dismal notes from the white-caped priests, and the 
 priests before catch them from the brown-robed friars, 
 and mournfully the sound rises up between the tall 
 buildings into the blue night-sky that lies between 
 heaven and Rome. 
 
 " Vede, vede ! " says Cesare ; and in a blaze of 
 the red torch-fire comes the bier, borne on the necks of 
 stout friars ; and on the bier is the body of a dead man 
 habited like a priest. Heavy plumes of black wave at 
 each corner. 
 
 " Hist ! " says my landlady. 
 
 The body is just under us. Enrica crosses herself; 
 her smile is for the moment gone. Cesare's boy-face is 
 grown suddenly earnest We could see the pale, youth 
 ful features of the dead man. The glaring flambeaux 
 sent their flaunting streams of unearthly light over the 
 wan visage of the sleeper. A thousand eyes were look 
 ing on him ; but his face, careless of them all, was turm-il 
 np straight toward the stars. 
 
 Still the chant rises ; and companies of priests follow 
 the bier like those who hud ijone before. Friars ii
 
 204 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 brown cloaks, and prelates and Carmelites, come after 
 all with torches. Two by two their voices growing 
 hoarse they tramp, and chant. 
 
 For a while the voices cease, and you can hear the 
 rustling of their robes, and their footfalls, as if your ear 
 was to the earth. Then the chant rises again as they 
 glide on in a wavy, shining line, and rolls back over the 
 death-train, like the howling of a wind in winter. 
 
 As they pass, the faces vanish from the windows. The 
 kneeling women upon the pavement rise up, mindful of 
 the paroxysm of Life once more. The groups in the 
 doorways scatter. But their low voices do not drown 
 the voices of the host of mourners and their ghost-like 
 music. 
 
 I look long upon the blazing bier trailing under the 
 deep shadows of the Roman palaces, and at the stream 
 of torches winding like a glittering, scaled serpent. 
 " It is a priest," say I to my landlady, as she closes the 
 window. 
 
 u No, signor, a young man never married ; and so 
 by virtue of his condition they put on him the priest- 
 robes." 
 
 " So I," says the pretty Enrica, " if I should die, 
 would be robed in white, as you saw me on a Carnival 
 light, and be followed by nuns for sisters." 
 
 " A long way off may it be, Enrica ! " 
 
 She took my hand in hers and pressed it. An Italiau
 
 THE MORNING. 205 
 
 tprl does not fear to talk of death ; and we were talking 
 of it still as we walked back to my little parlor my 
 hand all the time in hers and sat down by the blaze 
 of my fire. 
 
 It was Holy Week. Never had Knrica looked more 
 sweetly than in that black dress, under that long, 
 dark veil of the days of Lent. Upon the broad pave 
 ment of St. Peter's, where the people, flocking by 
 thousands, made only side-groups about the altars of 
 the vast temple, I have watched her kneeling beside 
 her mother, her eyes bent down, her lips moving ear 
 nestly, and her whole figure tremulous with deep emo 
 tion. Wandering around among the halberdiers of the 
 Pope, and the court-coats of Austria, and the bare 
 footed pilgrims with sandal, shell, and staff, I would 
 sidle back again, to look upon that kneeling figure ; 
 and leaning against the huge columns of the church, 
 would dream even as I am dreaming now. 
 
 At nightfall I urge my way into the Sistine Chapel. 
 Enrica is beside me, looking with me upon the gaunt 
 figures of the Judgment of Angelo. They are chant 
 ing the Miserere. The twelve candlesticks by the altar 
 are put out one by one, as the service continues. The 
 sun has gone down, and only the red glow of twilight 
 steals through the dusky windows. There is a pause, 
 and a brief reading from a red-cloaked cardinal, and all 
 down. She kneels beside me; and the sweet,
 
 206 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 mournful flow of the Miserere begins again, growing 
 in force and depth till the whole chapel rings, and the 
 balcony of the choir trembles ; then it subsides again 
 into the low, soft wail of a single voice, so prolonged, 
 BO tremulous, and so real, that the heart aches, and the 
 ears start for Christ is dead! 
 
 Lingering yet, the wail dies not wholly, but, just 
 
 as it seemed expiring, it is caught up by another and 
 stronger voice that carries it on, plaintive as ever; 
 nor does it stop with this ; for just as you looked for 
 silence, three voices more begin the lament, sweet, 
 touching, mournful voices, and bear it up to a full 
 cry, when the whole choir catch its burden, and make 
 the lament change into the wailing of a multitude, 
 wild, shrill, hoarse, with swift chants intervening, as 
 if agony had given force to anguish. Then, sweetly, 
 slowly, voice by voice, note by note, the wailings sink 
 into the low, tender moan of a single singer falter 
 ing, tremulous, as if tears checked the utterance, and 
 swelling out as if despair sustained it. 
 
 It was dark in the chapel when we went out ; voices 
 irere low. Enrica said nothing, I could say nothing. 
 
 I was to leave Rome after Easter. I did not love to 
 epeak of it, nor to think of it. Rome that old city 
 with all its misery, and its fallen state, and its broken 
 palaces of the Empire grows upon one's heart. The 
 -ringing shrubs of the Coliseum, flaunting their blossoms
 
 THE MORNING. 207 
 
 dt the tall beggarmen in cloaks, who grub below,- 
 the sun glimmering over the mossy pile of the 'House 
 of Nero, the sweet sunsets from the Pincian, that 
 make the broad pine- tops of the Janiculan stand sharp 
 and dark against a sky of gold, cannot easily be left 
 behind. And Enrica, with her silver-brown hair, and 
 the silken fillet that bound it, and her deep hazel 
 eyes, and her white, delicate fingers, and the blue 
 veins chasing over her fair temples, ah, Easter is too 
 near ! 
 
 But it comes ; and passes with the glory of St. 
 Pecer's lighted from top to bottom. With Enrica, 
 I saw it from the Ripetta, as it loomed up in the dis 
 tance, like a city on fire. 
 
 The next day I bring home my last bunch of flowers, 
 and with it a little richly chased Roman ring. No fire 
 blazes on the hearth, but they are all there. Warm 
 days have come, and the summer air even now hangs, 
 heavy with fever, in the hollows of the plain. 
 
 I heard them stirring early on the morning on which 
 I was to go away. I do not think I slept very well 
 myself nor very late. Never did Enrica look more 
 beautiful never. All her Carnival robes, and the 
 sad drapery of the Friday of Crucifixion, could not so 
 ;idorn her beauty as that neat morning-dress, and that 
 >imple rose-bud she wore upon her bosom. She gave 
 It to me the last with a trembling hand. I did
 
 208 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Dot, for * could not, thank her. She knew it ; and hei 
 eyes were full. 
 
 The old man kissed my cheek, it was the Roman 
 custom, but the custom did not extend to the Roman 
 girls, at least not often. As I passed down the Corso 
 I looked back at the balcony, where she stood in the 
 time of Carnival, in the brown sombrero with th 
 white plume. I knew she would be there now ; an 
 there she was. My eyes dwelt upon the vision, very 
 loth to leave it ; and after my eyes had lost it, my heart 
 clung to it, there, where my memory clings now. 
 
 At noon, the carriage stopped upon the hills toward 
 Soracte, that overlooked Rome. There was a stunted 
 pine-tree grew a little way from the road, and I sat 
 down under it, for I wished no dinner, and I looked 
 back with strange tumult of feeling upon the sleeping 
 city, with the gray, billowy sea of the Campagna lying 
 around it. 
 
 I seemed to see Enrica the Roman girl in that 
 morning-dress, with her brown hair in its silken fillet ; 
 jut the rose-bud, that was in her bosom, was now in 
 mine. Her silvery voice too seemed to float past me, 
 bearing snatches of Roman songs ; but the songs were 
 sad and broken. 
 
 After all, this is sad vanity ! thought I ; and yet 
 
 ff I had espied then some returning carriage going 
 iown toward Rome, I will not say but that I should
 
 THE MORNING. 209 
 
 have hailed it, and taken a place, and gone back, and 
 to this day, perhaps have lived at Rome. 
 
 But the vetturino called me ; the coach was ready ; 
 I gave one more look toward the dome that guarded 
 the sleeping city ; and then we galloped down the 
 mountain on the road that lay towards Perugia and 
 Lake Thrasimene. 
 
 Sweet Enrica ! art thou living yet ? Or hast 
 
 thou passed away to that Silent Land where the good 
 sleep and the beautiful? 
 
 The visions of the Past fade. The morning breeze 
 has died upon the meadow; the Bob-o'-Lincoln sits 
 swaying upon the willow-turfs, singing no longer. The 
 trees lean to the brook ; but the shadows fall straight 
 and dense upon the silver stream. 
 
 Noon has broken into the middle sky ; and Morning 
 is gone.
 
 LL 
 
 Noon. 
 
 JTI^HE Noon is short; the sun never loiters on Uii 
 -*- meridian, nor does the shadow on the old dial by 
 the garden stay long at XII. The Present, like the 
 noon, is only a point, and a point so fine, that it is not 
 measurable by the grossness of action. Thought alone 
 is delicate enough to tell the breadth of the Present. 
 
 The Past belongs to God ; the Present only is ours. 
 And short as it is, there is more in it and of it than we 
 can well manage. That man who can grapple it, and 
 measure it, and fill it with his purpose, is doing a 
 man's work ; none can do more ; but there are thou 
 sands who do less. 
 
 Short as it is, the Present is great and strong, as 
 much stronger than the Past as fire than ashes, or as 
 Death than the grave. The noon sun will quicken veg 
 etable life that in the morning was dead. It is hot 
 and scorching ; I feel it now upon my head ; but it 
 does not scorch and heat like the bewildering Present. 
 There are no oak-leaves to interrupt the rays of the 
 turning Now. Its shadows do not fall east or west
 
 NOON. 211 
 
 like the noon, the shade it makes falls straight from sk) 
 to earth, straight from Heaven to Hell ! 
 
 Memory presides over the Past ; Action presides over 
 the Present. The first lives in a rich temple hung 
 with glorious trophies and lined with tombs ; the other 
 has no shrine but Duty, and it walks the earth like a 
 spirit ! 
 
 I called my dog to me, and we shared together 
 
 the meal that I had brought away at sunrise from the 
 mansion under the elms ; and now Carlo is gnawing at 
 the bone that I have thrown to him, and I stroll dream 
 ily in the quiet noon atmosphere upon that grassy knoll 
 under the oaks. 
 
 Noon in the country is very still : the birds do not 
 sing ; the workmen are not in the field ; the sheep lay 
 their noses to the ground ; and the herds stand in pools 
 under shady trees, lashing their sides, but otherwise 
 motionless. The mills upon the brook far above have 
 ceased for an hour their labor ; and the stream softens 
 its rustle, and sinks away from the sedgy banks. The 
 heat plays upon the meadow in noiseless waves, and the 
 beech-leaves do not stir. 
 
 Thought, I said, was the only measure of the Pres 
 ent; and the stillness of noon breeds thought, and my 
 thought brings up the old companions, and stations them 
 n the domain of Now. Thought ranges over the world, 
 tnd brings up nopes and fears and resolves to measure
 
 -1. -V-L "^ .-. _ -L .- . :" j* 
 
 Ls 
 
 M> 
 
 :;-,_- 
 
 - - -: "f 
 
 
 - -_ie 

 
 
 -V: 
 
 - - _ - 
 
 
 < :.-itv . -: .: 1- 
 
 L.t: - 
 
 T 
 
 ffifc. He does a 
 
 . - 
 
 I-,:-: 

 
 214 GKVERIL3 cF A BACHELOR. 
 
 same when I told it to her : Paul, Paid, she did not 
 remember any Paul except a little boy. a long wl ale ago. 
 
 "To whom you gave a purse when he went 
 
 away, and told him to say nothing to Lilly or to 
 Ben?' 
 
 - Yes ; that Pful^ saxs the old woman, exulting^ 
 do you know him?" * 
 
 And when I told herf '^e would not have believed 
 it ! " But she did, a^P fflok hold of my hand again 
 (for she was blind) ; and then smoothed down the plaits 
 of her apron, and jogged her cap-strings, to look tidy 
 in the presence of - the gentleman." And she told me 
 long stories about the old house, and how other people 
 came in afterward ; and she called me - sir ** sometimes, 
 and sometimes " Paul." But I asked her to say only 
 Pan! ; she seemed glad for this, and talked easier ; and 
 went on to tell of my old playmates, and how we used 
 to ride the pony, poor Jacko ! and bow we gathered 
 nuts, such heaping piles ; and how we used to play 
 at fbx-and-geese through the long winter evenings; 
 
 and bow my poor mother would smile but here I 
 
 isked her to stop. She could not have gone on much 
 longer, for I believe she loved our house and people 
 better than she loved her own. 
 
 As for my uncle, the cold, silent man, who lived with 
 Us books in the boose upon the hill, and who used to 
 Tighten me sometimes with his look, he grew very feeble
 
 xoox. 215 
 
 after I had left, and almost crazed. The country-people 
 said that he was mad ; and Isabel with her sweet heart 
 dung to him, and would lead him out, when his step 
 tottered, to the seat in the garden, and read to him ont 
 of the books he loved to bear. And sometimes, the} 
 told me, she would read to him some letters that I had 
 written to Lilly or to Ben, and ask him if he remem 
 bered Paul, who saved her from drowning under the 
 tree in the meadow ? But he could only shake his head, 
 and mutter something about how old and feeble he had 
 grown. 
 
 They wrote me afterward that he died; and was 
 buried in a far-away place, where his wife once bred, 
 and where he now sleep? beside her. Isabel was sick 
 with grief, and came to lire for a time with Lilly ; but 
 when they wrote me last, she had gone back to her 
 old home. where Tray was buried, where we had 
 played together so often through the long days of 
 summer. 
 
 I was glad I should find her there when I came back 
 Lilly and Ben were both living nearer to the city when 
 I landed from my long journey over the seas ; but still 
 I went to find Isabel first Perhaps I had heard so 
 much oftener from the others that I felt less eager to 
 
 _ 
 
 see them ; or perhaps I wanted to save my best visits 
 So the last ; or perhaps (I did think it) perhaps I 
 loved Isabel better than them all
 
 216 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 So I went into the country, thinking all the way how 
 she must have changed since I left. She must be 
 now nineteen or twenty ; and then her grief must have 
 saddened her face somewhat; but I thought I should 
 like her all the better for that. Then perhaps she 
 would not laugh, and tease me, but would be quieter, 
 and wear a sweet smile, so calm and beautiful, I 
 thought. Her figure too must have grown more ele 
 gant, and she would have more dignity in her air. 
 
 I shuddered a little at this ; for I thought, she will 
 hardly think so much of me then ; perhaps she will 
 have seen those whom she likes a great deal better 
 Perhaps she will not like me at all ; yet I knew very 
 well that I should like her. 
 
 I had gone up almost to the house ; I had passed the 
 stream where we fished on that day, many years before ; 
 and I thought that now since she was grown to woman 
 hood, I should never sit with her there again, and surely 
 never drag her as I did out of the water, and never 
 chafe her little hands, and never perhaps kiss -her as I 
 did when she sat upon my mother's lap, oh, no 
 no no! 
 
 I saw where we buried Tray, but the old slab was 
 ^one ; there was no ribbon there now. I thought that 
 at least Isabel would have replaced the slab; but it 
 was a wrong thought. I trembled when I went up to 
 :he door ; for it flashed upon me, that perhaps Isabo.l
 
 NOON. 211 
 
 was married. I could not tell why she should not : but 
 I knew it would make me uncomfortable t6 hear that 
 she had. 
 
 There was a tall woman, who opened the door ; she 
 did not know me ; but I recognized her as one of the 
 old servants. I asked after the housekeeper first, think 
 ing I would surprise Isabel. My heart fluttered some 
 what, thinking that she might step in suddenly herself, 
 or perhaps that she might have seen me coming up the 
 hill. But even then, I thought, she would hardly know 
 me. 
 
 Presently the housekeeper came in, looking very 
 grave ; she asked if the gentleman wished to see her ? 
 
 The gentleman did wish it, and she sat down on one 
 side of the fire ; for it was autumn, and the leaves 
 were falling, and the November winds were very chilly. 
 
 Shall I tell her, thought I, who I am, or ask 
 
 at once for Isabel ? I tried to ask ; but it was hard for 
 me to call her name ; it was very strange, but I could 
 not pronounce it at all. 
 
 " Who, sir ? " said the housekeeper, in a tone so ear 
 nest that I rose at once, and crossed over, and took 
 her hand : " You know me," said I, " you surely 
 emember Paul ? " 
 
 She started with surprise, but recovered herself and 
 esumed the same grave manner. I thought I had 
 committed some mistake, or been in some way cause 
 10
 
 -- 
 
 RETEXfES OF A BACHEL 
 
 7,,. 
 ^tr. 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 --.- -.--.;. 
 
 ; hrit I dU Bat kor dtea aary 
 
 I: :- i: :- 
 ,: ; : :--.:: 
 preca.' 
 
 Jl - r 
 
 OGoi!" 
 
 . every smBsfcaae 
 
 _ . - - : 
 
 had 
 
 7 ' . ' ' : 
 Im*. : 
 
 ft poor Tray 
 Toy I
 
 Ah, wfeai a gap ia tfce worid is 
 
 . _: . - . - " :. . - 
 
 .-.-._-". :_'_ i ;:.
 
 220 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 nothing but the little mound I had dressed over Bella's 
 grave. There she sleeps now, the sleep of Death ! 
 
 ScJwol Revisited. 
 
 THE old school is there still, with the high cupola 
 upon it, and the' long galleries, with the sleeping-rooms 
 opening out on either side, and the corner one where I 
 slept. But the boys are not there, nor the old teachers. 
 They have ploughed up the play-ground to plant corn ; 
 and the apple-tree with the low limb, that made our 
 gymnasium, is cut down. 
 
 I was there only a little time ago. It was on Sun 
 day. One of the old houses of the village had been 
 fashioned into a tavern, and it was there I stopped. 
 But I strolled by the old one, and looked into the bar 
 room, where I used to gaze with wonder upon the enor-. 
 - mous pictures of wild animals, which heralded some 
 coming menagerie. There was just such a picture 
 hanging still, and two or three advertisements of 
 sheriffs, and a little bill of a " horse stolen," and, as I 
 jhought, the same brown pitcher on the edge of the 
 bar. I was sure it was the same great wood-box that 
 stood by the fireplace, and the same whip and great- 
 .oat hung in the corner. 
 
 * I was not in so gay a costume as I once thought I 
 urould be wearing, when a man ; I had nothing bettei
 
 NOON. 221 
 
 than a rusty shooting-jacket ; but even \vith this I was 
 determined to have a look about the church, and see if 
 I could trace any of the faces of the old times. They 
 had sadly altered the building ; they had cut out its 
 long galleries, and its old-fashioned square pews, and 
 filled it with narrow boxes, as they do in the city. The 
 pulpit was not so high, or grand ; and it was covered 
 ovei with the work of the cabinet-makers. 
 
 I missed, too, the old preacher whom we all feared so 
 much ; and in place of him was a jaunty-looking man, 
 whom I thought I would not be at all afraid to speak 
 to, or, if need be, to slap on the shoulder. And when I 
 did meet him after church, I looked him in the eye as 
 boldly as a lion ; what a change was that from the 
 school-days ! 
 
 Here and there I could detect about the church some 
 .old farmer, by the stoop in his shoulders, or by a par 
 ticular twist in his nose ; and one or two young fellows, 
 who used to storm into the gallery in my school-days, in 
 very gay jackets dressed off with ribbons, which we 
 thought was astonishing 'heroism, and admired accord 
 ingly, were now settled away into fathers of families 
 .ind looked as demure and peaceable at the head of 
 their pews, with a white - headed boy or two between 
 them and their wives, as if they had been married all 
 'heir days. 
 
 There was a stout man, too, with a slight limp in his
 
 222 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 gait, who used to work on harnesses, and strap oui 
 skates, and who I always thought would have made a 
 capital Vulcan ; he stalked up the aisle past me as if 
 I had my skates strapped at his shop only yesterday. 
 
 The bald-pated shoemaker, who never kept his word, 
 and who worked in the brick shop, and who had a sou 
 called Theodore, which we all thought a very pretty 
 name for a shoemaker's son, I could not find. I 
 feared he might be dead. I hoped, if he was, that his 
 broken promises about patching boots would not come 
 up against him. 
 
 The old factor of tamarinds and sugar-crackers, who 
 t^ed to drive his covered wagon every Saturday even- 
 tag into the play-ground, I observed, still holding his 
 place in the village choir, and singing though with a 
 tooth or two gone as serenely and obstreperously as 
 ever. 
 
 I looked around the church to find the black-eyed 
 girl, who always sat behind the choir, the one I loved 
 to look at so much. I knew she must be grown up ; but 
 I could fix upon no face positively ; once, as a stout 
 voman with a pair of boys, and who wore a big red 
 shawl, turned half-round, I thought I recognized her 
 nose. If it was she, it had grown red though, and I 
 felt cured of my old fondness. As for the other, who 
 wore the hat trimmed with fur, she was nowhere to bo 
 een, among either maids or matrons ; and when I asked
 
 NOON. 22H 
 
 the tavern-keeper, and described her and Her father as 
 they were in my school-days, he told me that she had 
 married too, and lived some five miles from the village ; 
 and, said he, " I guess she leads her husband a devil of 
 a life ! " 
 
 1 felt cured of her too ; but I pitied the husband. 
 
 One of my old teachers was in the church ; I could 
 ; jave sworn to his face ; he was a precise man, and now 
 I thought he looked rather roughly at my old shooting- 
 jacket But I let him look, and scowled at him a little ; 
 for I remembered that he had feruled me once. 1 
 thought it was not probable that he would ever do it 
 again. 
 
 There was a bustling little lawyer in the village, who 
 lived in a large house* and who was the great man of 
 that town and country : he had scarce changed at all ; 
 and he stepped into the church as briskly and promptly 
 as he did ten years ago. But what struck me most was 
 the change in a couple of pretty little white-haired girls 
 that at the time I left were of that uncertain age when 
 the mother lifts them on a Sunday, and pounces them 
 down one after the other upon the seat of the pew ; 
 'hese were now grown into blooming young ladies. And 
 they swept by me in the vestibule of the church, with a 
 flutter of robes and a grace of motion that fairly made 
 ny heart twitter in my bosom. I know nothing thai 
 wings home upon a man so quick the consciousness of
 
 224 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 jicreasing years, as to find the little prattling girls, thai 
 were almost babies in his boyhood, become dashing la 
 dies ; and to find those whom he used to look on pat 
 ronizingly and compassionately thinking they were 
 little girls grown to such maturity that the mere 
 rustle of their silk dress will give him a twinge, and 
 their eyes, if he looks at them, make him unaccount 
 ably shy. 
 
 After service I strolled up by the school-buildings ; I 
 traced the names that we had cut upon the fence ; but 
 the fence had grown brown with age, and was nearly 
 rotted away. Upon the beech-tree in the hollow behind 
 the school, the carvings were all overgrown. It must 
 have been vacation, if indeed there was any school at 
 all ; for I could see only one old woman about the prem 
 ises, and she was hanging out a dishcloth to dry in the 
 sun. I passed on up the hill, beyond the buildings 
 where, in the boy-days, we built stone forts with bas 
 tions and turrets ; but the farmers had put bastions and 
 turrets into their cobble-stone walls. At the orchard- 
 fence I stopped and looked from force, I believe, of 
 old habit to see if any one were watching, and then 
 .eaped over, and found my way to the early apple-tree ; 
 but the fruit had gone by. It seemed very daring in 
 me, even then, to walk so boldly in the forbidden 
 ground. 
 
 But the old head-master, who forbade it, was dead
 
 NOON. 226 
 
 ind Russell and Burgess, and I know not how many 
 others, who in other times were culprits with me, were 
 dead too. When I passed back by the school, I lin 
 gered to look up at the windows of that corner-room 
 where I had slept the sound, healthful sleep of boyhood 
 and where, too, I had passed many, many wakeful hours, 
 thinking of the absent Bella and of my home. 
 
 How small seem now the great griefs of boy 
 hood ! Light, floating clouds will obscure the sun that 
 is but half risen ; but let him be up mid-heaven, and the 
 cloud that then darkens the land must be thick and 
 heavy indeed. 
 
 The tears started from my eyes ; was not such 
 
 a cloud over me now ? 
 
 College. 
 
 SCHOOLMATES slip out of sight and knowledge, and 
 are forgotten ; or if you meet them, they bear another 
 character ; the boy is not there. It is a new acquaint 
 ance that you make, with nothing of your fellow upon 
 the benches but the name. Though the eye and face 
 jleave to your memory, and you meet them afterward 
 \nd think you have met a friend, the voice or the action 
 irill break down the charm, and you find only an- 
 >ther man. 
 
 But with your classmates in that later school, where 
 10*
 
 226 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 form and character were both nearer ripeness, and 
 ivhere knowledge, labored for together, bred the first 
 manly sympathies, it is different. And as you meet 
 them or hear of them, the thought of their advance 
 makes a measure of your own, it makes a measure 
 of the Now. 
 
 You judge of your happiness by theirs ; of your prog 
 ress by theirs ; and of your prospects by theirs. If one 
 is happy, you seek to trace out the way by which he has 
 wrought his happiness; you consider how it differs from 
 your own ; and you think with sighs how you might pos 
 sibly have wrought the same, but now it has escaped. 
 If another has won some honorable distinction, you 
 fall to thinking how the man your old equal, as you 
 thought, upon the college-benches has outrun you. 
 h pricks to effort, and teaches the difference between 
 now and then. Life with all its duties and hopes gath 
 ers upon your Present like a great weight, or like a 
 storm ready to burst. It is met anew ; it pleads more 
 strongly ; and action, that has been neglected, rises be 
 fore you, a giant of remorse. 
 
 Stop not, loiter not, look not backward, if you would 
 be among the foremost ! The great Now so quick, 
 fx> broad, so fleeting is yours ; in an hour it will be 
 long to the Eternity of the Past. The temper of Life 
 is to be made good by big, honest blows ; stop striking. 
 ind you will do nothing ; strike feebly, and you will dn
 
 NOON. 227 
 
 almost as little. Success rides on every hour ; grapple 
 Jt, and you may win ; but without a grapple it will never 
 go with you. Work is the weapon of honor, and who 
 lacks the weapon will never triumph. 
 
 There were some seventy of us, all scattered now. 
 I meet one here and there at wide distances apart ; and 
 we talk together of old days, and of our present work 
 and life, and separate. Just so ships at sea, in 
 murky weather, will shift their course to come within 
 hailing distance, and compare their longtitude, and 
 part. One I have met wandering in Southern Italy 
 dreaming as I was dreaming, over the tomb of Virgil 
 by the dark grotto of Posilippo. It seemed strange 
 to talk of our old readings in Tacitus there upon classic 
 ground ; but we did ; and ran on to talk of our lives ; 
 and sitting down upon the promontory of Baiae, look 
 ing off upon that blue sea, as clear as the classics, we 
 told each other our respective stories. And two nights 
 after, upon the quay, in sight of Vesuvius, which shed a 
 lurid glow upon the sky, that was reflected from the 
 white walls of the Hotel de Russie, and from the broad 
 'ava pavements, we parted, he to wander among the 
 isles of the JEgean, and I to turn northward. 
 
 Another time, as I was wandering among those mys- 
 'serious figures that crowd the foyer of the French opera 
 ipon a night of the masked ball. I saw a familiar face 
 I followed it with my eye, until I became convinced
 
 J28 REVERIES t)F A BACHELOR. 
 
 He did not know me, until I named his old seat upon 
 he bench of the division-room, and the hard-faced 
 
 Tutor G . Then we talked of the old rivalries, 
 
 and Christmas jollities, and of this and that one, whom 
 we had come upon in our wayward tracks, while the 
 black-robed grisettes stared through their velvet masks ; 
 nor did we tire of comparing the old memories with the 
 unearthly gayety of the scene about us, until daylight 
 broke. 
 
 In a quiet mountain town of New England I camt 
 not long since upon another: he was hale and hearty 
 and pushing his lawyer work with just the same ner 
 vous energy with which he used to recite a theorem 
 of Euclid. He was father, too, of a couple of stout, 
 curly-pated boys ; and his good woman, as he called 
 her, appeared a sensible, honest, good-natured lady. I 
 must say that I envied him his wife, much more than 
 I had envied my companion of the opera his domino. 
 
 I happened only a little while ago to drop into the 
 college chapel of a Sunday. There were the same 
 hard oak benches below, and the lucky fellows who 
 enjoyed a corner seat were leaning back upon the rail, 
 after the old fashion. The tutors were perched up in 
 their side-boxes, looking as prim and serious and im 
 oortant as ever. The same stout Doctor read the hymn 
 n the same rhythmical way ; and he prayed the same 
 orayer, for (I thought) the same old sort of sinners
 
 NOON. 220 
 
 A.8 I shut my eyes to listen, it seemed as if the inter 
 mediate years had all gone out ; and that I was on my 
 DWH pew-bench, and thinking out those little schemes 
 for excuses, or for effort, which were to relieve me, or 
 to advance me, in my college world. 
 
 There was a pleasure like the pleasure of dream 
 ng about forgotten joys in listening to the Doctor's 
 sermon : he began in the same half embarrassed, half 
 awkward way; and fumbled at his Bible-leaves, and 
 the poor pinched cushion, as he did long before. But 
 as he went on with his rusty and polemic vigor, the 
 poetry within him would now and then warm his soul 
 into a burst of fervid eloquence, and his face would 
 glow, and his hand tremble, and the cushion and the 
 Bible-leaves be all forgot, in the glow of his thought, 
 until with a half cough, and a pinch at che cushion, 
 he fell back into his strong but tread-mill argumenta 
 tion. 
 
 In the corner above was the stately, white-haired 
 professor, wearing the old dignity of carriage, and a 
 smile as bland as if the years had all been playthings ; 
 and had I seen him in his lecture-room, I dare say I 
 should have found the same suavity of address, the 
 same marvellous currency of talk, and the same infinite 
 Domposure over the exploding retorts. 
 
 Near him was the silver-haired old gentleman, 
 vith a very astute expression, who used to have an
 
 23U REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 odd habit of tightening his cloak about hu> nethei 
 limbs. I could not see that his eye was any the less 
 bright ; nor did he seem less eager to catch at the 
 handle of some witticism, or bit of satire, to the poor 
 student's cost. I remembered my old awe of him, I 
 must say, with something of a grudge ; but I had got 
 fairly over it now. There are sharper griefs in life 
 than a professor's talk. 
 
 Farther on I saw the long-faced, dark-haired man, 
 who looked as if he were always near some explosive- 
 electric battery, or upon an insulated stool. He was, I 
 believe, a man of fine feelings ; but he had a way of 
 reducing all action to dry, hard, mathematical system, 
 with very little poetry about it. I know there was not 
 much poetry in his problems in physics, and still less in 
 his half-yearly examinations. But I do not dread them 
 now. 
 
 Over opposite, I was glad to see still the aged 
 head of the kind and generous old man, who, in my 
 day, presided over the college ; and who carried with 
 him the affections of each succeeding class. added to 
 their respect for his learning. This seems a higher 
 triumph to me now than it seemed then. A strong 
 mind, or a cultivated mind may challenge respect ; but 
 here is needed a noble one to win affection. 
 
 A new man now filled his place in the president's 
 seat ; but he was one whom I had known, and been
 
 NOUN. 231 
 
 proud to know. His figure was bent and thin, the 
 very figure that an old Flemish master would have 
 chosen for a scholar. His eye had a kind of piercing 
 lustre, as if it had long been fixed on books ; and his 
 expression when unrelieved by his affable smile 
 was that of hard midnight toil. With all his polish of 
 mind, he was a gentleman at heart, and treated us 
 always with a manly courtesy that is not forgotten. 
 But of all the faces that used to be ranged below, 
 
 O ' 
 
 four hundred men and boys, there was not one with 
 whom to join hands, and live back again. Their griefs, 
 joys, and toil were chaining them to their labor of 
 life. Each one in his thought, coursing over a world 
 as wide as my own, how many thousand worlds of 
 thought upon this one world of ours ! 
 
 I stepped dreamily through the corridors of the old 
 Athenaeum, thinking of that first fearful step when the 
 faces were new, and the stern tutor was strange, and 
 the prolix Livy so hard. I went up at night and 
 skulked around the buildings when the lights were 
 blazing from all the windows, and they were busy with 
 their tasks, plain tasks, and easy tasks, because 
 they are certain tasks. Happy fellows, thought I, who 
 have only to do what is set before you to be done. But 
 the time is coining, and very fast, when you must not 
 only do, but know what to do. The time is comin 
 when in place of your one master you will have a thou-
 
 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 and masters. masters of duty, of business, of 
 ore. and of grieC giving you harder learn 
 af them than any of your Fluxions. 
 
 wffl pass, and the Noon will come hot 
 
 Tke Packti of BeO*. 
 
 1 HAT* not forgotten that packet of Beila; I did 
 not once forget it. And when I saw Lilly, now the 
 grown-up Lilly, happy in her household, and blithe as 
 when she was a maiden, she gave it to roe. She told 
 me too of Bella's illness, and of her suffering, and of 
 her manner, when she put the little packet in her 
 hand - for Cbosm Pant* But this I will not repeat, 
 I cannot. 
 
 I know not why h was, but I shuddered at the men 
 tion of her name. There are some who will talk at 
 table, and in their gossip, of dead friends ; I wonder 
 how they do it ? For myself, when the grave has dosed 
 fes gates on the laces of those I lore, however busy 
 my mournful thought may be, the tongue is silent. I 
 lame their names ; it shocks me to bear them 
 It seems like tearing open half-healed wounds, 
 with harsh, worldly noise the sweet sleep 
 * death. 
 
 IkncdBdfa. I know not how I loved her, whetLef
 
 NOON. 
 
 M> A lover, or as a husband lores a wile ; I oolj 
 this, I always loved her. She was so gentle, so beau 
 tiful, so confiding, that I never once thought but that 
 the whole world loved her as well as I. There was 
 onlj one thing I never told to Bella : I would tell her 
 of all my grief, and of all ray joys ; I would tell her my 
 hopes, my ambitious dreams, my disappointments, my 
 anger, and my dislikes ; but I never told her bow nraefc 
 I loved her. 
 
 I do not know why, unless I knew that it was need- 
 lev. But I should as soon have thought of telling 
 Bella, on some winter's day. * Bella, it is winter ! " 
 or of whispering to her on some balmy day of August 
 - Bella, it is summer ! " as of telling her, after she 
 had grown to girlhood, u Bella, I love you!* 
 
 I had received one letter from her in the old coun 
 tries: it was a sweet letter, in which she told me all that 
 bbe had been doing, and bow she had thought of me 
 when she rambled over the woods where we had ram 
 bled together. She had written two or three other let 
 ters, Lilly told me, but they had never reached me. 1 
 nad told her. too, of all that made my happiness ; 1 
 wrote her about the sweet girl I had seen on shipboard, 
 tnd bow I met her afterward, and what a happy bone 
 we passed down in Devon. I even told her of the 
 ttrange dream I had, in which Isabel seemed to be n 
 England, and to turn away from me sadly because I 
 ailed - Carry
 
 234 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I also told her of all I saw in that great world of 
 Paris, writing as I would write to a sister ; and I told 
 her, too, of the sweet Roman girl, Enrica, of her 
 brown hair, and of her rich eyes, and of her pretty Car 
 nival dresses. And when I missed letter after letter, I 
 told her that she must still write her letters, or some 
 little journal, and read it to me when I came back, 
 thought how pleasant it would be to sit under the trees 
 by her father's house, and listen to her tender voice 
 going through that record of her thoughts and fears. 
 Alas, how our hopes betray us ! 
 
 It began almost like a diary about the time that her 
 father fell sick. " It is," said she to Lilly, when she 
 gave it to her, " what I would have said to Cousin Paul, 
 if he had been here." 
 
 It begins :"...! have come back now to father's 
 house; I could not leave him alone, for they told me 
 he was sick. I found him not well ; he was very glad 
 to see me, and kissed me so tenderly that I am sure, 
 Cousin Paul, you would not have said, as you used to 
 say, that he was a cold m_n ! I sometimes read to him 
 sitting in the deep library-window, (you remember it,) 
 ivhere we used to nestle out of his sight at dusk. He 
 'annot read any more. 
 
 " I would give anything to see the little Carry you 
 ipeak of; but do you know you did not describe her tr
 
 NOON. 
 
 me at all ; will you not tell me if she has dark hair, or 
 light ; or if her eyes are blue, or dark like mine ? Is 
 she good; did she not make ugly speeches, or grow 
 peevish, in tliose long days upon the ocean ? How I 
 would have liked to have been with you on those clear 
 starlit nights, looking off upon the water ! But then I 
 think that you would not have wished me there, and 
 that you did not once think of me even. This makes 
 me sad ; yet I know not why it should, for I always 
 liked you best when you were happy : and I am sure 
 you must have been happy then. You say you shall 
 never see her after you have left the ship : you must 
 not think so, Cousin Paul ; if she is so beautiful and 
 fond as you tell me, your own heart will lead you in her 
 way some time again ; I feel almost sure of it. 
 
 " Father is getting more and more feeble, 
 
 wid wandering in his mind ; this is very dreadful ; he 
 calls me sometimes by my mother's name ; and when I 
 say, ' It is Isabel,' he says, ' What Isabel ? ' and treats 
 me as if I was a stranger. The physician shakes his 
 head when I ask him of father. Oh, Paul ! if he should 
 die, what could I do ? I should die too ; I know I 
 should. Who would there be to care for me ? Lilly is 
 married, and Ben is far off, and you, Paul, whom I love 
 better than either, are a long way r rom me. But Goo 
 fe good, and he will spare my father
 
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 Bat Italy is far away. Paul; I ca 
 
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 fed so of Ac Bamm giri; I do not wart to fed L 
 
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 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 much. ' Father,' said I, ' you cannot read ; it is almost 
 dark.' 
 
 " ' Oh, yes,' said he ; ' Isabel, I can read now. And 
 I brought it; he kept my hand a long while, then he 
 opened the book ; it was a book about death. 
 
 " I brought a candle, for I knew he could not read 
 without. 
 
 " ' Isabel, dear,' said he, ' put the candle a little 
 nearer.' But it was close beside him even then. 
 
 " 'A little nearer, Isabel,' repeated he, and his voice 
 was very faint, and he grasped my hand hard. 
 
 " ' Nearer, Isabel ! nearer ! ' 
 
 " There was no need to do it, for my poor father was 
 dead ! Oh ! Paul, Paul ! pity me. I do not know but I 
 am crazed. It does not seem the same world it was. 
 And the house and the trees! oh, they are very dismal ! 
 
 " I wish you would come home, Cousin Paul ; life 
 would not be so very, very blank as it is now. Lilly is 
 kind ; I thank her from my heart. But it is not her 
 "ather who is dead ! 
 
 "I am calmer now ; I am staying with 
 
 Lilly. The world seems smaller than it did ; but 
 heaven seems a great deal larger ; there is a place for 
 is all there, Paul, if we only seek it. They tell me you 
 are coming home : 1 am glad. You will not like, per 
 haps, to come away from that pretty Enrica you speak
 
 NOON. 
 
 :>f ; but do so, Paul. It seems to me that I se\j ciearei 
 ilinr, I did, and I talk bolder. The girlish Isabel you 
 will not find, for I am much older, and my air is more 
 grave ; and this suffering has made me feeble, very 
 feeble. 
 
 ' It is not easy for me to write ; but I must 
 
 tell you that I have just found out who your Carry is. 
 Years ago, when you were away from home, I was at 
 school with her. We were always together. I wonder 
 I could not have found her out from your description ; 
 but I did not even suspect it. She is a dear girl, and is 
 worthy of all your love. I have seen her once since 
 you have met her; we talked of you. She spoke kindly, 
 very kindly ; more than this I cannot tell you, for I do 
 not know more. Ah, Paul, may you be happy : I feel 
 as if I had but a little while to live. 
 
 " It is even so, my dear Cousin Paul : I 
 
 shall write but little more ; my hand trembles now. 
 But I am ready. It is a glorious world beyond this ; I 
 know it is ! And there we shall meet. I did hope to 
 see you once again, and to hear your voice speaking to 
 me as you used to speak. But I shall not. Life is too 
 (rail with me. I seem to live wholly now in the world 
 \ here I am going; there is my mother, and my father, 
 ind my little brother ; we shall meet, I know we shall 
 meet !
 
 240 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 "The last. Paul. Never again in this 
 
 world ! I am happy, very happy. You will corne to 
 me. I can write no more. May good angels guard 
 you, and bring you to heaven ! " 
 
 Shall I go on ? 
 
 But the toils of life are upon me. Private griefs do 
 not break the force and the weight of the great Pres 
 ent A life at best the half of it is before me. It 
 is to be wrought out with nerve and work. And, 
 blessed be God ! there are gleams of sunlight upon it 
 That sweet Carry doubly dear to me now that she is 
 joined with my sorrow for the lost Isabel shall be 
 sought for ! 
 
 And with her sweet image floating before me, the 
 NOON wanes, and the shadows of EVENING lengthen 
 upon the land.
 
 EVENING 241 
 
 in. 
 
 Evening. 
 
 fT^lIE Future is a great land: how the lights and the 
 -- shadows throng over it bright and dark, slow 
 and swift ! 
 
 Pride and Ambition build up great castles on its 
 plains, great monuments on the mountains that reach 
 heavenward, and dip their tops in the blue of Eternity ! 
 Then comes an earthquake the earthquake of disap 
 pointment, of distrust, or of inaction and lays them 
 low. Gaping desolation widens its breaches every 
 where ; the eye is full of them, and can see nothing 
 beside. By-and-by the sun peeps forth as now from 
 behind yonder cloud and reanimates the soul. 
 
 Fame beckons, sitting high in the heavens ; and joy 
 lends a halo to the vision. A thousand resolves stir 
 your heart ; your hand is hot and feverish for action ; 
 your brain works madly, and you snatch here, and you 
 snatch there, in the convulsive throes of your delirium 
 Perhaps you see some earnest, careful plodder, once far 
 behind you, now toiling slowly but surely over the plain 
 of life, until he seems near to grasping those bril'iant 
 11
 
 REVERIES Ul<- A BACHELOR. 
 
 phantoms which dance along the horizon of the future 
 and the sight stirs your soul to frenzy, and you bound 
 on after him with the madness of a fever in your veins. 
 But it was by no such action that the fortunate toiler 
 has won his progress. His hand is steady ; his brain is 
 cool ; his eye is fixed and sure. 
 
 The Future is a great land ; a man cannot go round 
 it in a day ; he cannot measure it with a bound ; he can 
 not bind its harvests into a single sheaf. It is wider 
 than the vision, and has no end. 
 
 Yet always, day by day, hour by hour, second by sec 
 ond, the hard Present is elbowing us off into that great 
 land of the Future. Our souls indeed wander to it as 
 to a home-land ; they run beyond time and space, be 
 yond planets and suns, beyond far-off suns and comets, 
 until, like blind flies, they are lost in the blaze of im 
 mensity, and can only grope their way back to our earth 
 and our time by the cunning of instinct. 
 
 Cut out the Future, even that little Future which is 
 the Evening of our life, and what a fall into vacuity ! 
 Forbid those earneet forays over the borders of Now, 
 and on what spoils would the soul live ? 
 
 For myself, I delight to wander there, and to weave 
 ^very day the passing life into the coming life so 
 closely that I may be unconscious of the joining. And 
 if so be that I am able, I would make the whole piecf 
 near fair proportions and i jst figures, like those tapes
 
 EVENING. 243 
 
 tries on which nuns work by inches, and finish with 
 their lives ; or like those grand frescos which poet-art 
 ists have wrought on the vaults of old cathedrals, gaunt 
 and colossal, appearing mere daubs of carmine and 
 azure, as they lay upon their backs, working out a 
 hand's-breadth at a time, but when complete, show 
 ing symmetrical and glorious ! 
 
 But not alone does the soul wander to those glitter 
 ing heights where Fame sits, with plumes waving in 
 Kephyrs of applause ; there belong to it other appetites, 
 which range wide and constantly over the broad Fu 
 ture-land. We are not merely working, intellectual ma 
 chines, but social puzzles, whose solution is the work of 
 a life. Much as hope may lean toward the intoxicating 
 joy of distinction, there is another leaning in the soul, 
 deeper and stronger, toward those pleasures which the 
 heart pants for, and in whose atmosphere the affections 
 bloom and ripen. 
 
 The first may indeed be uppermost ; it may be noisJ 
 est ; it may drown with the clamor of mid-day the nicer 
 sympathies. But all our day is not mid-day; and al* 
 our life is not noise. Silence is as strong as the soiu , 
 and there is no tempest so wild with blasts but has a 
 wilder lull. There lies in the depth of every man's 
 soul a mine of affection, which from time to time wil' 
 burn with the seething heat of a volcano, and heave up 
 'ava-like monuments through all the cold strata of his 
 commoner nature.
 
 44 REVERIES OF A BACHELC-R. 
 
 One may hide his warmer feelings ; he may paint 
 them dimly ; he may crowd them out of his sailing- 
 chart, where he only sets clown the harbors for traffic ; 
 yet in his secret heart he will map out upon the great 
 country of the Future fairy islands of love and of joy. 
 There he will be sure to wander, when his soul is lost 
 in those quiet and hallowed hopes which take hold on 
 heaven. 
 
 Love only unlocks the door upon that Futurity where 
 the isles of the blessed lie like stars. Affection is the 
 stepping-stone to God. The heart is our only measure 
 of infinitude. The mind tires with greatness ; the 
 heart never. Thought is worried and weakened in 
 its flight through the immensity of space, but Love 
 soars around the throne of the Highest with added 
 blessing and strength. 
 
 I know not how it may be with others, but with me 
 the heart is a readier and quicker builder of those fab 
 rics which stresv the great country of the Future than 
 the mind. They may not, indeed, rise so high as the 
 dizzy pinnacles that ambition loves to rear ; but they lie 
 like fragrant islands in a sea whose ripple is a continu 
 ous melody. 
 
 And as I muse now, looking toward the Evening, 
 which is already begun, tossed as I am with the toils 
 of the Past, and bewildered with the vexations of the 
 Present, my affections are the architect that build up
 
 EVENING. 245 
 
 the ftiture refuge. And in fancy at least I will build it 
 boldly, saddened it may be by the chance shadows of 
 evening ; but through all I will hope for a sunset, wher 
 the day ends, glorious with crimson and gold. 
 
 Carry. 
 
 I SAID that, harsh and hot as was the Present, there 
 were joyous gleams of light playing over the Future. 
 How else could it be when that fair being whom I met 
 first upon the wastes of ocean, and whose name even is 
 hallowed by the dying words of Isabel, is living in the 
 same world with me ? Amid all the perplexities that 
 haunt me as I wander from the present to the future, 
 the thought of her image, of her smile, of her last kind 
 adieu, throws a dash of sunlight upon my path. 
 
 And yet why ? Is it not very idle ? Years have passed 
 since I have seen her; I do not even know where she 
 may be. What is she to me ? 
 
 My heart whispers, " Very much ! " but I do not 
 listen to that in my prouder moods. She is a woman, a 
 beautiful woman indeed, whom I have known once 
 pleasantly known ; she is living, but she will die, or she 
 will marry : 1 shall hear of it by-and-by, and sigrh per 
 haps, nothing more. Life is earnest around me, 
 there is no time to delve in the past, for bright thing? 
 In shed radiance on the future.
 
 46 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I will forget the sweet girl who was with me upon 
 the ocean, and think she is dead. This manly soul is 
 strong, if we would but think so ; it can make a puppet 
 of griefs, and take down and set up at will the symbols 
 of its hope. 
 
 But no, I cannot ; the more I think thus, the less 
 
 really think thus. A single smile of that frail girl 
 when I recall it mocks all my proud purposes, as if 
 without her my purposes were nothing. 
 
 Pshaw! I say, it is idle ; and I bury my thought 
 
 m books, and in long hours of toil ; but, as the hours 
 lengthen, and my head sinks with fatigue, and the shad 
 ows of evening play around me, there comes again that 
 sweet vision, saying with tender mockery, ' Is it idle?" 
 And I am helpless, and am led away hopefully and joy 
 fully toward the golden gates which open on the Fu 
 ture. 
 
 But this is only in those silent hours when the man is 
 alone and away from his working thoughts. At mid 
 day, or in the rush of the world, he puts hard armor on, 
 that reflects all the light of such joyous fancies. He 
 .s cold and careless, and ready for suffering and for 
 fight. 
 
 One day I am travelling. I am absorbed in some 
 present cares, thinking out some plan which is to make 
 easier or more successful the voyage of life. I glance 
 ipon the passing scenery, and upon new faces, with thai
 
 EVENING. 241 
 
 sareless indifference which grows upon a man with 
 years, and above all with travel. There is no wife to 
 enlist your sympathies, no children to sport with ; my 
 friends are few and scattered, and are working out fairly 
 what is before them to do. Lilly is living here, and 
 Ben is living there ; their letters are cheerful, contented 
 letters, and they wish me well. Griefs even have grown 
 light with wearing ; and I am just in that careless hu 
 mor as if I said, Jog on, old world, jog on ! And the 
 end will come along soon, and we shall get poor 
 devils that we are just what we deserve. 
 
 But on a sudden my eyes rest on a figure that I think 
 I know. Now the indifference flies like mist ; and my 
 heart throbs, and the old visions come up. I watch her, 
 us if there were nothing else to be seen. The form is 
 hers ; the grace is hers; the simple dress, so neat, so 
 tasteful ! that is here too. She half turns her head : it 
 is the face that I saw under the velvet cap in the Park 
 of Devon ! 
 
 I do not rush forward ; I sit as if I were in a trance 
 I watch her every action, the kind attentions to hei 
 mother, who sits beside her, her naive exclamations 
 as we pass some point of surpassing beauty. It seems 
 is if a new world were opening to me ; yet I cannot tell 
 vhy. I keep my place, and think, and gaze. I tear the 
 japer I hold in my hand into shreds. I play with mj 
 ?atch-chain, and twist the seal until it is near breaking.
 
 48 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I take out my watch, look at it, and put it back ; yet I 
 Cannot tell the hour. 
 
 It is she, I murmur ; I know it is Carry ! 
 
 But when they rise to leave, my lethargy is broken ; 
 yet it is with a trembling hesitation a faltering as it 
 were between the present life and the future that I 
 approach. She knows me on the instant, and greets me 
 kindly; as Bella wrote very kindly. Yet she shows 
 a slight embarrassment, a sweet embarrassment, that I 
 treasure in my heart more closely even than the greet 
 ing. I change my course, and travel with them ; now 
 we talk of the old scenes, and two hours seem to have 
 made with me the difference of half a lifetime. 
 
 It is five years since I parted with her, never hoping 
 to meet again. She was then a frail girl ; she is now 
 just rounding into womanhood. Her eyes are as dark 
 and deep as ever ; the lashes that fringe them seem to 
 me even longer than they were. Her color is as rich, 
 her forehead as fair, her smile as sweet, as they were 
 before ; only a little tinge of sadness floats upon her eye, 
 like the haze upon a summer landscape. I grow bold 
 to look upon her, and timid with looking. We talk of 
 Bella : she speaks in a soft, low voice, and the shade of 
 sadness on her face gathers, as when a summer mist 
 obscures the sun. I talk in monosyllables ; I can com 
 mand no other. And there is a look of sympathy in 
 ^er eye, when I speak thus, that binds my soul to het
 
 EVENING. 249 
 
 as no smiles could do. What can draw the heart into 
 the fulness of love so quick as sympathy ? 
 
 But this passes ; we must part : she for her home, 
 and I for that broad home that has been mine so long 
 the world. It seems broader to me than ever, and 
 colder than ever, and less to be wished for than ever. 
 AL new book of hope is sprung wide open in my life : a 
 hope of home ! 
 
 We are to meet at some time, not far off, in the city 
 where I am living. I look forward to that time as at 
 school I used to look for vacation ; it is a point d'appui 
 for hope, for thought, and for countless journeyings into 
 the opening future. Never did I keep the dates better, 
 never count the days more carefully, whether for bonds 
 to be paid, or for dividends to fall due. 
 
 I welcome the time, and it passes like a dream. I 
 am near her, often as I dare ; the hours are very short 
 with her, and very Song away. She receives me kindly 
 always very kindly ; she could not be otherwise than 
 kind. But is it anything more ? This is a greedy 
 mature of ours ; and when sweet kindness flows upon 
 us, we want more. I know she is kind ; and yet in 
 place of being grateful, I am only covetous of an excess 
 of kindness. 
 
 She does not mistake my feelings, surely, ah, no, 
 l rust a woman for that ! But wnat have I, or what SLIT 
 I. *o ask a return ? She is pure and gentle as an angel : 
 11*
 
 260 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 and I, alas, only a poor soldier in our world - fight 
 against the Devil ! Sometimes, in moods of vanity, I 
 call up what I fondly reckon my excellencies or deserts, 
 a sorry, pitiful array, that makes me shamefaced when 
 I meet her. And in an instant I banish them all. And 
 I think, that, if I were called upon in some high court 
 of justice to say why I should claim her indulgence, or 
 her love, I would say nothing of my sturdy effort to 
 beat down the roughnesses of toil, nothing of such 
 manliness as wears a calm front amid the frowns of the 
 world, nothing of little triumphs in the every-day 
 fight of life ; but only, I would enter the simple plea 
 this heart is hers ! 
 
 She leaves ; and I have said nothing of what was 
 seething within me : how I curse my folly ! She is 
 gone, and never perhaps will return. I recall in despair 
 her last kind glance. The world seems blank to me. 
 She does not know, perhaps she does not care, *f I 
 love her. Well, I will bear it, I say. But I cannot 
 bear it. Business is broken : books are blurred ; some 
 thing remains undone that fate declares must be done. 
 Not a place can I find, but her sweet smile gives to 
 it either a tinge of gladness, or a black shade of deso 
 lation. 
 
 I sit down at my table with pleasant books ; the fire 
 ts burning cheerfully ; my dog looks up earnestly when 
 I speak to him ; but it will never do I Her image
 
 EVENING. 261 
 
 jwceps away all thesrj comforts in a flood. I fling down 
 my book ; I turn my back upon my dog ; the fire hisses 
 and sparkles in mockery of me. 
 
 Suddenly a thought flashes on my bruin : I will write 
 to her, I say. And a smile floats over my face, a 
 smile of hope, ending in doubt. I catch up my pen 
 my trusty pen ; and the clean sheet lies before me. 
 The paper could not be better, nor the pen. I have 
 written hundreds of letters ; it is easy to write letters ; 
 but now it is not easy. 
 
 I begin, and cross it out. I begin again, and get on 
 a little farther ; then cross it out. I try again, but can 
 write nothing. I fling down my pen in despair, and 
 burn the sheet, and go to my library for some old sour 
 treatise of Shaftesbury or Lyttleton ; and say, talking 
 to myself all the while, let her go ! She is beautiful, 
 but I am strong ; the world is short ; we I and my 
 dog, and my books, and my pen will battle it through 
 bravely, and leave enough for a tombstone. 
 
 But even as I say it, the tears start ; it is all false 
 laying ! And I throw Shaftesbury across the room, and 
 take up my pen again. It glides on and on, as my hope 
 glows, and I tell her of our first meeting, and of our 
 hours in the ocean twilight, and of our unsteady step 
 ping on the heaving deck, and of that parting in the 
 noise of London, and of my joy at seeing her in th 
 pleasant country, and of my grief afterward. And then
 
 262 REVERIES JF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I mention Bella, her friend and mine, and the 
 tears flow ; and then I speak of our last meeting, and 
 of my doubts ; and of this very evening ; and how I 
 could not write, and abandoned it ; and then felt some 
 thing within me that made me write and tell her 
 ill ! " That my heart was not my own, but was wholly 
 aers , and that if she would be mine I would cherisl 
 her and love her always ! " 
 
 Then I feel a kind of happiness a strange, tumult 
 uous happiness, into which doubt is creeping from time 
 to time, bringing with it a cold shudder. I seal the 
 letter, and carry it a great weight for the mail It 
 seems as if there could be no other letter that day and 
 as if all the coaches and horses, and cars, and boats 
 were specially detailed to bear that single sheet. It is 
 a great letter for me ; my destiny lies in it. 
 
 I do not sleep well that night ; it is a tossing sleep 
 One time, joy, sweet and holy joy, comes to my dreams, 
 and an angel is by me ; another time, the angel fades, 
 the brightness fades, and I wake struggling with fear. 
 For many nights it is so, until the day comes on which 
 [ am looking for a reply. 
 
 The postman has little suspicion that the letter which 
 ae gives me although it contains no promissory notes, 
 aor moneys, nor deeds, nor articles of trade is yet to 
 bave a greater influence upon my life and upon my 
 "hture, than all the letters he has ever brought to me
 
 EVENING. 263 
 
 Before. But I do not show him this ; nor do I let him 
 see the clutch with which I grasp it. 1 bear it, as if it 
 were a great and fearful burden, to my room. I lock 
 the door, and having broken the seal with a quivering 
 hand, read: 
 
 The Letter. 
 
 " PAUL, for I think I may call you so now, J 
 know not how to answer you. Your letter gave me 
 great joy ; but it gave me pain too. I cannot will 
 not doubt what you say : I believe that you love me 
 better than I deserve to be loved ; and I know that I 
 am not worthy of all your kind praises. But it is not 
 this that pains me ; for I know that you have a generous 
 heart, and would forgive, as you always have forgiven, 
 any weakness of mine. I am proud too, very proud, 
 to have won your love ; but it pains me more perhaps 
 than you will believe to think that I cannot write 
 back to you as I would wish to write ; alas, never ! " 
 
 Here I dash the letter upon the floor, and, with my 
 hand upon my forehead, sit gazing upon the glowing 
 coals, and breathing quick and loud. The dream then 
 is broken ! 
 
 Presently I read again :
 
 254 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 " You know that my father died before we had 
 
 ever met. He had an old friend who had come from 
 England, and who in early life had done him some 
 great service, which made him seem like a brother. 
 This old gentleman was my godfather, and called me 
 daughter. When my father died, he drew me to his 
 side and said, ' Carry, I shall leave you, but my old 
 friend will be your father ; ' and he put my hand in his 
 and said, ' I give you my daughter.' 
 
 " This old gentleman had a son, older than myself; 
 but we were much together, and grew up as brother and 
 sister. I was proud of him, for he was tall and strong, 
 and every one called him handsome. He was as kind, 
 too, as a brother could be ; and his father was like my 
 own father. Every one said and believed that we 
 would one day be married ; and my mother and my 
 new father spoke of it openly. So did Laurence, for 
 that is my friend's name. 
 
 " I do not need to tell you any more, Paul ; for when 
 I was still a girl, we had promised that we would one 
 day be man and wife. Laurence has been much in 
 England ; and I believe he is there now. The old gen 
 tleman treats me still as a daughter, and talks of the 
 time when I shall come and live with him. The letters 
 of Laurence are very kind ; and though he does not talk 
 so much of our marriage as he did, it is only, I think, 
 Oecause he regards it as so certain.
 
 EVENING. 26 
 
 1 have wished to tell you all this before, but I have 
 feared to tell you ; I am afraid I have been too selfish 
 to tell you. And now what can I say ? Laurence 
 seems most to me like a brother; and you, Paul 
 but I must not go on. For if I marry Laurence, as fate 
 seems to have decided, I will try and love him better 
 than all the world. 
 
 " But will you not be a brother, and love me as you 
 once loved Bella ? You say my eyes are like hers, and 
 that my forehead is like hers : will you not believe that 
 my heart is like hers too ? 
 
 " Paul, if you shed tears over this letter, I have shed 
 them as well as you. I can write no more now. 
 
 "Adieu." 
 
 I sit long, looking upouthe blaze ; and when I rouse 
 myself it is to say wicked things against destiny. Again 
 all the future seems very blank. I cannot love Carry 
 as I loved Bella ; she cannot be a sister to me ; she 
 must be more, or nothing ! Again, I seem to float singly 
 on the tide of life, and see all around me in cheerful 
 groups. Everywhere the sun shines, except upon my 
 own cold forehead. There seems no mercy in heaven, 
 and no goodness for me upon earth. 
 
 I write, after some days, an answer to the letter. But 
 it is a bitter answer, in which I forget myself in the 
 vhirl of my misfortunes to the utterance of re 
 proaches.
 
 266 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Her reply, which comes speedily, is sweet and gentle 
 She is hurt by my reproaches, deeply hurt. But with a 
 touching kindness, of which I am not worthy, she cred 
 its all my petulance to my wounded feeling ; she soothes 
 me, but in soothing only wounds the more. I try to 
 believe her when she speaks of her unworthiness, but I 
 cannot. 
 
 Business, and the pursuits of ambition or of interest 
 pass on like dull, grating machinery. Tasks are met 
 and performed, with strength indeed, but with no cheer 
 Courage is high, as I meet the shocks and trials of the 
 world ; but it is a brute, careless courage, that glories in 
 opposition. I laugh at any dangers, or any insidious 
 pitfalls ; what are they to me ? What do I possess 
 which it will be hard to lose ? My dog keeps by me 
 my toils are present ; my food is ready ; my limbs are 
 strong : what need for more ? 
 
 The months slip by ; and the cloud that floated over 
 my evening sun passers. 
 
 Laurence, wandering abroad and writing to Caroline 
 as to a sister, writes more than his father could have 
 wished. He has met new faces, very sweet faces, and 
 Dne which shows through the ink of his later letters 
 very gorgeously. The old gentleman does not like to 
 lose thus his little Carry, and he writes back rebuke. 
 But Laurence, with the letters of Caroline before him 
 "~r data, throws himself upon his sister's kindness and
 
 EVENING. 257 
 
 charity. It astonishes not a little the old gentleman to 
 find his daughter pleading in such strange way for the 
 son. "And what will you do then, my Carry ? " the old 
 man says. 
 
 " Wear weeds, if you wish, sir ; and love you 
 
 and Laurence more than ever ! " 
 
 And he takes her to his bosom, and says, " Carry 
 Carry, you are too good for that wild fellow, Laurence!" 
 
 Now the letters are different ! Now they are full of 
 hope, dawning all over the future sky. Business, and 
 care, and toil glide as if a spirit animated them all ; it 
 is no longer cold machine-work, but intelligent and 
 hopeful activity'. The sky hangs upon you lovingly, 
 and the birds make music that startles you with its fine 
 ness. Men wear cheerful faces ; the storms have a kind 
 pity gleaming through all their wrath. 
 
 The days approach when you can call her yours. For 
 she has said it, and her mother has said it ; and the kind 
 tW gentleman, who says he will still be her father, has 
 said it too ; and they have all welcomed you won by 
 her story with a cordiality that has made your cup 
 full to running over. Only one thought comes up to 
 obscure your joy : Is it real ? or, if real, are you worthy 
 to enjoy ? Will you cherish and . love always, as you 
 have promised, that angel who accepts your word, an.i 
 rests her happiness on your faith ? Are there not harsh 
 4i-alities in your nature which you fear may sometime
 
 258 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 make her regret that she gave herself to your love aud 
 charity ? And those friends who watch over her as the 
 apple of their eye. can you always meet their tenderness 
 and approval for your guardianship of their treasure ? 
 Is it not a treasure that makes you fearful as well as 
 joyful ? 
 
 But you forget this in her smile ; her kindness, her 
 goodness, her modesty will not let you remember it. 
 She forbids such thoughts ; and you yield such obedi 
 ence as you never yielded even to the commands of a 
 mother. And if your business and your labor slip by 
 partially neglected, what matters it ? What is interest, 
 or what is reputation, compared with that fulness of 
 your heart which is now ripe with joy ? 
 
 The day for your marriage comes, and you live as if 
 you were in a dream. You think well and hope well 
 for all the world. A flood of charity seems to radiate 
 from all around you. And as you sit beside her in the 
 twilight, on the evening before the day when you will 
 call her yours, and talk of the coming hopes, and of the 
 soft shadows of the past ; and whisper of Bella's love, 
 and of that sweet sister's death ; and of Laurence, a 
 new brother, coining home joyful with his bride ; and 
 'ay your cheek to hers, life seems as if it were aJl d;iy 
 uid as if there could be no night ! 
 
 The marriage passes, and she is yours, yours foi
 
 EVENING. 269 
 
 New Travel. 
 
 AGAIJS I am upon the sea, but not alone. She, whom 
 f first met upon the wastes of ocean, is there beside mo. 
 Again I steady her tottering step upon the deck ; once 
 it was a drifting, careless pleasure ; now the pleasure is 
 holy. 
 
 Once the fear I felt as the storms gathered, and 
 night came, and the ship tossed madly, and great waves 
 gathering swift and high came down like slipping 
 mountains, and spent their force upon the quivering 
 vessel was a selfish fear. But it is so no longer. In 
 deed I hardly know fear ; for how can the tempests 
 harm her 1 Is she not too good to suffer any of the 
 wrath of heaven ? 
 
 And in nights of calm holy nights we lean over 
 the ship's side, looking down, as once before, into the 
 dark depths, and murmur again snatches of ocean song, 
 and talk of those we love ; and we peer among the stars, 
 ivhic'., seem neighborly, and as if they were the homes 
 of friends. And <?:> the great ocean-swells come rock 
 ing under us, and carry us up and clown along the val 
 leys and the hills of water, they geem like deep pulsa- 
 lions of the great heart of nature, heaving us forward 
 /ward the goal of life, and to the gates of heaven ! 
 
 We watch the ships as they come upon the horizon
 
 260 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 and sweep toward us, like false friends, with the sua 
 glittering on their sails ; and then shift their course, and 
 bear away with their bright sails turned to spots of 
 shadow. We watch the long-winged birds skimming 
 the waves hour after hour, like pleasant thoughts ; now 
 dashing before our bows, and then sweeping behind 
 until they are lost in the hollows of the water. 
 
 Again life lies open, as it did once before ; but the 
 regrets, disappointments, and fruitless resolves do not 
 come to trouble me now. It is the future, which has 
 become as level as the sea ; and she is beside me, the 
 sharer in that future, to look out with me upon the joy 
 ous sparkle of water, and to count with me the dazzling 
 ripples that lie between us and the shore. A thousand 
 pleasant plans come up, and are abandoned, like the 
 waves we leave behind us ; a thousand other joyous 
 plans dawn upon our fancy, like the waves that glitter 
 before us. We talk of Laurence and his bride, whom 
 we are to meet ; we talk of her mother, who is even now 
 watching the winds that waft her child over the ocean ; 
 we talk of the kindly old man, her godfather, who gave 
 her a father's blessing ; we talk low, and in the twilight 
 hours, of Isabel who sleeps. 
 
 At length, as the sun goes down upon a fair night 
 over the western waters which we have passed, we sec 
 before us the low, blue line of the shores of Cornwall 
 ind Devon. In the night, shadowy ships glide past ua
 
 EVENING. 261 
 
 *rith gleaming lanterns ; and in the morning we see tli 
 yellow cliffs of the Isle of Wight, and standing out 
 from the land is the dingy sail of our pilot London, 
 with its fog, roar, and crowds, has not the same charms 
 that it once had ; that roar and crowd is good to make 
 a man forget his griefs, forget himself, and stupefy him 
 with amazement. We are in no need of such forget- 
 fulness. 
 
 We roll along the banks of the sylvan river that 
 glides by Hampton Court; and we toil up Richmond 
 Hill, to look together upon that scene of water and 
 meadow, of leafy copses, and glistening villas, of 
 brown cottages, and clustered hamlets, of solitary 
 oaks, and loitering herds, all spread like a veil of 
 beauty upon the bosom of the Thames. But we cannot 
 linger here, nor even under the glorious old boles of 
 Windsor Forest ; but we hurry on to that sweet county 
 of Devon, made green with its white skeins of water. 
 
 Again we loiter under the oaks where we have loi 
 tered before ; and the sleek deer gaze on us with their 
 liquid eyes, as they gazed before. The squirrels sport 
 among the boughs as fearless as ever ; and some wan 
 dering puss pricks her long ears at our steps, and 
 bounds off along the hedge-rows to her burrow. Agaii 
 I see Carry in her velvet riding-cap, with the white 
 plume ; and I meet her, as I met her before, under the 
 princely trees that skirt the northern avenue. I recaL
 
 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 the evening when I sauntered out at the park-gates 
 and gained a blessing from the porter's wife, and 
 dreamed that strange dream; now, the dream seems 
 more real than my life. "God bless you!" said the 
 woman again. 
 
 " Aye, old lady, God has blessed me ! " and I 
 fling her a guinea, not as a gift, but as a debt. 
 
 The bland farmer lives yet; he scarce knows me, 
 until I tell him of my bout around his oatfield at the 
 tail of his long-stilted plough. I find the old pew in 
 the parish church. Other holly-sprigs are hirag now ; 
 and 1 do not doze, for Carry is beside me. The curate 
 drawls the service, but it is pleasant to listen ; and I 
 make the responses with an emphasis that tells more, I 
 fear, for my joy than for my religion. The old groom 
 at the mansion in the Park has not forgotten the hard 
 riding of other days, and tells long stories (to which I 
 love to listen) of the old visit of Mistress Carry, when 
 she followed the hounds with the best of the English 
 lasses. 
 
 " Yer honor may well be proud, for not a prettier 
 face, or a kinder heart, has been in Devon since Mis 
 tress Carry left us ! " 
 
 But pleasant as are the old woods, full of memories, 
 ind pleasant as are the twilight evenings upon the ter 
 race, we must pass over to the mountains of Switzer 
 land. There we are to meet Laurence.
 
 EVENING. 
 
 Carry has never seen the magnificence of the Juras ; 
 and as we journey over the hills between Dole and the 
 border line, looking upon the rolling heights shrouded 
 with pine-trees, and down thousands of feet, at the very 
 road-side, upon the cottage- roofs, and emerald valleys, 
 where the dun herds are feeding quietly, she is lost in 
 admiration. At length we come to that point above tte 
 Jttle town of Gex, from which you see, spread out be 
 fore you, the meadows that skirt Geneva, the placid sur 
 face of Lake Leman, and the rough, shaggy mountains 
 of Savoy ; and far behind them, breaking the horizon 
 with snowy cap, and with dark pinnacles, Mont Blanc, 
 and the Needles of Chamouni. 
 
 I point out to her in the valley below the little town 
 of Ferney, where stands the deserted chateau of Vol 
 taire ; and beyond, upon the shores of the lake, the old 
 home of De Stae'l ; and across, with its white walls 
 reflected upon the bosom of the water, the house where 
 Byron wrote the " Prisoner of Chillon." Among the 
 grouping roofs of Geneva we trace the dark cathedral, 
 and the tall hotels shining on the edge of the lake. 
 And I tell of the time when I tramped down through 
 \onder valley, with my future all visionary and broken, 
 ind drank the splendor of the scene, only as a quick 
 relief to the monotony of my solitary life. 
 
 " And now, Carry, with your hand locked La 
 
 Tune, and your heart mine, yonder lake sleeping in the
 
 REVERIES OF A BACHELOH. 
 
 sun, and the snowy mountains with their rosy hue, seem 
 like the smile of Nature, bidding us be glad ! " 
 
 Laurence is at Geneva : he welcomes Carry as he 
 would welcome a sister. He is a noble fellow, and tells 
 me much of his sweet Italian wife ; and presents me to 
 the smiling, blushing Enrica ! She has learned Eng 
 lish now ; she has found, she says, a better teacher than 
 ever I was. Yet she welcomes me warmly, as a sister 
 might; and we talk of those old evenings by the blaz 
 ing fire, and of the one-eyed Maestro, as children, long 
 separated, might talk of their school-tasks and of their 
 teachers. She cannot tell me enough of her praises of 
 Laurence, and of his noble heart. " You were good," 
 she says, " but Laurence is better." 
 
 Carry admires her soft brown hair, and her deep 
 liquid eye, and wonders how I could ever have left 
 Rome ? 
 
 Do you indeed wonder, Carry ? 
 
 And together we go down into Savoy, to that mar 
 vellous valley which lies under the shoulder of Mont 
 Blanc ; and we wander over the Mer de Glace, and pick 
 Alpine roses from the edge of the frowning glacier 
 We toil at nightfall up to the monastery of the Great 
 St. Bernard, where the new-forming ice crackles in the 
 narrow footway, and the cold moon glistens over wastes 
 af snow, and upon the windows of the dark Hospice. 
 ^Lgain, we are among the granite heights, whose ieag(#
 
 EVENING. 26 
 
 are filled with ice, upon the Grimsel. The pond is dark 
 and cold ; the paths are slippery ; the great glacier of 
 Aar sends down icy breezes, and the echoes ring from 
 rock to rock, as if the ice-god answered. And yet we 
 neither suffer nor fear. 
 
 In the sweet valley of Meyringen we part from Lau 
 rence : he goes northward, by Grindenwald and Thun, 
 thence to journey westward, and to make for the Roman 
 girl a home beyond the ocean. Enrica bids me go on 
 to Rome : she knows that Carry will love its soft, warm 
 air, its ruins, its pictures and temples, better than these 
 cold valleys of Switzerland. And she gives me kind 
 messages for her mother, and for Cesare ; and should 
 we be in Rome at the Easter season, she bids us re 
 member her, when we listen to the Miserere, and when 
 we see the great Chiesa on fire, and when we saunter 
 upon the Fincian Hill, and remember that it is her 
 home. 
 
 We follow them with our eyes as they go up the steep 
 height over which falls the white foam of the clattering 
 Rcichenbach ; and they wave their hands toward us. 
 ani disappear upon the little plateau which stretches 
 toward the crystal Rosenlaui, and the tall, still Engel- 
 Horner. 
 
 May the mountain angels guard them ! 
 
 As we journey on toward that wonderful pass of 
 
 Spliigun, I recall by the way, upon the heights and iu 
 12
 
 266 RETRIES OF A BAJHELOR. 
 
 the valleys, the spots where I lingered years before 
 Here, I plucked a flower ; there, I drank from that cold, 
 yellow glacier water ; and here, upon some rock over 
 looking a stretch of broken mountains, hoary with their 
 eternal frosts, I sat musing upon that very Future 
 which is with me now. But never, even when the ice 
 genii were most prodigal of their fancies to the wan 
 derer, did I look for more joy, or a better angel. 
 
 Afterward, when all our trembling upon the Alpine 
 paths has gone by, we are rolling along under the 
 chestnuts and lindens that skirt the banks of Como. 
 We recall that sweet story of Manzoni, and I point out, 
 as well as I may, the loitering place of the bravi, and 
 the track of poor Don Abbondio. We follow in the 
 path of the discomfited Renzi, to where the dainty spire 
 and pinnacles of the Duomo of Milan glisten against 
 the violet sky. 
 
 Carry longs to see Venice ; its water-streets and pal 
 aces have long floated in her visions. In the bustling 
 activity of our own country, and in the quiet fields of 
 England, that strange, half-deserted capital, lying in the 
 Adriatic, has taken the strongest hold upon her fancy. 
 
 So we leave Padua and Verona behind us, and find 
 mrselves upon a soft spring noon upon the end of the 
 '.ron road which stretches across the lagoon toward Ven- 
 'ce. With the hissing of steam in the ear, it is hard to 
 Jiink of the wonderful city we are approaching. Bu
 
 EVENING. 267 
 
 is we escape from the carriage, and set our feet 
 Jown into one of those strange, hearse-like, ancient 
 boats, with its sharp iron prow, and listen to the melo 
 dious, rolling tongue of the Venetian gondolier; as 
 \ve see rising over the watery plain before us all glit 
 tering in the sun tall, square towers with pyramidal 
 tops, and clustered domes, and minarets, and sparkling 
 roofs lifting from marhle walls, all so like the old 
 paintings ; and as we glide nearer and nearer to the 
 floating wonder under the silent working oar of our 
 now silent gondolier ; as we ride up swiftly under the 
 deep, broad shadows of palaces, and see plainly the play 
 of the sea-water in the crevices of the masonry, and 
 turn into narrow rivers shaded darkly by overhanging 
 walls, hearing no sound but of voices, or the swaying of 
 the water against the houses, we feel the presence of 
 the place. And the mystic fingers of the Past, grap 
 pling our spirits, lead them away, willing and rejoicing 
 captives, through the long vista of the ages that are 
 gone. 
 
 Carry is in a trance, rapt bj the witchery of the 
 scene into dream. This is her Venice ; nor have all the 
 visions, that played upon her fancy, been equal to the 
 enchanting presence of this hour of approach. 
 
 Afterward it becomes a living thing, stealing upon 
 the affections and upon the imagination by a thousand 
 5oy advances. We wander, under the warm Italian sun-
 
 268 REVERIES OF A BAG HE: OP 
 
 light to the steps from which rolled the whit* 1 head ol 
 poor Marino Faliero. The gentle Carry can new thrus' 
 her ungloved hand into the terrible Lion's mouth. We 
 enter the salon of the fearful Ten, and peep through the 
 half-opened door into the cabinet of the more fearful 
 Three. We go through the deep dungeons of Car- 
 i*agnob and of Carrara ; and we instruct the willirg 
 gondolier to push his dark boat under the Bridge of 
 Sighs ; and, with Rogers's poem in our hand, glide up 
 U> the prison-door, and read of 
 
 " that fearful closet at the foot 
 Lurking for prey, which, when a victim came, 
 Grew less and less, contracting to a span 
 An iron door, urged onward by a screw, 
 Forcing out life! " 
 
 I sail, listening to nothing but the clip of the gondo 
 lier's oar, or to her gentle words, fast under the palace- 
 door which closed that fearful morning on the guilt and 
 shame of Bianca Capello. Or, with souls lit up by the 
 scene into a buoyancy that can scarce distinguish be 
 tween what is real and what is merely written, we chase 
 the anxious step of the forsaken Corinna ; or seek 
 among the veteran palaces the casement of the old 
 Brabantio, the chamber of Desdemona, the house 
 of Jessica ; and trace among the strange Jew money 
 changers, who yet haunt the Rialto, the likeness of the 
 bearded Sky-lock. We wander into stately churches,
 
 EVENING. 269 
 
 brushing over grass or tell-tale flowers that grow in the 
 court, and find them clamp and cheerless ; the incense 
 rises murkily, and rests in a thick cloud over the altars, 
 and over the paintings ; the music, if so be that the 
 organ-notes are swelling under the roof, is mournful)} 
 Jaintive. 
 
 Of an afternoon we sail over to the Lido, to gladden 
 our eyes with a sight of land and green things, and 
 we pass none upon the way save silent oarsmen, with 
 barges piled high with the produce of their gardens, 
 pushing their way down toward the floating city. And 
 upon the narrow island we find Jewish graves, half cov 
 ered by drifted sand ; and from among them watch the 
 sunset glimmering over a desolate level of water. As 
 
 O O 
 
 we Hide back, lights lift over the Lagoon, and double 
 
 o o o 
 
 along the Guideca and the Grand Canal. The little 
 neighbor isles will have their company of lights dan- 
 ting in the water ; and from among them will rise up 
 against the mellow evening sky of Italy, gaunt, unlighted 
 bouses. 
 
 After the nightfall, which brings no harmful dew with 
 
 f~> O 
 
 it. I stroll, with her hand within my arm, a$ once upon 
 the sea, and in the English Park, and in the home 
 land, over that great square which lies before the pal- 
 ice of St. Mark's. The white moon is riding in the 
 middle heaven like a globe of silver ; the gondoliers 
 
 O O 
 
 stride over the echoing stones ; and their lo"g, black
 
 270 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR 
 
 shadows, stretching over the pavement, or shaking upon 
 the moving water, seem like great funereal plumes wav 
 ing over the bier of Venice. 
 
 Carrying thence whole treasures of thought and 
 fancy to feed upon in the after-years, we wander to 
 Rome. 
 
 I find the old one-eyed maestro, and am met with cor. 
 dial welcome by the mother of the pretty Enrica. The 
 Count has gone to the Marches of Ancona. Lame Pie- 
 tro still shuffles around the boards at the Lepre, and 
 the flower-sellers at the corner bind me a more brilliant 
 bouquet than ever for a new beauty at Rome. As we 
 ramble under the broken arches of the great aqueduct 
 stretching toward Frascati, I tell Carry the story of my 
 trip in the Apennines, and we search for the pretty Car- 
 lotta. But she is married, they tell us, to a Neapolitan 
 guardsman. In the spring twilight we wander upon 
 those heights which lie between Frascati and Albano, 
 and, looking westward, see that glorious view of the 
 Campagna which can never be forgotten. But beyond 
 k he Campagna, and beyond the huge hulk of St. Peter's, 
 heaving injo the sky from the middle waste, we see 
 or fancy we see a glimpse of the sea which stretches 
 .ut and on to the land we love better than Rome. And 
 in fancy we build up that home which shall belong to us 
 on the return, a home that has slumbered long in the 
 Future, and which, now that the future has come, lies 
 Cairlv before me.
 
 EVENING. 71 
 
 Home. 
 
 YEARS seem to have passed. They have mellowed 
 life into ripeness. The start, and change, and hot am 
 bition of youth seem to have gone by. A calm am 
 joyful quietude has succeeded. That future, which stiL 
 lies before me, seems like a roseate twilight sinking into 
 a peaceful and silent night. 
 
 My home is a cottage near that where Isabel* once 
 lived. The same valley is around me ; the same brook 
 rustles and loiters under the gnarled roots of the over 
 hanging trees. The cottage is no mock cottage, but a 
 substantial, wide-spreading cottage, with clustering ga 
 bles and ample shade, such a cottage as they build 
 upon the slopes of Devon. Vines clamber over it, and 
 the stones show mossy through the interlacing climbers. 
 There are low porches with cosy arm-chairs, and gen 
 erous oriels fragrnwt with mignonette and the blue blos 
 soming violets. 
 
 The chimney-stacks rise high, and show clear against 
 the heavy pine-trees that ward off the blasts of winter 
 The dove-cote is a habited dove-cote, and the purple- 
 necked pigeons swoop around the roofs in great compa 
 nies. The hawthorn is budding into its June fragrance 
 along all the lines of fence, and the paths are trim and 
 "lean. The shrubs our neglected azalias and rhodo-
 
 272 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 (lendrons chiefest among them stand in picturesque 
 groups upon the close-shaven lawn. 
 
 The gateway in the thicket below is between two 
 mossy old posts of stone ; and there is a tall hemlock, 
 flanked by a sturdy pine, for sentinel. Within the cot 
 tage the library is wainscoted with native oak ; and my 
 trusty gun hangs upon a branching pair of antlers. M 
 rod and nets are disposed above the generous book 
 shelves ; and a stout eagle, once a tenant of the native 
 woods, sits perched over the central alcove. An old- 
 fashioned mantel is above the brown stone jambs of the 
 country fireplace, and along it are distributed records 
 of travel, little bronze temples from Rome, the pietro 
 duro of Florence, the porcelain busts of Dresden, the 
 rich iron of Berlin, and a cup fashioned from a stag's 
 horn, from the Black Forest by the Rhine. 
 
 Massive chairs stand here and there in tempting atti 
 tude ; strewed over an oaken table in the middle are 
 the uncut papers and volumes of tha-day ; and upon a 
 lion's skin stretched before the hearth is lying another 
 Tray. 
 
 But this is not all. There are children in the cot- 
 Uge. There is Jamie; we think him handsome, for 
 lie has the dark hair of his mother, and the same 
 jlack eye with its long, heavy fringe. There is Carry 
 little Carry I must call her now, with a face full of 
 gloc, and rosy with health. Then there is a little rogue
 
 EVENING. 27S 
 
 Borne two years old, whom we call Paul, a very bad 
 boy, as we tell him. 
 
 The mother is as beautiful as ever, and far more dear 
 to me ; for gratitude has been adding, year by year, to 
 love. The r e have been times when a harsh word of 
 mine, uttered in the fatigues of business, has touched 
 her ; and -I have seen that soft eye fill with tears ; and 
 I have upbraided myself for causing her one pang. But 
 such things she does not remember, or remembers 
 only to cover with her gentle forgiveness. 
 
 Laurence and P^nrica are living near us. And the 
 old gentleman, who was Carry's godfather, sits with me 
 on sunny days upon the porch, and takes little Paul 
 upon his knee, and wonders if two such daughters as 
 Enrica and Carry are to be found in the world. At 
 twilight we ride over to see Laurence : Jamie mounts 
 with the coachman ; little Carry puts on her wide- 
 rimmed Leghorn for the evening visit ; and the old 
 gentleman's plea for Paul cannot be denied. The 
 mother too is with us ; and old Tray comes whisking 
 along, now frolicking before the horses' heads, and then 
 bounding off after the flight of some belated bird. 
 
 Away from that cottage home I seem away from life 
 Within it, that broad and shadowy future, which lay 
 before me in boyhood and in youth, is garnered, like 
 fine mist gathered into drops of crystal. 
 
 And when away, those long letters, dating from thr 
 12*
 
 274 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 tottage home, are what tie me to life. That cherished 
 wife far dearer to me now than when she wrote that 
 first letter, which seemed a dark veil between me and 
 the future writes me now as tenderly as then. She 
 narrates, in her delicate way, all the incidents of the 
 home-life ; she tells me of their rides, and of their 
 games, and of the new-planted trees, of all their 
 sunny days, and of their frolics on the lawn ; she tell 
 me how Jamie is studying, and of little Carry's beauty, 
 growing every day, and of roguish Paul so like his 
 father ! And she sends me a kiss from each of them ; 
 and bids me such adieu, and such " God's blessing," that 
 it seems as if an angel guarded me. 
 
 But this is not all ; for Jamie has written a post 
 script. 
 
 ' Dear Father," he says, " mother wishes me to 
 
 tell you how I am studying. What would you think, 
 father, to have me talk in French to you, when you 
 some back ? I wish you would come back though ; the 
 hawthorns are coming out, and the apricot under my 
 sdndow is all full of blossoms. If you should bring i;:t 
 i present, as you almost always do, I would like 
 tishing-rod. 
 
 " Your affectionate son, 
 
 "JAMIE."
 
 EVENING. 276 
 
 And little Carry has her fine, rambling characters 
 running into a second postscript. 
 
 " Why don't you come, papa ; you stay too long. I 
 have ridden the pony twice ; once he most threw me 
 off. This is all from CARRY." 
 
 And Paul has taken the pen too, and in his extraor 
 dinary effort to make a big P, has made a very big 
 blot. And Jamie writes under it, "This is Paul's 
 work, Pa ; but he says it 's a love-blot, only he loves 
 you ten hundred times more." 
 
 And after your return, Jamie will insist that you 
 should go with him to the brook, and sit down with him 
 upon a tuft of the brake, to fling off a line into the 
 eddies, though only the nibbling roach are sporting 
 below. You have instructed the workmen to spare the 
 clumps of bank-willows, that the wood-duck may have a 
 covert in winter, and that the liob-o-Lincolns may have 
 a quiet nesting-place in the spring. 
 
 Sometimes your wife too kind to deny such favor 
 will stroll with you along the meadow banks, and you 
 pick meadow-daisies in memory of the old time. Little 
 Carry weaves them into rude chaplets, to dress the 
 forehead of Paul ; and they dance along the greensward, 
 and switch off the daffodils, and blow away the dande- 
 'ion seeds, to see if their wishes are to come true 
 lamie holds a buttercup under Carry's chin, to find if
 
 276 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 she loves gold ; and Paul, the rogue, teases them bj 
 sticking a thistle into sister's curls. 
 
 The pony has hard work to do under Carry's swift 
 riding ; but he is fed by her own hand with the coin 
 breakfast- rolls. The nuts are gathered in time, and 
 stored for long winter evenings, when the fire is burn 
 ing bright and cheerily, a true, hickory blaze, whicl. 
 sends its waving gleams over eager, smiling faces, and 
 over well-stored book-shelves and portraits of dear lost 
 ones. While from time to time that wife, who is the 
 soul of the scene, will break upon the children's prattle, 
 with the silver melody of her voice, running softly and 
 sweetly through the couplets of Crabbe's stones, or the 
 witchery of the Flodden Tale. 
 
 Then the boys will guess conundrums, and play at 
 fox-and-geese ; and Tray, cherished in his age, and old 
 Milo, petted in his dotage, lie side by side upon the 
 lion's skin before the blazing hearth. Little Tomtit 
 the goldfinch sits sleeping on his perch, or cocks his 
 eye at a sudden crackling of the fire for a familiar 
 squint upon our family group. 
 
 But there is no future without its stra^ ing clouds. 
 Even now a shadow :s trailing along the lands*. 
 
 It is a soft and mild day of summer. The leaves are 
 at their fullest. A southern breeze has been blowing 
 op the valley all tho morning, and the light, smoky
 
 EVENING. 277 
 
 haze hangs in the distant mountain-gaps /ike a vt>il ou 
 beauty. Jamie has been busy with his lessons, and 
 afterward playing with Milo upon the lawn. Little 
 Carry has come in from a long ride, her face bloom 
 ing, and her eyes all smiles and joy. The mother has 
 busied herself with those flowers she loves so well. 
 Little Paul, they say, has been playing in the meadow, 
 and old Tray has gone with him. 
 
 But at dinner-time, Paul does not come back. 
 
 " Paul ought not to ramble off so far," I say. 
 
 The mother says nothing ; but there is a look of 
 anxiety upon her face that disturbs me. Jamie won 
 ders where Paul can be, and he saves for him what 
 ever he knows Paul will like a henping plateful. 
 But the dinner-hour passes, and Paul does not come. 
 Old Tray lies in the sunshine by the porch. 
 
 Now the mother is indeed anxious. And I, though I 
 conceal this from her, find my fears strangely active. 
 Something like instinct guides me to the meadow ; I 
 wander down the brook-side, calling Paul ! Paul ! 
 But there is no answer. 
 
 All the afternoon we search, and the neighbors 
 search; but it is a fruitless toil. There is no -joy that 
 evening : the meal passes in silence ; only little Carry, 
 with tears in her eyes, asks if Paul will soon come 
 back. All the night we search and call : the mother 
 even, braving the night-air, and running here and there 
 <ratil the morning finds us sad and despairing.
 
 278 REVEUES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 That day the next cleared uj the mystery; but 
 cleared it up with darkness. Poor /ittle Paul ! he has 
 sunk under the murderous eddies of the hrook ! His 
 boyish prattle, his rosy smiles, his artless talk, arc lost 
 to us forever ! 
 
 I will not tell how, nor when, we found him ; nor will 
 tell of our desolate home, and of her grief the first 
 crushing grief of her life. 
 
 The cottage is still. The servants glide noiseless, 
 as if they might startle the poor little sleeper. The 
 house seems cold, very cold. Yet it is summer weather ; 
 and the south breeze plays softly along the meadow, 
 and softly over the murderous eddies of the brook. 
 
 Then comes the hush of burial. The kind mourners 
 are there ; it is easy for them to mourn ! The good 
 clergyman prays by the bier : " O Thou, who didst 
 take upon thyself human woe, and drank deep of every 
 pang in life, let thy Spirit come and heal this grief, and 
 guide toward that Better Land, where justice and love 
 shall reign, and hearts laden with anguish shall rest 
 Forevermore ! " 
 
 Weeks roll on ; and a smile of resignation lights up 
 the saddened features of the mother. Those dark 
 mourn ing- robes speak to the heart deeper and more 
 tenderly than even the bridal costume. She lights 
 ens the weight of your grief by her sweet word- ^f
 
 E VENING. 279 
 
 resignation. " Paul," she says, " God has taken our 
 boy ! " 
 
 Other weeks roll on. Joys are still left great and 
 ripe joys. The cottage smiling in the autumn sunshine 
 is there ; the birds are in the forest boughs ; Jamie and 
 little Carry are there ; and she, who is more than them 
 all, is cheerful and content. Heaven has taught us that 
 the brightest future has its clouds, that this life is a 
 motley of lights and shadows. And as we look upon 
 the world around us, and upon the thousand forms of 
 human misery, there is a gladness in our de%p thanks 
 giving. 
 
 A year goes by ; but it leaves no added shadow on 
 our hearth-stone. The vines clamber and flourish ; the 
 oaks are winning age and grandeur. Little Carry is 
 blooming into the pretty coyness of girlhood ; and 
 Jamie, with his dark hair and flashing eyes, is the pride 
 of his mother. 
 
 There is no alloy to pleasure but the remembrance of 
 poor little Paul. And even that, chastened as it is with 
 years, is rather a grateful memorial that our life is not 
 all here, than a grief that weighs upon our hearts. 
 
 Sometimes, leaving little Carry and Jamie to their 
 play, we wander at twilight to the willow-tree beneath 
 rmcn GUI armvneoi ooy steeps oaimi) tor tne irea*. 
 Awaking. It is a Sunday in the week-day of our life 
 to linger by the little grave, to hang flowers upon the
 
 280 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 headstone, and to breathe a prayer that our little Paul 
 may sleep well in the arras of Him who loveth chil 
 dren ! 
 
 And her heart, and my heart, knit together by sor 
 row as they had been knit by joy, a silver thread min 
 gled with the gold, follow the dead one to the Laud 
 that is before us, until at last we come to reckon the boy 
 as living in the new home which, when this is old, shall 
 be ours also. And my spirit, speaking to his spirit in 
 the evening watches, seems to say joyfully, so joyfully 
 that the te*ars half choke the utterance, " Paul, my 
 boy, we will be there ! " 
 
 And the mother, turning her face to mine, so that I 
 see the moisture in her eye, and catch its heavenly look, 
 whispers softly, so softly that an angel might have 
 said it, " Yes, dear, we will be THERE ! " 
 
 The night had now come, and my day under the oaks 
 was ended. But a crimson belt yet lingered over the 
 horizon, though the stars were out. 
 
 A line of shaggy mist lay along the surface of the 
 brook. I took my gun from beside the tree, and t.n 
 shot-pouch from its limb, and whistling for Carlo, as 
 if it had been Tray, I strolled over the bridge, and 
 iown the lane, to the old house under the elms. 
 
 I dreamed pleasant dreams that night ; for I dreamed 
 'hat my Eeverie was real.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 dCTl 1972 
 
 1987
 
 3 1970 00561 
 
 Bi 
 
 000328608