Part 19 (2/2)
There is nothing that happens, you know, which must not inevitably, and which does not actually, photograph itself in every conceivable aspect and in all dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past await but one brief process and all their pictures will be called out and fixed forever. We had a curious ill.u.s.tration of the great fact on a very humble scale. When a certain bookcase, long standing in one place, for which it was built, was removed, there was the exact image on the wall of the whole, and of many of its portions. But in the midst of this picture was another,-the precise outline of a map which had hung on the wall before the bookcase was built. We had all forgotten everything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as some day or other we may remember a sin which has been built over and covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away from before the wall of Infinity, where the wrong-doing stands self-recorded.
The Professor lived in that house a long time,-not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he pa.s.sed through it for the last time,-and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof but his; children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling.
Peace be to those walls, forever,-the Professor said,-for the many pleasant years he has pa.s.sed within them!
The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, who has been with him in many of his changes of place, and who follows him in imagination with tender interest wherever he goes.-In that little court, where he lived in gay loneliness so long,-
-in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from its mountain fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud and swollen and wantons in huge luxurious...o...b..ws about the fair Northampton meadows, and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its lower sh.o.r.es,-up in that caravansary on the banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement processions,-where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor always called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft climbing ma.s.ses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used to look through his old ”Dollond” to see if the s.h.i.+ning Ones were not within range of sight,-sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks which carried them by the peaceful common, through the solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the terminus of their harmless stroll,-the patulous f.a.ge, in the Professor's cla.s.sic dialect,-the spreading beech, in more familiar phrase,-[stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not done yet, and we have another long journey before us,]-
-and again once more up among those other hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic,-dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that s.h.i.+ne beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed demi-blondes,-in the home overlooking the winding stream and the smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, where the tracks of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter snow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North, the highest waves of the great land-storm in all this billowy region,-suggestive to mad fancies of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a half-buried t.i.taness, stretched out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of the forest,-in that home where seven blessed summers were pa.s.sed, which stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific vision of the holy dreamer,-
-in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its drab and mahogany,-full of great and little boys' playthings from top to bottom,-in all these summer or winter nests he was always at home and always welcome.
This long articulated sigh of reminiscences,-this calenture which shows me the maple-shadowed plains of Berks.h.i.+re and the mountain-circled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves which come feeling their way along the wall at my feet, restless and soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers,-is for that friend of mine who looks into the waters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them the same visions which paint themselves for me in the green depths of the Charles.
-Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress?-Why, no,-of course not.
I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't think I should expect any woman to listen to such a sentence as that long one, without giving her a chance to put in a word?
-What did I say to the schoolmistress?-Permit me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the cla.s.sic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is _nullum tui negotii_.
When the schoolmistress and I reached the school-room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to let me join her again.
EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL.
(_To be burned unread_.)
I am afraid I have been a fool; for I have told as much of myself to this young person as if she were of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence and expansive utterance. I have been low-spirited and listless, lately,-it is coffee, I think,-(I observe that which is bought _ready-ground_ never affects the head,)-and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am downhearted.
There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except at dead-low tide.
There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription!
-Oh, no, no, no! a thousand times, no!-Yet what is this which has been shaping itself in my soul?-Is it a thought?-is it a dream?-is it a _pa.s.sion_?-Then I know what comes next.
-The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill; those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all the windows. When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside that very high fence. But I never see much life in those groups I sometimes meet;-and then the careful man watches them so closely! How I remember that sad company I used to pa.s.s on fine mornings, when I was a schoolboy!-B., with his arms full of yellow weeds,-ore from the gold mines which he discovered long before we heard of California,-Y., born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive,-made a Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a stick,-(the multi-millonnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good people made him easy for life,)-how I remember them all!
I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, in ”Vathek,” and how each shape, as it lifted its hand from its breast, showed its heart,-a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder summit.
Go there on the next visiting-day, and ask that figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the sitting posture, to lift its hand,-look upon its heart, and behold, not fire, but ashes.-No, I must not think of such an ending!
Dying would be a much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty.
Make a will and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping school.-I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she could by any possibility marry.
-It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing.-It is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her and her husband, sometimes.
No coffee, I hope, though,-it depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably;-they must have been grinding it at home.-Another morning walk will be good for me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air before school.
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