Part 16 (2/2)
”Uncle!” I cried, looking back in uncontrollable excitement, ”I've got a fis.h.!.+” ”Not yet,” said my uncle. As he spoke there was a plash in the water; I caught the arrowy gleam of a scared fish shooting into the middle of the stream; my hook hung empty from the line. I had lost my prize.
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We are apt to speak of the sorrows of childhood as trifles in comparison with those of grown-up people; but we may depend upon it the young folks don't agree with us. Our griefs, modified and restrained by reason, experience, and self-respect, keep the proprieties, and, if possible, avoid a scene; but the sorrow of childhood, unreasoning and all-absorbing, is a complete abandonment to the pa.s.sion. The doll's nose is broken, and the world breaks up with it; the marble rolls out of sight, and the solid globe rolls off with the marble.
So, overcome by my great and bitter disappointment, I sat down on the nearest ha.s.sock, and for a time refused to be comforted, even by my uncle's a.s.surance that there were more fish in the brook. He refitted my bait, and, putting the pole again in my hands, told me to try my luck once more.
”But remember, boy,” he said, with his shrewd smile, ”never brag of catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It's no use to boast of anything until it's done, nor then either, for it speaks for itself.”
How often since I have been reminded of the fish that I did not catch!
When I hear people boasting of a work as yet undone, and trying to antic.i.p.ate the credit which belongs only to actual achievement, I call to mind that scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle in that particular instance takes the form of a proverb of universal application: ”NEVER BRAG OF YOUR FISH BEFORE YOU CATCH HIM.”
_John G. Whittier._
LITTLE KATE WORDSWORTH.
When I first settled in Grasmere, Catherine Wordsworth was in her infancy, but even at that age she noticed me more than any other person, excepting, of course, her mother. She was not above three years old when she died, so that there could not have been much room for the expansion of her understanding, or the unfolding of her real character. But there was room in her short life, and too much, for love the most intense to settle upon her.
The whole of Grasmere is not large enough to allow of any great distance between house and house; and as it happened that little Kate Wordsworth returned my love, she in a manner lived with me at my solitary cottage. As often as I could entice her from home, she walked with me, slept with me, and was my sole companion.
That I was not singular in ascribing some witchery to the nature and manners of this innocent child may be gathered from the following beautiful lines by her father. They are from the poem ent.i.tled ”Characteristics of a Child Three Years Old,” dated, at the foot, 1811, which must be an oversight, as she was not so old until the following year.
”Loving she is, and tractable, though wild; And Innocence hath privilege in her To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes, And feats of cunning, and the pretty round Of trespa.s.ses, affected to provoke Mock chastis.e.m.e.nt, and partners.h.i.+p in play.
And as a f.a.got sparkles on the hearth Not less if unattended and alone Than when both young and old sit gathered round, And take delight in its activity,-- Even so this happy creature of herself Was all-sufficient. Solitude to her Was blithe society, who filled the air With gladness and involuntary songs.”
It was this radiant spirit of joyousness, making solitude, for her, blithe society, and filling from morning to night the air with gladness and involuntary songs,--this it was which so fascinated my heart that I became blindly devoted to this one affection.
In the spring of 1812 I went up to London; and early in June I learned by a letter from Miss Wordsworth, her aunt, that she had died suddenly. She had gone to bed in good health about sunset on June 4, was found speechless a little before midnight, and died in the early dawn, just as the first gleams of morning began to appear above Seat Sandel and Fairfield, the mightiest of the Grasmere barriers,--about an hour, perhaps, before sunrise.
Over and above my love for her, I had always viewed her as an impersonation of the dawn, and of the spirit of infancy; and this, with the connection which, even in her parting hours, she a.s.sumed with the summer sun, timing her death with the rising of that fountain of life,--these impressions recoiled into such a contrast to the image of death, that each exalted and brightened the other.
I returned hastily to Grasmere, stretched myself every night on her grave, in fact often pa.s.sed the whole night there, in mere intensity of sick yearning after neighborhood with the darling of my heart.
In Sir Walter Scott's ”Demonology,” and in Dr. Abercrombie's ”Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers,” there are some remarkable ill.u.s.trations of the creative faculties awakened in the eye or other organs by peculiar states of pa.s.sion; and it is worthy of a place among cases of that nature, that in many solitary fields, at a considerable elevation above the level of the valleys,--fields which, in the local dialect, are called ”intacks,”--my eye was haunted, at times, in broad noonday (oftener, however, in the afternoon), with a facility, but at times also with a necessity, for weaving, out of a few simple elements, a perfect picture of little Kate in her att.i.tude and onward motion of walking.
I resorted constantly to these ”intacks,” as places where I was little liable to disturbance; and usually I saw her at the opposite side of the field, which sometimes might be at the distance of a quarter of a mile, generally not so much. Almost always she carried a basket on her head; and usually the first hint upon which the figure arose commenced in wild plants, such as tall ferns, or the purple flowers of the foxglove. But whatever these might be, uniformly the same little full-formed figure arose, uniformly dressed in the little blue bed-gown and black skirt of Westmoreland, and uniformly with the air of advancing motion.
_Thomas De Quincey._
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