THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 EDWIN CORLE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 JEAN CORLE
 
 REVERIES OF A 
 BACHELOR 
 
 PHItADLL
 
 DONALD G. MITCHELL 
 
 
 or A 
 
 BACHELOR
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS book is neither more, nor less 
 than it pretends to be ; it is a collec- 
 tion 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 con^ 
 trasts, uncovered. 
 
 As for the truth that is in them, the 
 world may believe what it likes ; for having 
 (v) 
 
 2035330
 
 TI PREFACE. 
 
 written to humor the world, it would be 
 hard, if I should curtail any of its privi- 
 leges 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 for thinking so well of me ; and 
 heartily wish that his thought were as true, 
 as it is kind. 
 
 Yet I am inclined to think that bache. 
 tors 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 matrimonial affairs. 
 
 Perhaps I ought however to make an 
 exception in favor of spinsters, who like us, 
 are independent spectators, and possess 
 just that kind of indifference to the mari- 
 tal state, which makes them intrepid in
 
 PREFACE. vil 
 
 their observations, and very desirable for 
 authorities. 
 
 As for the style of the book, I have noth- 
 ing to say for it, except to refer to my title. 
 These are not sermons, nor essays, nor criti- 
 cisms ; they are only Reveries. And if 
 the reader should stumble upon occasional 
 magniloquence, or be worried with a little 
 too much of sentiment, pray, let him re- 
 member, that I am dreaming. 
 
 But while I say this, in the hope of nick- 
 ing off the wiry edge of my reader's judg- 
 ment, I shall yet stand up boldly for the 
 general tone, and character of the book. 
 If 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 charac- 
 ter ; they consist mainly of just such whim- 
 seys, and reflections, as a great many 
 brother bachelors are apt to indulge in, but 
 which they are too cautious, or too prudent
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 to lay before the world. As I have in this 
 matter, shown a frankness, and naivetf 
 which are unusual, I shall ask a correspond- 
 ing frankness in my reader; and I can as- 
 sure him safely that this is eminently one 
 of those books which were ' never intended 
 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. MARVEL. 
 NEW YORK, Nov. 1850.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FIRST REVERIE. 
 
 OVER A WOOD FIRE, 15 
 
 I. Smoke, signifying Doubt, . . 19 
 
 II. Blaze, signifying Cheer, ... 29 
 
 III. Ashes, signifying Desolation, . . 36 
 
 SECOND REVERIE. 
 
 BY A CITY GRATE, . . . . , 53 
 
 I. Sea-Coal, ... ... . 61 
 
 II. Anthracite, .... 8c 
 
 THIRD REVERIE. 
 OVER HIS CIGAR, . . . . ... . 101 
 
 I. Lighted with a Coal, . . .105
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 II. Lighted with a Wisp of Paper, . 119 
 
 III. Lighted with a Match, , 134 
 
 FOURTH REVERIE. 
 , NOON, AND EVENING, . . If I 
 
 L Morning which is the Past, , . 159 
 School Days, .... 169 
 
 The Sea, Z 8i 
 
 Father-Land, , . , .190 
 A Roman Girl, . 199 
 
 The Appenines, . . . .210 
 Enrica, ...... 219 
 
 II. Noon which is the Present, , . 228 
 
 Early Friends, . . .230 
 
 School Revisited . . 239 
 
 College, . . . 245 
 
 Bella's Pacquet . . 252
 
 CONTENTS. xi 
 
 III. Evening which is the Future, . 262 
 
 Carry, 266 
 
 The Letter, 275 
 
 New Travel, .... 282 
 
 Home, 295
 
 FIRST REVERIE 
 
 SMOKE, FLAME AND ASHES.
 
 OVER A WOOD FIRE, 
 
 I HAVE got a quiet farmhouse in the 
 country, a very 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 looking fire-place 
 a heavy oak floor a couple of arm 
 chairs and a brown table with carved lions' 
 feet. Out of this rbom opens a little cab- 
 inet, 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 am bona-fide owner ; and 
 I take a vast deal of comfort in treating it 
 
 ds)
 
 rf REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 just as I choose. I manage to break some 
 article of furniture, almost every time I 
 pay it a visit ; and if I cannot open the 
 window readily of a morning, to breathe 
 the fresh air, I knock out a pane or 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, or make a prim housewife fret 
 herself into a raging fever. I laugh out 
 loud with myself, in my big arm-chair, 
 when I 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 between the jams, 
 roars for hours together, with white flame. 
 To be sure the windows are not very tight, 
 between 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 dispose
 
 OVER A WOOD FIRE. 17 
 
 myself for an evening of such sober, and 
 thoughtful 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 now and then, though there is 
 a thick stone chimney, and broad entry 
 between, multiplying contrivances with 
 his wife, to put two babies to sleep. This 
 occupies them, 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 ex- 
 hausted ; 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 country 
 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 ricketty house
 
 i& REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 sympa- 
 thies sometimes even starting tears 
 that I determined, the next day, to set as 
 much of it as I could recal, on 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 sug- 
 gested to me the thought of Marriage. 
 
 I piled upon the heated fire-dogs, the 
 last arm-full of my wood ; and now, said I, 
 bracing myself courageously between the 
 arms of my chair, I'll not flinch ; I'll 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 disposition to blaze. It smoked furi- 
 ously. 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. 
 
 A WIFE? thought I; yes, a wife! 
 And why ! 
 
 And pray, my dear sir, why not 
 why ? Why not doubt ; 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, hes- 
 itating, and doubting ? 
 
 Can a man stake his bachelor respecta- 
 bility, 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 
 lett or hindrance, shut himself up to mar- 
 riage-ship, within four walls called Home, 
 that are to claim him, his time, his trouble, 
 and his tears, thenceforward forever more, 
 without doubts thick, and thick-coming as 
 Smoke? 
 
 (19)
 
 *> REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Shall he who has been hitherto a mere 
 observer of other men's cares and business 
 moving off where they made him sick of 
 heart, approaching whenever and wherever 
 they made him gleeful shall he now under- 
 take administration of just such cares and 
 business, without qualms ? Shall he, whose 
 whole life has been but a nimble succession of 
 escapes from trifling difficulties, now broach 
 without doublings that Matrimony, 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, gigantic castles, dream- 
 ing out beatitudes hour by hour turn itself 
 at length to such dull task-work, as think- 
 ing 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 bril- 
 liant working imagination has invested time 
 and again with brightness, and delight, can 
 serve no longer as a mine for teeming 
 fancy : all, alas, will be gone reduced to 
 the dull standard of the actual ! No more 
 room for intrepid forays of imagination- 
 no more gorgeous realm-makingall will 
 be over ! 
 
 Why not, I thought, go on dreaming ? 
 
 Can any wife be prettier than an after
 
 SMOKE-SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 21 
 
 dinner fancy, idle and yet vivid, can paint 
 for you ? Can any children make less 
 noise, than the little rosy-cheeked ones, 
 who have no existence, except in the om- 
 nium gatherum of your own brain ? Can 
 any housewife be more unexceptionable 
 than she who goes sweeping daintily the 
 cobwebs 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 Delmonico's ? 
 Can any family purse be better filled than 
 the exceeding plump one, you dream of, 
 after reading such pleasant books as Mun- 
 chausen, or Typee ? 
 
 But if, after all, it must be duty, or 
 what-not, making 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 or San- 
 tillane ; or shall he make application to sora*
 
 a REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 cent, on the fortunes of the parties ? 
 
 I have trouted, when the brook was so 
 low, and the sky so hot, that I might as 
 well have thrown my fly upon the turn- 
 pike; and I have hunted hare at noon, and 
 wood-cock in snow-time never despairing, 
 scarce doubting ; 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 
 Qdd millions of unmarried women, for a 
 single capture irremediable, unchangeable 
 and yet a capture which by strange me- 
 tonymy, 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-relations. 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
 
 SMOKE-SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 23 
 
 spend a month or two with their "dear Peg- 
 gy," and want to know every tea-time, "if 
 she isn'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 determin- 
 ed 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 locker in the wainscot. 
 
 Then, perhaps, there is a little bevy of 
 dirty-nosed nephews who come to spend 
 the holydays, and eat up your East India 
 sweetmeats ; and who are forever tramping 
 over your head or raising the old Harry 
 below, 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 impudently 
 kisses his little Peggy ! 
 
 That could be borne, however : for 
 
 perhaps he has promised his fortune to Peg- 
 gy. 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 buying 
 very extravagant Paisleys.
 
 M REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 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 speculation. 
 
 She will be provokingly silent when you 
 hint to a tradesman, that you have not the 
 money by you, for 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, for the superlative folly of "marry- 
 ing rich." 
 
 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 in- 
 come ; you will be pestered for pin-money, 
 and pestered with your poor wife's rela- 
 tions. 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 chil- 
 dren shan'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
 
 SMOKE SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 25 
 
 worse) growing faster on you. You won- 
 der why you didn'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 chaussfo but now since 
 she's married she does wear such infernal 
 slippers ! And yet for all this, to be prig- 
 ging up for an hour, when any of my old 
 chums come to dine with me ! 
 
 " Bless your kind hearts ! my dear fel- 
 lows," 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 up before. 
 
 What sad, thin, poorly cooked chops, to 
 eat with your 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'll not 
 
 raise a storm about butter a little turned. 
 I think I see myself ruminated I sitting 
 3
 
 26 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 meekly at table, scarce daring 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 side-ways at the end, and slipping 
 out with my hat between my knees, to busi- 
 ness, and never feeling myself a compe- 
 tent, 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 triumph 
 with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled 
 up again in the corner. 
 
 Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, 
 mild enough, only she doesn't care a fig for 
 you. She has married you because father, 
 or grandfather thought the match eligible, 
 and because she didn't wish to disoblige 
 them. Besides, she didn'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
 
 SMOKE- SIGNIFYING DOUBT, yj 
 
 looking fellow, and wishes you * ,ould trim 
 up a little, were it only for appearance' 
 sake. 
 
 You need not hurry up from the office s<? 
 early at night : she, bless her dear heart ! 
 does not feel lonely. You read to her 3 
 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 has 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 Sor- 
 rows of Werter. She has pin-money which 
 she spends for the Literary World and the 
 Friends in Council. She is not bad look- 
 ing, save a bit too much of forehead ; nor is 
 she sluttish, unless a neglige till three 
 o'clock, and an ink stain on the forefinger 
 be sluttish; but then she is such a sad 
 blue! 
 
 You never fancied when you saw her 
 buried in a three volume novel, that it was 
 anything more than a girlish vagary ; and 
 when she quoted Latin, you thought inno- 
 cently, that she had a capital memory for 
 her samplers. 
 
 But to be bored eternally about Divine 
 Dante and funny Goldoni, is too bad 
 Your copy of Tasso, a treasure print of
 
 18 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 1680, 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 
 i head at breakfast, and she will fling you a 
 scrap of Anthology in lieu of the cam- 
 phor bottle or chant the ajar alat, 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 smoke caught at a twig be- 
 low rolled round the mossy oak-stick 
 cwined among the crackling tree-limbs 
 mounted lit up the whole body of smoke, 
 ind blazed out cheerily and bright. Doubt 
 yanished with Smoke, and Hope began 
 
 mfn T71o*v^^ ^ 
 
 Flame.
 
 II. 
 
 BLAZE SIGNIFYING 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, and 
 looked straight into the leaping, and danc- 
 ing flame. 
 
 Love is a flame ruminated I ; and 
 
 (glancing round the room) how a flame 
 brightens up a man's habitation. 
 
 " 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 all, to like a dog." 
 
 If now in that chair yonder, not the 
 
 one your feet lie upon, but the other, beside 
 you closer yet were seated a sweet-faced
 
 |p REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 a forehead fair as any of your dreams; 
 and if you could reach an arm around 
 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 pleasanter than this cold 
 single night-sittingcounting the sticks- 
 reckoning the length of the blaze, 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 listening, 
 because it is you who whisper ears ever 
 indulgent because eager to praise ; and if 
 your darkest fancies were lit up, not mere- 
 ly with bright wood fire, but with a ring- 
 ing laugh of that sweet face turned up in 
 fond rebuke how far better, than to be
 
 BLAZE-SIGNIFYING CHEER. 31 
 
 waxing black, and sour, over pestilential 
 humors alone your very dog asleep! 
 
 And if when a glowing thought comes 
 into your brain, quick and sudden, you 
 could tell it over as to a second self, to 
 that sweet creature, who is not away, be- 
 cause she loves to be there; and if you 
 could watch the thought catching that 
 girlish mind, illuming that fair brow, spark- 
 ling 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 
 richer 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
 
 32 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 into the middle 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. Sure- 
 ly imagination would be stronger, and 
 purer, if it could have the playful fancies 
 of dawning womanhood to delight it. All 
 toil would be torn from mind-labor, if but 
 another heart grew into this present soul, 
 quickening it, warming it, cheering it, bid- 
 ding it ever, God speed! 
 
 Her face would make a halo, rich as a 
 rainbow, atop of all such noisome things, 
 as we lonely souls call trouble. Her 
 smile would illumine the blackest of crowd- 
 ing cares; and darkness that now seats you 
 despondent, 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 are busy with all her fairness. 
 How it makes you think earth nothing but 
 a spot to dig graves upon ! 
 
 It is more : s/ie, she says, will be a
 
 BLAZE SIGNIFYING CHEER. 33 
 
 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 bitterness 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 as- 
 suage that kind sorrow of hers. 
 
 Then those children, rosy, fair-haired ; 
 no, they do not disturb you with their 
 prattle now they are yours ! Toss away 
 there on the green-sward 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 gather wild bou- 
 quets to love, and cherish : flower, tree, 
 gun, are all dead things; things livelier 
 hold your soul. 
 
 And she, the mother, sweetest and fair- 
 est 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 lec- 
 ture to teach thankfulness : your heart is 
 full of it. No need now, as once, of burst*
 
 34 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 ing blossoms, of trees taking leaf, a$* 
 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 un- 
 speakable, thank-offering. 
 
 And if sickness catches you, binds you, 
 lays you down no lonely meanings, and 
 wicked curses at careless stepping nurses. 
 The step is noiseless, and yet distinct be- 
 side you. The white curtains are drawn, 
 or withdrawn by the magic of that other 
 presence ; and the soft, cool hand is upon 
 your brow. 
 
 No cold comfortings of friend-watchers, 
 merely come 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 
 your greatest grief, if it were not a great- 
 er joy. 
 
 The blaze was leaping light and high, 
 and the wood falling under the growing 
 heat. 
 
 So, continued I, this heart would 
 
 be at length itself ; striving with every- 
 thing gross, even now as it clings to gross- 
 ness. Love would make its strength native 
 and progressive. Earth's cares would fly. 
 Joys would double. Susceptibilities be
 
 BLAZE-SIGNIFYING CHEER. 35 
 
 quickened ; Love master self ; and having 
 made the mastery, stretch onward, and up- 
 ward toward Infinitude. 
 
 And if the end came, and sickness 
 brought that follower 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 con- 
 soles, which triumphs, which circleth all, 
 and centereth in all Love Infinite and 
 Divine ! 
 
 Kind hands none but hers will smooth 
 the hair upon your brow as the chill grows 
 damp, and heavy on it ; and her fingers 
 none but hers will lie in yours as the 
 wasted flesh stiffens, and hardens for the 
 ground. Her tears, you could feel no 
 others, if oceans fell will warm your 
 drooping features once more to life ; once 
 more your eye lighted in joyous triumph, 
 kindle in her smile, and then 
 
 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, over which the white ashes gath- 
 ered fast. I was alone, with only my dog 
 for company.
 
 III. 
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 
 
 AFTER all, thought I, ashes follow 
 blaze, inevitably 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 pleas- 
 ure that when it passes, leaves no void. It 
 is only a little alleviating redundance in 
 your solitary heart-life, which if lost, an~ 
 other can be supplied. 
 
 But if your heart, not solitary not 
 quieting its humors 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 ? 
 (36)
 
 ASHES-SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 37 
 
 Is it then only a little heart-redundancy 
 cut off, which the next bright sunset will 
 fill up ? 
 
 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 embers, to 
 picture heart-desolation 
 
 What kind congratulatory letters, hosts 
 of them, coming from old and half-forgot- 
 ten friends, now that 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 value 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 ;
 
 j8 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 How you totter under the weight of that 
 muslin sleeve a phantom 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. 
 
 Is your sleep, quiet sleep, after that she 
 has whispered to you her fears, and in the 
 same breath soft as a sigh, sharp as an 
 arrow 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 re- 
 members : and on remembrance he can 
 live for days, and weeks. The garret, if a gar- 
 ret covers him, is rich in fancies. The rain 
 if it pelts, pelts only him used to rain-pelt- 
 ings. And his dog crouches not in dread, 
 but in companionship. His crust he di- 
 vides with him, and laughs. He crowns 
 himself with glorious memories of Cer-
 
 ASHES-SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 39 
 
 vantes, 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 
 the humor takes him ; and laughs at the 
 world: for the world, thank Heaven, has 
 left him alone ! 
 
 Keep your money, old misers, and your 
 palaces, old princes, the world 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; 
 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 we 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
 
 40 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 strength of her love can dam up the foun- 
 tains 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, food- 
 less children? 
 
 But this ill, strong hands, and Heaven's 
 help, will put down. Wealth again; Flowers 
 again ; Patrimonial acres again ; Brightness 
 again. But your little Bessy, your favorite 
 child is pining. 
 
 Would to God ! you say in agony, that 
 wealth could bring fulness again into that 
 blanched cheek, or round those little thin 
 lips once more; but it cannot. Thinner 
 and thinner they grow; plaintive and more 
 plaintive 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 head-stone ! 
 
 The wind, growing with the night, is 
 rattling at the window panes, and whistles
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 41 
 
 dismally. I wipe a tear, and in the interval 
 of my Reverie, thank God, that I am no 
 such mourner. 
 
 But gaiety, snail-footed, creeps back to 
 the household. 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 deli- 
 cate as a flower. Her frailty doubles your 
 love. 
 
 And the little one she clasps frail too 
 too frail : the boy you had set your hopes 
 and heart on. You have watched him grow- 
 ing, ever prettier, ever winning more and 
 more upon your soul. The love you bore 
 to 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 intelligence. 
 
 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 thousandfold. 
 
 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. 
 
 4
 
 4* REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 cluster 
 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 the breathing be 
 regular and sweet ! 
 
 But the day comes the night rather 
 when you can catch no breathing. 
 
 Aye, put your hair away, compose your- 
 self listen again. 
 
 No, there is nothing ! 
 
 Put your hand now to his brow damp in- 
 deed but not with healthful night-sleep; 
 it is not your hand, no, do not deceive your- 
 self it is your loved boy's forehead that 
 is so cold ; and your loved boy will never 
 speak to you again never play again' 
 he is dead ! 
 
 O, the tears the tears; what blessed 
 things are tears ! Never fear now to let 
 them fall on his forehead, or his lip, lest 
 
 Ci waken him .'Clasp him clasp him 
 der 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 tmbers will get into blaze again.
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 43 
 
 But courage, and patience, and faith, 
 and hope have their limit. Blessed be the 
 man who escapes such trial as will deter- 
 mine 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 graveyard ? You read Hervey and muse 
 upon the wall. A friend dies ? You sigh, 
 vou pat your dog, it is over. Losses? 
 You retrench you light your pipe it is 
 forgotten. Calumny ? You laugh you 
 sleep. 
 
 But with that childless wife clinging to 
 you in love and sorrow what then ? 
 
 Can you take down Seneca now, and 
 coolly blow the dust from the leaf-tops ? 
 Can you crimp your lip with Voltaire ? 
 Can you smoke idly, your feet dangling 
 with the ivies, your thoughts all waving 
 fancies upon a church-yard wall a wall 
 that borders the grave or 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 cal- 
 umnyyand 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 !
 
 44 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 But the trial comes : colder and colder 
 were growing 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 trials and your loves together have 
 centered your affections. They are not 
 now as when you were a lone man, wide- 
 spread 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 have 
 grown under the forcing-glass of home- 
 roof, they will not now bear exposure. 
 
 You do not now look men in the face as if 
 a heart-bond was linking you as if a com- 
 munity of feeling lay between. There is 
 a heart-bond that absorbs all others ; there 
 is a community that monopolizes your feel- 
 ing. When the heart lay wide open, be- 
 fore it had grown upon, and closed around 
 particular objects, it could take strength 
 and cheer, from a hundred connections 
 that now seem colder than ice. 
 
 And now those particular objects alas 
 for you ! are failing.
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION, 
 
 What anxiety pursues you ! How you 
 struggle to fancy there is no danger ; now 
 she struggles to persuade 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 care- 
 lessly over the way; they do not know 
 what canker is at your heart. 
 
 The undertaker comes wit'h his bill for 
 the dead boy's funeral. He knows your 
 grief ; he is respectful. You bless him in 
 your soul. You wish the laughing street- 
 goers were all undertakers. 
 
 Your eye follows the physician as he 
 leaves your house : is he wise, you ask 
 
 Smrself ; is he prudent? is he the best? 
 id he never fail is he never forgetful ? 
 And now the hand that touches yours, 
 is it no thinner no whiter than yesterday? 
 Sunny days come when she revives ; color 
 comes back ; she breathes freer ; she picks 
 flowers ; she meets you with a smile : hope 
 lives again.
 
 46 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 be- 
 thumbed by the dear boy she has lost. 
 She hides it in her chair ; she has pity on 
 you. 
 
 - Another day of revival, when the 
 
 ring sun shines, and flowers open out of 
 oors ; 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, while yet you may ! 
 
 You are early home mid-afternoon. 
 Your step is not light ; it is heavy, terrible. 
 
 They have sent for you. 
 
 She is lying down ; her eyes half closed ; 
 her breathing long 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. 
 
 sp 
 do
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 47 
 
 " 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 tip-toe. 
 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 how smooth ! 
 
 Some sprigs of mignionette are lying 
 carelessly in a little gilt-edged saucer. 
 She loved mignionette. 
 
 It is a good staunch table the coffin rests 
 on ; it is your table ; you are a house- 
 keeper a man of family ! 
 
 Aye, of family! keep down outcry, or 
 the nurse will be in. Look over at the
 
 48 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 pinched features ; is this all that is left of 
 ner ? 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 -cushioned one, over against yours 
 empty. You press your fingers on your 
 eye-balls, as if you would press out some- 
 thing 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 softly, 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 not offend the sick sense
 
 ASHES SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 49 
 
 now. They have half opened the window, 
 that the room so long closed may have air. 
 It will not be too cold. 
 
 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 my 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. My reverie was ended.
 
 SECOND REVERIE 
 
 SEA COAL AND ANTHRACITE 
 
 (50
 
 BY A CITY GRATE. 
 
 BLESSED be letters ! they are the 
 monitors, they are also the comfort- 
 ers, and they are the only true heart- 
 talkers ! Your speech, and their speeches, 
 are conventional ; they are moulded by cir- 
 cumstance ; they are suggested by the ob- 
 servation, 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, with only the soulless pen, and the 
 
 snow-white, virgin paper. Your soul is 
 
 measuring itself by itself, and saying its 
 
 (53)
 
 * REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 own sayings : there are no sneers to modify 
 its utterance, no scowl to scare, noth- 
 ing 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 
 op, acted, rehearsed, 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 pacquet, not very large, 
 tied up with narrow crimson ribbon, now 
 soiled with frequent handling, 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 after a kinder 
 and holier man. 
 
 There are in this little pacquet, letters 
 
 in the familiar hand of a mother what 
 
 gentle admonition ; what tender affection ! 
 God have mercy on him who outlives the 
 tears that such admonitions, and such affec- 
 tion call up to the eye ! There are others 
 in the budget, in the delicate, and unformed
 
 BY A CITY GRATE. 
 
 hand of a loved, and lost sister ; written 
 when she, and you were full of glee, and 
 the best mirth of youthfulness ; does it 
 harm you to recall that mirthf ulness ? or to 
 trace again, for the hundredth time, that 
 scrawling postscript at the bottom, with its 
 i'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 pacquet of 
 letters ; I almost need a new and longer 
 ribbon ; the old one is getting too short. 
 Not a few of these new and cherished let- 
 ters, a former Reverie* has brought to me; 
 not letters of cold praise, saying it was 
 well done, artfully executed, prettily im- 
 agined no such thing : but letters of sym- 
 pathy of sympathy which means sym- 
 pathy the TraOrj/j.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 writ- 
 ers, have seen a heart in the Reverie have 
 felt that it was real, true. They know it ; 
 a secret influence has told it. What mat- 
 ters it, pray, if literally, there was no wife, 
 and no dead child, and no coffin in the 
 house ? Is not feeling, feeling ; and heart, 
 
 * The first Reverie Smoke, Flame, and Ashes, 
 was published some months previous to this, in the 
 Southern Literary Messenger.
 
 56 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 heart ? Are not these fancies thronging 
 on my brain, bringing tears to my eyes, 
 bringing joy to my soul, as living, as any- 
 thing 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 levelling of soul 
 to matter. 
 
 Are we not creatures of thought and 
 passion ? Is anything about us more earn- 
 est than that same thought and passion ? 
 Is there anything more real, more char- 
 acteristic of that great and dim destiny to 
 which we are born, and which may be writ- 
 ten 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 ! 
 
 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.
 
 BESIDE A CITY GRA TE. 57 
 
 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, 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 hus- 
 band 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 
 albeit so weak of truth ; and has kindly 
 believed that it must be earnest. Aye, in- 
 deed is it, fair, and generous one, earnest 
 as life and hope ! Who indeed with a heart 
 at all, that has not yet slipped away irrep- 
 arably, 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.
 
 g* REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 God bless them all ! How far better thig, 
 than the cold praise of newspaper para- 
 graphs, or the critically contrived approval 
 of colder friends I 
 
 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 to- 
 gether, a snug pacquet, and we will label 
 them, not sentimentally, (I pity the one who 
 thinks it !) but earnestly, and in the best 
 meaning of the term SOUVENIRS DU CCEUR. 
 
 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 pota- 
 toes 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
 
 BESIDE A CITY GRATE. 39 
 
 scene, but in a strain too long, and sombre 
 to be set down here. In place of the wide 
 country chimnev, 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, 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 replen- 
 ishes 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 bed-time. 
 
 I love these accidental measures of the 
 nours, 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 
 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.
 
 So REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 presence, 
 full of companionship, and full of the 
 warning time is passing ! 
 
 In the summer season I have even meas 
 ured my reading, and my night-watch, by 
 the burning of a taper; and I have scratch 
 ed upon the handle to the little bronze 
 taper-holder, that meaning passage of the 
 New Testament, Nu^ ydp IPYCTCU 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 sou- 
 venirs to me of other times, and other 
 places and sat watching the lively, un- 
 certain, yellow play of the bituminous 
 flame.
 
 SEA-COAL 
 
 IT is like a flirt mused I; lively, un- 
 certain, 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 wav- 
 ing, and leaping like 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 native 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 passion*, 
 even as Jenny puts the soft coal first, th& 
 better to kindle the anthracite? 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, foi 
 (60
 
 6* REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 just such waving, idle heart-blaze, which 
 means nothing, yet which must be got over? 
 Lamartme 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 
 // y a plus de seve folk et cf ombre flottante 
 dans lesjeunes plants de la fortt; ilyaplus 
 deft* dans le vieux cceur du chtne. 
 
 is Lamartine playing off his prettiness 
 
 expression, dressing up with his poetry 
 
 -making a good conscience against the 
 
 * of some accusing Graziella, or is 
 
 there truth in the matter ? 
 
 A man who has seen sixty years, whether 
 widower or bachelor, may 7 well pu such 
 
 w rds: 
 
 ; *, renews the exultation 
 P Ieasant est of equivoca 
 
 of 
 
 nn h K M ' 1S !t not true? s 
 
 not the heart like new blossoming field- 
 oi a e n ,H W I hose u first flo ^rs are half-formed, 
 one-sided perhaps, but by-and-by, in ma 
 
 wenfo ftf n ' P uttin / ou t wholesome, 
 well-formed blossoms, that will hold their 
 leaves long and bravely ? 
 
 Bulwer in his story of the Caxtons has 
 
 s C a Unted ^f- heart -4hts mere fancy-pi. 
 
 2JSTJ 1 dalh ance with the breezes of love 
 
 ich pass, and leave healthful heart ap-
 
 SEA- COAL. 63 
 
 petite. Half the reading world has read 
 the story of Trevanion and Pisistratus. 
 But Bulwer is past ; his heart-life is used 
 up fyuise. Such a man can very safely 
 rant about the cool judgment of after years. 
 
 Where does Shakspeare put the unripe 
 heart -age ? All of it before the ambition, 
 that alone makes the hero-soul. The 
 Shakspeare man "sighs like a furnace," 
 before he stretches his arm to achieve the 
 " bauble, 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 creations, loves 
 without any of the mawkish matter, which 
 makes the whining love of a Juliet. And 
 Florizel in the Winter's Tale, says to Per- 
 dita, 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 ? 
 no sea-coal blaze, but one that is con- 
 stant, 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
 
 *4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 we quote by this sparkling blaze, a -em 
 from the Paradise Lost? We will hC 
 it to ourselves what Raphael sings to 
 Adam a classic song. 
 
 - Him, serve and fear ! 
 
 est 
 
 hou 
 
 ~ , ear 
 
 Of other creatures, as Him pleases best 
 Wherever placed, let Him dispose ; joy t 
 
 And w ^i\ gi ^r thee ' thispar ^- 
 
 And again : 
 
 The thoughts, and hea^S^J? feh his * 
 
 Bvwh-h't an u iS J ud 7 idous: is the scale 
 
 By which to Heavenly love thou may'st ascend I 
 
 whrhK u n this ^6, 
 
 which belongs to the flame of my sea-coa 
 fire that is now dancing, lively as a cricket 
 can s ngab Ut my garret Camber, I 
 
 K , 
 
 en i h ^ resemble s the arch- 
 
 gel Raphael, or "thy fair Eve." 
 
 n r ffl S a deg u ee 0/ moist re about the 
 sea-coal flame, which 
 
 S0mewhere 'n the Excur-
 
 SEA- COAL. t 
 
 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 summer of 
 his pilgrimage ; and hung over with cob- 
 webs, in which sit such watchful gray old 
 spiders as Avarice, and Selfishness, for- 
 ever on the look out 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 
 flame of the sea-coal ; rising, and wrap- 
 ping 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?
 
 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Take for instance your heart of senti- 
 ment, and quick sensibility, a weak, warm- 
 working heart, flying off in tangents of un- 
 happy 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 sensi- 
 bility becomes. Poor Mackenzie himself 
 must have suffered thus; you cannot read 
 his .books without 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 inherit- 
 ance; and one that a strong man or woman 
 will study to subdue : it is a vain sea-coal 
 sparkling, which will count no good The 
 world is made of much hard, flinty sub- 
 stance, against which your better, and 
 holier thoughts will be striking fire 
 see to it, that the sparks do not burn you I 
 But what a happy, careless life belongs 
 to this Bachelorhood, in which you may 
 strike out 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 boddice knowing nothing of tender- 
 ness but the name, to prate of; and nothing
 
 SEA- COAL. 67 
 
 of soul-confidence, but clumsy confession. 
 And if in your careless out-goings of 
 feeling, you get here, only a little lip vapid- 
 ity 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 cannot twist and 
 weave the threads of his feeling 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. 
 
 Reading is a great, and happy disen- 
 tangler 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
 
 68 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Crabbe when you would shake off vagary, 
 by a little handling of sharp actualities. 
 There' is Voltaire, 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 Rousseau, when you want to lose your- 
 self in a mental dream-land, and be be- 
 guiled 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 forewarned of rocks 
 against which you must surely smite read 
 Bolingbroke ; run over the letters of Lyt- 
 tleton ; 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 feel- 
 ing 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
 
 SEA- COAL. 69 
 
 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 
 victim 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 comes upon 
 him, he wrestles with in secret, with strong, 
 frenzied struggles. He wraps hi 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 spark* 
 ling under it, like my sea-coal fire ; lifting 
 and blazing, and lighting and falling, but
 
 TO REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 un- 
 noticed, 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 ci re. 
 
 Wit. a woman it is worse; with her, this 
 delicat^ 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 sym- 
 pathies give a tone, like the harp of yolus,| 
 to the slightest breath. Her sensibility 
 lights up, and quivers and falls, like the 
 name of a sea-coal fire. 
 
 If she loves(and may not a Bachelor rea- 
 son on this daintiest of topics) her love is 
 a gushing, wavy flame, lit up with hope, 
 that has only a little kindling matter to
 
 SEA- COAL. 71 
 
 light it ; and this soon burns out. Yet in- 
 tense sensibility will persuade her that the 
 flame still 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 shock- 
 ed sensitiveness emits only faint, yellowish 
 sparkles in its place ; her high-wrought or- 
 ganization makes those sparks seem a verit- 
 able flame. 
 
 With her, judgment, prudence, and dis- 
 cretion are cold measured terms, which have 
 no meaning, except as they attach to the 
 actions of others. Of her own acts she nev- 
 er predicates them; feeling is much too high, 
 to allow her to submit to any such obtrusive 
 guides of conduct. She needs disappoint- 
 ment 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 disap- 
 pointments : she who sinks under real dis- 
 appointment, lacks philosophy ; 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 the visitants of hell ; 
 let the soul rise with the blaze of new-kin- 
 dled, active, and world-wide emotions, and 
 so brighten into steady and constant flame.
 
 72 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Let her abjure such poets as Cowper, or By- 
 ron, 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 ring- 
 ing organry as Comus. 
 
 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 passions, 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 tornado of mad- 
 dened action a whirlwind of fire that hisses, 
 and sends out jets of wild, impulsive com- 
 bustion, 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, re- 
 curring to my first thought so lively, yet un- 
 certain ; 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
 
 SEA- COAL. 73 
 
 only sparkle. How carefully she cramps it, 
 if the flames show too great a heat ; how dex- 
 terously 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- 
 curbings, and heart-teachings ; sensibility 
 enquires 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. 
 
 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 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 double^
 
 7* REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 ness of meaning. Naturalness she copies, 
 and she scorns. She accuses herself of a 
 single expression or regard, which nature 
 prompts. She prides herself on her school- 
 ing. 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 germ as is left of it be- 
 trays 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 shallow over hard pebbly bottom 
 always rustles. She is light-hearted, be- 
 cause 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 ac- 
 cepted as a cover for the faint and tawdry 
 sparkles of an old and cherished heartless- 
 ness. 
 
 She will not pine under any regrets, be- 
 cause she has no appreciation of any loss- 
 she will not chafe at indifference, because 
 t is her art ; she will not be worried with 
 ifr u Usies ' because she is ignorant of love. 
 With no conception of the soul in its 
 strength and' fulness, she sees no lack (
 
 SEA-COAL. 75 
 
 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 something like the same connection : 
 Les hiboux ne connaissent pas le chemin par 
 oil les aigles -vont au soleil. 
 
 Poor Ned ! mused I, looking at the 
 
 play of the fire was a victim and a conque~ 
 ror. 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 loved him, and who, may be, 
 flattered him. Scarce 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 biensfance 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,
 
 76 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 
 5 ? m ' his im P ulses would have blind- 
 ed him Never was dodger more artful at 
 the Olympic Games than the Peggy of 
 Ned s heart-affection. He was charged, 
 beguiled, entranced. 
 
 When Ned spoke of love, she staved it 
 -Ti ^ e Pettiest of sly looks that only 
 bewildered him the more. A charming 
 creature to be sure ; coy as a dove ! 
 
 bo he went on, poor fool, until one day 
 -he told me of it with the blood mounting 
 to his temples, and his eye shooting' flam? 
 -he suffered his feelings to run out in pas- 
 sionate avowal, - entreaty, - everything. 
 ie gave a pleasant, noisy laugh, and maS- 
 ifested such pretty surprise ! 
 
 He was looking for the intense glow of 
 passion ; and o, there was nothing but the 
 shifting sparkle of a sea-coal flam? 
 
 1 wrote him a letter of condolence for 
 I was his senior by a year;-" My dear fel- 
 
 ireenf \ tJ' "** y UrSdf >' ^ Can find 
 greens at the up-town market : eat a little 
 
 T- i, you i r C i inner; abstain from heat - 
 mg drinks : don't put too much butter to
 
 SEA- COAL. 77 
 
 your cauliflower; read one of Jeremy Tay. 
 lor's sermons, and translate all the quota- 
 tions at sight ; run carefully over that ex- 
 quisite picture of Geo. Dandin in your 
 Moliere, and my word for it, in a week you 
 will be a 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, do- 
 mestic, 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 such flashing, flaming flirt 
 must in the end make ; the prostitute of 
 fashion ; the bauble of fifty hearts idle as 
 hers; the shifting make-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 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 frittering passions, fvses all that 
 is sound and combustible, into black, sooty, 
 shapeless residuum.
 
 78 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 co- 
 quetry 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 soul like the blaze around an omelette 
 au r/nim, leaving the kernel sounder and 
 warmer. 
 
 Coquetry, with all its pranks and teas- 
 ings, 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 care- 
 ful disposition of the forces ? Who would 
 bulletin such success as my Uncle Toby's, 
 in a 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 
 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.
 
 SEA-COAL. 79 
 
 And so, with my eye clinging to the 
 flickering blaze, I see in my reverie, 
 bright one dancing before me, with spark- 
 ling, 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 tc 
 pity, as a gleam of sensibility comes steal- 
 ing 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 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, pity- 
 ing, teasing eyes, and my arm clasps round 
 that shadowy form, and my lips feel a 
 warm breath growing warmer and warm- 
 er 
 
 Just here the maid comes in, and throws 
 upon the fire a pan-ful of Anthracite, and 
 my sparkling sea-coal reverie is ended.
 
 If. 
 
 ANTHRACITE. 
 
 IT 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 be- 
 longed 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 chase them 
 away, like scared deer vanishing over a gray 
 horizon of moor-land ! 
 
 * Voyage autour de Ma Chambre.
 
 ANTHRACITE. 8t 
 
 I know not justly, if it be a weakness or 
 a 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 relief, 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 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 ; it 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 ecstacy of kindling 
 your soul into fervor and love, and mad- 
 ness, over pages that reek with genius. 
 
 There are indeed base-moulded souls 
 who know nothing 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
 
 2 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 cheer- 
 ily, and sure of a gracious hearing -peccavi 
 misericord* ! 
 
 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 is, to the flashing play of the sea-coal ! 
 unlike as an unsteady, uncertain-work- 
 ing 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 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
 
 ANTHRACITE. 83 
 
 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 natur- 
 ally a holy 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, lukewarm, half-hearted soul ; 
 - considerate, because ignorant ; 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 fur- 
 nace 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, or energy to attack, or 
 hope to quench.
 
 84 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 
 appearance ; it is the heart's eye, weigh- 
 ing your soul ! 
 
 It is full of deep, tender, and earnest 
 feeling. 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, unconsciously, 
 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 of beauty ; no matter for pop- 
 ular 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
 
 ANTHRACITE. 85 
 
 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, it matters nothing, the heart 
 is there. The talk may be soft or low, se- 
 rious or piquant a free and honest soul ia 
 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 warmtn 
 that lies in it is not only generous, but re- 
 ligious, genial, devotional, tender, self-sac- 
 rificing, and looking heavenward. 
 
 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 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 map*
 
 6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 kind ; but a woman in her comparative* 
 ly 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 Rep- 
 utation may stretch before him ; but a 
 woman where can she put her hope in 
 storms, if not in Heaven ? 
 
 And that sweet trustfulness that abid- 
 ing love that enduring hope, mellowing 
 every page and scene of life, lighting 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 enjoyed the coun- 
 sel and the love of a Christian mother, but 
 will echo the thought with energy, and hal- 
 low it with a tear ? et moi,je plcurs ! 
 
 My fire is now a mass of red-hot coal. 
 The whole atmosphere of my room is 
 warm. The heart that with its glow can 
 light up, and warm a garret with loose case- 
 ments 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
 
 ANTHRACITE. 87 
 
 lightning, has stolen from the world of 
 fancy (a Promethean theft,) a home ob- 
 ject, 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 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 deli- 
 cate, sustains a little home volume that 
 hangs from her fingers. The forefinger is 
 between 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 fore- 
 head, and now on the finger, where glit- 
 ters like a star, the marriage ring little 
 gold band, at which she does not chafe, 
 that tells you, she is ydurs ! 
 
 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
 
 88 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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! 
 
 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, gaily 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 at its 
 source, but it will become a strong river 
 of flowing charities. 
 
 Clitumnus breaks from under the Tus- 
 can mountains, almost a flood ; on a glori- 
 ous spring day I leaned down and tasted 
 the water, as it boiled from its sources ; 
 the little temple of white marble, the
 
 ANTHRACITE. 89 
 
 mountain sides gray with olive orchards, 
 the white streak of road, the tall 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 cat- 
 tle 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 bright Cascino ; 
 gathering strength and volume, till between 
 Pisa and Leghorn, in sight of the won- 
 drous 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, 
 
 7
 
 90 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 trustful, religious heart. Trials have tried 
 it ; afflictions have weighed upon it ; dan- 
 ger has scared 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 humanity. 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. 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 offering 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, ador- 
 able, 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? 
 
 It is not the house, though that may
 
 ANTHRACITE. 91 
 
 have its charms; nor the fields carefully 
 tilled, and streaked with your own foot- 
 paths ; 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 the cherished 
 books, but more far than all these it is 
 the PRESENCE. The Lares of your wor- 
 ship 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 conviction, 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, unsympathizingears; 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, because my 
 wish, and every will, keep it there, unenv 
 ing.
 
 9 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 The fire shows through the screen, yel- 
 low 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 knowledge, and a steady pilot-hand, to 
 steer your boat out boldly upon that shore- 
 less 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 toward the pure sky-depths, an 
 usher to the land where you will follow 
 dfter. 
 
 It is quite cold, and I take away the
 
 ANTHRACITE, 93 
 
 screen altogether ; 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 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 
 enj oys. 
 
 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 seems sliding backward ; 
 and hope and you are - sliding forward. 
 The clouds, the agonies, the vain expect- 
 ancies, the braggart noise, the 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 end- 
 ing Present, you reach out your prayerful
 
 94 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 hands toward that boundless Future, 
 where God's eye lifts over the horizon, 
 like sunrise on the ocean. Do you recog- 
 nize 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 faith bear it on. There is no extrava- 
 gant 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 Ely- 
 sium ! 
 
 But what is paper ; and what are words ?
 
 ANTHRACITE. 95 
 
 Vain things ! The soul leaves them be- 
 hind ; 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 longings, its poor baf- 
 fled 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 to- 
 ward 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. 
 
 And this mused I is only a bache- 
 lor-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 grovelling 
 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 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-
 
 96 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 will be lavished, be- 
 fore 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 pilgrim- 
 age, setting up its claims in forms fresh, 
 and odorous as new-blown heath bells, say- 
 ing, come away from the heartless, the 
 factitious, the vain, and measure your heart 
 not by its constraints, but by its fulness, 
 and by its depth ? let it run, and be joy- 
 ous ! 
 
 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 mission will be fulfilled ; nature shall 
 accomplish its purpose ; the soul shall have 
 its Paradise ? 
 
 1 threw myself upon my bed : and as 
 
 my thoughts ran over the definite, sharp 
 business of the morrow, my Reverie, and its
 
 ANTHRACITE. 97 
 
 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 senti- 
 ment made actual, is after all, as happy as 
 wr poor fellows, in our dreams ?
 
 THIRD REVERIE 
 
 A CIGAR THREE TIMES 
 LIGHTED. 
 
 (99)
 
 OVER HIS CIGAR. 
 
 I DO not believe that there was ever an 
 Aunt Tabithy 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 an Havana-labelled box. It put 
 her out of all conceit with Guava jelly, to 
 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, purling. 
 
 " It is dirty," said my aunt. 
 
 (101)
 
 102 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 " It is clean and sweet," said I ; " and a 
 most pleasant soother of disturbed feelings ; 
 and a capital companion ; and a comforter 
 " and I stopped to puff. 
 
 "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 gesticulation, 
 had fallen out of its place. 
 
 " It suggests quiet thoughts" continued 
 I, "and makes a man meditative; and 
 gives a current to his habits of contempla- 
 tion, 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 incred- 
 ulous 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 ! " 
 
 "About what, pray ? " said my aunt, con- 
 temptuously. 
 
 "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
 
 OVER HIS CIGAR. 103 
 
 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 
 an expression of some wonder, some curi- 
 osity, and a great deal of expectation. 
 
 I 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 im- 
 possible 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 dinner, and after it a good cigar, 
 and I will serve you such a sun-shiny 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 mention 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, (Aurit Tabithy drew near me) shall
 
 34 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 go to buy ribbons for my most respectable, 
 and worthy Aunt Tabithy ; and a kinder 
 person could not have them ; or one," con- 
 tinued I, with a generous puff, " whom they 
 would more adorn." 
 
 My Aunt Xabithy gave me a half -playful, 
 half-thankful 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 cigar un- 
 molested, 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 broom-stick. 
 
 And this Reverie, to make the matter 
 short, is what came of the contract.
 
 f. 
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 
 
 I 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 light- 
 ing 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, purblind 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, 2 
 8 (105)
 
 106 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 tempo perduto : to love, and not be loved, is 
 time lost. 
 
 I take a kind of rude pleasure in flinging 
 down a coal that has no life in it. And it 
 seemed to me, 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 lukewarm 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 I should long to break away, 
 though the marriage bonds held me, and 
 see what liveliness was to be found else- 
 where. 
 
 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, ana in 
 the showers, and shoot out toward some 
 hospitable trunk. They fasten easily to 
 the kindly roughness of the bark, and
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 107 
 
 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 f 
 we, the tree and I are kindred, it the helper, 
 and I the helped ; and bound fast together, 
 we riot in the sunshine, and in gladness. 
 
 The 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 off, and exposes the 
 heat, and the glow that you are seeking. 
 
 At the first touch, the delicate edges of 
 the cigar crimple, a thin line of smoke 
 rises, doubtfully for a while, and with a 
 coy delay ; but after a hearty respiration 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, genial, 
 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 atmos-
 
 io8 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 phere 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 passions, 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 affec- 
 tion. But J mean that boyish burning, 
 which belongs to every poor mortal's life- 
 time, and which bewilders him with the 
 thought that he has reached the highest 
 point of human 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 individual who 
 dared to doubt it.
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. ioj 
 
 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 act- 
 ually so, and how you could have dared ; 
 and you wonder if you would have cour- 
 age to do the same thing again ? and upon 
 second thought, are quite sure you would, 
 and snap your fingers atthe thought of it. 
 
 What sweet little hats she does wear ; 
 and in the school room, when the hat is 
 hung up what curls 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 no- 
 tice, 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 father (who 
 is Judge of the County Court,) take your
 
 lio REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 hand in both of his, and make some elo- 
 quent remarks. A great many such re-cap- 
 tures 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 
 the shade of very dark ivy vines. And you 
 would have such a charming boudoir in some 
 corner of the old ruin, with a harp in it, and 
 books bound in gilt, with cupids on the cover, 
 and such a fairy couch, with the curtains 
 hung as you have seen them hung in 
 some illustrated Arabian stories upon a 
 pair of carved doves ! 
 
 And when they laugh at you about it, 
 you turn it off perhaps with saying " it 
 isn'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 stout 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
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. HI 
 
 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 minis- 
 ter 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 pret- 
 tily 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 stirs 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 foot-mark, 
 on your way to the school ; and what a 
 dear little foot-mark it is ! And from that 
 single point, if she be out of your sight for 
 days, you conjure up the whole image, 
 the elastic, lithe little figure, the springy 
 step, the dotted muslin so light, and flow- 
 ing, the silk kerchief, with its most tempt- 
 ing fringe playing upon the clear white of 
 her throat, how you envy that fringe!
 
 112 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 elegant, 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 
 are good girls to be sure ; and you hope 
 they will get good husbands some day or 
 other : but it is not a matter 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 gra- 
 ciously ; you can say laughingly that you 
 are deeply in love with them, and think it 
 a most capital joke ; you can touch their 
 hands, or steal a kiss from them in your 
 games, most imperturbably : they are very 
 dead coals. 
 
 But the live one is very lively. When 
 you take the name on your lip, it seems
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 113 
 
 somehow, to be made of different 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 geographies, 
 and of your natural philosophy. You 
 know perfectly well how it looks ; it seems 
 to be written, indeed, somewhere behind 
 your eyes ; and in such happy position with 
 respect to the optic nerve, that you see it 
 all the time, though you are looking in an 
 opposite direction ; 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 voice. 
 
 It is something against your school- 
 master'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 moon- 
 light. The beams, too, breed sympa-
 
 Ii4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 thies, very close-running sympathies, not 
 talked about in the chapters on 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 the 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 pressure, that is but half ac- 
 knowledged, by the hand that makes it. 
 
 My cigar is burning with wondrous free- 
 ness ; 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 pret- 
 tier to your ear, the more you listen to her. 
 But you wonder who the tall boy was, who 
 you saw walking with her, two days ago ? 
 He was not a bad-looking boy ; on the con-
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 115 
 
 trary, you think, (with a grit of your teeth) 
 that he was infernally handsome ! You 
 look at him very shyly, and very closely, 
 when you pass him ; and turn to see how 
 he walks, and to measure his shoulders, 
 and are quite disgusted with 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 yourself 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 dig- 
 nity ; and wonder if she is not sorry, and 
 does not feel very badly, to have got suck 
 a look from you ? 
 
 On some other day, however, you meet
 
 ii6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 her alone ; and the sight of her makes 
 your face wear a genial, sunny air ; and you 
 talk a little sadly about your fears and your 
 jealousies ; she seems a little sad, and a lit- 
 tle glad, together ; and is sorry she has 
 made you feel badly, and. you are sorry 
 too. And with this pleasant twin sorrow, 
 you are knit together again closer 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 uni- 
 verse. You even say as much to some kind 
 old friend at night-fall ; but your mention 
 of her, js 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 hearing. 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 su- 
 perlatives, 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
 
 LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 117 
 
 fast ; and the matter it feeds fastest on, is 
 judgment ; and with judgment gone, there 
 is room for jealousy to creep in. You 
 grow petulant at another sight of that tall- 
 boy ; and the one 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 again with your petulance, 
 you will find your rosy-lipped girl taking 
 her first studies in dignity. 
 
 You will stay away, you say ; poor fool, 
 you are feeding 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 fondness is struggling with your pride, 
 and has almost made the mastery ; but in 
 the very moment of victory, you see yon- 
 der your hated rival, and beside him, look- 
 ing very gleeful, and happy : your perfidi 
 ous Louise.
 
 ji8 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 How quick you throw off the marks of 
 your struggle, and put on the boldest air of 
 boyhood ; and what a dexterous 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 
 the hand, as you tear out the next day, 
 every fly-leaf that bears her name. But at 
 sight of your rival, looking 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 your 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 for 
 a month, nor two months nor three. 
 
 Puff puff once more ; there is only a 
 little nauseous smoke ; and now my cigar 
 is gone out altogether. I must light again.
 
 II. 
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 
 
 THERE are those who throw away a 
 cigar, when once gone out ; they must 
 needs have plenty more. But nobody 
 that I ever heard of, keeps a cedar box of 
 hearts, labelled at Havanna. 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 impartial authority. I 
 should be loth to take in evidence, for the 
 fact, however it might 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 of the fire : and I can easily
 
 120 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 conceive of one so pure, so constant, so 
 exhausting, that if it were once gone out, 
 whether in the chills of death, or under the 
 blasts of pitiless fortune, there would be 
 no rekindling ; simply because there would 
 be nothing left to kindle. And I can im- 
 agine too a fire so earnest, and so true, that 
 whatever malice might urge, or a devilish 
 ingenuity devise, there could no other be 
 found, high or low, far or near f , 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 slanders, to quit her alto- 
 gether, though he has loved, and does still 
 love passionately. She bids him adieu, 
 with large tears dropping from her eyes, 
 (and I lay down my cigar, to recite it aloud, 
 fancying all the while, with a varlet impu- 
 dence, 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 you 
 May not suspect her, nor may she be worthy 
 Of your suspicion : and if you hear hereafter 
 That I am dead, inquire but my last words, 
 And you shall know that to the last I loved you. 
 And when you walk forth with your second choice, 
 Into the pleasant fields, and by chance talk of me, 
 Imagine that yousee me thin, and pale, 
 Strewing your oath with flowers !
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. i 
 
 Poor Abstemia ! Lorenzo never could 
 
 find such another, there never could be 
 such another, for such Lorenzo. 
 
 To blaze anew, it is essential that the old 
 fire be utterly gone ; and can any truly- 
 lighted soul ever grow cold, except the 
 grave cover it ? The poets all say no : 
 Othello, had he lived a thousand years, 
 would not have loved again ; nor Desde- 
 mona, nor Andromache, nor Medea, 
 nor Ulysses, nor Hamlet. But in the cool 
 wreaths of the pleasant smoke, let us see 
 what 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 mel- 
 ody. Presently, admiration comes in, as 
 a sort of balance-wheel for the eccentric 
 revolutions of your fancy ; and your ad- 
 miration is touched off with such neat qual- 
 ity 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 
 agreeable and confused mingling, all these 
 qualities, and affections of the soul, become 
 transfused into that vital feeling, called 
 Love. 
 
 Your heart seems to have gone over to 
 
 9
 
 i2 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 another and better counterpart of your hu- 
 manity; what is left of you, seems the 
 mere husk of some kernel that has been 
 stolen. It is not an emotion of yours, 
 which is making very easy voyages towards 
 another soul, that may be shortened, or 
 lengthened, at will ; but it is a passion, that 
 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 belong 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 break, 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, be- 
 cause 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 ex-
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 125 
 
 hausted, and will not thenceforth germinate 
 through all of your life-time ? 
 
 Take away the worm-eaten frame 
 
 from your arbor plant, and the wrenched 
 arms of the despoiled climber will not at 
 the first, touch any new trellis; they can- 
 not in a day, change the habit of a year. 
 But let the new support stand firmly, and 
 the needy tendrils will presently lay hold 
 upon the stranger ! and your plant will re- 
 gain its pride and pomp; cherishing per- 
 haps in its bent figure, a memento of the 
 Old ; but in its more earnest, and abounding 
 life, mindful only of its sweet dependance 
 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 man- 
 ner, I tear off a wisp of paper, and holding; 
 it in the blaze of my lamp, re-light my cigar. 
 It does not burn so easily perhaps 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 succeeds the crackling blaze
 
 124 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 sweetness 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 well 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 Nelly's; nor can it be 
 her mouth, though Nelly's mouth is cer- 
 tainly very sweet. And you keep study- 
 ing 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
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 125 
 
 wonder, that is either suggested by his 
 hope, or by that entanglement of feeling 
 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 
 vour companionship, and your wonder, -re- 
 lapse into a constant, quiet habit of un- 
 mistakeable 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 of it was rather 
 an old remembrance, than a fresh passion. 
 It does not seek to gratify its exuberance, 
 and force, with such relief as night-sere- 
 nades, or any Jacques-like meditations in 
 the forest ; but it is a quiet, still joy, that 
 floats 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 perma- 
 nence to the smile of existence. 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
 
 1*6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 extrava- 
 gant 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 have a sudden charity for street 
 beggars, with pale children. You catch 
 yourself taking a step in one of the new 
 "Polkas, upon a country walk : and wonder 
 immensely at the number of bright days 
 which succeed each other, without leaving 
 a single stormy gap, for your old melan- 
 choly moods. Even the chambermaids at 
 your hotel, never did their duty one half 
 so well ; and as for your man Tom, he is 
 become a perfect pattern of a fellow. 
 
 My cigar is in a fine glow ; but it has 
 gone out once, and it may go out again. 
 
 You begin to talk of marriage ; but
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 137 
 
 some obstinate Papa, or guardian uncle 
 thinks that it will never do; that it is 
 quite too soon, or that Nelly is a mere girl. 
 Or some of your wild oats, quite forgot- 
 ten 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 repu- 
 tations, but only a very full, and delirious 
 flow of feeling. What care you for any 
 position, except a position near the being 
 that you love ? What wealth do you prize, 
 except a wealth of heart, that shall never 
 know diminution ; or for reputation, ex- 
 cept that of truth, and of honor? How 
 hard it would break upon these pleasant 
 idealities, to have a weazen-faced old guard- 
 ian, set his arm in yours, and tell you how 
 tenderly he has at heart the happiness of 
 his niece; and reason with you about 
 your very small, and sparse dividends, and
 
 j8 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 any- 
 thing but what you are ! a very dangerous 
 suspicion : for no man with any true nobil- 
 ity 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 ex- 
 quisite softness, and meaning of the pres- 
 sure 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 short-comings ; and 
 would not barter your strong love, and 
 your honest heart, for the greatest magnate 
 in the land.
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 129 
 
 What a spur to effort is the confiding 
 love of a true-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, quickens 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 corre- 
 spondence. 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 
 
 * Festus.
 
 -J30 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 to see from time to time, still beautiful. 
 You struggle with your moods of melan- 
 choly, and wear bright looks yourself 
 bright to her, and very bright to the eye 
 of the old curmudgeon, who has 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 helpless resolves. 
 
 My cigar is still burning ; but it will 
 require constant 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 cumu- 
 lative as joy. For a time, there is a pleas- 
 ure in the mood, with which you recal your 
 broken hopes; and with which you self- 
 ishly 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 blithe- 
 some cheer ; and the thought of you that
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 131 
 
 snaded her fair face so long, fades under 
 the sunshine of gaiety ; or at best, it only 
 seems to cross that white forehead, like a 
 playful shadow, that a fleecy cloud-rem- 
 nant will fling upon a sunny lawn. 
 
 As for you, the world with its whirl and 
 roar, is deafening the sweet, distant notes, 
 that come up through old, choked channels 
 of the affections. Life is calling for 
 earnestness, and not for regrets. So the 
 months, and the years slip by ; your bache- 
 lor habit grows easy and light with wear- 
 ing ; you have mourned enough, to smile 
 at the violent mourning of others ; and 
 you have enjoyed 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
 
 132 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 to the quick, are dull weapons to break 
 through the panoply of your seared, eager, 
 and ambitious manhood. They only ven- 
 ture 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 returned a woman, there is a slight 
 
 e'ow, but no tumultuous bound of the heart, 
 ife, and time have worried you down 
 like a spent hound. The world has given 
 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 dis- 
 tract your attention from the morning jour- 
 nal. You cannot work yourself into a re- 
 .spectable degree of indignation against the 
 old gentleman her guardian. 
 
 You sigh poor thing! and in a very 
 flashy waistcoat, you venture a morning 
 call. 
 
 She meets you kindly, a comely, mat- 
 ronly 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 gentle- 
 men meets you with a most pleasant shake 
 of the hand, hints that you were among
 
 WITH A WISP OF PAPER. 133 
 
 his niece's earliest friends, and hopes that 
 you are 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 rosy-faced papa. In short, 
 you are made perfectly at home ; and you 
 sit over your wine for an hour, in a cozy 
 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 find, a great strengthener of the 
 bachelor heart. But 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 sob over that poor dumb heart within 
 you, which craves so madly a free and joy- 
 ous 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.
 
 HI. 
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 
 
 I HATE a match. I feel sure that brim- 
 stone 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 coaxings, 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 infernal, gossipping, 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, 
 
 (134)
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 135 
 
 who talk to him about nice matches, 
 " very nice matches," matches which 
 never go off? And who, 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 con- 
 nection, "of highly respectable parent- 
 age !" 
 
 What a delightful thing, surely, for a 
 withered bachelor, to bloom forth in the 
 dignity of an ancestral tree ! What a 
 precious surprise for him, who has all his 
 life worshipped the wing-heeled Mercury, 
 to find on a sudden, a great stock of pre- 
 served, 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 the head of an establish- 
 ment. And I must confess that this kind
 
 136 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 imagined. 
 And let not the pouting lady condemn me, 
 without a hearing. 
 
 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 
 boddice, trimmed to aline, 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 luxu- 
 riate upon that of a sweet wife, who is 
 cheating hosts of friends into love, sym- 
 pathy and admiration, by the modest mu- 
 nificence of her wealth ? Is it not rather 
 agreeable, to feed your hopeful soul upon 
 that abundance, which, while it supplies 
 her need, will give a range to her loving 
 charities ; which will keep from her brow 
 the 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
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MA TCH. 137 
 
 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 
 inner sympathies ; nor am I prepared to 
 say, that such associations would not add 
 force to the most abstract love imaginable. 
 
 Think of it for a moment ; what is it t 
 that we poor fellows love ? We love, if one 
 may judge for himself, over his cigar, gen- 
 tleness, beauty, refinement, generosity, 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 refine- 
 ment ; 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 hard- 
 ening its hand with toil, nor tempting the 
 wrinkles to come early. But whether it 
 provokes greatly that returning passion, 
 that abnegation of soul, that sweet trust- 
 fulness, and abiding affection, which are to
 
 138 REVERIES OF, A BACHELOR, 
 
 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 mammon, is not over ready to 
 be grateful for intensity of love. It is hard 
 to gratify those, who have nothing left to 
 gratify. 
 
 Heaven help the man who having wearied 
 his soul with delays and doubts, or ex- 
 hausted the freshness, and exuberance of 
 his youth, by a hundred little dallyings 
 of love, consigns himself at length to the 
 issues of what people call a nice match 
 whether of money, or of a family ! 
 
 Heaven help you (I brushed the ashes 
 from my cigar) when you begin to regard 
 marriage as only a respectable institution, 
 and under the advices of staid old friends, 
 begin to look about you for some very re- 
 spectable 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 cap- 
 ital appearance at the head of your table ; 
 nor in the event of your coming to any 
 
 Eublic honor, would she make you blush 
 >r her breeding. She talks well, exceed- 
 ingly well ; and her face has its charms ; 
 especially under a little excitement. Her
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 139 
 
 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 sometime 
 sent a papier mache card-case, for the show- 
 box of some Dorcas benevolent society, 
 thinks, with a sly wink, that she would 
 make a fine wife for somebody. 
 
 She certainly has an elegant figure; and 
 the marriage of some half dozen of your 
 old flames, warn you that time is slip- 
 ping and your chances failing. And in the 
 pleasant warmth of some after-dinner mood, 
 you resolve with her image in her prettiest 
 pelisse drifting across your brain that 
 you will marry. Now comes the pleasant 
 excitement of the chase; and whatever 
 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, every- 
 body 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 ;
 
 140 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 and your old friend Tom writes you that 
 he hears you are going to marry a spendid 
 woman; and all the old ladies say what 
 a capital match ! And your business part- 
 ner, who is a married man, and something 
 of a wag "sympathizes 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 pres- 
 ently Miss Charlotte of such a street, 
 whose father was something very fine, in 
 his way; and whose father before him was 
 very distinguished; you add, in a post- 
 script, that she is easily situated, and has 
 "expectations." Your friend, who has a 
 wife that he loves, and that loves him, 
 writes back kindly "hoping you may be 
 happy;" and hoping so yourself, you 
 light your cigar, one of your last bachelor 
 cigars, with the margin of his letter. 
 
 The match goes off with a brilliant mar- 
 riage; at which you receive a very elegant 
 welcome from your wife's spinster cousins, 
 and drink a great deal of champagne with 
 her bachelor uncles. And as you take the 
 dainty hand of your bride, very magnifi- 
 cent under that bridal wreath, and with her 
 face lit up by a brilliant 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
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 141 
 
 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 ac- 
 cident of marriage. 
 
 Ah thought I, brushing off the ashes 
 again, bridal pictures are not home pic- 
 tures ; 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 house- 
 keepers, 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 wo- 
 man. Even the old ladies who come for 
 occasional charities, think Madame a pat- 
 tern of a lady ; and so think her old ad- 
 mirers, whom she receives still with an 
 easy grace, that half puzzles you. And as 
 you stand by the ball room door, at two of 
 the morning, with your Charlotte's shawl 
 upon your arm, some little panting fellow 
 will confirm the general opinion, by telling 
 you that Madame is a magnificent dancer ;
 
 14* REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 and Monsieur le Comte, will praise extrava- 
 gantly her French. You are grateful for 
 all this ; but you have an uncommonly ser- 
 ious way of expressing your gratitude. 
 
 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 de- 
 range 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, especial- 
 ly when you have some spruce young fel- 
 lows at your table. 
 
 You catch sight of occasional notes per- 
 haps, whose superscription you do not 
 know ; and some of her admirers' attentions 
 become so pointed, and constant, that your 
 pride is stirred. It would be silly to show 
 jealousy ; but you suggest to your " dear" 
 as you sip your tea, the slight impro- 
 priety of her action. 
 
 Perhaps you fondly long for some little 
 scene, as a proof of wounded confidence ;
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MA TCH. 143 
 
 but no nothing of that ; she trusts, (call- 
 ing 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 sym- 
 pathies that was to steal from life its bit- 
 terness ; and spread over care and suffer- 
 ing, the sweet, ministering hand of kind- 
 ness, and of love ? Aye, you may well wan- 
 der back to your bachelor club, and make 
 the hours long_at the journals, or at play 
 
 killing 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 mus- 
 ings, may break forth sudden, and heavy. 
 Go on counterfeiting your life, as you have 
 began. 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 in his respite 
 from your well-ordered nursery, and the 
 tasks of his teachers alone ; and to 
 spend upon him a little of that depth of
 
 S44 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 nauseous,) 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 disconso- 
 late 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 delight; in contrast with 
 the old dreams, that a pleasant summer's
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MA TCH. 145 
 
 journey has called up, your parlor as you 
 enter it so elegant, so still so modish 
 seems the charnel-house of your heart. 
 
 By and by, you fall into weary days of sick- 
 ness ; 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 soft land- 
 scape 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 adjusting 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 happi- 
 ness, from his earnest look, as he gazes 
 strangely upon your pale and shrunken fore- 
 head. Your smile even, ghastly with long 
 suffering, disturbs him ; there is no inter- 
 preter, save the heart, between you. 
 
 Your parched lips feel strangely, to his
 
 .46 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 flushed, healthful face ; and he steps about 
 on tip-toe, at a motion from the nurse, to 
 look at all those rosy-colored medicines 
 upon the table, and he takes your cane 
 from the corner, and passes his hand over 
 the smooth ivory head ; and he runs his 
 eve 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 much as they can of that figure 
 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 con- 
 fused, 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
 
 LIGHTED WITH A MATCH. 147 
 
 you, and move your lips, as if you would 
 speak to him ; and they place his head near 
 you, so that you feel his fine hair brush- 
 ing your cheek. 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? 
 
 You strain your vision, and a feeble smile 
 flits over 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 wnich 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, " may 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, "Yes 
 Isaac," and having scratched the back of 
 her head, with the disengaged needle, re- 
 sumed her knitting,
 
 FOURTH REVERIE 
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND 
 EVENING.
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND 
 EVENING. 
 
 IT 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 my 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 proprie- 
 torship ; for seventy years, the Lares of 
 our country home, often neglected, almost 
 forgotten, yet brightened from time to 
 time, by gleams of heart -worship, had held 
 their place in the sweet valley of Elm- 
 grove. 
 
 And in this changeful, bustling, Ameri- 
 can life of ours, seventy years is no child's 
 holiday. The hurry of action, and prog-
 
 152 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 ress, may pass over it with quick step; 
 but the foot-prints 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 to make a river for English land- 
 scape, 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 arms, 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 pant- 
 ing workers, or for the herds of August. 
 
 Westward of the stream, where I am 
 lying, the banks roll up swiftly into slop- 
 ing 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
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. 153 
 
 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, in a wide swamp wood, which in the 
 autumn time is covered with a scarlet sheet, 
 blotched here and there by the dark crim- 
 son 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 tangled 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 dips its lower boughs in the insidious 
 current ; and of clumps of alders, and wil- 
 low tufts, above which even now, the
 
 154 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 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 dis- 
 tance 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 the stream, a lane 
 branches across the meadows, to the man* 
 sion with the tall chimneys. I can just re- 
 member now, the stout, broad-shouldered 
 old gentleman, with his white hat, his long 
 white hair, and his white headed cane, who 
 built the house, and who farmed the whole 
 valley around me. He is gone, long since; 
 and lies in a grave 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 
 phalanx 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 wind- 
 ings upon the hill-side, it would bring me 
 shortly upon the old home of my grand- 
 father; there is no pleasure in wandering 
 there now. The woods that sheltered it
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. 155 
 
 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 grandfather 
 
 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 special 
 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 doors 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 afield, 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 forlorn !
 
 156 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 This bye-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 hillock near by. Half a cen- 
 tury 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 grand- 
 father used to loiter here with his gun, 
 while his hounds lay around under the 
 scattered oaks. Now he sleeps, as I said, 
 in the little grave-yard yonder, where I can 
 see one or two white tablets glimmering 
 through the foliage. I never knew him ; 
 he died, as the brown stone table says, 
 aged twenty-six. Yesterday I climbed the 
 wall that skirts the yard, and plucked a 
 flower from his tomb. I 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 my grandfather's 
 tomb : 1850.'
 
 MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. 157 
 
 But other feet have trod upon this knoli 
 far more dear 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 foreheads. 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, be- 
 tween 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 oaks these loved oaks of a once 
 cherished home. Last night, I slept in 
 yonder mansion, under the elms. The 
 cattle going to the pasture are drinking in 
 the pool by the bridge ; the boy who drives 
 them, is making his shrill halloo echo 
 against the hills. The sun has risen fairly
 
 i 5 8 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 oVer the eastern heights, and shines 
 brightly upon the meadow land, and bright- 
 ly upon a bend of the brook below me. 
 The birds, the blue-birds sweetest and 
 noisiest of all, are singing over me in 
 the branches. A wood-pecker is hammer- 
 ing at a dry limb aloft ; and 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 actuali- 
 ties, 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 
 Past ! 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 atmosphere 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 the 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. 
 
 T S ABEL 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, a dimple of the sunlight plays 
 upon the pool, where I am fishing. 
 
 Her eye is hazel, and bright ; and now 
 (i59)
 
 160 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 in 
 her little ringers one of the dead fish, and 
 threatens to throw it back upon the stream. 
 Her little feet Jiang over 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 frightening away the fishes. 
 "Bella," I say, "what if you should 
 tumble in the river ? " 
 "But I won't." 
 
 " Yes, but if you should ? " .'> ., 
 " Why then you would pull me out." 
 " But if I wouldn't pull you out ? " 
 " But I know you would ; wouldn't 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 you 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 now he is fairly hooked,
 
 THE MORNING. 161 
 
 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 has dragged it away on 
 the other side of me ; and as 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 sup- 
 port 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 fields hear me, and come down. One 
 takes Isabel in his arms, and I follow on 
 foot to our uncle's home upon the hill.
 
 I6a REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 " Oh my children !" says my mother; 
 and she takes Isabel in her arms ; and pres- 
 ently with dry clothes, and blazing wood- 
 fire, little Bella smiles again. I am at my 
 mother's knee. 
 
 "I told you so, Paul," say Isabel, "aunty, 
 doesn't Paul love me ?" 
 
 "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 vigor of a boy's heart ! 
 how the memory of it refreshes like the 
 first gush of spring, or the break of an 
 April shower ! 
 
 But boyhood has its PRIDE, as well as its 
 LOVES. 
 
 My uncle is a tall, hard-faced man :, I fear 
 him when he calls me "child " ; I love 
 him when he calls me "Paul." He is al- 
 most 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
 
 THE MORNING. 163 
 
 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 great, mother I " But she is looking in 
 your face, and not at your prize. 
 
 " Take them, mother," and you lay the 
 basket upon her lap. 
 
 " Thank you, Paul, I do not wish them : 
 but you must give some to Bella." 
 
 And away you go to find laughing, play- 
 ful, cousin Isabel. And we sit down to- 
 gether on the grass, and I pour out my 
 stores between us. " You shall take, Bella, 
 what 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 forbids 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 ?"
 
 (64 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 " Why Paul, he is a man, and doesn'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 will 
 overtake it like an opening Korah gulf, in 
 the years that are to come. It is joyous, 
 full, and running over ! 
 
 " You may go," she says, "if your uncle 
 is willing." 
 
 " But mamma, I am afraid to ask him ; 
 I do not believe he loves me." 
 
 " Don't say so, Paul," 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 qld 
 wainscotted 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 ;
 
 THE MORNING. 165 
 
 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: you can have the pony, and 
 Tray, and play at home." 
 
 "But, uncle " 
 
 "You need say no more, my child." 
 
 I pinch the hand of little Isabel, and 
 look in her eye, my own half filling with 
 tears. I feel that my forehead is flushed, 
 and I hide it behind Bella's tresses, whis- 
 pering to her at the same time "let us 
 
 g-" 
 
 "What, sir," says my uncle, mistaking 
 my meaning "do you persuade her to 
 disobey?" 
 
 Now I am angry, and say blindly "no, 
 sir, I didn'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 can- 
 not always find such covert ! There will be
 
 1 66 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 times when it will harrass you strangely ; 
 when it will peril friendships, will sever 
 old, standing intimacy; and then no re- 
 source, 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 of 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 as well as you. He is a noble 
 old fellow, with shaggy hair, and long ears, 
 and big paws, that he will put up into your 
 hand, if you ask him. And he never gets 
 angry when you play with him, and tumble 
 him over in the long grass, and pull his 
 silken ears. Sometimes, to be sure, he 
 will open his mouth, as if he would bite, 
 but when he gets your hand fairly in his 
 jaws, he will scarce 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 he can- 
 not find it. 
 
 He will carry a heaping basket full of 
 nuts too in his mouth, and never spill one 
 of them ; and when you come out to your
 
 THE MORNING- 16? 
 
 ancle's home in the spring, after staying 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 wouldn'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 did ; and so does nurse ; 
 and so does Bella ; for in the spring, she 
 had a pet lamb, and Tray never worried lit- 
 tle Fidele. 
 
 And one or two of the dogs that belong 
 to the neighbors are shot ; though nobody 
 knows who shot them ; and you have great 
 fears about poor Tray ; and try to keep him 
 at home, and fondle him more than ever. 
 But Tray will sometimes wander off; till 
 finally, one afternoon, he comes back whin- 
 ing piteously, and with his shoulder all 
 bloody. 
 
 Little Bella cries loud ; and you almost 
 cry, as nurse dresses the wound ; and poor 
 old Tray whines very sadly. You pat his
 
 168 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 head, and Bella pats him ; and you sit 
 down 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 dead ! 
 
 You take his head upon your knees, and 
 pat again those glossy ears, and cry ; but 
 you cannot bring him to life. And Bella 
 conies, 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 digs a grave under 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's 
 grave.
 
 THE MORNING, 169 
 
 You and Bella together, put up a little 
 slab for a tombstone ; and she hangs flowers 
 upon it, and ties them there with a bit of 
 ribbon. You can scarce play 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 ; besides, 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 leaves, to make great 
 bonfires, with Ben, and the rest of the 
 boys, I should have liked to listen, and 
 would have braved the dismal morning with 
 the cheerfullest of them all. For it would 
 have been a capital time to light a fire in
 
 170 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 rus- 
 sets 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 be- 
 fore ; 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 dis- 
 mally ; 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 sta- 
 ble 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 come. The 
 yellow muskmelons showed plain among 
 the frost-bitten vines, and looked cold, and 
 uncomfortable.
 
 THE MORNING, IJI 
 
 Then they were all so kind, in-doors! 
 
 The cook 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 jack- 
 knife, 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 
 Ben 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 
 face; but she did not say a word. I 
 thought it was very odd; and yet it did 
 not seem odd to me, that I could say noth- 
 ing to her. I daresay 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 white 
 horses, and band-boxes 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
 
 I7 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 came to the door, and said I should have a 
 capital time ; but somehow, I doubted if 
 the nurse was talking honestly. I believe 
 she gave me an honest kiss though, and 
 such a hug ! 
 
 But it was nothing to my mother's. 
 ,',Tom told me to be 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 didn't, at first. But I re- 
 member, 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 floating behind her, as the wind 
 freshened, I felt my heart leaping into my 
 throat, and the water coming into my eyes, 
 and how just then, I caught sight of the 
 tall boy glancing 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 handker- 
 chief outside 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
 
 THE MORNING. 173 
 
 brightens into noon-day ; 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 home-ties that make a web 
 of infinite fineness and soft silken meshes 
 around his heart, and toss him aloof into 
 the boy- world, where he must struggle up 
 amid bickerings and quarrels, into his age 
 of youth ! There are boys indeed with lit- 
 tle 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 life, 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 adieux 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
 
 174 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 you will ; talk as you will of the fearless 
 ness, and strength of the boy's heart, yet 
 there belong to many, tenderly strung 
 chords of affection which give forth low, 
 and gentle music, that consoles, 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 delicate; and 
 if delicate, in God's name, do not, as you 
 value your peace and his, breed a harsh 
 youth spirit in 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 I thought I would like to go up. 
 The schoolmaster, they told me at home, 
 was kind ; he said he hoped I would 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 rib- 
 bons in her cap, and who shook my hand, 
 but so stiffly, that I didn't dare to look up 
 in her face. 
 
 One boy took me down to see the school
 
 THE MORNING. . 175 
 
 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 wore a queer roundabout jacket with 
 big bell buttons ; and he called the school- 
 master " Old Crikey " and kept me 
 awake half the night, telling me how he 
 whipped the scholars, and how they played 
 tricks upon him. I thought my chum was 
 a very uncommon boy. 
 
 For a day or two, the lessons were easy, 
 and it was sport to play with so many "fel- 
 lows." But soon I began 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 I could 
 step in, and tell Isabel how bravely I had 
 got my lessons. When I told my 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 vil- 
 lage store, and club our funds together, to
 
 176 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 make great pitchers of lemonade. Some 
 boys would have money besides ; though 
 it was against the rules ; and one, I recol- 
 lect, showed us a five dollar bill in his wal- 
 let 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 pulpit ; but after- 
 ward, 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 country women, who wore 
 stiff bonnets, and eat fennel, and sung with 
 the choir. But there was a little black- 
 eyed girl, who sat over behind the choir, 
 that I thought handsome ; I used to look 
 at her very often; but was careful she 
 should never catch my eye. 
 
 There was another down below, in a cor- 
 ner 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
 
 THE MORNING. 17? 
 
 them on the ice, in skating time. But I 
 didn'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, 1 sobbed 
 bitterly, as I thought of Isabel, and Ben, 
 and my mother, and how much they loved 
 me; and laying 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. It 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 com- 
 ing in to furnish other supply for the soul 
 that is in him. If he cannot 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. 
 
 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
 
 *78 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 champions 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. I cannot but think how jaunty 
 that stout boy looked in that jacket ; and 
 what an Ajax cast there was to his coun- 
 tenance ! It certainly did occur to me, to 
 compare him with William Wallace (Miss 
 Porter's William Wallace) 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 indig- 
 nant remark, and thought 'we should like 
 to see them do it'; and prepared clubs 
 from the wood-shed, after a model sug- 
 gested by a New York boy, who had seen 
 the clubs of the Policemen. 
 
 There was one scholar, poor Leslie, 
 who had friends in some foreign country, 
 and who occasionally received letters bear- 
 ing a foreign post-mark : what an extra- 
 ordinary 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 num- 
 ber four boots, should ever visit those 
 countries spoken of in the geographies,
 
 THE MORNING. 179 
 
 and by 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 for- 
 bidden 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 came ! 
 
 A scholar by the name of Tom Belton, 
 who wore linsey 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 is keeping a 
 grocery store. 
 
 At the close of all the terms we had ex. 
 hibitions,to which all the towns people 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 I 
 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 gentleman who
 
 l8o REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 was said to have got it from some privateer, 
 who was said to have taken it from some 
 great British Admiral, in the old wars : 
 and the way I carried that sword upon the 
 platform, and the way I jerked it out, when 
 it came to my turn to say, " battle ! bat- 
 tle ! then death to the armed, and chains 
 for the defenceless ! " 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 re- 
 called the image 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 school-master by giving him a familiar
 
 THE MORNING. 181 
 
 tap on the shoulder ; and how I would be 
 the admiration, and the wonder of the 
 pretty girl, in the fur-trimmed hat ! Alas, 
 how our thoughts outrun our deeds ! 
 
 For long long years, I saw no more of 
 my old school : and when at length the 
 new view came, great 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 vanishes into the proud stateli- 
 ness of youth. The ambition, and the 
 rivalries of the college life, its first boast- 
 ful importance 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 morn- 
 ing breeze along the meadows; and like 
 that too, bear upon their wing, a chillness 
 as of distant ice-banks. 
 
 Ben has grown almost to manhood : Lilly
 
 r8a REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 head- 
 fends 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 pages of poets, into your own quiet 
 reverie. 
 
 The 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 child- 
 ish 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 awhile to the 
 smooth spars, till 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
 
 THE MORNING. 183 
 
 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 
 evening, after the sun has grown big and 
 sunk under the water line, and the moon 
 risen, white and cold, to glimmer across 
 the tops of the surging ocean, there is 
 nothing but the sea, and the sky, to lead 
 off thought, or to crush it with their great- 
 ness. 
 
 Hour after hour, as I sit in the moon- 
 light upon the taffrail, the great waves 
 gather far back, and break, and gather 
 nearer, and break louder, and gather again, 
 and roll down swift and terrible under the 
 creaking 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 bil- 
 lows 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,
 
 i4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 can- 
 not range, as upon the land, over a thou- 
 sand objects. You are strangely attracted 
 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 
 fullness of a land 'farewell.' And beauty 
 grows upon the ocean ; you cannot cer- 
 tainly say that the face of the fair girl-voy- 
 ager is prettier than that of Isabel ; on, 
 no ! but you are certain that you cast in- 
 nocent, and honest glances upon her, as 
 you steady her walk upon the deck, far 
 of tener than at the 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.
 
 THE MORNING. 185 
 
 She will even linger of an evening- 
 pleading first with the mother, and stand- 
 ing 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 for- 
 gotten poems, tremulously uttered, either 
 by reason of the rolling of the ship, or 
 some accidental touch of that 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 passen- 
 gers are clustered, trembling, below. Every 
 plank shakes ; and the oak ribs groan, as if 
 they suffered with their toil. The hands 
 are all aloft ; the captain is forward shout- 
 ing to the mate in the cross-trees, and I am 
 clinging to one of the stanchions, by the 
 binnacle. The ship is pitching 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. 
 13
 
 j86 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 can- 
 vass ; 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 the 
 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, 
 deadening 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 see any 
 more, the blackness comes, and the thunder, 
 with a crash that half deafens me. I think 
 I hear a low cry, as the mutterings die 
 away in the distance ; and at the next flash 
 of lightning, which comes in an instant, I 
 see upon the top of one of the waves along- 
 side, the poor reefer who has fallen. The 
 lightning glares upon his face.
 
 THE MORNING. 187 
 
 But he has caught at a loose bit of run- 
 ning rigging, as he fell; and I see it slip, 
 ping 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 length away from the vessel. 
 
 ' Hold on, my man ! " shouts the captain. 
 
 " For God's sake, be quick ! " says the 
 
 poor fellow ; and he goes down in a trough 
 
 of the sea. We pull the harder, and the 
 
 captain keeps calling to him to keep up 
 
 courage, and hold strong. But in the hush, 
 
 we can hear him say" I can't hold out 
 
 much longer ; I'm most gone ! " 
 
 Presently we have brought the man 
 where we can lay hold of him, and are only 
 waiting for a good lift of the sea to bring 
 him up, when the poor fellow groans out,
 
 188 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 "It's of no use I can't good bye!" 
 And a wave tosses the end of the rope, 
 clean upon the bulwarks. 
 
 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 cov- 
 eted 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 sailed yachts, looking 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, three-decked 
 Indiamen, of which I had read in story 
 books, drift slowly down with the tide.
 
 THE MORNING. 189 
 
 Dingy steamers, with white pipes, and 
 with red pipes, whiz past us to the sea, 
 and now, my eye rests on the great palace 
 of Greenwich ; I see the wooden-legged 
 pensioners smoking 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, to the old oaks, and 
 to the brooks, and to thy side sweet 
 Isabel !
 
 igo REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 THE FATHER-LAND. 
 
 THERE is a great contrast between the 
 easy deshabille of the ocean life, and the 
 prim attire, and conventional spirit of the 
 land. In the first, there are but few to 
 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 voy- 
 ager of the sea. Her white neglige has 
 given place to silks ; and the simple care- 
 less coiffe of the ocean, is replaced by the 
 rich dressing of a modiste. 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 
 England. 
 
 Abuse her, as we will, pity her starving 
 peasantry, as we may, smile at her court 
 pageantry, as much as we like, old Eng- 
 land, is dear old England still. Her cottage 
 homes, her green fields, her castles, her 
 blazing firesides, her church spires are as
 
 THE MORNING. 191 
 
 old as song ; and by song and story, we 
 inherit them in our hearts. This joyous 
 boast, was, I remember, upon my lip, as I 
 first trode upon the rich meadow of Runny 
 mede ; and recalled that GREAT CHARTER 
 wrested from the king, which made the 
 first stepping stone toward the bounties of 
 our western freedom. 
 
 It is a strange feeling that comes over 
 the Western Saxon, as he strolls first along 
 the green bye-lanes of England, and scents 
 the hawthorn in its April bloom, and lin- 
 gers 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 clinck of the smith's 
 hammer, or the hedgeman's bill-hook, or 
 the ploughman's ' ho-tup ! ' from the hills.
 
 I 9 2 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 At evening, listening to the nightingale, 1 
 stroll wearily into some close-nestled vil- 
 lage, that I had seen long ago from a roll- 
 ing height. It is far away from the great 
 lines of travel; and the children stop 
 their play to have a look at me, and 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 pictured 
 upon the swinging sign-board at the corner. 
 The hostess is half ready to embrace me, 
 and treats me like 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 set- 
 ting it temptingly 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.
 
 THE MORNING. 193 
 
 I muse for an hour before the glowing 
 fire, as quiet as the cat that has come in, 
 to bear me company ; and at bed-time, I 
 find sheets, as fresh as the air of the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 At another time, and many months 
 later, I am walking under a wood of Scot- 
 tish firs. It is near night-fall, 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 Edin- 
 burgh and Castle Stirling, and sweet Perth, 
 in its silver valley, are far to the south- 
 ward. The larchs of Athol and Bruar 
 Water, and that highland gem Dunkeld, 
 are passed. I am tired with a morning's 
 tramp over Culloden Moor ; and from the 
 edge of the wood, there stretches before 
 me in the cool gray twilight, broad fields 
 of heather. In the middle, there rise 
 against the night-sky, the turrets of a cas- 
 tle; it is Castle Cawdor, where King Dun- 
 can was murdered by Macbeth. 
 
 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 uncropped branches, and its
 
 194 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 dried berries over the heavy portal. I cross 
 the moat, and my step makes the chains 
 of the draw-bridge 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, as they sighed that 
 night of murder. I fancy it must be a 
 fancy, that I hear an owl scream ; I am 
 sure that I hear the crickets cry. 
 
 I sit down upon the green bank of the 
 moat ; a little dark water lies in the bot- 
 tom. 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 away time, when I 
 Stole the first reading of the tragic story. 
 
 " Did'st 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
 
 THE MORNING. 
 
 195 
 
 'hark!' And at dead of night, in the 
 
 thatched cottage under the castle walls, 
 where a dark faced, Gaelic woman, in plaid 
 turban, is my hostess, I wake, startled by 
 the wind, and my trembling lips say in- 
 voluntarily ' 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 sum- 
 mer, like skeins of silk. A bland old far- 
 mer, 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, straight-forward talk about the im- 
 provements 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 landscape. At the parish 
 church, I doze against the high pew backs, 
 as I listen to the see-saw tones of the 
 drawling curate; and in my half wakeful 
 moments, the withered holly sprigs (not 
 removed since Easter) grow upon my vision, 
 into Christmas boughs, and preach ser- 
 mons to me of the days of old.
 
 196 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Sometimes, I wander far over the hills 
 into a neighboring 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 mi., with their daring leaps, utterly 
 careless of my presence, and the pheasants 
 whir away from my very feet. 
 
 On one of these random strolls I re- 
 member 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 the} 
 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 gen- 
 tleman mounted upon a spirited hunter, at- 
 tended by a boy of some dozen years, who 
 managed his pony with a grace, that is a 
 part of the English boy's education. Then 
 followed two older lads, and a travelling 
 phaeton; in which sat a couple of elderly
 
 THE MORNING. 197 
 
 Jadies. But what most drew 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 at- 
 titude, 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 I 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 com- 
 panion 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 of the car- 
 riage was her mother ; and one of the lads, 
 the school-boy brother, who had teased her 
 on the sea. 
 
 I recal now perfectly, her frank manner, 
 as she ungloved her hand to bid me wel- 
 come. I strolled beside them to the steps. 
 Old Devon had suddenly renewed its beau- 
 ties for me. I. had much to tell her, of the 
 little out-lying nooks, which my wayward 
 feet had led me to : and she as much to ask. 
 My stay with the bland old farmer length- 
 ened ; and two days hospitalities at the Park 
 ran over into three, and four. There was
 
 198 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 hard galloping down those avenues ; and 
 new strolls, not at all lonely, under the stur- 
 dy oaks. The long summer twilight of 
 England used to find a very happy fellow 
 lingering on the garden terrace, looking, 
 now at the rookery, where the belated birds 
 quarreled for a resting 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 Charing 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 ! "
 
 THE MORNING. 
 
 199 
 
 I liked her for it ; I would have given a 
 guinea for it : and that night, whether it 
 was^the old woman's benediction, or the 
 waving scarf upon the terrace, I do not 
 know ; but there was a charm upon my 
 thought, and my hope, as if an ?ngel had 
 been near me. 
 
 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 R 
 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 drown- 
 ing : I longed to tell her, as I did then I 
 do love you. But she turned her tearful 
 face upon me, I dreamed ; and then, I saw 
 no more. 
 
 A ROMAN GIRL. 
 
 I REMEMBER the very words" nonpar^ 
 Francese, Signore,\ do not speak French, 
 bignor "said the stout lady, "but my 
 daughter, perhaps, will understand you " 
 
 And she called " Enrica /Enrica! ve< 
 mte, subito ! c'2 unforestiere"
 
 200 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 And the daughter came, her light brown 
 hair falling carelessly over her shoulders, 
 her rich hazel eye twinkling and full of life, 
 the colour 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 the other 
 gently, upon the arm of her mother, and 
 asked in that sweet music of the south 
 " cosa volete, mamma?" 
 
 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 beauties, 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 
 ihey 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
 
 THE MORNING. 201 
 
 me ; and then the door would open, and 
 along the corridor, under the daughter's 
 guidance, (until I had learned the way,) I 
 passed to my Roman home. I was a long 
 time learning the way. 
 
 My chamber looked out upon the Corso, 
 and I could catch from it a glimpse of the 
 top of the tall column of Antoninus, and of 
 a fragment of the palace of the Governor. 
 My parlor, which was separated from the 
 apartments of the family by a narrow cor- 
 ridor, looked upon a small court; hung 
 around with balconies. From the upper 
 one, a couple of black-eyed girls are oc- 
 casionally 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 Roman 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 
 may be looking out. 
 
 Night after night, a bright blaze glows 
 upon my hearth, of the alder faggots which 
 they bring from the Albanian hills. Night 
 after night too, the family come in, to aid 
 my blundering speech, and to enjoy the 
 rich sparkling of my faggot fire. Little 
 Cesare, a dark-faced Italian boy, takes up 
 his position with pencil and slate, and
 
 S02 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 draws by the light of the blaze genii and 
 castles. The old one-eyed teacher of En- 
 rica, lays his snuff box 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 a heavy 
 watch seal, and reads Dante with furore. 
 The mother, with arms akimbo, looks 
 proudly upon her daughter, and counts her, 
 as well she may, a gem among the Roman 
 beauties. 
 
 The table was round, with the fire blaz- 
 ing on one side ; there was scarce room for 
 but three upon the other. Signer ilmaestro 
 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 far oftener 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
 
 THE MORNING. 2QJ 
 
 Frenchman, 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 convent, upon the skirts of 
 Rome. She knew nothing of life, but the 
 life of feeling ; and all thoughts of happi- 
 ness, lay as yet in her childish hopes. It 
 was pleasant to look upon her face ; and it 
 was still more pleasant to listen to that 
 sweet Roman voice. What a rich flow of 
 superlatives, and endearing diminutives, 
 from those vermillion lips! Who would 
 not have loved the study, and who would 
 not have loved without meaning it the 
 teacher ? 
 
 In those clays, I did not linger long at 
 the tables of lame Pietro in the Via Con- 
 dotti ; but would hurry back to my little 
 
 Roman parlor the fire was so pleasant ! 
 
 And it was so pleasant to greet Enrica with 
 her mother, even before the one-eyed maes- 
 tro had come in ; and it was pleasant to 
 unfold the book between us, and to lay 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 put- 
 ting them down upon the other. And
 
 so4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 bon-bons, she 
 would shake at me threateningly; and laugh 
 a musical 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 would 
 bear home to the Roman parlor, my best 
 trophy of the day, as a guerdon for Enrica; 
 and Enrica would be sure to render in ac- 
 knowledgment, some carefully hidden flow- 
 ers, 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
 
 THE MORNING. 205 
 
 laced crimson jacket, and the strange head 
 gear with its trinkets, and the short skirts 
 leaving to view as delicate 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 bod- 
 dice, and with a Swiss hat caught up by 
 a looplet of silver, and adorned with a 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 about 
 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 win- 
 ter long : and each morning, I find upon 
 my table a fresh rose bud ; each night, 1 
 bear back for thank-offering, the prettiest 
 bouquet that can be found in the Via Con- 
 dotti. The quiet fire-side evenings come- 
 back ; in which my hand seeks its wonted 
 place upon her book ; and my other, will 
 creep around upon the back of Enrica's 
 chair, and Enrica will look indignant, 
 and then all forgiveness.
 
 ao6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 One day I received a large pacquet of 
 letters : ah, what luxury to lie back in my 
 big arm-chair, there before the crackling 
 faggots, with the pleasant rustle of that 
 silken dress beside me, and run over a sec- 
 ond, and a third time, those mute paper 
 missives, which bore to me over so many 
 miles of water, the words of greeting, 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 mio." 
 
 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!" 
 
 " // vostro fratello, dunque ? " 
 
 "Nemmeno" said I "not from a bro- 
 ther either." 
 
 She handed me the letter, and took up 
 her book ; and presently she laid the book 
 down again ; and looked at the letter, and 
 then at me ; and went out.
 
 THE MORNING. xf 
 
 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 ha4 written my let- 
 ter?" 
 
 "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 Cor- 
 inth: we were sitting one 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. 
 
 " I think she is beginning to love you," 
 Said he, soberly.
 
 jo8 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 " 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 still a woman ; you are lov- 
 ing 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 Appe- 
 nines ; 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 : "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
 
 THE MORNING. 205 
 
 your time of life, the one to cherish always 
 those passionate sympathies which are 
 bred by this atmosphere, and their scenes." 
 
 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 shoulde- s,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. Ce- 
 sare said it would be hard walking. En- 
 rica asked papa, if there would be any 
 danger ? And again the old man shrug. 
 
 fed his shoulders. Again I asked him, if 
 e knew a man who would serve us as 
 guide among the Appenines ; and finding 
 me determined, he shrugged his shoulders, 
 and said he would find one the next day
 
 2io REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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- 
 pered "ah, mi displace tanto tanto, 
 
 Signer!" 
 
 THE APPENINES. 
 
 I SHOOK her hand, and in an hour after- 
 ward svas 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 Apperiines. Be- 
 hind us, the vesper bells of Tivoli were 
 sounding, and their echoes floating sweetly 
 under the broken arches ; before us, stretch- 
 ing 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 be- 
 hind us. Rocks and stones, huge and 
 ragged, lie strewed over the surface right
 
 THE MORNING, 
 
 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 live- 
 lihood ; as if the brimstone fire that con- 
 sumed Nineveh, had withered their ener- 
 gies. Sometimes, our eyes rest on a great 
 white scar of the broken calcareous rock, 
 on which the moss cannot grow, and the 
 lizards dare not creep. Then we see a 
 cliff beetling far aloft, with the shining 
 walls of some monastery of holy men glis- 
 tening at its base. The wayside brooks do 
 not seem to be the gentle offspring of bount- 
 iful hills, but the remnants 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 mountain 
 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 sweet pastoral pipes of the 
 Appenines. We see the shepherds in their 
 rough skin coats, high over our heads.
 
 aa REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Their herds are feeding, as it seems, on 
 ledges of a hand's breadth. The sweet 
 sound floats and lingers in the soft atmos- 
 phere, 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 togeth- 
 er. And as we wander on, through the 
 stunted vineyards in the bottom of the val- 
 ley, 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 the heavy arches 
 of the mountain churches. Shuffling old 
 women grope in and out ; dim lamps glim- 
 mer faintly at the side altars, shedding hor- 
 rid 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 
 foot, and ragged boys move stealthily under 
 the shadows of the columns. Presently 
 comes 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,
 
 THE MORNING. 213 
 
 fa 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 our tread : across the valley, 
 it is like summer ; and the birds for there 
 are songsters in the Appenines, make 
 summer music. Their notes blend softly 
 with the faint sounds of some far off con- 
 vent belli tolling for morning mass, and 
 strike the frosted and shaded mountain 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 lit- 
 tle black dots twining along the white 
 fitreak of foot-way upon the mountain above 
 us. We lost them as we began to ascend, 
 until a wild snatch of an Appenine song 
 turned our eyes up, and there, straggling 
 through the brush, they appeared again ; 
 afoot^slip would have brought the mules 
 and wine casks rolling upon us. We keep 
 still, holding by the brushwood, 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
 
 2i4 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 smoking on them in the bare valleys ; the 
 sun is hot and smoking on the hill-side, 
 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 moun- 
 tains, 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 I think, that here under the an< 
 cestral wood, still a wishful and blunder- 
 ing mortal, I should be gathering up the 
 shreds, that memory can catch of our Ap- 
 penine wandering, and be weaving them 
 into my bachelor dreams. 
 
 Away again upon the quick wing of 
 thought, I follow our steps, as after weeks 
 of wandering, we gained once more a 
 height that overlooked the Campagna 
 and saw the sun setting on its edge, throw- 
 ing into relief the dome of St. Peter's, and
 
 THE MORNING. 215 
 
 blazing in a red stripe upon the waters of 
 the Tiber. 
 
 Below us was Palestrina the Praneste 
 of the poets and philosophers ; the dwell- 
 ing place of I know not how many Em- 
 perors. We went straggling through the 
 dirty streets, searching for some tidy-look- 
 ing osteria. At length, we found an old 
 iady, who could give us a bed, but no din- 
 ner. 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 Pales- 
 trina not furnish a dinner to a tired traveller? 
 "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 faces; espe- 
 cially the little girl of twelve years, who 
 came close by me as I ate, and afterward 
 strung a garland of marigolds, and put it 
 on my head. Then there was a bright- 
 eyed boy of fourteen, who wrote his name, 
 and those of the whole family, upon a fly 
 leaf of my book : and a pretty, saucy-look- 
 ing girl of sixteen, who peeped a long time 
 from behind the kitchen door, but before
 
 i6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 the evening was gone, she was in the chah 
 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 old camp-ground of 
 Pyrrhus ; beyond it, were the mountains, , 
 which hide Frascati, and Monte-Cavl 
 There was old Colonna too, that 
 
 Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest 
 Of purple Appenine. 
 
 As the mist lifted, and the sun bright- 
 ened the plain, I could see the road, along 
 which Sylla came fuming and maddened 
 after the Mithridaten war. I could see, as 
 I half dreamed and half-slept, the fright- 
 ened peasantry whooping to their long- 
 horned cattle, as they drove them on tumul- 
 tuously up through the gateways of the 
 town ; and women with babies in their 
 arms, and children scowling with fear and 
 hate all trooping fast and madly, to 
 escape the hand of the Avenger ; alas ! 
 ineffectually, for Sylla murdered them, and 
 pulled down the walls of their town the 
 proud Palestrina! 
 
 I had a queer fancy of seeing the nobles 
 of Rome, led on by Stefano Colonna, group- 
 ing along the plain, their corslets flashing
 
 THE MORNING. arj 
 
 out of the mists, their pennants dashing 
 above it, coming up fast, and still as the 
 wind, to make the Mural Praeneste, their 
 stronghold against the Last of the Trib- 
 unes. And strangely mingling fiction with 
 fact, I saw the brother of Walter de Mont 
 real, with his noisy and bristling army $ 
 crowd over the Campagna, and put up his 
 white tents, and hang out his showy ban- 
 ners, on the grassy knolls that lay nearest 
 my eye. 
 
 But the knolls were all quiet ; there 
 
 was not so much as a strolling coniadino 
 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 wonderful 
 silence of the scene, or some wild gush of 
 memory, I do not know, but something 
 made me sad. 
 
 " Perche cosi pens eras o ? 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 mat, " 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.
 
 9l8 REVERIES OP" A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 j go back, and we will make 
 you gay again ! ' 
 
 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 on over the roll- 
 ing 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 Capitoline, 
 or the Janiculan hill ! The ivy was cover- 
 ing up richly the Etruscan foundations, 
 and there was a quiet 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 An- 
 cona ? "
 
 THE MORNING. 219 
 
 " 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 St. Peter's, and I for the 
 
 tall house upon the Corso. 
 
 ENRICA. 
 
 I HEAR her glancing feet, the moment I 
 have tinkled the bell; and there she is, 
 with her brown hair gathered into braids, 
 and her eyes full of joy, and greeting. 
 And as I walk with the mother to the win- 
 dow to look at some pageant that is pass- 
 ing, 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 
 ftew, and deep bitterness. 
 
 Now, the first torch-light under us shines
 
 MO REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 plainly on faces in the windows, and on 
 the kneeling women in the street. First, 
 come old retainers of the dead one, bearing 
 long blazing flambeaux. Then comes a 
 company of priests, two by two, bare- 
 headed, and every second one with a light- 
 ed 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 the 
 chant, and pass slowly on. 
 
 Then comes a company of priests, in 
 white muslin capes, and black robes, and 
 black caps, bearing books in their hands, 
 wide open, and lit up plainly by the torches 
 of churchly senators, who march beside 
 them ; and from the books, the priests 
 chant loud and solemnly. Now the music 
 is loudest ; and the friars take up the dis- 
 mal notes from the white-capped 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. 
 
 " Vedc vcdc !" 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, hab- 
 ited like a priest. Heavy plumes of black 
 wave at each corner.
 
 THE MORNING. 22: 
 
 " Hist ! " says my landlady. 
 
 The body is just under us. Enrica cross- 
 es herself ; her smile is for the moment 
 gone. Cesare's boy-face is grown sudden- 
 ly 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 looking 
 on him ; but his face careless of them all, 
 was turned up, straight toward the stars. 
 
 Still the chant rises ; and companies of 
 priests follow the bier, like those who had 
 gone before. Friars, in 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 foot-falls, 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 door- 
 ways scatter. But their low voices do not 
 drown the voices of the host of mourners, 
 and their ghost-like music.
 
 832 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I look long upon the blazing bier, trail- 
 ing under the deep shadows of the Roman 
 palaces, and at the stream of torches, wind- 
 ing like a glittering, scaled serpent. It 
 
 is a priest say I to my landlady, as she 
 closes the window. 
 
 " No, signor, a young man never mar- 
 ried, 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 night, 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 Italian girl 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 Enrica 
 looked more sweetly than in that black 
 dress, under that long, dark veil of the 
 days of Lent. Upon the broad pavement 
 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 
 earnestly, and her whole figure tremulous 
 with deep emotion. Wandering around
 
 THE MORNING. 223 
 
 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 night-fall, 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. Thetwelve candle-sticks 
 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 kneel down. She 
 kneels beside me : and the sweet, mournful 
 flow of the Miserere begins again, grow- 
 ing 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 so 
 tremulous, and so real, that the heart aches, 
 and the tears 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
 
 24 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 looked for silence, three voices more begin 
 the lament sweet, touching, mournful 
 voices, and bear it up to a full cry, when 
 the wnole 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 faltering, 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 were low. Enrica said nothing 
 1 could say nothing. 
 
 I was to leave Rome after Easter ; I did 
 not love to speak 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 fring- 
 ing snrubs of the coliseum, flaunting their 
 blossoms at the tall beggar-men m 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, can- 
 not easily be left behind. And Enrica with 
 her silver brown hair, and the silken fillet 
 that bound it, and her deep hazel eyes,
 
 THE MORNING. 225 
 
 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. Peter's lighted from top to bottom. 
 With Enrica I saw it from the Ripetta, 
 as it loomed up in the distance, 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 morn- 
 ing on which I was to go away. I do not 
 think I slept very well myself nor very- 
 late. Never did Enrica look more beauti- 
 ful never. All her Carnival robes, and 
 the sad drapery of the FRIDAY OF CRUCI- 
 FIXION could not, so adorn her beauty as 
 that neat morning dress, and that simple 
 rosebud she wore upon her bosom. She 
 gave it to me the last with a trembling 
 hand. I did not, for I could not, thank her. 
 She knew it ; and her 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
 
 226 RE VERIES OF A BA CHEL OR. 
 
 looked back at the balcony, where she stood 
 in the time of Carnival, in the brown 
 Sombrero, with the white plume. I knew 
 she would be there now ; and 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 ; but 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 if I had espied then 
 some returning carriage going down toward 
 Rome, I will not say but that I should 
 have hailed it, and taken a place, and 
 gone back, and to this day, perhaps have 
 lived at Rome.
 
 THE MORNING. 227 
 
 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 beau- 
 tiful ? 
 
 The visions of the Past fade. The 
 morning breeze has died upon the meadow ; 
 the Bob-o'-Lincoln sits swaying on the 
 willow tufts 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.
 
 II. 
 
 NOON. 
 
 T^HE Noon is short; the sun never 
 
 1 loiters on the 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 thousands 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 vegeta- 
 ble life, that in the morning was dead. It 
 is hot and scorching : I feel it now upon 
 (228)
 
 NOON. 229 
 
 my head : but it does not scorch and heat 
 like the bewildering Present. There are 
 no oak leaves to interrupt the rays of the 
 burning NOW. Its shadows do not fall 
 east or west ; like the noon, the shade it 
 makes, falls straight from sky 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 tro- 
 phies, and lined with tombs : the other has 
 no shrine but Duty, and it walks the earth 
 like a spirit ! 
 
 1 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 gnaw- 
 ing at the bone that I have thrown to him, 
 and I stroll dreamily 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
 
 230 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 meadow in noiseless waves, and the beech 
 leaves do not stir. 
 
 Thought, I said, was the only measure of 
 the Present : and the stillness of noon 
 breeds thought : and my thought brings up 
 the old companions, and stations them in 
 the domain of NOW. Thought ranges over 
 the world, and brings up hopes, and fears, 
 and resolves, to measure the burning NOW. 
 Joy, and grief, and purpose, blending in 
 my thought, give breadth to the Present. 
 
 Where thought I is little Isabel 
 now ? Where is Lilly where is Ben ? 
 Where is Leslie, where is my old teacher ? 
 Where is my chum, who played such rare 
 tricks where is the black-eyed Jane ? 
 Where is that sweet -faced girl whom I 
 parted with upon that terrace, looking 
 down upon the old spire of Modbury 
 church ? Where are my hopes where my 
 purposes where my sorrows ? 
 
 I care not who you are but if you bring 
 such thought to measure the Present, the 
 present will seem broad ; and it will be sul- 
 try as noon and make a fever of Now. 
 
 EARLY FRIENDS. 
 
 WHERE are they ? 
 
 I cannot sit now, as once, upon the edge
 
 NOON. 231 
 
 of the brook, hour after hour, flinging off 
 my line and hook to the nibbling roach, 
 and reckon it great sport. There is no girl 
 with auburn ringlets to sit beside me, and 
 to play upon the bank. The hours are 
 shorter than they were then ; and the little 
 joys that furnished boyhood till the heart 
 was full, can fill it no longer. Poor Tray is 
 dead, long ago ; and he cannot swim into 
 the pools for the floating sticks ; nor can I 
 sport with him hour after hour, and think 
 it happiness. The mound that covers his 
 grave is sunken ; and the trees that shad- 
 ed it, are broken and mossy. 
 
 Little Lilly is grown into a woman, and 
 is married ; and she has another little Lilly, 
 with flaxen hair, she says, looking as she 
 used to look. I dare say the child is pretty ; 
 but it is not my Lilly. She has a little boy 
 too, that she calls Paul ; a chubby rogue 
 she writes, and as mischievous as ever I 
 was. God bless the boy ! 
 
 Ben, who would have liked to ride in 
 the coach that carried me away to school 
 has had a great many rides since then 
 rough rides, and hard ones, over the road 
 of life. He does not rake up the falling 
 leaves for bonfires, as he did once ; he is 
 grown a man, and is fighting his way some- 
 where in our western world, to the short- 
 lived honors of time. He was married not
 
 2 3 2 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 long ago ; his wife I remembered as one of 
 my playmates at my first school : she was 
 beautiful, but fragile as a leaf. She died 
 within a year of their marriage. Ben was 
 but four years my senior ; but this grief 
 has made him ten years older. He does 
 not say it ; but his eye and his figure tell 
 it. 
 
 The nurse who put the purse in my hand 
 that dismal morning, is grown a feeble old 
 woman. She was over fifty then ; she may 
 well be seventy now. She did not know 
 my voice when I went to see her the other 
 day, nor did she know my face at all. She 
 repeated the name when I told it to her 
 Paul, Paul, she did not remember any 
 Paul, except a little boy, a long while ago. 
 
 " To whom you gave a purse when 
 
 he went away, and told him to say nothing 
 to Lilly or to Ben ? " 
 
 "Yes, that Paul "says the old 
 
 woman exultingly "do you know him ? " 
 
 And when I told her "she would not 
 have believed it ! " But she did ; and took 
 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 after- 
 ward ; and she called me ' sir ' sometimes,
 
 NOON. 233 
 
 and sometimes ' Paul.' But I asked her 
 to say only Paul ; 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 how we 
 gathered nuts such heaping piles; and 
 how we used to play at fox and geese 
 through the long winter evenings; and 
 
 how my poor mother would smile but 
 
 here I asked 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 his books in the house upon 
 the hill, and who used to frighten me some- 
 times with his lc:k, he grew very feeble 
 after I had left, and almost crazed. The 
 country people said that he was mad ; and 
 Isabel with her sweet heart clung to him, 
 and would lead him out when his step tot- 
 tered, to the seat in the garden, and read 
 to him out of the books he loved to hear. 
 And sometimes, they told me, she would 
 read to him some letters that I had written 
 to Lilly or to Ben, and ask him if he re- 
 membered Paul, who saved her from drown- 
 ing under the tree in the meadow? But 
 he could only shake his head, and mutter 
 something about how old and feeble he 
 had grown.
 
 234 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 They wrote me afterward that he died; 
 and was buried in a far-away place, where 
 his wife once lived, and where he now 
 sleeps beside her. Isabel was sick with 
 grief, and came to live 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 
 to the last ; or perhaps (I did think it) per- 
 haps I loved Isabel, better than them all. 
 
 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 sad- 
 dened 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 elegant, and she would have more 
 dignity in her air.
 
 NOON. 
 
 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 Per- 
 haps she will not like me at all yet I 
 knew very well that I should like her 
 
 1 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 gone ; 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 the door for it flashed upon me, that 
 perhaps, Isabel was married. I could not 
 tell why she should not; but I knew it 
 would make me uncomfortable, to hear' 
 that she had. 
 
 There was a tall woman who opened the 
 door; she did not know me; but I recog- 
 nized her as one of the old servants I 
 asked after the housekeeper first, thinking 
 I would surprise Isabel. My heart fluttered
 
 236 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 somewhat, 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, look- 
 ing 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 earnest, that I rose at once, and 
 crossed over, and took her hand : "You 
 know me," said I, "you surely remember 
 Paul ?" 
 
 She started with surprise, but recovered 
 herself and resumed the same grave man- 
 ner. I thought I had committed some mis- 
 take, or been in some way cause of offence. 
 I called her Madame, and asked for 
 Isabel ? 
 
 She turned pale, terribly pale" Bella ?" 
 said she. 
 
 "Yes, Bella."
 
 NOON. 
 
 237 
 
 Sir Bella is dead !" 
 
 I dropped into my chair. I said nothing. 
 The housekeeper bless her kind heart !-- 
 slipped noiselessly out. My hands were 
 over my eyes. The winds were sighino- 
 outside, and the clock ticking mournfully 
 within. 
 
 I did not sob, nor weep, nor utter any 
 cry. 
 
 The clock ticked mournfully, and the 
 winds were sighing ; but I did not hear 
 them any longer ; there was a tempest rag- 
 mg within me, that would have drowned 
 the voice of thunder. 
 
 It broke at length in a long, deep sigh,- 
 "oh God!" said I. It may have been a 
 prayer ; it was not an imprecation. 
 
 Bella sweet Bella was dead ! It seemed 
 as if with her, half the world were dead 
 every bright face darkened every sunshine 
 blotted out, every flower withered, every 
 hope extinguished ! 
 
 I walked out into the air, and stood un- 
 der the trees where we had played together 
 with poor Tray-where Tray lay buried 
 But it was not Tray I thought of, as I stood 
 there, with the cold wind playing throuo-h 
 my hair and my eyes filling with tear's. 
 How could she die ? Why was she gone ? 
 Was it really true ? Was Isabel indeed 
 dead in her coffin buried? Then why
 
 238 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 should anybody live ? What was there to 
 live for, now that Bella was gone ? 
 
 Ah, what a gap in the world, is made by 
 the death of those we love ! It is no longer 
 whole, but a poor half-world, that swings 
 uneasy on its axis, and makes you dizzy 
 with the clatter of its wreck ! 
 
 The housekeeper told me all little by 
 little, as I found calmness to listen. She 
 had been dead a month; Lilly was with 
 her through it all ; she died sweetly, with- 
 out pain, and without fear, what can an- 
 gels fear ? She had spoken often of 'Cous- 
 in Paul ; ' she had left a little pacquet for 
 him, but it was not there ; she had given 
 it into Lilly's keeping. 
 
 Her grave, the housekeeper told me, 
 was only a little way off from her home 
 beside the grave of a brother who died long 
 years before. I went there that evening. 
 The mound was high and fresh. The sods 
 had not closed together, and the dry leaves 
 caught in the crevices, and gave a ragged 
 and a terrible look to the grave. The next 
 day, I laid them all smooth as we had 
 once laid them on the grave of Tray ; 1 
 clipped the long grass, and set a tuft oi 
 blue violets at the foot, and watered it all 
 with tears. The homestead, the trees, 
 the fields, the meadows in the windy No- 
 vember, looked dismally. I could not like
 
 NOON. 2<J5 
 
 them again ; I liked nothing, but , the lit- 
 tle mound, that I had dressed over Bella's 
 grave. There she sleeps now, the sleep 
 of Death ! 
 
 SCHOOL 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 gym- 
 nasium, is cut down. 
 
 I was there only a little time ago. It 
 was on a Sunday. 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 won- 
 der upon the enormous pictures of wild an- 
 imals, which heralded some coming me- 
 nagerie. There was just such a picture 
 hanging s.till, and two or three advertise- 
 ments of sheriffs, and a little bill of a < horse 
 stolen, 'and as I thought the same brown 
 pitcher on the edge of the Bar. I was sure 
 it was the same great wood box that stood
 
 240 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 by the fire place, and the same whip, and 
 great coat hung in the corner. 
 
 I was not in so gay costume, as I once 
 thought I would be wearing, when a man ; 
 I had nothing better than a rusty shooting 
 jacket ; but even with this, I was deter- 
 mined to have a look about the churchj 
 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 galler- 
 ies, 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 over 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 particular 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-
 
 NOON. 
 
 241 
 
 ingly, were now settled away into fathers 
 of families ; and 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 mar- 
 ried all their days. 
 
 There was a stout man too, with a slight 
 limp in his gait, who used to work on har- 
 nesses, and strap our 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 son called Theodore, 
 which we all thought a very pretty name 
 for a shoemaker's son I could not find. 
 If eared he might be dead. I hoped, if he 
 was, that his broken promises about patch- 
 ing boots, would not come up against him. 
 The old factor of tamarinds and sugar 
 crackers, who used to drive his covered 
 wagon every Saturday evening 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 obstreporously 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,
 
 242 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 I knew she must be grown up ; but I 
 could fix upon no face positively ; once, as 
 a stout woman with a pair of boys, and 
 who wore a big red shawl, turned half 
 around, 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 be seen, 
 among either maids, or matrons ; and 
 when I asked 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 !" 
 
 I felt cured of her too ; but I pitied the 
 husband. 
 
 One of my old teachers was in the 
 church ; I could have 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. I 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
 
 NOON. 
 
 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 uncer- 
 tain age, when the mother lifts them on a 
 bunday, and pounces them down one after 
 the other upon the seat of the pew ; _ these 
 were now grown into blooming youn- 
 ladies. And they swept by me in the ve?- 
 tibule of the church, with a flutter of robes, 
 and a grace of motion, that fairly made my 
 heart twitter in my bosom. I know no- 
 thing that brings home upon a man so' 
 quick, the consciousness of increasing years, 
 as to find the little prattling girls, that 
 were almost babies in his boyhood become 
 dashing ladies ; and to find those whom 
 he used to look on patronizingly, and com- 
 passionatelythinking they were little 
 & lrls 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 unaccountably 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 tvas any school at
 
 244 RE VERIES OF A BA CHEL OR. 
 
 all ; for I could see only one old woman 
 about the premises, 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 bastions and turrets ; but the farmers 
 had put bastions, and turrets, into their cob- 
 ble-stone walls. At the orchard fence, I 
 stopped, and looked from force, I believe, 
 of old habit, to see if any one were watch- 
 ing ; and then leaped 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 for- 
 bidden ground. 
 
 But the old head-master who forbade it, 
 was dead ; and 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 
 lingered 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 boyhood! 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.
 
 NOON. 245 
 
 The tears started from my eyfes -- 
 
 was not such a cloud over me now ? 
 
 COLLEGE. 
 
 SCHOOL-MATES 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 
 fallow upon the benches, but the name. 
 1 hough the eye and face cleave to your 
 memory, and you meet them afterward 
 and think you have met a friend the 
 voice or the action will break down the 
 charm, and you find only another man 
 
 But with your classmates, in that later 
 school, where form and character were 
 both nearer ripeness, and where 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 progress, 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
 
 246 . REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. ( 
 
 it differs from your own ; and you think 
 with sighs, how you might possibly have 
 wrought the same ; but now it has escaped. 
 If another has won some honorable distinc- 
 tion, you fall to thinking, how the man 
 your old equal, as you thought, upon the 
 college benches has outrun you. It pricks 
 to effort, and teaches the difference be- 
 tween now, and then. Life with all its du- 
 ties and hopes, gathers 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 neglect- 
 ed, rises before you a giant of remorse. 
 
 Stop not, loiter not, look not backward, 
 if you would be among the foremost ! The 
 great Now, so quick, so broad, so fleeting, 
 is yours ; in an hour it will belong to the 
 Eternity of the Past. The temper of Life 
 is to be made good by big honest blows ; 
 stop striking, and you will do nothing; 
 strike feebly, and you will do almost as 
 little. Success rides on every hour : grap- 
 ple it, 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 to- 
 gether of old days, and of our present work
 
 KOON. 
 
 and life, and separate. Just so ships at 
 sea, in murky weather, will shift their course 
 to come within hailing distance, and com- 
 pare their longitude, 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 Pau- 
 silippo. 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 pro- 
 montory of Baie, looking 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 lava pavements, we parted he to 
 wander among the isles of the ^Egean and 
 I to turn northward. 
 
 Another time, as I was wandering among 
 those mysterious figures that crowd the 
 
 T n pera u P n a n o 
 
 the Masked Ball, I saw a familiar face I 
 
 followed it with my eye, until I became 
 convinced. He did not know me until I 
 named his old seat upon the bench of the 
 Division Room, and the hard-faced Tutor 
 V - J Then we talked of the old rival- 
 ries, and Christmas jollities, and of this and
 
 248 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 gaiety of the 
 scene about us, until day-light broke. 
 
 In a quiet mountain town of New Eng- 
 land, I came not long since upon another: 
 he was hale and hearty, and pushing his 
 lawyer work with just the same nervous 
 energy, with which he used to recite a theo- 
 rem 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 important, as ever. 
 The same stout Doctor read the hymn in 
 the same rhythmical way ; and he prayed 
 the same prayer, for (I thought) the same 
 old sort of sinners. As I shut my eyes to 
 listen, it seemed as if the intermediate
 
 NOON. 
 
 249 
 
 years had all gone out ; and that I was on 
 my own 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 
 dreaming about forgotten joys in listen- 
 ing 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, 
 m the glow of his thought, until with a half 
 cough, and a pinch at the cushion, he fell 
 back into his strong, but tread-mill argu- 
 mentation. 
 
 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 composure 
 over the exploding retorts. 
 
 Near him was the silver-haired old gen-
 
 250 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 tleman, with a very astute expression, 
 who used to have an odd habit of tighten- 
 ing his cloak about his nether 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 re- 
 membered 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 al- 
 ways near some explosive, electric battery, 
 or upon an insulated stool. He was, I be- 
 lieve, 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 examina- 
 tions. 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 col- 
 lege ; and who carried with him the affec- 
 tions 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 there is needed 
 a noble one, to win affection.
 
 NOON. 35, 
 
 A new man now filled his place in the 
 president's seat ; but he was one whom I 
 had known, and been 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 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 Atheneum, thinking of that first 
 fearful step, when the faces were new, and 
 the stem 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 cer-
 
 252 ' REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 tain tasks. Happy fellows thought I 
 who have only to do, what is set before you 
 to be done. But the time is coming, and 
 very fast, when you must not only do, but 
 know what to do. The time is coming, 
 when in place of your one master, you will 
 have a thousand masters masters of duty, 
 of business, of pleasure, and of grief giv- 
 ing you harder lessons each one of them, 
 than any of your Fluxions. 
 
 MORNING will pass, and the NOON will 
 come hot, and scorching. 
 
 THE PACQUET OF BELLA. 
 
 I HAVE not forgotten that pacquet of 
 Bella ; I did not once forget it. And when 
 I saw Lilly now the grown up Lilly, hap- 
 py in her household, and blithe as when 
 she was a maiden, she gave it to me. She 
 told me too of Bella's illness, and of her 
 suffering, and of her manner, when she put 
 the little pacquet in her hand 'for Cousin 
 Paul.' But this I will not repeat ; I can- 
 not. 
 
 I know not why it was, but I shuddered 
 at the mention of her name. There are 
 some who will talk, at table, and in their 
 gossip, of dead friends ; I wonder how
 
 NOON. 
 
 they do it ? For myself, when the grave 
 has closed its gates on the faces of those I 
 love however busy my mournful thought 
 may be, the tongue is silent. I cannot 
 name their names ; it shocks me tg hear 
 them named. It seems like tearing open 
 half-healed wounds, and disturbing with 
 harsh worldly noise, the sweet sleep of 
 death. 
 
 I loved Bella. I know not how I loved 
 her, whether as a lover, or as a husband 
 loves a wife ; I only know 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 only one thing; 
 I never told to Bella ; 1 would tell her 
 
 if? my griefj and of a11 y Jy s ; I w uid 
 
 1 her my hopes, my ambitious dreams, 
 my disappointments, my anger, and my 
 dislikes ; but I never told her how much 
 I loved her. 
 
 I do not know why, unless I knew that 
 t was needless. 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 tell- 
 ing her,, after she had grown to girlhood, 
 Bella, I love you ! 
 
 I had received one letter from her in
 
 54 REVERIES GF A BACHELOR: 
 
 the old countries ; it was a sweet letter, in 
 which she told me all that she had been 
 doing, and how she had thought of me, 
 when she rambled over the woods where 
 we had rambled together. She had writ- 
 ten two or three other letters, Lilly told 
 me, but they had never reached me. I 
 had told her too of all that made my happi- 
 ness ; I wrote her about the sweet girl I 
 had seen on shipboard, and how I met her 
 afterward, and what a happy time we passed 
 down in Devon. I even told her of the 
 strange dream I had, in which Isabel 
 seemed to be in England, and to turn away 
 from me sadly, because I called Carry. 
 
 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. I 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 her father fell sick. "It is" said
 
 NOON. 255 
 
 rfhe to Lilly, when she gave it to her, "what 
 I would have said to Cousin Paul, if he 
 had been here." 
 
 It begins " 1 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 man! I sometimes read to him, sit- 
 ting in the deep library window, (you re- 
 member it,) where we used to nestle out of 
 his sight, at dusk. He cannot read any 
 more. 
 
 " I would give anything to see the little 
 Carry you speak of; but do you know you 
 did not describe her to 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 those 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
 
 J 5 6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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, and 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 strang- 
 er. 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 from me. But 
 God is good, and he will spare my father. 
 
 * * * " So you have seen again 
 your little Carry : I told you it would be 
 so. You tell me how accidental it was : 
 ah, Paul, Paul, you rogue, honest as you 
 are. I half doubt you there ! I like your 
 description of her too, dark eyes like 
 mine you say ' almost as pretty ; ' well, 
 Paul, I will forgive you that ; it is only a
 
 NOON. 
 
 257 
 
 white lie. _ You know they must be a great 
 deal prettier than mine, or you would nev- 
 er have stayed a whole fortnight in an old 
 farmer's house, far down in Devon! I 
 wish I could see her : I wish she was here 
 with you now ; for it is mid-summer, and 
 the trees and flowers were never prettier. 
 But I am all alone ; father is too ill to go 
 out at all. I fear now very much, that he 
 will never go out again. Lilly was here 
 yesterday, but he did not know her. She 
 read me your last letter : it was not so long 
 as mine. You are very very good to me, 
 -raul. 
 
 * * * u p or a i ong time 
 written nothing: my father has been very 
 ill, and the old housekeeper has been sick 
 too, and father would have no one but me 
 near him. He cannot live long. I feel 
 sadly miserably ; you will not know me 
 when you come home ; your ' pretty Bella' 
 as you used to call me, will have lost all 
 her beauty. But perhaps you will not care 
 for that, for you tell me you have found 
 one prettier then ever. I do not know, 
 Cousin Paul, but it is because I am so sad, 
 and selfish for sorrow is selfish but I do 
 not like your raptures about the Roman 
 girl. Be careful, Paul : I know your heart : 
 it is quick and sensitive ; and I dare say
 
 5 8 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 she is pretty, and has beautiful eyes ; for 
 they tell me all the Italian girls have soft 
 eyes. 
 
 " But Italy is far away, Paul ; I can never 
 see Enrica ; she will never come here. No- 
 no, remember Devon : I feel as if Carry 
 was a sister now : I cannot feel so of the 
 Roman girl : I do not want to feel so. You 
 will say this is harsh ; and I am afraid you 
 jvill not like me so well for it; but I 
 cannot help saying it. I love you too well, 
 Cousin Paul, not to say it. 
 
 * * * it is all over! Indeed, 
 Paul, I am very desolate ! ' The golden 
 bowl is broken my poor father has gone 
 to his last home. I was expecting it ; but 
 how can we expect that fearful comer 
 death ? He had been for a long time so 
 feeble, that he could scarce speak at all : 
 he sat for hours in his chair, looking upon 
 the fire, or looking out at the window. He 
 would hardly notice me when I came to 
 change his pillows, or to smooth them for 
 his head. But before he died, he knew me 
 as well as ever. 'Isabel,' he said, 'you 
 have been a good daughter : God will re- 
 ward you !' and he kissed me so tenderly, 
 and looked after me so anxiously, with 
 such intelligence in his look, that I thought 
 perhaps he would revive again. In the
 
 NOON. 259 
 
 evening he asked me for one of his books, 
 that he loved very 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 hs 
 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 f 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 father 
 who is dead ! 
 
 * * * i am calmer now ; I am 
 staying with Lilly. The world seems 
 smaller than it did ; but Heaven seems a
 
 a6o REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 great deal larger : there is a place for us 
 all there, Paul, if we only .seek it ! They 
 tell me you are coming home : I am glad. 
 You will not like perhaps to come away 
 from that pretty Enrica, you speak of ; but 
 dc so, Paul. It seems to me that I see 
 clearer than 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 wor- 
 thy 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
 
 NOON. 261 
 
 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 frail 
 with me. I seem to live wholly now in the 
 world where I am going -.there is my 
 mother, and my father, and my little 
 brother we shall meet I know we shall 
 meet ! 
 
 * * * " The last Paul. Never 
 again in this world! I am happy very- 
 happy. You will come 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 Present. 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 be- 
 fore me, the NOON wanes, and the shadows 
 of EVENING lengthen upon the land.
 
 III. 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 THE 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 cas- 
 tles on its plains, great monuments on 
 the mountains, that reach heavenward, and 
 dip their tops in the blue of Eternity! 
 Tnen comes an earthquake the earth- 
 quake of disappointment, of distrust, or of 
 inaction, and lays them low. Gaping des- 
 olation widens its breaches everywhere ; the 
 eye is full of them, and can see nothing be- 
 side. By and by, the sun peeps forth, as 
 now from behind yonder cloud and reani- 
 mates the soul. 
 
 Fame beckons, sitting high in the heav- 
 ens ; 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 
 (262)
 
 EVENING. 6j 
 
 throes of your delirium. Perhaps you see 
 some earnest, careful plodder, once far be- 
 hind you, now toiling slowly but surely, 
 over the plain of life, until he seems near 
 to grasping those brilliant 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 can- 
 not go round it in a day ; he cannot meas- 
 ure it with a bound ; he cannot 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 second, 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, beyond planets and suns, beyond 
 far-off suns and comets, until like blind flies, 
 they are lost in the blaze of immensity, 
 and can only grope their way back to our 
 earth, and our time, by the cunning of in- 
 stinct. 
 
 Cut out the Future even that little 
 Future, which is the EVENING of our life, 
 and what a fall into vacuity ! Forbid those
 
 64 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 earnest forays over the borders of Now, 
 and on what spoils would the soul live ? 
 
 For myself, I delight to wander there, 
 and to weave every 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 
 piece bear fair proportions, and just 
 figures, like those tapestries, on which 
 nuns work by inches, and finish with their 
 lives ; or like those grand frescos, which 
 poet artists have wrought on the vaults of 
 old cathedrals, gaunt, and colossal, ap- 
 pearing mere daubs of carmine and azure, 
 as they lay upon their backs, working out 
 a hand's breadth at a time, but when com- 
 plete, showing symmetrical, and glo- 
 rious ! 
 
 But not alone does the soul wander to 
 those glittering heights where fame sits, 
 with plumes waving in zephyrs of applause ; 
 there belong to it, other appetites, which 
 range wide, and constantly over the broad 
 Future-land. We are not merely, working, 
 intellectual machines, 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.
 
 EVENING. 265 
 
 The first may indeed be uppermost; it 
 may be noisiest ; it may drown with the 
 clamor of mid-day, the nicer sympathies. 
 But all our day is not mid-day ; and all our 
 life is not noise. Silence is as strong as 
 the soul ; 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 
 will burn with the seething heat of a vol- 
 cano, and heave up lava-like monuments, 
 through all the cold strata of his commoner 
 nature. 
 
 One may hide his warmer feelings ; 
 he may paint them dimly ; he may crowd 
 them out of his sailing chart, where he only 
 sets down 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 immen- 
 sity of space ; but Love soars around the 
 
 18
 
 66 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 fabrics which strew 
 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 continuous 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 be- 
 wildered with the vexations of the Present, 
 my affections are the architect, that build 
 up the future 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, 
 when 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
 
 EVENING. 267 
 
 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 v 
 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 ; I shall hear of it by and 
 by, and sigh perhaps nothing more. Life 
 is earnest around me ; there is no time to 
 delve in the past, for bright things to shed 
 radiance on the future. 
 
 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, I really think thus. A 
 single smile of that frail girl, when I recal 
 it, mocks all my proud purposes ; as if, 
 without her, my purposes were nothing.
 
 268 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Pshaw ! I say it is idle ! and I 
 
 bury my thought in books, and in long 
 hours of toil; but as the hours lengthen, 
 and my head sinks with fatigue, and the 
 shadows 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 
 joyfully, toward the golden gates which 
 open on the Future. 
 
 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 is 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 suc- 
 cessful, the voyage of life. I glance upon 
 the passing scenery, and upon new faces, 
 with that careless 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
 
 EVENING. 269 
 
 even have grown light with wearing ; and 
 I am just in that careless humor 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 fig- 
 ure that I think I know. Now, the indiffer- 
 ence flies like mist ; and my heart throbs: 
 and the old visions come up. I watch her, 
 as 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 
 hers 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 her mother who sits 
 beside her, her naive exclamations, as we 
 pass some point of surpassing beauty. It 
 seems as if a new world were opening 
 to me ; yet I cannot tell why. I keep my 
 place, and think, and gaze. I tear the 
 paper I hold in my hand into shreds. I 
 play with my watch chain, and twist the 
 seal, until it is near breaking. 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 !
 
 arc REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 But when they rise to leave, my lethargy 
 is broken ; yet it is with a trembling hesita- 
 tion 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 
 greeting. 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 land- 
 scape. 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 command no 
 other. And there is a look of sympathy in 
 her eye, when I speak thus, that binds my
 
 EVENING* 271 
 
 soul to her, 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. A 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 for- 
 ward to that time, as at school I used to 
 look for vacation : it is a point (fappui for 
 hope, for thought, and for countless jour- 
 neyings 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 
 long away. She receives me kindly 
 always very kindly ; she could not be other- 
 wise than kind. But is it anything more ? 
 This is a greedy nature 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:
 
 272 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 ah, no, trust a woman for that ! But what 
 have I, or what am I, to ask a return ? She 
 is pure, and gentle as an angel ; 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 shame-faced 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 recal in despair her 
 last kind glance. The world seems blank 
 to me. She does not know; perhaps she 
 does not care, if I love her. Well, I will 
 bear it, I say. But I cannot bear it. 
 Business is broken ; books are blurred ; 
 something remains undone, that fate, de- 
 clares must be done. Not a place can I 
 find, br" her sweet smile g:ives to it, either
 
 EVENING. 373 
 
 a tinge of gladness, or a black shade of 
 desolation. 
 
 I sit down at my table with pleasant 
 books ; the fire is burning cheerfully ; my 
 dog looks up earnestly when I speak to him; 
 but it will never do! Her image sweeps 
 away all these 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 brain ; 
 I will write to her I say. And a smile 
 floats over my face, a smile of hope, end- 
 ing 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 let- 
 ters ; 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 Lyttle- 
 ton; 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 tomb-stone.
 
 874 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 But even as I say it, the tears start ; it 
 is all false saying ! And I throw Shaftes- 
 bury 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 stepping on the heaving 
 deck, and of that parting in the noise of 
 London, and of my joy at seeing her in the 
 pleasant country, and of my grief after- 
 ward. And then 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 something within me that 
 
 made me write, and tell her all ! 
 
 " That my heart was not my own, but was 
 wholly hers ; and that if she would be mine, 
 
 1 would cherish her, and love her 
 
 always !" 
 
 Then, I feel a kind of happiness, a 
 strange, tumultuous happiness, into which 
 doubt is creeping from time to time, bring- 
 ing with it a cold shudder. I seal the let- 
 ter, 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 spe- 
 cially detailed to bear that single sheet. It 
 is a great letter for me ; my destiny lies 
 in it.
 
 EVENING. t 75 
 
 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, strug- 
 gling with fear. For many nights it is so, 
 until the day comes, on which I am looking 
 for a reply. 
 
 The postman has little suspicion that the 
 letter which he gives me although it con- 
 tains no promissory notes, nor moneys, nor 
 deeds, nor articles of trade is yet to have 
 a greater influence upon my life and upon 
 my future, than all the letters he has ever 
 brought to me before. But I do not show 
 him this ; nor do I let him see the clutch 
 with which I grasp it. I 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 I 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
 
 276 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 for- 
 given, 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 breath- 
 ing quick and loud. The dream then is 
 broken ! 
 
 Presently I read again : 
 
 "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 god-father, 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,
 
 EVENING. 277 
 
 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 Lau- 
 rence, 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 gentleman 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, because he regards 
 it as so certain. 
 
 " I 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 Lau- 
 rence, 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
 
 *78 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 upon the 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 noth- 
 ing ! Again, I seem to float singly on the 
 tide of life, and see all around me in cheer- 
 ful 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 whirl of my 
 misfortunes to the utterance of re- 
 proaches. 
 
 Her reply, which comes speedily, is sweet, 
 and gentle. She is hurt by my reproaches, 
 deeply hurt. But with a touching kind- 
 ness, of which I am not worthy, she credits 
 all my petulance to my wounded feeling ; 
 she soothes me; but in soothing, only
 
 EVENING. 
 
 279 
 
 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, care- 
 less courage, that glories in opposition. I 
 laugh at any dangers, or any insidious pit- 
 falls ; 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, passes. 
 
 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 
 one 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 for data, throws himself upon 
 his sister's kindness, and charity. It as- 
 tonishes not a little the old gentleman, to 
 find his daughter pleading in such
 
 28o REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 in- 
 telligent, 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 old gen- 
 tleman, who says he will still be her father, 
 has said it too; and they have all wel- 
 comed you won by her story with a cor- 
 diality, that has made your cup full, to run- 
 ning over. Only one thought comes up to 
 obscure your joy; is it real? or if real, 
 are you worthy to enjoy? Will you cher- 
 ish and love always, as you have promised, 
 that angel who accepts your word, and
 
 EVENING. 281 
 
 rests her happiness on your faith? Are 
 there not harsh qualities in your nature, 
 which you fear may sometime make her 
 regret that she gave herself to your love 
 and charity? And those friends who 
 watch over her, as the apple of their eye, 
 :an 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 obedience, 
 as you never yielded even to the com 
 mands 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 full- 
 ness 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 shad- 
 ows of the past; and whisper of Bella's 
 love, and of that sweet sister's death, and 
 '9
 
 282 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 of Laurence, a new brother, coming home 
 joyful with his bride, and lay your cheek 
 to hers life seems as if it were all day, 
 and as if there could be no night ! 
 
 The marriage passes ; and she is yours, 
 t yours forever. 
 
 NEW TRAVEL. 
 
 AGAIN I am upon the sea ; but not alone. 
 She whom I first met upon the wastes of 
 ocean, is there beside me. 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 gath- 
 ered, 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. Indeed I hardly know fear; for 
 how can the tempests harm kerf 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
 
 EVENING. 2&3 
 
 talk of thooe we love; and we peer among 
 the stars, which seem neighborly, and as it 
 they were the homes of friends. And as 
 the great ocean-swells come rocking under 
 us, and carry us up and down along the 
 valleys and the hills of water, they seem 
 like deep pulsations of the great heart of 
 nature, heaving us forward toward the goal 
 of life, and to the gates of heaven ! 
 
 We watch the ships as they come upon 
 the horizon, and sweep toward us, like false 
 friends, with the sun 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 sweep- 
 ing behind, until they are lost in the hoi- 
 lows of the water. 
 
 Again life lies open, as it did once before 
 but the regrets, disappointments, and fruit- 
 less resolves do not come to trouble me 
 now. It is the future, which has become 
 a u I as the sea > and ^ is beside me, 
 the sharer in that future to look out with 
 me, upon the joyous sparkle of water, and 
 to count with me, the dazzling ripples that 
 he between us and the shore. A thousand 
 pleasant plans come up, and are abandoned 
 like the waves we leave behind us ; a thou
 
 284 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 sand 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 god-father, who 
 gave her a father's blessing ; we talk low, 
 and in the twilight hours, of Isabel who 
 
 At length, as the sun goes down upon a 
 fair night, over the western waters which 
 we have passed, we see before us, the low 
 blue line of the shores of Cornwall and 
 Devon. In the night, shadowy ships glide 
 past us with gleaming lanterns ; and in the 
 morning, we see the 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 stupify him 
 with amazement. We are in no need of 
 such forgetfulness. 
 
 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
 
 EVENING. 
 
 solitary oaks, and loitering herds all spread 
 hke a veil of beauty, upon the bosom of the 
 1 names But we cannot linger here, nor 
 even under the glorious old boles of Wind- 
 k orest ; 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 loitered before ; and the sleek 
 deer gaze on us with their liquid eyes, as 
 the-y gazed before. The squirrels sport 
 among the boughs as fearless as ever; and 
 some wandering puss pricks her long ears 
 at out steps, and bounds off along the 
 hedge rows to her burrow. Again I see 
 Carry m her velvet riding-cap, with the 
 white plume ; and I meet her as I met her 
 before, under the princely trees that skirt 
 tne northern avenue. I recal the evenin^ 
 when I sauntered out at the park gates 3 
 and gamed a blessing from the porter's 
 wife, and dreamed that strange dream _ - 
 now, the dream seems more real, than my 
 
 a am" 7 U ! "~ Said the woma * 
 
 ~~* Aye, old lady, God has blessed me! " 
 
 The bland farmer lives yet ; he scarce 
 knows me, until I tell him of my bout 
 around his oat-field, at the tail of his long
 
 ?86 REVERIES Of A BACHELOR. 
 
 stilted plough. I find the old pew in the 
 parish church. Other holly sprigs are hung 
 now ; and I do not doze, for Carry is beside 
 me. The curate drawls the service ; but it 
 is pleasant to listen; and I make the re- 
 sponses 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 mistress Carry left 
 us!" 
 
 But pleasant as are the old woods, full of 
 memories, and pleasant as are the twilight 
 evenings upon the terrace we must pass 
 over to the mountains of Switzerland. 
 There we are to meet Laurence. 
 
 Carry has never seen the magnificence 
 of thejuras; and as we journey over the 
 hills between Dole, and the border line, look- 
 ing 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 admira- 
 tion. At length we come to that point
 
 EVENING. 287, 
 
 above the little town of Gex, from which 
 you see spread out before you, the mead- 
 ows that skirt Geneva, the placid surface 
 ot Lake Leman, and the rough, shag-cry 
 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 vally below 
 the little town of Ferney, where stands- 
 the deserted chateau of Voltaire ; and be- 
 yond, upon the shores of the lake, the old 
 home of de Stael ; and across, with its- 
 white walls reflected upon the bosom of 
 the water, the house where Byron wrote 
 the prisoner of Chillon. Among the group- 
 ing 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 yon- 
 der valley, with my future all visionary 
 and broken, and drank the splendour of 
 the scene, only as a quick relief to the 
 monotony of my solitary life. 
 
 -" And now, Carry, with your hand 
 locked m mine, and your heart mine yon- 
 der lake sleeping in the sun, and the 
 snowy mountains with their rosy hue seem 
 35ft C Smile f nature > bidding us be 
 Laurence is at Geneva; he welcomes
 
 288 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 English 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 blazing 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 marvellous valley, which lies under 
 the shoulder of Mont Blanc ; and we wan- 
 der over the Mer de Glace, and pick Alpine 
 roses from the edge of the frowning glacier. 
 We toil at night-fall up to the monastery of 
 the Great St. Bernard, where the new form- 
 ing ice crackles in the narrow foot-way, 
 and the cold moon glistens over wastes of 
 snow, and upon the windows of the dark 
 Hospice. Again, we are among the granite 
 heights, whose ledges are filled with ice,
 
 EVENING. 289 
 
 r Vlf Grir ? sel The Pond is dark and 
 cold; the paths are slippery; the great 
 glacier of the Aar sends down icy breezes 
 and the echoes ring from rock to rock as' 
 it the ice-God answered. And yet we 
 neither suffer, nor fear. 
 
 In the sweet valley of Meyringen, we 
 part from Laurence : he goes northward, 
 by Grmdenwald, and Thun, thence to 
 journey westward, and to make for the 
 Koman girl, a home beyond the ocean 
 Knnca bids me go on to Rome : she knows 
 that Carry will love its soft warm air its 
 rums, its pictures and temples, better than 
 these^ cold valleys of Switzerland. And 
 >he gives me kind messages for her mother, 
 ?1 t are; andsh uldwe be in Rome 
 at the Easter season, she bids us remember 
 her, when we listen to the Miserere, and 
 when we seethe great Chiesa on fire, and 
 when we saunter upon the Pincian 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 Reichenbach ; 
 and they wave their hands toward us, and 
 disappear upon the little plateau which 
 
 rt t ft* ^f d th - e ^^ R senlaui, and 
 the tall, still, Engei-Horner. 
 
 May the mountain angels guard them t 
 As we journey on toward that wonderful
 
 290 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 pass of Splugen, I recall by the way, upon 
 the heights, and in 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 overlooking 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 wanderer, did I look for more 
 joy, or a better angel. 
 
 Afterward, when all our trembling upon 
 the Alpine paths has gone by, we are roll- 
 ing 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 Abbon- 
 dio. We follow in the path of the discom- 
 fited 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 palaces 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 capi- 
 tal, lying in the Adriatic, has taken the 
 strongest hold upon her fancy. 
 
 So we leave Padua, and Verona behind
 
 EVENING. 291 
 
 us, and find ourselves upon a soft spring 
 noon, upon the end of the iron road which 
 stretches across the lagoon, toward Venice. 
 With the hissing of steam in the ear, it is 
 hard to think of the wonderful city, we are 
 approaching. But as we escape from the 
 carriage, and set our feet down into one of 
 those strange, hearse-like, ancient boats, 
 with its sharp iron prow, and listen to the 
 melodious rolling tongue of the Venetian 
 gondolier: as we see rising over the 
 watery plain before us, all glittering in the 
 sun, tall, square towers with pyramidal 
 tops, and clustered domes, and minarets; 
 and sparkling roofs lifting from marble 
 walls all so like the old paintings; and 
 as we glide nearer and nearer to the float- 
 ing 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 
 darjdy 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, grappling our spirits, 
 lead them away willing and rejoicing cap- 
 tives, through the long vista of the ages, 
 that are gone.
 
 292 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 Carry is in a trance ; rapt by the witch- 
 ery 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 ap- 
 proach. 
 
 Afterward, it becomes a living thing, 
 stealing upon the affections, and upon the 
 imagination by a thousand coy advances. 
 We wander under the warm Italian sun- 
 light to the steps from which rolled the 
 white head of poor Marino Faliero. The 
 gentle Carry can now thrust 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 Carmag- 
 nola and of Carrara ; and we instruct the 
 willing gondolier to push his dark boat 
 under the Bridge of Sighs ; and with Rogers' 
 poem in our hand, glide up to 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 dip of 
 the gondolier's oar, or to her gentle words,
 
 EVENING. 293 
 
 fast unaer 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 between what is real, 
 and what is merely written,- we chase the 
 anxious step of the forsaken Corinna; or 
 seek among the veteran palaces the case- 
 ment 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 Shylock. We 
 wander into stately churches, brushing 
 over grass, or tell-tale flowers that grow in 
 the court, and find them damp and cheer- 
 less ; 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 mournfully plaintive. 
 
 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 gar- 
 dens, pushing their way down toward 
 the floating city. And upon the narrow 
 island, we find Jewish graves, half covered 
 by drifted sand; and from among them, 
 watch the sunset glimmering over a deso-
 
 294 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 late level of water. As we glide back, 
 lights lift over the Lagoon, and double 
 along the Guideca, and the Grand Canal. 
 The little neighbor isles will have their 
 company of lights dancing in the water ; 
 and from among them, will rise up against 
 the mellow evening sky of Italy, gaunt, 
 unlighted houses. 
 
 After the nightfall, which brings no 
 harmful dew with it, I stroll, with her hand 
 within my arm, as once upon the sea, 
 and in the English Park, and in the home- 
 land over that great square which lies be- 
 fore the palace of St. Marks. The white 
 moon is riding in the middle heaven, like a 
 globe of silver ; the gondoliers stride over 
 the echoing stones ; and their long black 
 shadows, stretching over the pavement, or 
 shaking upon the moving water, seem like 
 great funereal plumes, waving 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 cordial welcome by the mother of 
 the pretty Enrica. The Count has gone to 
 the marches of Ancona. Lame Pietro still 
 shuffles around the boards at the Lepre, 
 and the flower sellers at the corner, bind 
 me a more brilliant bouquet than ever, for
 
 EVENING. 
 
 295 
 
 a new beauty at Rome. As we ramble 
 under the broken arches of the great aque- 
 duct stretching toward Frascati, I tell 
 Carry, the story of my trip in the Appe- 
 nines ; and we search for the pretty Carlotta. 
 But she is married, they tell us, to a 
 Neapolitan guardsman. In the spring twi- 
 light, we wander upon those heights which 
 lie between Frascati and Albano ; and look- 
 ing westward, see that glorious view of the 
 Campagna, which can never be forgotten. 
 But beyond the Campagna, and beyond the 
 huge hulk of St. Peter's, heaving into the 
 sky from the middle waste, we see, or fancy 
 we see, a glimpse of the sea, which stretches 
 out 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 re- 
 turn ; a home, that has slumbered long in 
 the future ; and which, now that the future 
 has come, lies fairly before me. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 YEARS seem to have passed. They have 
 mellowed life into ripeness. The start, 
 and change, and hot ambition of youth, 
 seem to have gone by. A calm, and joyful 
 quietude has succeeded. That future
 
 296 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 which still lies before me, seems like a ros- 
 eate 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 gables, 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 cozy arm chairs ; and gen- 
 erous oriels, fragrant with mignionette, and 
 the blue blossoming 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 dovecote, and the purple- 
 necked pigeons swoop around the roofs, in 
 great companies. The hawthorn is budding 
 into its June fragrance along all the lines of 
 fence; and the paths are trim, and clean. 
 The shrubs, our neglected azalias and rho- 
 dodendrons chiefest among them stand in 
 K'cturesque groups upon the close shaven 
 wn. 
 
 The gateway in the thicket below, is be- 
 tween two mossy old posts of stone ; and
 
 EVENING, 297 
 
 there Is a tall hemlock flanked by a sturdy 
 pine, for sentinel. Within the cottage, the 
 library is wainscotted with native oak ; and 
 my trusty gun hangs upon a branching 
 pair of antlers. My rod and nets are dis- 
 posed above the generous, bookshelves; 
 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 jams of the country fire- 
 place; and along it are distributed records of 
 travel ; little bronze temples from Rome, 
 the/z>/n? 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 attitude ; strewed over an oaken 
 table in the middle, are the uncut papers, 
 and volumes of the 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 cottage. There is Jamie we think 
 him handsome for he has the dark hair of 
 his mother, and the same black eye, with 
 its long, heavy fringe. There is Carry^ 
 little Carry I must call her now with a 
 face full of glee, and rosy with health ; then 
 there is a little rogue some two years old, 
 whom we call Paul a very bad boy, as we 
 tell him.
 
 jgS REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 The mother is as beautiful as ever, and far 
 more dear to me ; for gratitude has been 
 adding, year by year, to love. There have 
 been times when a harsh word of mine, 
 uttered in the fatigues of business, has 
 touched her ; and I have seen that soft eya 
 fill with tears ; and I have upbraided my- 
 self for causing her one pang. But such 
 things she does not remember ; or remem- 
 bers, only to cover with her gentle forgive- 
 ness. 
 
 Laurence and Enrica are living near us. 
 And the old gentleman, who was Carry's 
 god-father, 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 coach- 
 man; 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 be- 
 fore 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 a 
 fine mist, gathered into drops of crystal.
 
 EVENING. 
 
 Z W 
 
 And when away those long letters, dat- 
 ing from the cottage 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 
 derlt th j; ^re-writes me now, as ten. 
 derly as then She narrates, in her deli- 
 Si 6 , Wa i 7 ' a11 the , ^dents of the home life; 
 she tells me of their rides, and of the* 
 games, and of the new planted trees -of 
 all their sunny days, and of their frolics on 
 
 in* 'r? J l^'f 118 G how J a e ^ study 
 ing, and of little Carry's beauty, growing 
 
 SEl^ifi? <***** Paul-^like fiS 
 earhrfffc lu"5 ndS me a kiss fr 
 
 oh ?r th r m ^ and bld \ me such adieu, and 
 such 'God s blessing,' that it seems as if 
 an angel guarded me. 
 
 a postscript: n0t aU ; f r Jamle has Written 
 
 .-"Dear Father," he says, "mother 
 
 Wh ? me J tdl >^ OU how 1 am study ng 
 What would you think, father, to have me 
 raiic m French to you, when you come back? 
 I wish you would come back though; the 
 hawthorns are coming out, and the apricot 
 
 If vous7TA d - W 1S allfu11 of bl ossoms 
 [f you should bring me a present, as you al 
 most always do,-I would like a fishing rod. 
 "Your affectionate son, 
 
 " JAMIE." '
 
 joo REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 extraordinary 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 Bob-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 green-sward, and switch off the 
 daffodils, and blow away the dandelion
 
 EVENING. 3 oi 
 
 seeds, to see if their wishes are to come 
 true. Jamie holds a butter cup under 
 Carry s chin, to find if she loves gold; and 
 Paul, the rogue, teases them, by 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 cold breakfast rolls. 
 The nuts are gathered in time, and stored 
 for long winter evenings, when the fire is 
 burning bright and cheerily a true, hickory 
 blaze, which 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 
 stories, or the witchery of the Flodden 
 
 Then the boys will guess conundrums, 
 and play at fox and geese; and Tray, cher- 
 ished in his age, and old Milo petted in his 
 dotage, he side by side, upon the lion's 
 skin, before the blazing hearth. Little 
 1 omtit the goldfinch sits sleeping on his 
 perch, or cocks his eye at a sudden crack- 
 ling of the fire, for a familiar squint upon 
 our family group. 
 
 But there is no future without its strag^
 
 302 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR, 
 
 gling clouds. Even now a shadow is trail- 
 ing along the landscape. 
 
 It is a soft and mild day of summer. 
 The leaves are at their fullest. A southern 
 breeze has been blowing up the valley all 
 the morning, and the light, smoky haze 
 hangs in the distant mountain gaps, like a 
 veil on 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 has 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 wonders where Paul can be, 
 and he saves for him, whatever he knows 
 ; Paul will like a heaping plate-full. But 
 the dinner hour passes, and Paul does not 
 come. Old Tray lies in the sun-shine by 
 the porch. 
 
 Now the mother is indeed anxious. And 
 I, though I conceal this from her, find my 
 fears strangely active. Something like
 
 EVENING. 305 
 
 instinct guides me to the meadow : I wan- 
 der 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, until the 
 morning finds us sad, and despairing. 
 
 That day the next cleared up the 
 mystery; but cleared it up with darkness. 
 Poor little Paul! he has sunk under the 
 murderous eddies of the brook ! His boy- 
 ish prattle, his rosy smiles, his artless talk, 
 are lost to us forever ! 
 
 I will not tell how nor when we found 
 him : nor will I 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
 
 304 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 kind mourners are there : it is easy for 
 
 them to mourn ! The good clergyman 
 
 prays by the bier : ' Oh, Thou, who 
 
 did st 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 an- 
 guish, shall rest f orevermore ! ' 
 
 Weeks roll on ; and a smile of resigna- 
 tion lights up the saddened features of the 
 mother. Those dark mourning robes speak 
 to the heart deeper, and more tenderly, 
 than ever the bridal costume. She lightens 
 the weight of your grief by her sweet words 
 of resignation : " Paul," she says, " God 
 has taken our boy ! " 
 
 Other weeks roll on. Joys are still left 
 great and ripe joys. The cottage smil- 
 ing 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 deep thanksgiving. 
 
 A year goes by ; but it leaves no added 
 shadow on our hearth-stone. The vines
 
 EVENING. 
 
 clamber, and flourish : the oaks are win- 
 ning age and grandeur: little Carry is 
 blooming into the pretty coyness of girl- 
 hood ; 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. 
 
 Somtimes, leaving little Carry and Jamie 
 to their play, we wander at twilight to the 
 willow tree, beneath which our drowned 
 boy sleeps calmly, for the Great Awaking. 
 It is a Sunday, in the week-day of our life, 
 to linger by the little grave, to hang 
 flowers upon the heacl-stone, and to breathe 
 a prayer that our little Paul may sleep well, 
 m the arms of Him who loveth children ! 
 And her heart, and my heart, knit to- 
 gether bv sorrow, as they had been knit by 
 joy a silver thread mingled with the gold- 
 follow the dead one to the Land 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 tears half choke the utter- 
 ance "Paul, my boy, we will be there!"
 
 3o6 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 
 
 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 sur- 
 face of the brook. I took my gun from 
 beside the tree, and my shot-pouch from 
 its limb, and whistling for Carlo as if it 
 had been Tray I strolled over the bridge, 
 and down the lane, to the old house under 
 the elms. 
 
 I dreamed pleasant dreams that night ; 
 
 for I dreamed that my Reverie was 
 
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 ...108 Laddie and Miss Toosey's Mission. 
 
 ...109 Lady of the Lake. Scott. 
 
 ...no Lai la Rookh. Moore. 
 
 ...in Last Essays of Elia. Lamb. 
 
 ...112 Lays of Ancient Rome, The. Macaulay. 
 
 ...113 Let Us Follow Him. Sienkiewicz. 
 
 ...114 Light of Asia. Arnold. 
 
 ...115 Light That Failed, The. Kipling. 
 
 ...116 Little Lame Prince. Mulock. 
 
 ...117 Longfellow's Poems, Vol. I. 
 
 ...118 Longfellow's Poems, Vol. II. 
 
 ...119 Lowell's Poems. 
 
 ...120 Lucile. Meredith. 
 
 ...121 Line Upon Line. 
 
 ...126 Magic Nuts, The. Molesworth. 
 
 ...127 Manon Lescaut. Prevost. 
 
 ...128 Marmion. Scott. 
 
 ...129 Master of Ballantrae, The. Stevenson. 
 
 ...130 Milton's Poems. 
 
 ...131 Mine Own People. Kipling. 
 
 ...132 Minister of the World, A. Mason. 
 
 ...133 Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne. 
 
 ...134 Mulvaney Stories. Kipling. 
 
 ...135 Macbeth. Shakespeare. 
 
 ...140 Natural Law in the Spiritual World. 
 
 Drummond. 
 ...141 Nature, Addresses and Lectures. 
 
 Emerson. 
 ...145 Old Christmas. Irving.
 
 - r 
 
 Altemus' New Illustrated Vademecum Series.-Continued 
 
 ...146 Outre-Mer. Longfellow. 
 
 ...147 Othello, the Moor of Venice. Shakespeare. 
 
 ...150 Paradise Lost. Milton. 
 
 ...151 Paradise Regained. Milton. 
 
 ...152 Paul and Virginia. Sainte Pierre. 
 
 ...153 Peter Schlemihl. Chamisso. 
 
 ...154 Phantom Rickshaw. Kipling. 
 
 ...155 Pilgrim's Progress, The. Bunyan, 
 
 ...156 Plain Tales from the Hills. Kipling. 
 
 ...157 Pleasures of Life. Lubbock. 
 
 ...158 Plutarch's Lives. 
 
 ...159 Poe's Poems. 
 
 ...160 Prince of the House of David. Ingraham. 
 
 ...161 Princess and Maud. Tennyson. 
 
 ...162 Prue and I. Curtis. 
 
 ...163 Peep of Day. 
 
 ...164 Precept Upon Precept. 
 
 ...169 Queen of the Air. Ruskin. 
 
 ...172 Rab and His Friends. Brown. 
 
 ...173 Representative Men. Emerson. 
 
 ...174 Reveries of a Bachelor. Mitchell. 
 
 ...175 Rip Van Winkle. Irving. 
 
 ...176 Romance of a Poor Young Man. Feuillet. 
 
 ...177 Rubalyat of Omar Khayyam. 
 
 ...178 Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare. 
 
 ...179 Robert Hardy's Seven Days. Sheldon. 
 
 ...182 Samantha at Saratoga. U alley. 
 
 ...183 Sartor Resartus. Carlyle. 
 
 ...184 Scarlet Letter, The. Hawthorne. 
 
 ...185 School for Scandal. Sheridan. 
 
 ...186 Sentimental Journey, A. Sterne. 
 
 ...187 Sesame and Lilies. Ruskin. 
 
 ...188 Shakespeare's Heroines. Jameson. 
 
 ...189 She Stoops to Conquer. Goldsmith.
 
 Altemus' New Illustrated Vademecum series. Continued 
 
 ...190 Silas Marner. Eliot. 
 ...191 Sketch Book, The. Irving. 
 ...192 Snow Image, The, Hawthorne. 
 ...199 Tales from Shakespeare. Lamb. 
 ...aco Tanglewood Tales. Hawthorne. 
 ...201 Tartarin of Tarascon. Daudet. 
 ...202 Tartarin on the Alps. Datidet. 
 ...203 Ten Nights in a Bar-Room. Arthur. 
 ...204 Things Will Take a Turn. Harraden. 
 ...205 Thoughts. Marcus Aurelius. 
 ...206 Through The Looking Glass. Carroll. 
 ...207 Tom Brown's School Days. Hughes. 
 ...2(8 Treasure Island. Stevenson. 
 ...209 Twice Told Tales. Haivthome. 
 ...210 Two Years Before the Mast. Dana. 
 ...211 The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare. 
 ...212 The Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 ...217 Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe. 
 ...218 Undine. Fouque. 
 ...222 Vic, the autobiography of a fox-terrier. 
 
 Marsh. 
 
 ...223 Vicar of Wakefield. Goldsmith. 
 ...220 Walden. Thorean. 
 ...227 Water-Babies. Kingsley. 
 ...228 Weird Tales. Poe. 
 ...229 What is Art. Tolstoi. 
 ...230 Whittier's Poems, Vol. I. 
 ...231 Whittier's Poems, Vol II. 
 ...232 Window in Thrums. Harrie. 
 ...233 Women's Work in the Home, Farrar. 
 ...234 Wonder Book, A. Hawthorne. 
 ...241 Yellowplash Papers, The. Thackeray. 
 ...244 Zoe. By author of Laddie, etc.
 
 Henry Altemus' Publications. 
 
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 Embracing popular works arranged for the 
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 Printed from extra large clear type on fine en- 
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 Fine English cloth; handsome, new, original 
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 1 /Esop's Fables. 62 illustrations. 
 
 2 A Child's Life of Christ. 49 illustrations. 
 3! A Child's Story of the Bible. 72 illus- 
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 4. The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. 70 
 
 illustrations. 
 
 5. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 46 illus- 
 
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 6. Swiss Family Robinson. 50 illustrations. 
 
 7. Gulliver's Travels. 50 illustrations. 
 
 8. Bible Stories for Little Children. 80 illus- 
 
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 Robinson Crusoe. (Chiefly in words of one 
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 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. With 42 
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 Banyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Arranged for 
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 A Child's Life of Christ. With 49 illustrations. 
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 Swiss Family Robinson. With 50 illustrations. 
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 Grandfather's Chair; A History for Youth. By 
 
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 Aunt Martha's Corner Cupboard. By Mary and 
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 Battles of the War for Independence. By 
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 Water Babies.* By Charles Kingsley, with 84 
 illustrations. A charming fairy tale. 
 
 Young People's History of the War with Spain. 
 By Prescott Holmes, with 86 illustrations. The 
 story of the war for the freedom of Cuba, 
 arranged for young readers. 
 
 Heroes of the United States Navy. By Hart- 
 well James, with 65 illustrations. From the 
 days of the Revolution until the end of the 
 War with Spain. 
 
 Military Heroes of the United States. By 
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 Their brave deeds from Lexington to Santiago, 
 told in a captivating manner. 
 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin. By Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
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 i Sea Kings and Naval Heroes. By Hartwell 
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 Handsomely printed from large, clear type, on extra-fane 
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 ... i Romulus, the Founder of Rome. With 49 
 
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 ... 2 Cyrus the Great, the Founder of the 
 
 Persian Empire. With 40 illustrations. 
 ... 3 Darius the Great, King of the Medes and 
 
 Persian. With 34 illustrations. 
 ... 4 Xerxes the Great, King of Persia. With 
 
 39 illustrations. 
 ... 5 Alexander the Great, King of Macedon. 
 
 With 51 illustrations. 
 
 ... 6 Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. With 45 illus- 
 trations. 
 
 ... 7 Hannibal, the Carthaginian. With 37 illus- 
 trations. 
 ... 8 Julius Ccesar, the Roman Conqueror. 
 
 With 44 illustrations. 
 ... 9 Alfred the Great, of England. With 40 
 
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 ...10 WilHam the Conqueror, of England. With 
 
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 ...ii Hernando Cortez, the Conqueror of 
 
 Mexico. With 30 illustrations. 
 ...12 Mary, Queen of Scots. With 45 illustrations. 
 ...13 Queen Elizabeth, of England. With 49 
 
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 ...14 King Charles the First, of England. With 
 
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 ...iS King Charles the Second, of England. 
 
 With 38 illustrations. 
 ...16 Maria Antoinette, Queen of France. With 
 
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 ...17 Madam Roland, A Heroine of the French 
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 ...18 Josephine, Empress of France. With 40 
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 ... I The Silver Buckle. By M. Nataline Crump- 
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 ... 2 Charles Dickens' Children Stories. With 
 
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 ... 3 The Children's Shakespeare. With 30 
 
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 ... 4 Young Robin Hood. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
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 ... S Honor Bright. By Mary C. Rowsell. With 
 
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 ... 6 The Voyage of the Mary Adair. By Frances 
 
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 ... 7 The Kingfisher's Egg. By L. T. Meade. 
 
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 ... 8 Tattine. By Ruth Ogden. With 24 illus- 
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 ... 9 The Doings of a Dear Little Couple By 
 
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 ...ii The Little Skipper. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
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 ... i Abide in Christ. Murray. 
 
 ... 3 Beecher's Addresses. 
 
 ... 4 Best Thoughts. From Henry Drummond. 
 
 ... 5 Bible Birthday Book. 
 
 ... 6 Brooks' Addresses. 
 
 ... 7 Buy Your Own Cherries, Kirton. 
 
 ... 8 Changed Cross, The. 
 
 ... 9 Christian Life. Oxenden. 
 
 ...10 Christian Living. Meyer. 
 
 ...12 Christie's Old Organ. Walton. 
 
 ...13 Coming to Christ. Havergal. 
 
 ...14 Daily Food for Christians. 
 
 ...15 Day Breaketh, The. Shugert. 
 
 ...17 Drummond's Addresses. 
 
 ...18 Evening Thoughts. Havergal. 
 
 ...19 Gold Dust. 
 
 ...20 Holy in Christ. 
 
 ...21 Imitation of Christ, The. A'Kempis. 
 
 ...22 Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture. 
 
 Gladstone. 
 
 ...23 Jessica's First Prayer. Stretton. 
 ...24 John Ploughman's Pictures. Spurgeon. 
 ...25 John Ploughman's Talk. Spurgeon. 
 ...26 Kept for the Master's Use. Havergal. 
 ...27 Keble's Christian Year. 
 ...28 Let Us Follow Him. Sienkiewicz. 
 ...29 Like Christ. Murray. 
 ...30 Line Upon Line. 
 ...31 Manliness of Christ, The. Hughes.
 
 Henry Altemus' Publications. 
 
 ...32 Message of Peace, The. ChurcJ:, 
 ...33 Morning Thoughts. Havergal. 
 ...34 My King and His Service. Havergal. 
 ...35 Natural Law in the Spiritual World. 
 
 Drummond. 
 ...37 Pathway of Promise. 
 
 ...38 Pathway of Safety. Oxcnden. 
 
 ...39 Peep of Day. 
 
 ...40 Pilgrim's Progress, The. Bunyan. 
 
 ...41 Precept Upon Precept. 
 
 ...42 Prince of the House of David. Ingraham. 
 
 ...44 Shepherd Psalm. Meyer. 
 
 ...45 Steps Into the Blessed Life. Meyer. 
 
 ...46 Stepping Heavenward. Prentiss. 
 
 ...47 The Throne of Grace. 
 
 ...50 With Christ. Murray. 
 
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 1. All's Well that Ends Well. 
 
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 King Henry VI. (Part II.) 
 King Henry VI. (Part III.) 
 King Henry VIII. 
 
 King John. 
 King Lear. 
 King Richard I!. 
 King Richard HI. 
 Love's Labour's Lost. 
 
 2. Macbeth. 
 
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 Much Ado About Nothing. 
 
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 36. Pericles. 
 
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 . LIBRARY FACILmr 
 
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