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 BY A CITY GRATE 
 
 SECOND REVERIE 
 
 SEA-COAL 
 ANTHRACITE
 
 " She was proud of the attentions of a man who carried 
 a mind in his brain." 
 
 By A City Grate
 
 OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 By a City Grate 
 
 FROM 
 
 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR 
 
 BY 
 
 IK. MARVEL 
 
 (DONALD G. MITCHELL) 
 
 R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 
 
 18 EAST SEVENTEENTH ST., NEW YORK
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907 
 BY R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
 
 BY A CITY GRATE 
 
 SECOND REVERIE 
 
 SEA-COAL 
 ANTHRACITE
 
 By a City Grate 
 
 BLESSED be 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 
 molded 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 -f^.^ 
 sneer. It is not individual ; it is not integral : I 
 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 i Vif : 
 
 presses, relaxes, or quickens. 
 
 But it is not so of letters there you are, 
 with 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 utterance no scowl to ; 
 3 
 
 2137210
 
 a 
 
 <5rate 
 
 scare nothing is present but 'you, and your 
 thought. 
 
 Utter it then freely write it down stamp 
 it burn it in the ink ! There it is, a true soul- 
 print ! 
 
 Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a 
 letter ! It is worth all the lip-talk in the world. 
 Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted, re- 
 hearsed, contrived, artistic ? 
 
 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 handling, which far into some win- 
 ter'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 after, a kinder and holier man. 
 
 There are in this little packet, letters in the 
 familiar hand of a mother what gentle ad- 
 monition what tender affection ! God have 
 mercy on him who outlives the tears that such 
 4
 
 a Cit (Brate 
 
 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 sister written when she, and you were 
 full of glee, and the best mirth of youthful- 
 ness ; does it harm you to recall that mirthful- 
 ness ? or to trace again, for the hundredth 
 time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom, 
 with its i's so carefully dotted, and its gigantic 
 t's so carefully crossed, by the childish hand of 
 a little brother ? 
 
 I have added latterly to that packet of let- 
 ters ; I almost need a new and longer ribbon ; 
 the old one is getting too short. Not a few 
 of these new and cherished letters, a former 
 reverie 1 has brought to me ; not letters of cold 
 praise, saying it was well done, artfully exe- 
 cuted, prettily imagined no such thing: but 
 letters of sympathy of sympathy which mean? ; 
 sympathy the 7ra0ij//c and the GUV. 
 
 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, 
 
 1 The first reverie Smoke, Flame and Ashes, was pub- 
 lished some mouths previous to this, in the Southern Literary 
 Messenger.
 
 a Cit$ (State 
 
 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 feel- 
 ing, 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 transformation of the 
 spiritual to the earthy a leveling of soul to 
 matter. 
 
 Are we not creatures of thought and passion ? 
 Is 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 terrible 
 word Forever ? 
 
 Let those who will then, sneer at what in 
 their wisdom they call untruth at what is 
 false, because it has no material presence : this 
 does not create falsity ; would to Heaven that 
 it did ! 
 
 6
 
 a City (Brate 
 
 And yet if there was actual, material truth, 
 superadded 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 cherished letters. 
 
 A mother, who has lost a child, has, she says, 
 shed a tear not one, but many over the dead 
 boy's coldness. And another, who has not 
 lost, but who trembles lest she lose, has found 
 the words failing as she read, and a dim, sor- 
 row-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 is in the house 
 " Stop !" she says ; and a gush of tears tells the 
 rest. 
 
 Yet the cold critic will say "It was art- 
 fully done." A curse on him ! it was not art : 
 it was nature. 
 
 Another, a young, fresh, healthful girl- 
 mind, has seen something in the love-picture 
 7
 
 a Cttp (Brate 
 
 albeit so weak of truth ; and has kindly be- 
 lieved that it must be earnest. Ay, 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 for- 
 ever 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 para- 
 graphs, or the critically contrived approval of 
 colder friends ! 
 
 Let me gather up these letters, carefully 
 to be read when the heart is faint, and sick of 
 all that there is unreal, and selfish in the world. 
 Let me tie them together, 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 the 
 one who thinks it !), but earnestly, and in 
 8
 
 a Cttp Grate 
 
 the best meaning of the term SOUVENIKS DU 
 CCEUE. 
 
 Thanks to my first reverie, which has added 
 to such a treasure ! 
 
 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 very 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 somber 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 
 cozily stuffed office chair by five or six o'clock 
 of the evening. The fire has been newly made, 
 perhaps an hour before : first, the maid drops' 
 a withe of paper in the bottom of the grate, 
 9 
 
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 a City (Brate 
 
 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 bar of the grate, the maid replenishes 
 it with a hod of anthracite ; and I sit musing 
 and reading, while the new coal warms and 
 kindles not leaving my place, until it has 
 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 neigh- 
 bors ; a church clock is as public, 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 the slated roof 
 yonder, or the burning of your fire, are pleasant 
 time-keepers full of presence, full of companion- 
 ship, and full of the warning time is passing ! 
 
 In the summer season I have even measured 
 my reading, and my night-watch, by the burn-
 
 a 
 
 (Brate 
 
 ing of a taper ; and I have scratched upon the 
 handle to the little bronze taper-holder, that 
 meaning passage of the New Testament Nug 
 Yap spiral the night cometh ! 
 
 But I 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 watching the 
 lively, uncertain yellow play of the bituminous 
 flame. 
 
 11
 
 18$ a Cits <5trate 
 
 b i. 
 
 
 SEA-COAL 
 
 IT 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 like a roebuck 
 from point to point. 
 
 How like a flirt 1 And yet is not this toss- 
 ing caprice of girlhood, to which I liken my 
 sea-coal flame, a native play of life, and be- 
 longing 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 
 anthracite ? Is it not a sort of necessary con- 
 sumption 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, 
 12 
 
 ;::, :;.
 
 a it (Brate 
 
 which means nothing, yet which must be got 
 over? 
 
 Lamartine says, somewhere, very prettily, 
 that there is more of quick running sap, and 
 floating shade in a young tree; but more of 
 fire in the heart of a sturdy oak II y a plus 
 de seve folle et d'oiribre flottante dans les ', 
 jeunes plants de la foret j il y a plus de feu 
 dans le vieux cceur du chene. 
 
 
 
 Is Lamartine playing off his prettiness of 
 expression, dressing up with his poetry mak- 
 ing a good conscience 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 senti- 
 ment into words : it feeds his wasted heart 
 with hope ; it renews the exultation 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 ? 
 13
 
 a Cits 6rate 
 
 Bulvver 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 Tre- 
 vanion and Pisistratus. But Bulvver is past ; 
 his heart-life is used up epuise. Such a man 
 can very safely rant about the cool judgment 
 of after years. 
 
 Where does Shakespeare put the unripe 
 heart-age ? All of it before the ambition, that 
 alone makes the hero-soul. The Shakespeare 
 man " sighs like a furnace," before he stretches 
 his arm to achieve the " bauble, reputation." 
 
 Yet Shakespeare has meted a soul-love, 
 mature and ripe, without any young furnace 
 sighs to Desdemona and Othello. Cordelia, 
 the sweetest of his play creations, loves with- 
 out 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 of a most sound heart : 
 
 My desires 
 
 Run not before mine honor, nor my wishes 
 Burn hotter than my faith. 
 
 How is it with Hector and Andromache? 
 14
 
 a 
 
 (Srate 
 
 no sea-coal blaze, but one that is constant, en- 
 during, pervading: a pair of hearts full of 
 esteem, and best love good, honest, and 
 sound. 
 
 Look now at Adam and Eve, in God's pres- 
 ence, 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, this Paradise 
 And thy fair eve ! 
 
 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 may'st ascend ! 
 
 None of the playing sparkle in this love, 
 which belongs to the flame of my sea-coal fire 
 that is now dancing, lively as a cricket. But 
 on looking about my garret chamber, I can see 
 nothing that resembles the archangel Raphael, 
 or " thy fair Eve." 
 
 <; 
 
 M
 
 a 
 
 Grate 
 
 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 of one ? 
 
 Wordsworth somewhere in the Excursion 
 says: 
 
 The good die first, 
 
 . And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 Burn to the socket ! 
 
 "What, in the name of Eydal 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 summer of his pilgrimage 
 and hung over with cobwebs, in which sit 
 such watchful gray old spiders as avarice, and 
 selfishness, forever on the lookout for such 
 bottle-green flies as lust. 
 
 " I will never " said I griping at the 
 elbows of my 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 
 16
 
 a Ctt Grate 
 
 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 in- 
 fluence, unguided by prudence, and perhaps 
 virtue. There is a paper by Mackenzie, in the 
 Mirror for April, 1780, which sets this un- 
 toward sensibility in a strong light. 
 
 And the more it is indulged, the more strong 
 and binding such a habit of sensibility be- 
 comes. Poor Mackenzie himself must have 
 suffered thus ; you cannot read his books with- 
 out feeling it ; your eye, in spite of 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 woman will study to subdue: 
 17
 
 a Cits Grate 
 
 it is a vain sea-coal sparkling, which will count 
 no good. The world is made of much hard, 
 flinty substance, against which your better, 
 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 
 is bachelorhood, in which you may strike 
 it boldly right and left ! Your heart is not 
 bound to another which may be full of only 
 sickly vapors of feeling : nor is it frozen to a 
 cold, man's heart under a silk bodice know- 
 ing nothing 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 
 he other will pass with a whiff of your cigar. 
 Or if your feelings are touched, struck, hurt, 
 ho is the wiser, or the worse, but you only ? 
 nd have you not the whole skein of your 
 .^ .-eart-life in your own fingers to wind, or un- 
 '/y/jwind, in what shape you please ? Shake it, or 
 (| f' twine it, or tangle it, by the light of your fire, 
 
 18
 
 
 a Cits Grate 
 
 as you fancy best. He is a weak man who 
 cannot twist and weave the threads of his feel- 
 ing however fine, however tangled, however 
 strained, or however strong into the great 
 cable of purpose, by which he lies moored to 
 his life of action. 
 
 Beading 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 
 digestion 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' : y 
 Yoltaire, a homeopathic 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 Eousseau, when you 
 want to lose yourself in a mental dreamland, 
 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- 
 19
 
 a Cttp (Brate 
 
 success, and be forewarned of rocks against 
 which you must surely smite read Boling- 
 broke run over the letters of Lyttleton; read, 
 and think of what you read, in the cracking 
 lines of Rochefoucauld. How he sums us up 
 in his stinging words ! how he puts the scalpel 
 between the nerves yet he never hurts ; for 
 he is dissecting dead matter. 
 
 If you are in a genial, careless mood, who is 
 better than such extemporizers of feeling and 
 nature good-hearted fellows as Sterne and 
 Fielding ? 
 
 And then again, there are Milton and Isaiah, 
 to lift up one's soul until it touches cloud-land, 
 and you wander with their guidance, on swift 
 feet, to the very gates of heaven. 
 
 But this sparkling sensibility to one strug- 
 gling under infirmity, or with grief or poverty, 
 is very dreadful. The soul is too nicely and 
 keenly hinged to be wrenched without mis- 
 chief. 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 begin- 
 ning to end ; his life will be a sea of troubles. 
 The poor victim of his own quick spirit he 
 Zanders with a great shield of doubt hung be- 
 20
 
 a City (Brate 
 
 lore him, so that none, not even friends, can 
 see the goodness of such kindly qualities as be- 
 long to him. Poverty, if it comes 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 woman : 
 
 Her vengeful pride, a kind of madness grown, 
 
 She hugged her wrongs, her sorrow was her throne ! 
 
 Cold picture! yet the heart was sparkling 
 under it, 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 chas- | 
 ing 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 
 21
 
 a Cits (Brate 
 
 of belief, where others see none. That deli- 
 cate 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 trem- 
 bling ; she looks with dread. Her sympathies 
 give a tone, like the harp of ^Eolus, to the 
 slightest breath. Her sensibility lights up, 
 and quivers and falls, like the flame of a sea- 
 coal fire. 
 
 If she loves (and may not a bachelor reason 
 on this daintiest of topics), her love is a gush- 
 ing, wavy flame, lit up with hope, that has only 
 a little kindling matter to light it ; and this 
 soon burns out. Yet intense sensibility will 
 persuade her that the flame still scorches. She 
 will mistake the annoyance of affection unre- 
 22
 
 a Cit Grate 
 
 quited 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, yellow- 
 ish sparkles in its place ; her high- wrought 
 organization makes those sparks seem a veri- 
 table flame. 
 
 With her, judgment, prudence, and discre- 
 tion are cold measured terms, which have no 
 meaning, except as they attach to the actions 
 of others. Of her own acts she never predi- 
 cates them ; feeling is much too high, to allow 
 her to submit to any such obtrusive guides of 
 conduct. 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 philos- 
 ophy ; but she who sinks 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 visitants 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 
 23
 
 a Cit (Srate 
 
 her abjure such poets as Cowper, or Byron, or 
 even Wordsworth ; and if she must poetize, let 
 her lay her mind to such manly verse as 
 Pope's, or to such sound and ringing organry 
 as Cornus. 
 
 My fire was getting dull, and I thrust in the 
 poker : it started up on the instant into a hun- 
 dred little angry tongues of flame. 
 
 Just so thought I the over-sensitive 
 
 heart once cruelly disturbed, will fling out a 
 score of flaming passions, darting here and 
 darting there half-smoke, half-flame love 
 and hate canker and joy wild in its mad- 
 ness, 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 tornado 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 the dashing flame of my 
 sea-coal suggests. 
 
 How like a flirt ! mused I again, recur- 
 ring to my first thought so lively, yet uncer- 
 tain ; so bright yet so flickering ! Your true 
 24
 
 a City (Brate 
 
 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 lights it ! 
 
 All this is the entire reverse of the unpre- 
 meditated dartings of the soul at which I have 
 been looking ; sensibility scorns heart-curb- 
 ings, and heart-teachings ; sensibility inquires 
 not how much ! but only where ? 
 
 Your true flirt has a coarse-grained soul; 
 well modulated and well tutored, but there is 
 no fineness in it. All its native fineness is 
 made coarse, by coarse efforts 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 gathered from the poets; she 
 adjusts it prettily as a Gobelin weaver adjusts 
 the colors in his tapis. She shades it off de- 
 lightfully; there are no bold contrasts, but a 
 most artistic mellow of nuances. 
 25 
 
 V
 
 a Cits (State 
 
 , '"': 
 *&,*' 
 
 She smiles like a wizard, and jingles it with 
 a laugh, such as tolled the poor home-bound 
 :&-. Ulysses to the Circean bower. She has a cast 
 ^p' of the head, apt and artful as the most dexter- 
 ous cast of the best trout-killing rod. Her 
 words sparkle, and flow hurriedly, and with 
 [f|k the prettiest doubleness of meaning. Natural- 
 .:'!!' ness she copies, 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 tri- 
 umphs of her art ; she chuckles over her own 
 falsity to herself. And if by chance her soul 
 such germ as is left of it betrays her into 
 untoward confidence, she condemns herself, as 
 if she had committed crime. 
 
 She is always gay, because she has no depth 
 ; : of feeling to be stirred. The brook that runs 
 
 vis shallow over hard pebbly bottom always rustles. 
 Q 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 taw- 
 26
 
 a 
 
 <5rate 
 
 dry sparkles of an old and cherished heartless- 
 ness. 
 
 She will not pine under any regrets, because 
 she has no appreciation of any loss: she will 
 not chafe at indifference, 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 crowd- 
 ing scenes of love, and bitterness, is a play upon 
 the stage. 
 
 I think it is Madame Dudevant who says, in 
 something like the same connection : Lea hiboux 
 ne connaissent pas le chernin par ou les aigles 
 vont au soleil. 
 
 Poor Ned ! mused I, looking at the play 
 
 of the fire was a victim and a conqueror. He 
 was a man of a full, strong nature not a little 
 impulsive with action too full of earnestness 
 for most of men to see its drift. He had 
 known little of what is called the world ; he 
 was fresh in feeling and high of hope ; he had 
 been encircled always by friends who lov 
 him, and who, may be, flattered him. Scarce 
 27
 
 a 
 
 (State 
 
 had he entered upon the tangled life of the 
 city, before he met with a sparkling 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 awkwardness 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 maneuvers 
 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, beguiled, entranced. 
 
 When Ned spoke of love, she staved it off 
 with the prettiest of sly looks that only be- 
 wildered him the more. A charming creature 
 to be sure ; coy as a dove ! 
 
 So he went on, poor fool, until one day he 
 28 

 
 a 
 
 <5rate 
 
 told me of it with the blood mounting to his 
 temples, and his eye shooting flame he suf- 
 fered his feelings to run out in passionate 
 avowal entreaty everything. She 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 senior by a year ; " My dear fellow," 
 said I, " diet yourself ; 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 
 exquisite picture of Geo. Dandin in your Mo- 
 liere, and my word for it, in a week you will be 
 sound man." 
 
 He was too angry to reply ; but eighteen 
 months 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, domestic, loving 
 wife, who was as lovely as a June day, and 
 29
 
 a Ctt\> (Brate 
 
 that their baby, not three months old, was as 
 vibright as a spot of June day sunshine on the 
 . grass. 
 
 .;' - What a tender, delicate, loving wife 
 I such flashing, flaming flirt must in 
 
 : the end make ; the prostitute of fashion ; the 
 
 bauble of fifty hearts idle as hers ; the shifting 
 'inake-piece of a stage scene ; the actress, now 
 in peasant, and now in princely petticoats! 
 ,How it would cheer an honest soul to call her 
 r his ! What a culmination of his heart-life : 
 what a rich dream-land 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 fritter- 
 ing passions, fuses all that is sound and com- 
 bustible, into black, soothy, shapeless residuum. 
 When I marry a flirt, I will buy second-hand 
 
 /"dlothes of the Jews. 
 
 - Still mused I as the flame danced 
 f|gain 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 
 
 30
 
 a Citp (Brate 
 
 blood, and not the play of purpose at the heart. 
 It will flicker around a true soul like the blaze 
 around an omelette au r/ium, leaving the 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 tcV 
 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 suc- 
 cess as my Uncle Toby's, in the back garden, 
 with only the Corporal Trim for assailant? 
 But let a man be very sure that the city is 
 worth the siege ! 
 
 Coquetry whets the appetite; flirtation de- 
 praves 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 flicker 
 ing blaze, I see in my reverie, a bright o 
 dancing before me, with sparkling, coquettish 
 smile, teasing me with the prettiest graces in 
 the world and I grow maddened between
 
 a 
 
 6rate 
 
 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 ap- 
 proaches 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 passionately 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, teasing eyes, and 
 my arm clasps round that shadowy form and 
 my lips feel a warm breath growing warmer 
 and warmer 
 
 Just here the maid comes in, throws upon the 
 fire a panful of anthracite, and my sparkling 
 sea-coal reverie is ended.
 
 a Cits $rate 
 
 ANTHKACITE 
 
 IT does not burn freely, so I put on the 
 blower. Quaint and good-natured Xavier de 
 Maistre 1 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 be- 
 fore 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 mem- 
 ory will chase them away, like scared deer 
 vanishing over a gray horizon of moor-land ! 
 
 I know not justly, if it be a weakness or a 
 
 1 Voyage autour de Ma Chambre. 
 33
 
 a Cits (Brate 
 
 sin to create these phantoms that we love, and 
 to group them 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 it not feel a rich re- 
 lief nay more, an exercise in keeping with 
 its end, if it flow out strong as a tempest, 
 wild as a rushing river, upon those ideal crea- 
 tions, which imagination invents, and which 
 are tempered by our best sense of beauty, 
 purity, and grace ? 
 
 Unless, do you say? Ay, it is as use- 
 less as the pleasure of looking hour upon 
 hour, over bright landscapes ; it is as useless 
 as the rapt enjoyment of listening with heart 
 full and eyes brimming, to such music as the 
 Miserere, at Home; 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-molded souls who 
 [now nothing of this ; they laugh ; they sneer ; 
 34
 
 a Cttp <5rate 
 
 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 of an Apicius ! 
 
 No, this phantom-making is no sin ; or 
 
 if it be, it is sinning with a soul so full, so 
 earnest, that it can cry to Heaven cheerily, 
 and sure of a gracious hearing -peccam 
 misericorde ! if 
 
 But my fire is in a glow, a pleasant glow, 
 throwing a tranquil, steady light to the 
 farthest corner of my garret. How unlike it J- 
 is, to the flashing play of the sea-coal ! un- 
 like as an unsteady, uncertain- working heart 
 to the true and earnest constancy of one .f-- : :, 
 cheerful and right. ; ; ;\^ -';.'* ,;| 
 
 After all, thought I, give me such a heart ; IpSt^ 
 
 not bent on vanities, not blazing too sharp with j '. ;v : i 
 
 sensibilities, 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;,. / 
 35
 
 a Cits (State 
 
 you see it in the crevices ; 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 of prudery, which is a dingy, 
 iron, repulsive screen). It will not allow itself 
 to be looked on too near it might scorch; 
 but through the veil you feel the warmth; and 
 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. 
 
 With such a heart the mind fuses naturally 
 a holy and heated fusion ; they work together 
 like twins-born. With such a heart, as Kaphael 
 says to Adam : 
 
 Love hath his seat 
 In reason, and is judicious. 
 
 But let me distinguish this heart from your 
 clay-cold, lukewarm, half-hearted soul; con- 
 siderate, because ignorant; judicious, because 
 36
 
 a 
 
 <5rate 
 
 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 negation. It may triumph over 
 love, and sin, and death ; but it will be a 
 triumph of the beast, which has neither 
 passions to subdue, nor 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 eye, weighing your purse; it is 
 not the worldly eye, weighing position ; it is 
 not the beastly eye, weighing your appear- 
 ance ; it is the heart's eye weighing your 
 soul ! 
 
 It is full of deep, tender, and earnest feel* 
 ing. It is an eye, which looked on once, you 
 long to look on again ; it is an eye which will 
 haunt your dreams an eye which will give a 
 color, in spite of you, to all your reveries. It 
 is an eye which lies before you in your future, 
 like a star in the mariner's heaven ; by it, un- 
 
 -
 
 a it\> (Brate 
 
 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 
 Yaucluse and a Clitumnus. 
 
 The face is an angel face ; no matter for 
 curious lines 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 re- 
 ceived ideal of your fondest dreams. 
 
 The figure may be this or that, it may be 
 tall or short, it matters nothing the heart is 
 there. The talk may be soft or low, serious or 
 ^piquant a free and honest soul is warming 
 and softening it all. As you speak, it speaks 
 back again ; as you think, it thinks again (not 
 in 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 not only generous, but re- 
 
 38
 
 a Cit\> (Srate 
 
 ligious, genial, devotional, tender, self -sacrific- 
 ing, and looking heavenward. 
 
 A man without some sort of religion, is at 
 best a poor reprobate, the football 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 honors, 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 
 contrive 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 controlling 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 
 39
 
 a Ctt$ (Brate 
 
 love that enduring hope, mellowing every 
 page and scene of life, lighting them with pleas- 
 antest 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 enjoyed 
 the counsel and the love of a Christian mother, 
 but will echo the thought with energy, and 
 hallow it with a tear ? et moi,je_pleurs ! 
 
 My fire is now a mass of red-hot coal. The 
 whole atmosphere of my room is warm. The 
 heat 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 
 feeling, quick as lightning, has stolen from the 
 world of fancy (a Promethean theft), a home 
 object, about which my 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 adorn- 
 ing color. A little bit of lace ruffle is gath- 
 ered about the neck, by a blue ribbon; and 
 40
 
 a 
 
 (Brate 
 
 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 be- 
 tween the leaves, and the others lie in relief 
 upon the dark embossed cover. She repeats 
 in a silver voice .a line that has attracted her 
 fancy ; and you listen or at any rate, you seem 
 to listen with your eyes now on the lips, now 
 on the forehead, and now on the finger, where, 
 glitters like a star, the marriage 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 know 
 not, but sweeping over heart and brain, like a 
 fire-flood, tells you too, that you are hers! 
 Irremediably bound as Massinger's Hortensio : 
 
 I am subject to another's will and can 
 
 Nor speak, nor do, without permission from her ! 
 
 41
 
 a Cit$ Grate 
 
 ^- 
 
 ^ , vv The fire is warm as ever ; what length of 
 j^y 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 cov- 
 ered 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 at its source, 
 but it will become a strong river of flowing 
 charities. 
 
 Clitumnus breaks from under the Tuscan 
 1 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 mountainsides 
 gray with olive orchards the white streak of 
 road the tall poplars of the river margin were 
 glistening in the bright Italian sunlight around 
 
 A \ 
 =4)
 
 a Cit$ (Brate 
 
 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, skirt- 
 ing the fair Florence, and the bounteous fields 
 of the bright Cascino ; gathering strength and 
 volume, till between Pisa and Leghorn 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 musings, 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 heart far down the lapse of time. Even 
 now, as the fire fades slightly, and sinks slowly 
 towards the bar, which is the dial of my hours, 
 I seem to see that image of love which has 
 played about the fire-glow of my grate years 
 hence. It still covers the same warm, trustful, 
 religious heart. Trials have tried it ; afflic- 
 tions have weighed upon it ; danger has scared 
 43
 
 a Ctt (Brate 
 
 it ; and death is coming near to subdue 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 hu- 
 manity. But the heart is fond, and steady ; it 
 is the same dear heart, the same self-sacrificing 
 heart, warming, like a fire, all around it. Af- 
 fliction has tempered joy ; and joy adorned 
 affliction. Life and all its troubles have be- 
 come distilled into an holy incense, rising ever 
 from your fireside an offering to your house- 
 hold gods. 
 
 Your dreams of reputation, your swift de- 
 termination, 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 center, 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 to be a glittering 
 day-dream, and become fully and fairly yours f 
 44 
 
 
 
 .-.; ... -
 
 a it (State 
 
 It is not the house, though that may have 
 its charms ; nor the fields carefully tilled, and 
 streaked with your own footpaths nor the 
 trees, though their shadow be to you like that 
 of a great rock in a weary land nor yet is it 
 the fireside, with its sweet blaze-play nor the 
 pictures which tell of loved ones, nor thei 
 cherished books but more far than all these " 
 it is the PRESENCE. The Lares of your 
 worship are there ; the altar of your confidence 
 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 convic- 
 tion, that there at least you are beloved ; that 
 there you are understood ; that there your 
 errors will meet ever with gentlest forgive- 
 ness : 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 mold and I 
 have seen such even in the disguise of women 
 who will reckon these feelings puling senti- 
 ment. God pity them ! as they have need of 
 pity. 
 
 45
 
 a 
 
 (Brate 
 
 . 
 
 That image by the fireside, calm, loving, 
 
 joyful, is there still : it goes not, however my 
 spirit tosses, because my wish, and every will, 
 keep it there, unerring. 
 
 The fire shows through the screen, yellow 
 and warm, as a harvest sun. It is in its best 
 age, and that age is ripeness. 
 
 A ripe heart! now I know what "Words- 
 worth meant, when he said : 
 
 The good die first, 
 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
 Burn to the socket ! 
 
 The town clock is striking midnight. The 
 cold of the night-wind is urging its way in at 
 the door and window-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 
 reverence ; passion has subsided into joyous 
 content. 
 
 And what if age comes, said I, in a new 
 
 flush of excitation what else proves the wine ? 
 What else gives inner strength, and knowl- 
 edge, and a steady pilot-hand, to steer your 
 46
 
 a City (State 
 
 boat out bodily upon that shoreless sea, where 
 the river of life is running? Let the white 
 ashes gather ; let the silver hair lie, where lay 
 the auburn ; let the eye gleam farther back, 
 and dimmer ; it is but retreating towards the 
 pure sky-depths, an usher to the land where 
 you will follow after. 
 
 It is quite cold, and I take away the screen 
 altogether ; there is a little glow yet, but pres- 
 ently 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 will surely kindle it better. 
 
 Tears indeed ; but they are tears of 
 
 thanksgiving, of resignation, and of hope ! 
 
 And the eyes, full of those tears, which 
 ministering angels bestow, climb with quick 
 vision, upon the angelic 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 
 47
 
 a Cttv <5rate 
 
 you are also in the death chamber of care. 
 The world seems sliding backward ; and hope 
 and you are sliding forward. The clouds, the 
 agonies, the vain expectancies, the braggart 
 noise, and fears, now vanish behind the curtain 
 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 
 towards that boundless future, where God's 
 eye lifts over the horizon, like sunrise on the 
 ocean. Do you recognize it as an earnest 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 youth-life, bear it up ; and hope and 
 48
 
 a Cits (Brate 
 
 faith bear it on. There is no extravagant 
 pulse-glow ; there is no mad fever of the brain ; 
 but only the soul, forgetting for once 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 the ashes of decaying life, 
 until the sharp edge of the grave seems but a 
 foot-scraper at the wicket of Elysium ! 
 
 But what is paper; and what are words? 
 Yain things! The soul leaves them behind; 
 the pen staggers like a starveling cripple ; and 
 your heart is leaving it, a whole length of the 
 life-course behind. The soul's mortal long- 
 ings its poor baffled hopes, are dim now in 
 the light of those infinite longings, which 
 spread over it, soft and holy as day-dawn. 
 Eternity has stretched a corner of its mantle 
 towards you, and the breath of its waving 
 fringe is like a gale of Araby. 
 
 A little rumbling, and a last plunge of the 
 cinders within my grate, startled me, and 
 dragged back my fancy from my flower chase, 
 beyond the Phlegethon, to the white ashes, 
 that were now thick all over the darkened^ 
 coals. 
 
 49 
 
 v>^ > ^.>-^-^^ : ^ ijie> V.v.-^'v 
 
 ^SK^-^- ^& 
 ^^M^S^^- 
 
 .','szs*'/^ fr^,**?*?' , 
 
 aa^fe . :' r. . -%
 
 3 
 
 ' 
 ^?\ 
 
 a 
 
 <5rate 
 
 And this mused I is only a bachelor- 
 dream about a pure, and loving heart ! And 
 to-morrow comes cankerous life again is it 
 wished for ? Or if not wished for, is the not 
 wishing, wicked ? 
 
 Will dreams satisfy, reach high as they can ? 
 Are we not after all poor groveling mortals, 
 tied to earth, and to each other ; are there not 
 sympathies, and hopes, and affections which 
 can only find their issue, and blessing, in fel- 
 low absorption ? Does not the heart, steady, 
 and pure as it may be, and mounting on soul 
 flights often as it dare, want a human sympa- 
 thy, perfectly indulged, 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 will be lavished, 
 before the end comes? Does it not plead 
 with the judgment, and make issue with pru- 
 dence, year after year ? Does it not dog your 
 steps all through your social pilgrimage, set- 
 ting up its claims 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 
 50
 
 a Ctt$ (Brate 
 
 by its fulness, 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 affections ; there is nothing 
 worth loving ? 
 
 Does not some sweet being hover over your 
 spirit of reverie like a beckoning angel, 
 crowned with halo, saying hope on, hope 
 ever; the heart and I are kindred; our mis- 
 sion will be fulfilled ; nature shall accomplish 
 its purpose ; the soul shall have its paradise ? 
 
 1 threw myself upon my bed: and as -'V^fe.; ;; 
 
 my thoughts ran over the definite, sharp busi- V^^^^f 
 
 ness of the morrow, my reverie, and its glow- 
 ing images, that made my heart bound, swept : -^^^^^ 
 away, like those fleecy rain clouds of August, 
 on which the sun paints rainbows driving 
 southward, by the cool, rising wind from the \ ; , 
 north. l;:|/ | 
 
 1 wonder thought I, as I dropped '--yf/^ 
 
 asleep if a married man with his sentiment vy; 
 
 made actual, is after all, as happy as we poor ^'^'.'P 
 
 fellows, in our dreams ? ^ ^? 
 
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