CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BEQUEST OF STEWART HENRY BURNHAM 1943 Cornell University Library arV1884 Reveries of a bachelor, or, A bool< of tfi 3 1924 031 252 111 olin.anx ^21^ Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031252111 RE VERIES A BACHELOR A BOOK OF THE HEART. r ■^ Bv IK MARVEL.^ ^%,t,VfJ, It is worth the labor — saith Plotinus — to consider well of Love, whether it be a God-, or a divell, or passion of the minde, or partly God, partly diveUi partly passion. — Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III. Sec. i. A NEW EDITION. NEW YORK: SCRIBNER. ARMSTRONG. AND COMPANY. . 1874- y\e- : fe-il4,-4-J — M Entered according to Act of CkingreBB, In ^e jeax 1863, by Chakli:3 Soribner &Co., bl til* Clerk's Office of the District Court of the XTuited States for the Southerc District of New York BITHtSISE, OAHBEISSI: , HIBKOTTFES AND PBlHTJtII If B. 0. HOUOHTON AND OOHPAITT TO ONE AT HOME, IS WHOM ARE MET SO MANY OF THE GRACES AND THE VIRTUES, OF WHICH AS BACHELOR I DREAMED, THIS SEW EDITION OF UY BOOK IS DUDICATBD. A NEW PBEFAOE. MY publisher has written me that the old type of this book of the Reveries are so far worn and battered, that they will bear no further usage ; and, in view of a new edition, he asks for such revision of the text as I may deem judicious, and for a few lines in way of preface. I began the revision. I scored out word after word ; presently I came to the scoring out of paragraphs ; and before I had done, I was laaking my scores by the page. It would never do. It might be the better, but it would not be the same. I cannot lop away those twelve swift, changeful years that are gone. Middle age does not look on life like youth ; we can- not make it. And why mix the years and the thoughts ? Let the young carry their own burdens, and banner ; and we — ours. I have determined not to touch the book. A race has grown up which may welcome its youngness, and find a spirit or a sentiment in it that cleaves to them, and cheers them, and is true. I hope they will. For me those young years are gone. 1 cannot go 6 A NEW PREFACE. back to that tide. I hear the rush of it in quiet houra, like the murmur of lost music. The companions who discussed with me these little fantasies as they came reeking from the press, — and suggested how I might have mended matters by throwing in a new light here, or deepening the shadows there, — are no longer within ear-shot. If living, they are widely scattered ; — heads of young families, maybe, who will bring now to the re-reading of passages they thought too sombre, the light of such bitter experience as, ten years since, neither they nor I had fathomed. Others are dapper, elderly bachelors, — coquetting with the world in the world's great cities, — brisk in their step, — coaxing all the features of youth to stay by them, — brushing their hair with needless and nervous frequency over the growing spot of baldness, — perversely reckoning themselves still proper mates for girlhood, — dreaming yet (as we once dreamed together) of an Elysium in store, and of a fairy future, where only roses shall bloom. The houses where I was accustomed to linger show other faces at the windows, — bright and cheery faces, it is true, — but they are looking over at a yoimg fellow upon the other side of the way. The children who sat for my pictures are grown ; the boys I watched at their game of taw, and who clapped their hands gleefully at a good shot, are buttoned into natty blue frocks, and wear little lace-bordered bands upon their shoulders; and over and over, as 1 read my morning paper, I am brought to sudden pause, A NEW PREFACE. • and a strange electric current thrills me, as I come upon their boy-names printed in the dead-roll of the war. The girls who wore the charming white pinafores, and a wild tangle of flaxen curls, have now netted Up all those clustering tresses into a stately Pompadour head- dress ; and they rustle past me in silks, and do not know me. The elderly friends who cheered me with kindly ex- pressions of look and tongue — I am compelled to say — now trip in their speech ; and I observe a little mo- rocco case at their elbows — for eye-glasses. And as they put them on, to read what I may be say- ing now, let them keep their old charity, and think an well of me as they can. Edgewood, 1863. PREFACE. rriHIS book is neither more nor less than it pretends -'- to be : it is a collection of those floating Reveries which have, from time to time, drifted across my brain. I never yet met with a bachelor who had not his share of just such floating visions ; and the only difierence between us Ues in the fact that I have tossed them from me in the shape of a Book. If they had been worked over with more unity of design, I dare say I might have made a respectable novel ; as it is, I have chosen the honester way of setting them down as they came seething from my thought, with all their crudities and contrasts, uncovered. As for the truth that is in them, the world may be- lieve what it likes ; for having written to humor the world, it would be hard if I should curtail any of its privileges of judgment. I should think there was as much truth in them as in most Eeveries. The first story of the book has already had some publicity ; and the criticisms upon it have amused and pleased me. One honest journalist avows that it could never have been written by a bachelor. I thank him 10 PREFACE. for 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 bachelors are the only safe and secure observers of all the phases of married life. The rest of the world have their hobbies, and by law, as well as by immemorial custom, are reckoned unfMr witnesses in everything relating to their matri- monial affairs. Perhaps I ought however to make an exception in favor of spinsters, who, like us, are independent spec- tators, and possess just that kind of indifference to the marital state which makes them intrepid in their obser- vations, and very desirable for — authorities. As for the style of the book, I have nothing to say for i1^ except to refer to my title. These are not sermons, nor essays, nor criticisms ; — they are only Reveries. And if the reader should stumble upon occasional mag- niloquence, or be worried with a little too much of sen- timent, pray let him remember — that I am dreaming But while I say this in the hope of nicking off the wiry edge of my reader's judgment, I shall yet stand up boldly for the general tone and character of the book. 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 character ; they consist mainly PREFACE. 11 of just such whimseys, and reflections, as a great many brother bachelors are apt to indulge in, but which they are too cautious, or too prudent, to lay before the world. As I have in this matter shown a frankness and naivete which are unusual, I shall ask a corresponding frankness in my reader ; and I can assure him safely that this is eminently one of those books which were " never in- tended for publication." In the hope that this plain avowal may quicken the reader's charity, and screen me from cruel judgment, I remain, with sincere good wishes, Ik !&Iarvel. Nkw York, Nov. 1860 CONTENTS. « FIRST REVERIE. PAS Oteb a Wood-Fikb . . . li I. Smoke — signifying Doubt 21 n. Blaze — sioNiFYiHO Cheeb 3( m. Ashes — sioinFYiNG Desolatios .... 37 SECOND REVERIE. By a City Gbaie 53 I. Sea-Coal 60 II. AUTHBACriE 77 THIRD REVERIE. OVEB HIS CiGAB 95 I. Lighted with a Coax. 99 n. Lighted with a Wisp of Papeb .... 112 in. Lighted with a Match 126 FOURTH REVERIE. MoBNiKG, Nook, and Evening 141 I. MOKNING — which IS THE PAST . . . .148 School-Days 157 The Sea . . .... 168 The Fatheb-Lanp .175 A EOMAN GlKL .184 The Apeshiues 194 EneiCA 802 14 14 CONTENTS. PAOB n. Noon — which is thb Puesknt .... 210 Early Friends 212 School Revisitkd 220 College 225 The Packet of Bella 232 III. Evening — which is the Future .... 241 Carry 245 The Letter ....... , 253 New Travel 259 Hose . . STl FIRST REVERIE. SMOKE, FLAME, AND ASHES. OVER A WOOB-FIBE. X HAVE got a quiet farm-house in the country, a verj -^ humble place to be sure, tenanted by a worthy enough man, of the old New-England stamp, where I sometimes go for a day or two in the winter, to look over the farm accounts, and to see how the stock is thriving on the winter's keep. One side the door, as you enter from the porch, is a little parlor, scarce tweWe feet by ten, with a cosy-look-^ ing fireplace, a heavy oak floor, a couple of arm-chairs, and a brown table with carved lions' feet Out of this room opens a little cabinet, only big enough for a broad bachelor bedstead, where I sleep upon feathers, and wake in the morning with my eye upon a saucy colored lithographic print of some fancy " Bessy." It happens to be the only house in the world of which I ma hona-Jide owner ; and I take a vast deal of comfcft in treating it just as I choose. I manage to break some article of furniture, almost every time I pay t a visit ; and if I cannot open the window readilv of a a 18 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 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 be- tween the jambs roars for hours together with white flame. To be sure, the windows are not very tight, be- tween broken panes and bad joints, so that the fire, large as it is, is by no means an extravagant comfort. As night approaches, I have a huge pile of oak and hickory placed beside the hearth ; I put out the tallow candle on the mantel, (using the family snuflFers, with one leg broke,) then, drawing my chair directly in front of the blazing wood, and setting one foot on each of the old iron fire-dogs, (until they grow too warm,) I dis- pose myself for an evening of such sober and thought- ful quietude, as I believe, on my soul, that very few of my fellow-men have the good fortune to enjoy. My tenant, meantime, in the other room, I can hear now and then, though there is a thick stone chimney and broad entry between, multiplying contrivances with Uis wife to put two babies to sleep. This occupies OVER A WOOD-FIRE. 19 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 exhausted ; I pile upon the hot coals what remains, and sit watching how it kindles, and blazes, and goes out, — even like our joys ! — and then slip by the light of the embers into my bed, where I luxuriate in such sound and healthful slumber as only such rattling window-frames, and coxm- try air, can supply. But to return. The other evening, — it happened to be on my last visit to my farm-house, — when I had exhausted all the ordinary rural topics of thought, had formed all sorts of conjectures as to the income of the year ; had planned a new wall around one lot, and the clearing up of another, now covered with patriarchal wood ; and wondered if the little rickety house would not be after all a snug enough box to live and to die in, — I fell on a sudden into such an unprecedented line of thought, which took such deep hold of ray sympathies — sometimes even starting tears — that I determined, the next day, to set as much of it as I could recall, 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 suggested to me the thought of — Mar- riage. 20 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. I piled upon the heated fire-dogs the last armful of my wood ; and now, said I, bracing myself courageously between the arms of my chair, I '11 not flinch ; I '11 pur- sue the thought wherever it leads, though it lead me to the d , (I am apt to be hasty,) — at least, continued I, softening, until my fire is out. The wood was green, and at first showed no disposi tion to blaze. It smoked furiously. Smoke, thought I, always goes before blaze ; and so does doubt go before decision : and my Eeverie, from that very starting-point, slipped into this shape : — Smoke — Signifying Douht. 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 eamii^ go in to secure the ticket — without trembling, hesitating, and doubting ? Can a man stake his bachelor respectability) his independence and comfort, upon the die of absorbing, unchanging, relentless marriage, without trembling at the venture ? Shall a man who has been free to chase his fancies over the wide world, without let or hindrance, shut himself up to marriage-ship, within four walls called Home, that are to claim him, his time, his trouble, and his tears, thenceforward forevermore, without doubts thick, and thick-coming as Smoke ? Shall he who has been hitherto a mere observer of other men's cares and business, — moving off where 22 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. they made him sick of heart, approaching whenever and wherever they made him gleeful, — shall he now undertake administration of just such cares and busi- ness, without qualms ? Shall he, whose whole life has been but a nimble succession of escapes from trifling difficulties, now broach without doubtings — that Matri mony, where if difficulty beset him, there is no escape . Shall this brain of mine, careless- working, never tired with idleness, feeding on long vagaries and high gigan- tic castles, dreaming out beatitudes hour by hour, — turn itself at length to such dull task-work, as thinking out a livelihood for wife and children ? Where thenceforward will be those sunny dreams in which I have warmed my fancies and my heart, and lighted my' eye with crystal? This very marriage, which a brilliant working imagination has invested time and again with brightness and delight, can serve nc longer as a mine for teeming fancy : all, alas ! will be gone — reduced to the dull standard of the actual ! No more room for intrepid forays of imagination — no more gorgeous realm-making — all will be over ! Why not, I thought, go on dreaming ? Gan any wife be prettier than an after-dinner fancy, idle and yet vivid, can paint for you ? Can any chil- dren make less noise than the little, rosy-cheeked ones, who have no existence except in the omnium gatherum of your own brain ? Can any housewife be more unex SMOKE — SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 23 ceptionable than she who goes sweeping daintily the cob- webs that gather in your dreams ? Can any domestic larder be better stocked than the private larder of your head dozing on a cushioned chair-back at Del- monico's ? Can any family purse be better filled thai the exceeding plump one you dream of, after reading such pleasant books as Miinchhausen, or Typee ? But if, after all, it must be, — duty, or what-not, mak- ing provocation, — what then ? And I clapped my feet hard against the fire-dogs, and leaned back, and turned my face to the ceiling, as much as to say, — And where on edrth, then, shall a poor devil look for a wife ? Somebody says, Lyttleton or Shaftesbury I think, that "marriages would be happier if they were all arranged by the Lord Chancellor." Unfortunately, we have no Lord Chancellor to make this commutation of our misery. Shall a man then scour the country on a mule's back, like Honest Gil Bias of Santillane ; or shall he make application to some such intervening providence as Madame St. Marc, who, as I see by the Presse, manages these matters to one's hand for some five per 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 turnpike; and I have hunted hare at noon, and woodcock in snow-time, never despairing, scarce 24 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 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 odd mill- ions of unmarried women, for a single capture — irrp-. mediable, unchangeable — and yet a capture which, by strange metonymy not laid down in the books, is very apt to turn captor into captive, and make game of hunter, — all this, surely, surely may make a man shrug with doubt ! Then, again, — liiere are the plaguey wife's relar tions. Who knows how many third, fourth, or fifth cousins will appear at careless complimentary intervals, long after you had settled into the placid belief that all congratulatory visits were at an end ? How many twisted-headed brothers will be putting in their advice, ■ as a friend to Peggy ? J;: */ -■» .•■'"/ • ' ' •^'^- -' ' « ' ' ''•''•^•^ How many maiden aunts wiU come to spend a month or two with their " dear Peggy," and want to know every tea-time " if she is n't a dear love of a wife ? " Then, dear father-in-law will beg (taking dear Peggy's hand in his) to give a little wholesome counsel; and will be very sure to advise just the contrary of what you had determined to undertake. And dear mamma- in-law must set her nose into Peggy's cupboard, and insist upon having the key to your own private locker in the wainscot SMOKE — SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 26 Then, perhaps, there is a little bevy of dirty-nosed nephews who come to spend the holidays, and eat up your East India sweetmeats ; and who are forever tramping over your head, or raising the old Harry be- low, while you are busy with your clients. Last, and worst, is some fidgety old uncle, forever too cold or too hot, who vexes you with his patronizing airs, and impu dently kisses his little Peggy ! That could be borne, however ; for perhaps he has promised his fortune to Peggy. Peggy, then, will be rich : (and the thought made me rub my shins, which were now getting comfoi-tably warm upon the fire-dogs.) Then, she will be forever talking of ker fortune; and pleasantly reminding you, on occasion of a favorite purchase, how lucky that she had the means ; and dropping hints about economy ; and buy- ing very extravagant Paisleys. She will annoy you by looking over the stock-list at breakfast-time ; and mention quite carelessly to your clients that she is interested in such or such a specu- lation. She will be provokingly silent when you hint to a tradesman that you have not the money by you foi his small bill; in short, she will tear the life out of you, making you pay in righteous retribution of annoy- ance, grief, vexation, shame, and sickness of hearty for the superlative folly of " marrying rich." 26 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. But if not rich, then poor. Bah ! the thought made me stir the coals ; but there was still no blaze. The paltry earnings you are able to wring out of clients by the sweat of your brow, will now be all our income ; you will be pestered for pin-money, and pestered with your poor wife's relations. Ten to one, she will stickle about taste, — " Sir Visto's," — and want to make this so pretty, and that so charming, if she oinly had the means ; and is sure Paul (a kiss) can't deny his little Peggy such a trifling sum, and all for the common benefit. Then she, for one, means that her children sha'n't go a-begging for clothes, — and another pull at the purse. Trust a poor mother to dress her children in finery! Perhaps she is ugly ; not noticeable at first, but growing on her, and (what is worse) growing faster on you. You wonder why you did n't see that vulgar nose long ago ; and that lip — it is very strange, you think, that you ever thought it pretty. And then, to come to breakfast, with her hair looking as it does, and you not so much as daring to say, "Peggy, do brush your hair ! " Her foot too — not very bad when decently chaussee — but now since she's married she does wear such infernal slippers ! And yet for all this, to be prigging up for an hour when any of my old chums come to dine with me ! SMOKE — SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 27 ' Bless your kind hearts my dear fellows," said I thrusting the tongs into the coals, and speaking out loud, as if my voice could reach from Virginia to Paris : " not married yet ! " Perhaps Peggy is pretty enough, only shrewish. No matter for cold coffee ; you should have been up before. What sad, tliin, 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 '11 not raise a storm about butter a little turned. I think I see myself, ruminated I, sitting meekly at table, scarce dar- ing to lift up my eyes, utterly fagged out with some quarrel of yesterday, choking down detestably sour muffins, that my wife thinks are " delicious," slipping in dried mouthflils of burnt ham off the side of my fork tines, slipping off my chair sideways at the end, and slipping out, with my hat between my knees, to business, and never feeling myself a competent, soimd-minded man, till the oak door is between me and Peggy. " Ha, ha ! not yet," said I j and in so earnest a tone that my dog started to his feet, cocked his eye to have a good look into my face, met my smile of tri- umph with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled up iigain in the corner. 28 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild enough, only she does n't care a fig for you. She has married you because father or grandfather thought the match eligible, and because she did n't wish to disoblige them. Besides, she did n't positively hate you, and thought you were a respectable enough young person ; she has told you so repeatedly at dinner. She wonders you like to read poetry ; she wishes you would buy her a good cook-book, and insists upon your making your will at the birth of the first baby. She thinks Captain So-and-So a splendid-looking fellow, and wishes you would trim up a little, were it only, for appearance' sake. You need not hurry up from the office so early at night : she, bless her dear heart ! does not feel lonely You read to her a love-tale : she interrupts the pathetic parts with directions to her seamstress. You read of marriages: she sighs, and asks if Captain So-and-So has left town ! She hates to be mewed up in a cottage, or between brick walls ; she does so love the Springs 1 But, again, Peggy loves you ; at least she swears it, with her hand on the " Sorrows of Werther.'' She has pin-money which she spends for the " Literary World " and the " Friends in Council." She is not bad-looking save a bit too much of forehead ; nor is she sluttish, unless a neglige tUl three o'clock, and an ink-stain on the forefinger be sluttish ; but then she is such a sad blue ! SMOKE — SIGNIFYING DOUBT. 29 Toil 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 innocently that she had a capital memory for her sam- plers. But to be bored eternally about divine Dant^ and funny Goldoni, is too bad. Your copy of Tasso, a treasure print of 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 head at break- fast, and she will fling you a scrap of Anthology, in lieu of the camphor-bottle, or chant the atai, atai, 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 below, rolled round the mossy jak stick, twined among the crackling tree - limbs, mounted, lit up the whole body of smoke, and blazed out cheerily and bright. Doubt vanished with. Smoke, and Hope began with Flame. n. Blaze — Sigmjying Cheer. 1 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 dancing flame. Love is a flame, ruminated I ; and (glancing round the room) how a flame brightens up a man's hab- itation. " Carlo," said I, calling up my dog into the light ; « good fellow. Carlo ! " and I patted him kindly ; and he ■wagged his tail, and laid his nose across my knee, and looked -wistfully up in my face ; then strode away, turned to look again, and lay down to sleep. " Pho, the brute 1 " 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 girl, with a pretty little foot lying out upon the hearth, a bit of lace running round the swelling throat, the hair parted to a charm over a BLAZE— SIGNIFYING CHEER. 81 forehead fair as any of your dreams, — and if you could reacli an arm round that chair-back, without fear of giving offence, and suffer your fingers to play idly with those curls that escape down the neck, — and if you could clasp with your other hand those little, whiter taper fingers of hers, which lie so temptingly within reach, and so, talk softly and low in presence of the blaze, while the hours slip without knowledge, and the winter winds whistle uncared for, — if, in short, you were no bachelor, but the husband of some such sweet image, (dream, call it rather,) would it not be far pleas- anter than this cold, single, night-sitting, counting the sticks, reckoning the length of the 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 lis- tening, because it is you who whisper, — ears ever in- dulgent, because eager to praise, — and if your darkest fancies were lit up, not merely with bright wood-fire, but with a ringing laugh of that sweet face turned up in fond rebuke, — how far better, than to be waxing black and sour over pestilential hiunors, alone, — your \rery dog asleep ? And if, when a glowing thoi^ht 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, 32 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. becanse she loves to be there ; and if you could watch the thought catching that girlish mind, illuming that fair brow, sparkling in those pleasantest of eyes, — how far better than to feel it slumbering, and going out, heavy, lifeless, and dead, in your own selfish fancy. And if a generous emotion steals over you, coming you know not whither, would there not be a 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 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. Surely imagination would be stronger and purer, if it could have the playful fancies of dawning womanhood to delight it. All toil BLAZE — SIGNIFYING CHEER. 33 vrould be torn from mind-labor, if but another heart grew into this present soul, quickening it, warming it cheering it, bidding it ever God speed ! 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 crowding cares ; and darkness that now seats you de- spondent in your solitary chair for days together, weaving bitter fancies, dreaming bitter dreams, would grow light and thin, and spread and float away, chased by that beloved smile. Tour friend — poor feUow ! — dies : never mind, that gentle clasp of her fingers, as she steals behind you, telling you not to weep, — it is worth ten friends ! Tour 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. She, she says, will«fae a sister ; and the waving curls, as she leans upon your shoulder, touch your cheek, and your wet eye turns to meet those other eyes — Grod has sent his angel, surely ! Tour 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 kUling yours ; and you live again, to issuage that kind sorrow of hers. 3* 34 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Then, those children, rosy, fair-haired ; no, they do not disturb you with their prattle now ; they are yours ! Toss away there on the greensward ; never mind the hyacinths, the snowdrops, the violets, if so be any are there ; the perfume of their healthful lips is worth all the flowers of the world. No need now to gather wild bouquets to love and cherish: flower, tree, gun, are all dead things ; things livelier hold your soul. And she, the mother, sweetest and fairest of all, watching, tending, caressing, loving, till your own heart grows pained with tenderest jealousy, and cures itself with loving. You have no need now of any cold lecture to teach thankfulness : your heart is full of it. No need now, as once, of bursting blossoms, of trees taking leaf and greenness, to turn thought kindly and thankfully ; for ever beside you there is bloom, and ever beside you there is fruit, fo» which eye, heart, and soul are full of unknown and unspoken, because unspeakable, thank- offering. And if sickness catches you, binds you, lays you down : no lonely moanings, and wicked curses at care- less stepping nurses. 27ie step is noiseless, and yet distinct beside 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 BLAZE --SIGNIFYING CHEER. 35 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 s, greater 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 everything gross, even now as it clings to grossness. Love would make its strength native and progressive. Earth's cares would fly. Joys would double. Susceptibilities be quickened ; Love master self; and having made the mastery, stretch on- ward, and upward toward Infinitude. And if the end came, and sickness brought that fol- lower — Great Follower — which sooner or later is sure to come after, then the heart, and the hand of Love, ever near, are giving to your tired soul, daily and hourly, lessons of that' love which consoles, which tri- umphs, which circleth all, and centreth in all, — Love Infinite and Divine ! Kind hands — none but hers — will smooth the hair upon your brow as the chill grows damp and heavy on it ; and her fingers — none but hers — will lie in yours OS the wasted flesh stiflFens, and hardens for the ground. Her tears — you could feel no others, if oceans ff;(l — • (rill warm your drooping features once more to 'ife ; once more your eye, lighted in joyous triumph, ki idle ui her smile, and then — 36 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. The fire fell upon the hearth ; the blaze gave a last leap, a flicker, then another, caught a little remaining t?rig, blazed up, wavered, went out. There was nothing but a bed of glowing embers, over which the white ashes gathered fast. I was alone, with only my dog for company. in. AsJies — Signifying Desolation. A FTER all, thought I, ashes follow blaze, inevi- -*~^ tably as Death follows Life. Misery treads on the heels of Joy ; Anguish rides swift after Pleasure. " Come to me again. Carlo," said I to my dog ; and I patted him fondly once more, but now only by the light of the dying embers. It is very little pleasure one takes in fondling brute favorites; but it is a pleasure that when it passes leaves no void. It is only a little alleviating redun- dance in your solitary heai-t-life, which, if lost, another can be supplied. But if your heart — not solitary, not quieting its hu- mors with mere love of chase or dog, not repressing year after year its earnest yearnings after something better and more spiritual — has fairly linked itself by bonds strong as life to another heart, is the casting off easy, then ? Is it then only a little heart-redundancy cut off Brhich the next bright sunset will fill up? 88 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. And my fancy, as it had painted doubt under the smoke, and cheer under warmth of the blaze, so now it began, under the faint light of the smouldering em- bers, to picture heart-desolation. What kind, congratulatory letters, hosts of them, coming from old and half-forgotten friends, now 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 I « 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 lahie 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 fkinter ; how you tremble at the lustre in those eyes, if it be not the lustre of Death ; how you totter under the weight of that muslin sleeve — a phan- tom weight ! How you fear to do it, and yet press ferward, to note if that breathing be quickened, as you ascend the home-heights, to look off on sunset lighting 4ie plain. ASHES — SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 89 Is your sleep quiet sleep, after that she has whis- pered to you her fears, and in the same breath — soft as a sigh, sharp as an 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 remembers : and on remembrance he can live for days, and weeks. The garret, if a garret covers him, is rich in fancies. The rain, if it pelts, pelfs only him used to rain-peitings. And his dog crouches not in dread, but in companionship. His crust he divides with him, and laughs. He crowns himself with glori- ous memories of Cervantes, though he begs : if he nights it under the stars, he dreams heaven-sent dreams of the prisoned and homeless Galileo. He hums old sonnets, and snatches of poor Jonson's plays. He chants Dryden's odes, and dwells on Otwa/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 ! 40 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Keep your money, old misers, and your palaces, old princes, — the world is mine ! " I care not, Fortune, what you me deny. Ton cannot rob me of free nature's grace, Tou cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; Ton cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living streams, at eve. Let health my nerves and finer-fibres brace. And I their toys to the great children leave: Of Fancy, Reason, Virtue, naught can me bereave 1 " 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 ? WiU your heart grow strong, if the strength of her love can dam up the fountains of tears, and the tied tongue not tell of bereavement ? Will it solace you to find her parting the poor treasure of food you have stolen for her, with begging, foodless children ? But this ill, strong hands, and Heaven's help, will put 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 ASHES— SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 41 bring fulness again into that blanched cheek, or round those little thin lips once more ; but it cannot. Thin- ner and thinner they grow ; plaintive and more plain- tive her sweet voice. " Dear Bessy " — and your tones tremble ; you feel that she is on the edge of the grave ? Can you pluck her back ? - Can endearments stay her ? Business is heavy, away from the loved child ; home you go, to fondle while yet time is left ; but this time you are too late. She is gone. She cannot hear you : she cannot thank you for the violets you put within her stiff white hand. And then — the grassy mound — the cold shadow of the headstone ! The wind, growing with the night, is rattling at the window-panes, and whistles dismally. I wipe a tear, and, in the interval of my Eeverie, thank God that I am no such mourner. But gayety, snail-footed, creeps back to the house- hold. All is bright again ; — the violet bed 's not sweeter Than the delicious breath marriage sends forth. ITer lip is rich and full ; her cheek delicate 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 growing, ever prettier, ever winning 42 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 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 thou- sand-fold. And now, with his pale sister in the grave, all that love has come away from the mound, where worms feast, and centres on the boy. How you watch the storms lest they harm him ! How often you steal to his bed late at night, and lay your hand lightly upon the brow, where the curls clus- ter thick, rising and falling with the throbbing temples, and watch, for minutes together, the little lips half parted, and listen — your ear close to them — if 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 yourself; listen again. No, there is nothing ! Put your hand now to his brow, — damp, indeed, ASHES— SIGNIFYINO DESOLATION. 43 but not with healthful night-sleep ; it is not your hand, — no, do not deceive yourself, — it is your loved boy's fore- head that is so cold ; and your loved boy will never speak to you again — never play again — he is dead ! Oh, the tears — the tears ; what blessed things are tears ! Never fear now to let them fall on his fore- head, or his lip, lest you waken him ! Clasp him — clasp him harder ; you cannot hurt, you cannot waken him ! Lay him down, gently or not, it is the same ; he is stiff; he is stark and cold. But courage is elastic ; it is our pride. It recovers itself easier, thought I, than these embers will get into blaze again. But courage, and patience, and faith, and hope have their limit. Blessed be the man who escapes such trial as will determine limit ! To a lone man it comes not near ; for how can trial take hold where there is nothing by which to try ? A funeral ? You reason with philosophy. A grave- yard ? You read Hervey, and muse upon the wall. A friend dies ? You sigh, you pat your dog ; it is over. Losses ? You retrench ; you light your pipe ; it is for- gotten. Calumny ? You laugh — you sleep. But with that childless wife clinging to you in love 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 44 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Voltaire? Can you smoke idly, your feet dangling with the ivies, your thoughts all waving fancies upon a chiu'chyard wall, — a wall that borders the grave of your boy ? Can you amuse yourself by turning stinging Martial into rhyme ? Can you pat your dog, and seeing, him wakeful and kind, say " It is enough " ? Can you sneer at calumny, and sit by your fire dozing ? Blessed, thought I again, is the man who escapes such trial as will measure the limit of patience and the limit of courage ! But the trial comes : colder and colder were grow- ing the embers. That wife, over whom your love broods, is feding. 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. Tour tiials and your loves together have centred your affections. They are not now as when you were a lone man, widespread and superficial. They have caught from domestic attachments a finer tone and touch. They cannot shoot out tendrils into barren world-soil, and suck up thence strengthening nutriment. They 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- ASHES— SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 45 bond was linking you — as if a community of feeling lay between. There is a heart-bond that absorb^ all others ; there is a community that monopolizes your feeling. When the heart lay wide open, before it had grown upon and closed around particular objects, it could take strength and cheer from a hundred connec- tions that now seem colder than ice. And now those particular objects, alas for you ! are failing. What anxiety pursues you ! How you struggle to fancy there is no danger ; how she struggles to per- suade you there is no danger ! How it grates now on your ear — the toil and turmoil of the city ! It was music when you were alone ; it was pleasant even, when from the din you were elaborating comforts for the cherished objects, — when you had such sweet escape as evening drew on. Now it maddens you to see the world careless while you are steeped in care. They hustle you in the street ; they smile at you across the table ; they. Tjow carelessly over the way ; they do not know what canker is at yout heart. The undertaker comes with 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 46 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. house : is he wise ? you ask yourself; is he prudent ? is he the best ? Did he never fail ; is he never forgetful ? And now the hand that touches yours — is it no thin- ner, no whiter than yesterday ? Sunny days come when he revives ; color comes back ; she breathes freer ; she picks flowers ; she meets you with a smile : hope lives again. But the next day of storm she is fallen. She cannot talk even ; she presses your hand. Tou hurry away from business before your time. What matter for clients ; who is to reap the rewards ? What matter for fame ; whose eye will it brighten ? What matter for riches; whose is the inheritance? You find her propped with pillows ; she is looking over a little picture-book bethumbed by the dear boy she has lost. She hides it in her chair ; she has pity on you. Another day of revival, when the spring sun shines, and flowers-open out-of-doors ; she leans on your arm, and strolls into the garden where the first birds are singing. Listen to them with her ; what memories are in bird-songs ! You need not shudder at her tears ; they are tears of Thanksgiving. Press the hand that lies light upon your arm, and you, too, thank God, while yet you may! You are early home, mid-afternoon. Tour step is not light ; it is heavy, terrible. ASHES — SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 41 They have sent for you. She is lying down, her eyes half closed, her breathing •ng and interrupted. She hears you ; her eye opens ; you put your hand in hers ; yours trembles ; hers does not. Her lips move ; it is your name. " Be strong," she says ; " God will help you." She presses harder your hand : "Adieu ! " A long breath, — another ; you are alone again. No tears now ; poor man ! You cannot find them '. Again home early. There is a smell of varnish in your house. A cofSn is there ; they have clothed the body in decent grave-clothes, and the undertaker is screwing down the lid, slipping round on tiptoe. Does he fear to waken her ? He asks you a simple question about the inscription upon the plate, rubbing it with his coat-cufT. 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 coiBn, a very nice coffin. Pass your hand over it ; how smooth ! Some sprigs of mignonette are lying carelessly in a little gilt-edged saucer. She loved mignonette. It is a good stanch table the coffin rests on; it is your table ; you are a housekeeper, a man of family 4S REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Aye, of family ! keep down outcry, or the nurse will be in. Look over at the pinched features ; is this iJl that is left of her ? And where is your heart now ? No, don't thrust your nails into your hands, nor mangle your lip, nor grate your teeth together. If you could only weep ! Another day. The coffin is gone out. The Stupid mourners have wept — what idle tears ! She, with your crushed heart, has gone out. Will you have pleasant evenings at your home now ? Go into your parlor that your prim housekeeper has made comfortable with clean hearth and blaze of sticks. Sit down in your chair ; there is another velvet-cush- ioned one, over against yours, empty. You press your fingers on your eyeballs, as if you would press out something that hurt the brain ; but you cannot. Your head leans upon your hand ; your eye rests upon the flashing blaze. Ashes always come after blaze. Go now into the room where she was sick, — 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 now. They have half opened the window, that the room so long closed may have air. It will not be too cold. ASHES— SIGNIFYING DESOLATION. 49 She is not there. Oh God ! thou who dost temper the wind to the shorn Iamb, 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- GOAL ANB ANTHRAOITK BY A QITY GRATE. "OLESSED be letters! — they are the monitors, they -■-' are also the comforters, and they are the only true heart-talkers! Your speech, and their speeches, are conventional ; they are moulded by circumstance ; they are suggested by the observation, remark, and influence of the parties to whom the speaking is addressed, or by whom it may be overheard. Your truest thought is modified half through its utterance by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual ; it is not integral : it is social and mixed, — half of you, and half of others. It bends, it sways, it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens. But it is not so of Letters. There you are, with only the soulless pen, and the snow-white, virgin paper Your soul is measuring itself by itself, and saying its own sayings : there are no sneers to modify its utter- ance, — no scowl to scare; nothing is present but you and your thought. 54 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. 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 ! I* is worth all the lip-talk in the world. Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, ar- tistic ? Let me see it then ; let me run it over ; tell me age, sex, circumstance, and I will tell you if it be studied or real, — if it be the merest lip-slang put into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper. I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with narrow crimson ribbon, now soiled with frequent hand- ling, which far into some winter's night I take down from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and run over, with such sorrow and such joy, such tears and such smiles, as 1 am sure make me for weeks after a kinder and holier man. There are in this little packet, letters in the familiar hand of a mother ; — what gentle admonition ; what tender aifection ! God have mercy on him who out- lives the tears that such admonitions and such aifection call up to the eye ! There are others in the budget, in the delicate and unformed hand of a loved and lost sis- ter, — written when she and you were full of glee, and the best mirth of youthfulness ; does it harm you to recall that mirthfulness ? or to trace again, for the hun- dredth time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom, BY A CITY GRATE. 56 frith 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 packet of letters. I almost need a new and longer ribbon ; the old one is getting too short. Not a few of these new and cher- ished letters a former Reverie * has brought to me ; not letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully executed, prettily imagined ; no such thing : but let- ters of sympathy — of sympathy which means sympa- thy — the tradrnxL and the a-uv. It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them ; I am too selfish for that. It is enough to say that they, the kind writers, have seen a heart in the Reverie, — have felt that it was real, true. They know it ; a secret influence has told it. / What matters it, pray, if literally there was no wife, and no dead child, and no coffin, in the house ? ^ Is not feeling, feeling ; and heart, heart ? Are not these fancies thronging on my brain, bringing tears to my eyes, bringing joy to my soul, as living as anything human can be living ? 1 What if they have no material type — no objective form ? All that is crude, — a mere reduction of ideality to sense, — a transfor- mation of the spiritual to the earthy, — a levelling of soul to matter. • The first Eeveiie — Smoke, Flame, and Ashes — was published some months previous to this, in the Southern Literary Messenger. 66 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Are we not creatures of thought and passion? Is anything about us more earnest than that same thoiight and passion? Is there anything more real, — more characteristic of that great and dim destiny to which we are born, and which may be written down in that terri- ble word — Forever? Let those who will, then, sneer at what in their wis- dom they call untruth, — at what is false, because it has no material presence : this does not create falsity ; would to Heaven that it did ! And yet, if there was actual, material truth, super- added to Eeveiie, 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 ! f Let them pass, and we will come back to these cher- ished letters. A mother, who has lost a child, has, she says, shed a tear — not one, but many — over the dead boy's cold- ness. And another, who has not lost, but who trembles lest she lose, has found the words failing as she read, and a dim, sorrow-borne mist spreading over the page. Another, yet rejoicing in all those famUy ties that make life a charm, has listened nervously to careful reading, until the husband is called home, and the coffin \s in the house. " Stop ! " she says ; and a gush of tears tells the rest. BY A CITY GRATE. 57 Ye: the cold critic will say, "It was artfully done." A turse 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, indeed is it, fair and generous one, earnest as life and hope ! Who, indeed, with a heart at all, that has not yet slipped away irreparably and forever from the shores of youth, — from that fairy land which young enthusiasm creates, and over which bright dreams hover, — but knows it to be real ? And so such things will be real till hopes are dashed, and Death is come. ,*'■ ^ " Another, a father, has laid down the book in tears. — God bless them all ! How far better this than the cold praise of newspaper paragraphs, or the criti- cally contrived approval of colder friends ! Let me gather up these letters carefully, to be read when the heart is faint and sick of all that there is unreal and selfish in the world. Let me tie them to- gether with a new and longer bit of ribbon ; not by a love-knot, that is too hard ; but by an easy slipping knot, that so I may get at them the better. And now they are all together, a snug packet, and we will label them, not sentimentally (1 pity the one who thinks it !) but earnestly, and in the best meaning of the term, — SODVENIES DU CcEUE. Thanks to my first Eeverie, which has added to such a treasure ! ^ * 58 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. — And now to my Second Reverie. I am no longer in the country." The fields, the trees, the brooks are far away from me, and yet they are very present. A letter from my tenant — how different from those other letters ! — lies upon my table, telling me what fields he has broken up for the autumn grain, and how many beeves he is fattening, and how the potatoes are turning out. But I am in a garret of the city. From my window I look over a mass of crowded house-tops, — moralizing often upon the scene, but in a strain too long and som- bre to be set down here. In place of the wide country chimney, with its iron fire-dogs, is a snug grate, where the maid makes me a fire in the morning, and rekindles it in the afternoon. I am usually fairly seated in my chair — a cosily stuffed office-chair — by five or six o'clock of the even- ing. The fire has been newly made, perhaps an hour before : first, the maid drops a withe of paper in the bottom of the grate, then a stick or two of pine-wood, and after it a hod of Liverpool coal ; so that by the time I am seated for the evening, the sea-coal is fairly in a blaze. When this has sunk to a level with the second ba of the grate, the maid replenishes it with a hod of An- thracite ; and I sit musing and reading, while the new toal warms and kindles ; not leaving my place, until \) BY A CITY GRATE. 59 las sunk to the third bar of the grate, which marks my bedtime. I love these accidental measures of the hours, which belong to you, and your life, and not to the world. A watch is no more the measure of your time than of the time of your neighbors ; a church-clock is as pub- lic and vulgar as a church-warden. I would as soon think of hiring the parish sexton to make my bed, as to regulate my timfe by the parish clock. A shadow that the sun casts upon your carpet, or a streak of light on a slated roof yonder, or the burning of your fire, are pleasant time-keepers, — full of pres- ence, full of companionship, and full of the warning — time is passing! In the summer season I have even measured my reading, and my night-watch, by the burning of a taper; and I have scratched upon the handle to the little bronze taper-holder that meaning passage of the New Testament, — Nu^ yap tpxerai, — the night cometh ! But I must get upon my Reverie. It was a drizzly evening ; I had worked hard during the day, and had drawn my boots, thrust my feet into slippers, thrown on a Turkish loose dress and Greek cap, souvenirs to mc of other times and other places, — and sat watch- ing the lively, uncertain, yellow play of the bituminous flame. I. Sea- Coal. TT is like a flirt, mused I : lively, uncertain, bright- -■- colored, waving here and there, melting the coal into black, shapeless mass ; making foul, sooty smoke, and pasty, trashy residuum! Yet withal, pleasantly sparkling, dancing, prettily waving, and leaping like a roebuck from point to point. How like a flirt ! And yet is not this tossing caprice of girlhood, to which I liken my sea-coal flame, a na- tive play of life, and belonging by nature to the play- time of life ? Is it not a sort of essential fire-kindling to the weightier and truer passions, even as Jenny puts the soft coal first, the better to kindle the anthra- cite? Is it not a sort of necessary consumption of young vapors, which float in the soul, and which is left thereafter the purer ? ^s there not a stage somewhere in every man's youth for just such waving, idle heart- blaze, which means nothing, yet which must be got over ? / Lamartine says somewhere, very prettily, that there is more of quick-running sap and floating shade in a SEA-COAL. 61 young tree, but more of fire in the heart of a sturdy oak : — ' 11 y a 'plus de slvefoUe et d^omhre flottante dam les j'eunes plants de la foret ; il y a plus de feu dans le vieux coeur du chene." Is Lamartine playing off his prettiness of expression, dressing up with his poetry, — making a good con- science against the ghost of some accusing Grazielia, — or is there truth in the matter ? A man who has seen sixty years, whether widower or bachelor, may well put such sentiment into words : it feeds his wasted heart with hope ; it renews the exul- tation of youth by the pleasantest of equivocation, and the most charming of self-confidence. But, after all, is it not true? Is not the heart like new blossoming field-plants, whose first flowers are half-formed, one- sided perhaps, but by-and-by, in maturity of season, putting out wholesome, well-formed blossoms, that will hold their leaves long and bravely ? Bulwer, in his story of the Caxtons, has counted first heart-flights mere fancy passages, — a dalliance with the breezes of love, — which pass, and leave healthful heart- appetite. Half the reading world has read the story of Trevanion and Pisistratus. But Bulwer is — past his heart-life is used up — epuise. ' Such a man can very lafely rant about the cool judgment of after-years. ' Where does Shakspeare put the imripe heart-age ? All of it before the ambition, that alone makes the 62 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. hero-soul. The Shakspeare man "sighs like a fur nace," before he stretches his arm to achieve the " bau ble, reputation."/ Yet Shakspeare has meted a soul-love, mature and ripe, without any yoimg furnace-sighs, to Desdemona and Othello. Cordelia, the sweetest of his play-crea- tions, loves without any of the mawkish matter which makes the whining love of a Juliet. And Florizel, in the " Winter's Tale," says to Perdita, in the true spirit of a most sound heart, — " My desires Ran not before mine honor, nor my lusts Bum hotter than my faith." How is it with Hector and Andromache ? No sea-coal blaze, but one that is constant, enduring, pervading : a pair of hearts full of esteem and best love, — good, honest, and sound. Look now at Adam and Eve, in God's presence, with Milton for showman. Shall we quote by this sparkling blaze, a gem from the " Paradise Lost " ? "We will hum It to ourselves, — what Raphael sings to Adam, — a classic song: — " Him, serve and fear! Of other creatures, as Him pleases best Wherever placed, let Him dispose ; joy thou In what he gives to thee, this Paradise And thy fair Eve!" SEA- COAL. 68 And again : — " Love refines The thoughts and heart enlarges : hath his seat In reason, and is judicious: is the scale By wliich to Heavenly love thou mayst ascend ! " None of the playing sparkle in this love, which be- longs to the flame of my sea-coal fire, that is now danc- ing, lively as a cricket. But on looking about my gar- ret-chamber, I can see nothing that resembles the arch- angel Raphael, or " thy fair Eve.'' There is a degree of moisture about the sea-coal flame, which, with the most earnest of my musing, I find it impossible to attach to that idea of a waving, sparkling heart which my fire suggests. A damp heart must be a foul thing to be sure ! But whoever heard of one ? Wordsworth, somewhere in the " Excursion," says : — " The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Bum to the socket ! " "What, in the name of Rydal Mount, is a dry heart ? A dusty one, I can conceive of: a bachelor's heart must be somewhat dusty, as he nears the sixtieth sum- mer of his pilgrimage ; and hung over with cobwebs, in which sit such watchful gray old spiders as Avarice and Selfishness, forever on the look-out for such bottle green flies as Lust. " I wilJ never," said I, griping at the elbows of my 64 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. chair, " live a bachelor till sixty : never, so surely as there is hope in man, or charity in woman, or faith in both!" And with that thought, my heart leaped about in playful coruscations, even like the flamb of the sea- coal : rising and wrapping round old and tender memories, and images that were present to me, trying to cling, and yet no sooner fastened than off; dancing again, riotous in its exultation, — a succession of heart- sparisles, blazing, and going out ! — And is there not, mused I, a portion of this world forever blazing in just such lively sparkles, waving here and there as the air-currents fan them ? Take, for instance, your heart of sentiment and quick sensibility, — a weak, warm-working heart, flying off in tangents of unhappy influence, unguided by prudence, and perhaps virtue. There is a paper by Mackenzie in the Mirror for April, 1780, which sets this untoward sensibility in a strong light. And the more it is indulged, the more strong and binding such a habit of sensibility becomes. Poor Mackenzie himself must have suffered thus ; you can- not read his books without feeling it ; your eye, in spit of you, runs over with his sensitive griefs, while you are half ashamed of his success at picture-making. It is a terrible inheritance, and one that a strong man or woman will study to subdue ; it is a vain sea-coal spark SEA-COAL. 6S ling, wliich will couut no good. The world is made of much hard, flinty substance, against which -your better and holier thoughts will be striking fire : see to it that the sparks do not bum you ! But what a Ttiappy careless life belongs to this Bach- elorhood, in which you may strike out boldly right and eft ! Your heart is not bound to another which maj be full of only sickly vapors of feeling ; nor is it frozen to a cold man's heart under a silk bodice, knowing noth- ing of tenderness but the name, to prate of; and nothing of soul-confidence, but clumsy confession. And if, in your careless out-goings of feeling, you get here only a little lip vapidity in return, be sure that you will find elsewhere a true heart utterance. This last you will cherish in your inner soul, a nucleus for a new group of affections ; and the other will pass with a whiff of your cigar. Or if your feelings are touched, struck, hurt, who is the wiser, or the worse, but you only ? And have you not the whole skein of your heart-life in your own fingers, to wind pr unwind in what shape you please ? Shake it, or twine it, or tangle it, by the light of your re, as you fancy best. He is a weak man who canno 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. 66 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Reading is a great and happy disentangler of all those knotted snarls — those extravagant vagaries, which belong to a heart sparkling with sensibility ; but the reading must be cautiously directed. There is old, placid Burton, when your soul is weak and its diges- tion of life's humors is bad ; there is Cowper, when your spirit runs into kindly, half-sad, religious musing there is Crabbe, when you would shake off" vagary, by a little handling of sharp actualities. There is Voltaire, a homoeopathic doctor, whom you can read when you want to make a play of life, and crack jokes at Nature, and be witty with Destiny; there is Rousseau, when you want to lose yourself in a mental dream-land, and be beguiled by the hannony of soul-music and soul- culture. And when you would shake off this, and be sturdiest among the battlers for hard world-success, and be fore- warned of rocks against which you must surely smite, — read Bolingbroke ; run over the letters of Lyttleton ; read, and think of what you read, in the cracking lines of Rochefoucauld. How he sums us up in his sting- ing words ! how he puts the scalpel between the erves ! yet he never hurts, for he is dissecting dead natter. If you are in a genial, careless mood, who is better than such extemporizers of feeling and nature — good- hearted fellows — as Sterne and Fielding ? SEA-COAL. 67 And then again, there are Milton and Isaiah, to lift up ones soul until it touches cloud-land, atid you wan- der with their guidance, on swift feet, to the very gates of heaven. But this sparkling sensibility to one struggling under infirmity, or with grief or poverty, is very dreadful. The soul is too nicely and keenly hinged to be wrenched without mischief. How it shrinks, like a hurt child, from all that is vulgar, harsh, and crude ! Alas, for such a man ! he will be buffeted from beginning to end ; his life will be a sea of troubles. The poor vic- tim of his own quick spirit, he wanders with a great shield of doubt hung before him, so that none, not even friends, can see the goodness of such kindly qualities as belong to him. Poverty, if it comes upon him, he wrestles with in secret, with strong, frenzied struggles. He wraps his scant clothes about him to keep him from the cold ; and eyes the world as if every creature in it was breathing chill blasts at him from every opened mouth. He threads the crowded ways of the city, proud in his griefs, vain in his weakness, not stopping to do good. Bulwer, in the " New Timon," has painted, in a pair of stinging Pope-like lines, this feeling in a woman : — " What had been pride, a kind of madness grown, She hugged her wrongs, her sorrow was her throne ! " Cold picture ! yet the heai-t was sparkling under it, 68 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. like my sea-coal fire, — lifting and blazing, and lighting and falling, — but with no object, and only such little heat as begins and ends within. Those fine sensibilities, ever active, are chasing and observing all ; they catch a hue from what the dull and callous pass by unnoticed — because unknown. They blunder at the great variety of the world's opinions; they see tokens of belief where others see none. That delicate organization is a curse to a man ; and yet, poor fool, he does not see where his cure lies ; he wonders at his griefs, and has never reckoned with himself their source. He studies others, without studying himself. He eats the leaves that sicken, and never plucks up the root that will cure. With a woman it is worse: with her, this delicate suscviptibility is like a frail flower, that quivers at every rough blast of heaven ; her own delicacy wounds her ; her highest charm is perverted to a curse. She listens with fear ; she reads with trembling ; she looks with dread. Her sympathies give a tone, like the harp of ^olus, to the slightest breath. Her sensibility lights up, and quivers and falls, like the flame of a sea- oal fire. If she loves, (and may not a Bachelor reason on this daintiest of topics,) her love is a gushing, wavy fiame, lit up with hope, that has only a little kindling matter to light it ; and this soon bums out. Yet in- SEA-COAL. 69 tense sensibility will persuade her that the flame stih scorches. She will mistake the annoyance of alFection unrequited for the sting of a passion that she fancies still burns. She does not look deep enough to see that the passion is gone, and the shocked sensitiveness emits only faint, yellowish sparkles in its place ; her high wrought organization makes those sparks seem a veri table flame. With her, judgment, prudence, and discretion are cold, measured terms, which have no meaning, except as they attach to the actions of others. Of her own acts, she never predicates them ; feeling is much too high, to al- low her to submit to any such obtrusive guides of con- duct. She needs disappointment to teach her truth, — to teach that all is not gold that glitters, — to teach that all warmth does not blaze. But let her beware how she sinks under any fancied disappointments : she who sinks under real disappointment lacks philosophy ; but she who 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 visit- ants of hell ; let the soul rise with the blaze of new- kindled, active, and world-wide emotions, and so brighten into steady and constant flame. Let her abjure such poets as Cowper, or Byron, or even Wordsworth ; and if she must poetize, let her lay her mind to such manly verse as Pope's, or to such sound and ringing organry as Comus. TO REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. My fire was getting dull, and I thrust in the poker : it started up on the instant into a hundred little angry tongues of flame. — Just so, thought I, the over-sensitive heart, once cruelly disturbed, will fling out a score of flaming pas- sions, 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 afiections, or even the fancied affections of such a soul, and you breed a tor- nado of maddened action, — a whirlwind of fire that hisses, and sends out jets of wild, impulsive combustion, that make the bystanders, even those most friendly, stand aloof until the storm is past. But this is not all that the dashing flame of my sea- coal suggests. How like a flirt! mused I again, recurring to my first thought : so lively, yet uncertain ; so bright, yet so flickering ! Your true flirt plays with sparkles ; her heart, much as there is of it, spends itself in sparkles ; she measures it to sparkle, and habit grows into nature, so that anon it can only sparkle. How carefully she cramps it, if the flames show too great a heat ; how dexterously she flings its blaze here and there ; how coyly she subdues it ; how winningly she lights it ! All this is the entire reverse of the unpremeditated SEA-COAL. 71 dartings of the soul at which I have been looking ; sen Bibility scorns heart-curbings and heart-teachings ; sen sibility inquires not, how much ? but only, where ? Your true flirt has a coarse-grained soul ; well mod- ulated and well tutored, but there is no fineness in it. All its native fineness is made coarse by coarse 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 gath- ered from the poets ; she adjusts it prettily as a Gobelin weaver adjusts the colors in his tapis. She shades it off delightfully ; there are no bold contrasts, but a most artistic mellow of nuances. She smiles like a wizard, and jingles it with a laugh, such as tolled the poor home-bound Ulysses to the Cir- cean bower. She has a cast of the head, apt and artful as the most dexterous cast of the best trout-killing rod. Her words sparkle, and flow hurriedly, and with the prettiest doubleness of meaning. Naturalness she cop- ies, and she scorns. She accuses herself of a single expression or regard, which nature prompts. She prides herself on her schooling. She measures her wit by the triumphs of her art ; she chuckles over her own falsity to herself. And if by chance her soul — such germ as is left of it — betrays her into imtoward confi- dence, she condemns herself, as if she had committed crime. 72 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. , She is always gay, because she has no depth of feel- ing to be stirred. The brook that runs shallow over hard, pebbly bottom always rustles. She is light- hearted, because her heart floats in sparkles, like my sea-coal fire. She counts on marriage, not as the great absorbent of a heart's-love, and life, but as a happy, feasible, and orderly conventionality, to be played with, and kept at distance, and finally to be accepted as a cover for the faint and tawdry sparkles of an old and cherished heartlessness. She will not pine tmder any regrets, because she has no appreciation of any loss ; she will not chafe at indif- ference, because it is her art ; she will not be worried with jealousies, because she is ignorant of love. "With no conception of the soul in its strength and fulness, she sees no lack of its demands. A thrill she does not know ; a passion she cannot ima^ne ; joy is a name ; grief is another ; and Life, with its crowding scenes of love and bitterness, is a play upon the stage. I think it is Madame Dudevant who says, in some- thing like the same connection : — " Z,es hihoux ne con- naissent pas le ehemin par ou les aigles vont au soldi." Poor Ned ! mused I, looking at the play of the fire, was a victim and a conqueror. He was a man of a full, strong nature, — not a little impulsive, — with action too full of earnestness for most of men to see its drift. He had known little of what is called the world ; he SEA- COAL. 73 was fresh in feeling and high of hope ; he had been encircled always by friends who loved him, and who, maybe, flattered him. Scarce had he entered upon the tangled life of the city, before he met with a spark- ling face and an airy step, that stirred something in poor Ned that he had never felt before. With him, t feel was to act. He was not one to be despised ; fo . notwithstanding he wore a country air, and the awk- wardness of a man who has yet the MensSance of social life before him, he had the soul, the courage, and the talent of a strong man. Little gifted in the knowledge of face-play, he easily mistook those coy manoeuvres of a sparkling heart for something kindred to his own true emotions. She was proud of the attentions of a man who carried a mind in his brain, and flattered poor Ned almost into servility. Ned had no friends to counsel him ; or if he had them, his impulses would have blinded him. Never was dodger more artful at the Olympic Games than the Peggy of Ned's heart-afiection. He was charmed, be- guiled, entranced. When Ned spoke of love, she staved it off with th prettiest of sly looks that only bewildered him th more. A charming creature to be sure ; coy as a dove So he went on, poor fool, until one day — he told me of it with the blood mounting to his temples, and his eye shooting flame — he sufiered his feelings to rur out 74 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. in passionate avowal, — entreaty, — everything. She gave a pleasant, noisy laugh, and manifested — such pretty surprise ! He was looking for the intense glow of passion ; and lo ! there was nothing but the shifting sparkle of a sea- coal flame. I wrote him a letter of condolence, for I was his sen for by a year. " My dear fellow," said I, " diet your- self : you can find greens at the up-town market ; eat a little fish with, your dinner; abstain from heating drinks ; don't put too much butter to your cauliflower ; read one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons, and translate all the quotations at sight ; run carefully over that exqui- site picture of Geo. 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, domes- tic, loving wife, who was as lovely as a June-day ; and that their baby, not three months old, was as bright as a spot of June-day sunshine on the grass. — What a tender, delicate, loving wife, mused I, such flashing, flaming flirt must in the end make ; — the prostitute of fashion ; the bauble of fifty hearts idle as hers ; the shifting makepeace of a stage-scene ; the actress, now in peasant, and now in princely petticoats J SEA-COAL. 75 How it would cheer an honest soul to call her — his ! What a culmination of his heart-life ; what a rick 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, fuses all that is sound and combustible into black, sooty, shapeless residuum. When I marry a flirt, I will buy second-hand clothes of the Jews. — Still, mused I, as the flame danced again, there is a distinction between coquetry and flirtation. A coquette sparkles, but it is more the sparkle of a harmless and pretty vanity than of calculation. It is the play of humors in the blood, and not the play of purpose at the heart. It will flicker around a true soul like the blaze around an omelette au rhum, leaving the kernel sounder and warmer. Coquetry, with all its pranks and teasings, makes the spice to your dinner — the mulled wine to your supper. It will drive you to desperation, only to bring you back otter to the fray. Who would boast a victory that ost no strategy, and no careful 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! 76 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Coquetry whets the appetite ; flirtation depraves it Coquetry is the thorn that guards the rose, — easily trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is like the slime on water-plants, making them hard to handle, and when caught, only to be cherished in slimy waters. And so, with my eye clinging to the flickering blaz^ I see in my reverie a bright one dancing before me, with sparkling, coquettish smile, teasing me with the prettiest graces in the world ; and I grow maddened between hope and fear, and still watch with my whole soul in my eyes ; and see her features by-and-by relax to pity, as a gleam of sensibility comes stealing over her spirit ; and then to a kindly, feeling regatd : presently she approaches, — a coy and doubtful approach, — and throws back the ringlets that lie over her cheek, and lays her hand — a little bit of white hand — timidly upon my strong fingers, and turns her head daintily to one side, and looks up in my eyes as they rest on the playing blaze ; and my fingers close fast and pas- sionately over that little hand, like a swift night-cloud shrouding the pale tips of Dian ; and my eyes draw nearer and nearer to those blue, laughing, pitying, teas- ing eyes, and my arm clasps round that shadowy form, ~ and my lips feel a warm breath — growing warmer and warmer Just here the maid comes in, and throws upon the fire a panful of Anthracite, and my sparkling sea-coal reverie is ended. n. Anthracite. TT 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 shfeet- iron blower ; but I cannot. I try to bring back the image that belonged to the lingering bituminous flame, but with my eyes on that dark blower — how can I ? It is the black curtain of destiny which drops down before our brightest dreams. How often the phantoms of joy regale us, and dance before us, golden-winged, angel-faced, heart-warming, and make an Elysium in which the dreaming soul bathes, and feels translated to another existence ; and then — sudden as night, or a cloud — a word, a step, a thought, a memory will chase them away, like scared deer vanishing over a gray horizon of moor-land ! I know not justly, if it be a weakness or a sin to • Voi;aije autour de Ma Chambre. 78 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. create these phantoms that we love, and to group thtm 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 keep- ing with its end, if it flow out, strong as a tempest, wild as a rushing river, upon those ideal creations which imagination invents, and which are tempered by our best sense of beauty, purity, and grace ? Useless, do you say ? Aye, it is as useless as the pleasure of looking hour upon hour over bright landscapes • 't is as useless as the rapt enjoyment of listening, with heart full and eyes brimming, to such music as the Miserere at Eome ; it is as useless as the ecstasy of kindling your soul into fervor and love and madness, over pages that reek with genius. There are indeed base-moulded souls who know noth- ing of this : they laugh ; they sneer ; they even affect to pity. Just so the Huns under the avenging Attila, who had been used to foul cookery and steaks ste-s?ed 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 ANTHRACITE. 79 cry to Heaven cheerily, and sure of a gracious hearing, — peccavi — misericorde ! But my fire is in a glow, a pleasant glow, throwing a tranquil, steady light to the farthest corner of my gar- ret How unlike it is to the flashing play of the sea- coal ! — imlike as an unsteady, uncertain-working heart to the true and earnest constancy of one cheerful and right After all, thought I, give me such a heart ; not bent on vanities, not blazing too sharp with sensibility, not throwing out coquettish jets of flame, not wavering, and meaningless with pretended warmth, but open, glowing, and strong. Its dark shades and angles it may have ; for what is a soul worth that does not take a slaty tinge from ,those griefs that chill the blood ? Yet still the fire is gleaming ; you see it in the crev- ices ; and anon it will give radiance to the whole mass. It hurts the eyes, this fire; and I draw up a screen painted over with rough but graceful figures. The true heart wears always the veil of modesty, (not of prudery, which is a dingy, iron, repulsive screen.) It will not allow itself to be looked en too near, — it might scorch ; but through the veil you feel the warmth ; and through the pretty'figuies 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. 80 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. "With such a heart the mind fuses naturally, — a liolj and heated fusion ; they work together like twins-born. With such a heart, as Eaphael 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 ig- norant ; judicious, because possessed of no latent fires that need a curb ; prudish, because with no warm blood to tempt. This sort of soul may pass scatheless through the fiery furnace of life ; strong only in its weakness ; pure, because of its failings ; and good only by nega^ tion. It may triumph over love, and sin, and death ; but it will be a triumph of the beast, which has neither passions to subdue, or energy to attack, or hope to quench. Let us come back to the steady and earnest heart, glowing like my anthracite coal. I fancy I see such a one now ; — the eye is deep, and reaches back to the spirit ; it is not the trading eye, weighing your purse ; it is not the worldly eye, weigh- ing position; it is not the beastly eye, weighing your appearance ; it is the heart's eye, weighing 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 ANTHRACITE. 81 eye which will give a color, in spite of you, to all yom reveries. It is an eye which lies before you in your future, like a star in the mariner's heaven ; by it, un- consciously, and from force of deep soul-habit, you take all your observations. It is meek and quiet ; but it is full, as a spring that gushes in flood ; an Aphrodite and a Mercury — a Vaucluse and a Clitumnus. The face is an angel face : no matter for curious lines of beauty ; no matter for popular talk of prettiness ; no matter for its angles or its proportions ; no matter for its color or its form, — the soul is there, illuminating every feature, burnishing every point, hallowing every surface. It tells of honesty, sincerity, and worth; it tells of truth and virtue ; — and you clasp the image to your heart, as the received ideal of your fondest dreams. The figure may be this or that, it may be tall or short ; it matters nothing, — the heart is there. The talk may > be soft or low, serious or piquant, — a free and honest soul is warming and softening it all. As you speak, it speaks back again ; as you think, it thinks again, (not in conjunction, but in the same sign of the Zodiac ;) as you love, it loves in return. It is the heart for a sister, and happy is the man who can claim such ! The warmth that lies in it is not only generous, but religious, genial, devotional, tende' self-sacrificing, and looking heavenward 4* S2 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. A man without some sort of religion is at best a poor reprobate, the foot-ball of destiny, with no tie linking him to infinity and the wondrous eternity that is begun with him ; but a woman without it is even worse, — a flame without heat, a rainbow without color, a flower without perfume ! A man may in some sort tie his frail hopes and 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 con- trive a kind of moral responsibility out of his relations to mankind ; but a woman in her comparatively isolated sphere, where affection and not purpose is the control- ling motive, can find no basis for any system of right action but that of spiritual faith. A man may craze his thought and his brain to trustfulness in such poor harborage as Fame and Reputation may stretch before him ; but a woman — where can she put her hope in storms, if not in Heaven ?^ And that sweet trustfiilness, that abiding 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 enjoj ed the counsel and the love of a Christian mother, but will echo the ANTHRA CITE. 83 bought with energy, and hallow it with a tear ? — et ■moifje pleurs! My fire is now a mass of red-hot coal. The whok atmosphere of my room is warm. The heart that with its glow can light up and warm a garret with loose casements and shattered roof, is capable of the best love, — domestic love. I draw farther off, and the images upon the screen change. The warmth, the hour, the quiet, create a home feeling ; and that feel- ing, quick as lightning, has stolen from the world of fancy (a Promethean theft) a home object, about which my musings go on to drape themselves in luxurious reverie. There she sits, by the comer 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 curved elbow of the oaken chair ; the hand, white and delicate, sustains a 'ittle home volume that hangs from her fingers. The brefinger is between the leaves, and the others lie in relief upon the dark embossed cover. She repeats, in silver voice, a line that has attracted her fancy ; and you listen, — or, at any rate, you seem to listen, — with your eyes now on the lips, now on the forehead, and 84 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. now on the finger, where glittere like a star the mar riage-ring — Httle gold band, at which she does not chafe — that tells you — she is yours ! Weak testimonial, if that were all that told it ! The eye, the voice, the look, the heart, tells you stronger and better, that she is yours. And a feeling within, where it lies you know not, and whence it comes you now not, but sweeping over heart and brain like a fire-flood, tells you too, that you are hers ! Irremedi- ably bound as Hortensio in the play : — " I am subject to another's will, and can Nor speak, nor do, without permission from her ! " The fire is warm as ever : what length of heat in this hard burning anthracite ! It has scarce sunk yet to the second bar of the grate, though the clock upon the church-tower has tolled eleven. — Aye, mused I, gayly, such a heart does not grow faint, it does not spend itself in idle puffs of blaze, it does not become chilly with the passing years ; but it gains and grows in strength and heat, until the fire of life is covered over with the ashes of death. Strong or hot as it may be at the first, it loses nothing. It may not, indeed, as time advances, throw out, like the coal-fire, when new-lit, jets of blue sparkling flame ; it may not continue to bubble, and gush like a fountain at its source, but it will become a strong river of flow- ing chaiities. ANTHRACITE. 85 Clitumnus breaks from under the Tuscan mountains, almost a flood. On a glorious spring day I leaned down and tasted the water, as it boiled from its sources. The little temple of white marble, the mountain sides graj with olive orchards, the white streak of road, the tall poplars qf the river margin were glistening in the bright Italian sunlight around me. Later, I saw it when it had become a river, — still clear and strong, flowing serenely between its prairie banks, on which the white cattle of the valley browsed ; and still farther down, I welcomed it, where it joins the Arno, — flowing slowly under wooded shores, skirting the fair Florence, and the bounteous fields of the bright Cascino, — gath- ering strength and volume, till between Pisa and Leg- horn, in sight of the wondrous Leaning Tower, and the ship-masts of the Tuscan port, it gave its waters to its life's grave — the sea. The recollection blended sweetly now with my mus- ings over my garret-grate, and offered a flowing image, to bear along upon its bosom the affections that were grouping in my Eeverie. it is a strange force of the mind and of the fancy that can set the objects which are closest to the hea?" 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 oas played about the fire-glow of my grate, years hence 86 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. It still covers the same warm, trustful, religious heart Trials have tried it ; afflictions have weighed upon it , danger has scared it, and death is coming near to sub- due it ; but still it is the same. The fingers are thinner ; the face has lines of care and sorrow, crossing each other in a web - work that makes the golden tissue of humanity. But the heart is fond and steady ; it is the same dear heart, the same 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 offer- ing to your household gods. Your dreams of reputation, your swift determination, your impulsive pride, your deep-uttered vows to win a name, have all sobered into aflfection, — have all blended into that glow of feeling which finds its centre and hope and joy in Home. From my soul I pity him whose soul does not leap at the mere utterance of that name. / A home ! it is the bright, blessed, adorable phantom which sits highest on the sunny horizon that girdeth Life ! When shall it be reached ? When shall it cease to be a glittering day-dream, and become fully and fairly yours ? It is not the house, — though that may have its charms ; nor the fields carefully tilled, and streaked with your own footpaths ; nor the trees, — though their ANTHRA CITE. 87 shadow be to yoii 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 c&erished bo'oks ; but more far than all these, — it is the Presence/ The Lares of your worship are there ; the altar of your confidence is there ; the end of your worldly faith is there ; and adorning it all, and sending your blood in passionate flow, is the ecstasy of the con- viction that there at least you are beloved ; that there you are understood ; that there your errors will meet ever with gentlest forgiveness ; that there your troubles will be smiled away ; that there you may unburden your soul, fearless of harsh, unsympathizing ears ; and that there you may be entirely and joyfully — yourself. There may be those of coarse mould — and I have seen such, even in the disguise of women — who' will reckon these feelings puling sentiment. God pity them ! as they have need of pity. That image by the fireside, calm, loving, joyful; is there still ; it goes not, however my spirit tosses, be- cause my wish and every will keep it there unerring. The fire shows through the screen, yellow and warm as- a harvest sun. It is in its best age, and that age is ripeness. A ripe heart ! now I know what Wordsworth meant, vhen he said, — " The good die first, And they whose hearts are drj' as summer dust Bum to the socket! " 88 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. The town-clock is striking midnight. The cold of the night wind is urging its way in at the door and win- dow crevice ; the fire has sunk almost to the third bar of the grate. Still my dream tires not, but wraps fondly round that image, now in the far-off, chilling mists of age, growing sainted. Love has blended into rever- ence ; passion has subsided into joyous content. And what if age 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 shoreless sea where the river of life is running ? Let the white ashes gather ; let the silver hair lie where lay the au- burn ; let the eye gleam farther back, and dimmer ; it is but retreating toward the pure sky-depths, an usher to the land where you will follow after. It is quite cold, and I take away the screen alto- gether ; there is a little glow yet, but presently the coal slips down below the third bar, with a rumbling sound, like that of coarse gravel falling into a new-dug grave. She is gone ! Well, the heart has burned fairly, evenly, generously while there was mortality to. kindle it; eternity wil surely kindle it better. Tears indeed ! but they are tears of thanksgiv ing, of resignation, and of hope. And the eyes — full of those tears which ministering ANTHRACITE. 89 »ngels bestow — climb with quick vision upon the an gelic ladder, and open upon the futurity where she has entered, and upon the country which she enjoys. It is midnight, and the sounds of life are dead. You are in the death-chamber of life ; but you are also in the death-chamber of care. The world seem sliding backward ; and hope and you are sliding for ward. The clouds, the agonies, the vain expectancies, the braggart noise, the fears, now vanish behind the cur- tain of the Past, and of the Night. They roll from your soul like a load. In the dimness of what seems the ending Present, , you reach out your prayerful hands toward that bound- less Future, where God's eye lifts over the horizon like sunrise on the ocean. Do you recognize it as an ear- nest of something better ? Aye, if the heart has been pure and steady, — burning like my fire, — it has learned it without seeming to learn. Faith has grown upon it as the blossom grows upon the bud, or the flower upon the slow-lifting stalk. Cares cannot come into the dream-land where I live. They sink with the dying street noise, and vanish with the embers of my fire. Even Ambition, with its hot and shifting flame, isall 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. so REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. There is no extravagant pulse-glow ; there is no mad fever of the brain ; but only the soul, forgetting, for once, all, save its destinies and its capacities for good. And it mounts higher and higher on these wings of thought ; and hope burns stronger and stronger out of the ashes of decaying life, until the sharp edge of the grave seems but a foot-scraper at the wicket of Elysium. But what is paper ; and what are words ? Vain things! The soul leaves them behind; the pen stag- gers 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 baffled hopes, are dim now in the light of those infinite longings which spread over it, soft and holy as day-dawn. Eternity has stretched a corner of its mantle toward 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 bachelor - dream about a pure and loving heart ! And to-morrow comes cankerous life again : is it wished for ? or, if not wished for, is the not wishing wicked ? / Will dreams satisfy, reach high as they can ? Are we not, after all, poor, grovelling mortals, tied to earth and ANTHRACITE. 91 to each other ? Are there not sympathies, and hopes, and affections which can only find their issue and bless- ing in fellow absorption ? Does not the heart, steady and pure as it may be, and mounting on soul-flights often as it dare, want a human sympathy perfectly in- dulged to make it healthful ? Is there not a fount of love for this world, as there is a fount of love for the other ? Is there not a certain store of tenderness cooped in this heart, which must and viiU be lavished before the end comes? Does it not plead with the. judgment, and make issue with prudence, year after year ? Does it not dog your steps all through your social pilgrimage, setting up its claims in forms fresh and odorous as new-blown heath-bells, saying. Come away from the heartless, the factitious, the vain, and measure your heart, not by its constraints, but by its ful- ness and by its depth ? Let it run and be joyous ! _«- Is there no demon that comes to your harsh night- dreams, like a taunting fiend, whispering, Be satisfied ; keep your heart from running over ; bridle those affec- tions ; there is nothing worth loving ? Does not some sweet being hover over your spirit of reverie like a beckoning angel, crowned with halo, say- ing, 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 92 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. thoughts ran over the definite, sharp business of the morrow, my Reverie, and its glowing images that made my heart bound, swept away like those fleecy rain- clouds of August, on which the sun paints rainbows, driving southward, by a cool, rising wind from the /rth. 1 wonder, thought I, as I dropped asleep, if a married man with his sentiment made actual, is, after all, as happy as we poor fellows in our dreams ? 6^H ? / THIRD REVERIE. A CIGAR THREE TIMES LIGHTED OVER HIS QIQAB. 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 a 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, puflSng. " It is dirty," said my aunt. "It is clean and sweet," said I; " and a most pleas- ant soother of disturbed feelings ; and a capital com panion ; and a comforter — " and I stopped to puff. 96 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. " You know it is a filthy abomination," said my aunt ; •* and you ought to be — " and she stopped to put up one of her curls, which, with the energy of her gestic- ulation, had fallen out of place. « It suggests quiet thoughts," continued I ; " and makes a man meditative ; and gives a current to his habits of contemplation, — as I can show you," said I, warming with the theme. My aunt, still fingering her papers, — with the pin in her mouth, — gave a most incredulous shrug. " Aunt Tabithy," said I, and gave two or three violent, consecutive puffs, — " Aunt Tabithy, I can make up such a series of reflections out of my cigar, as would do your heart good to listen to ! " " About what, pray ? " said my aunt, contemptuously. " About love,'' said I, " which is easy enough lighted, but wants constancy to keep it in a glow. Or about matrimony, which has a great deal of fire in the begin- ning, but it is a fire that consumes all that feeds the blaze. Or about life," continued I, earnestly, " which at the first is fresh and odorous, but ends shortly in a withered cinder, that is fit only for the ground." My aunt, who was forty and unmarried, finished her curl with a flip of the fingers, resumed her hold of the broom, and leaned her chin upon one end of it, with an expression of some wonder, some curiosity, and a great deal of expectation. OVER HIS CI GAB. 97 1 could have wished my aunt had been a little less curious, or that I had been a little less communicative ; for though it was all honestly said on my part, yet my contemplations bore that vague, shadowy, and delicious sweetness, that it seemed impossible to put them into words, — least of all, at the bidding of an old lady leaning on a broom-handle. " Give me time, Aunt Tabithy,'' said I, " a good din- ner, and after it a good cigar, and I will serve you such a sunshiny sheet of reverie, all twisted out of the smoke, as will make your kind old heart ache ! " Aunt Tabithy, in utter contempt, either of my men- tion of the dinner, or of the smoke, or of the old heart commenced sweeping furiously. " If I do not," continued I, anxious to appease her, — "if I do not. Aunt Tabithy, it shall be my last cigar; (Aunt Tabithy stopped sweeping ;) and all my tobacco money (Aunt Tabithy drew near me) shall go to buy ribbons for my most respectable and worthy Aunt Tabithy ; and a kinder person could not have them ; or one," continued I, with a generous puff, " whom they would more adorn." My Aunt Tabithy gave me a half-playftd, half-thank- ful nudge. It was in this way that our bargain was struck ; my part of it is already stated. On her part. Aunt Tabithy was to allow me, in case of my success, an evening 98 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. cigar unmolested, upon the front porch, underneath her favorite rose-tree./ It was concluded, I say, as I sat; the smoke of my cigar rising gracefully around my Aunt Tabithy's curls; our right hands joined; my left was holding my cigar, while in hers was tightly grasped — her broomstick. / And this Reverie, to make the matter short, is what came of the contract. Lighted with a Coal. T TAKE up a coal with the tongs, and setting the -^ end of my cigar against it, puff — and puff again ; but there is no smolce. There is very little hope of lighting from a dead coal; no more hope, thought I, than of kindling one's heart into flame by contact with a dead heart. To kindle, there must be warmth and life ; and I sat for a moment, thinking — even before I lit my cigar — on the vanity and folly of those poor, pur- blind fellows, who go on puffing for half a lifetime against dead coals. It is to be hoped that Heaven, in its mercy, has made their senses so obtuse, that they know not when their souls are in a flame, or when they are dead. I can imagine none but the most moderate satisfaction, in continuing to love what has got no ember of love within it. The Italians have a very sensible sort of proverb, — amare, e non essere amato, i 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 — 100 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. and may Heaven pardon the ill-nature that belongs to the thought — that there would be much of the same kmd of satisfaction in dashing from you a luke warm creature, covered over with the yellow ashes of old combustion, that with ever so much attention, and the nearest approach of the lips, never shows signs of fire. May Heaven forgive me again, but I should long to break away, though the marriage bonds held me, and see what liveliness was to be found elsewhere. I have seen before now a creeping vine try to grow up against a' marble wall ; it shoots out its tendrils in all directions, seeking for some crevice by which to fasten and to climb, — looking now above and now below, twining upon itself, reaching farther up, — but after all finding no good foothold, and falling away as if in despair. But nature is not unkind ; twining things were made to twine. The longing tendrils take new strength in the sunshine and in the showers, and shoot out toward some hospitable trunk. They fasten easily to the kindly roughness of the bark, and stretch up, dragging after them the vine; which by-and-by, from the topmost bough, will nod its blossoms over at the marble wall that refused it succor, as if it said, Stand there in your pride, cold, white wall! we, the tree and I, are kindred ; it the helper, and I the helped ; and, bound fast together, we riot in the sunshine and in gladness. LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 101 riie 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 o% and exposes the heat and the glow that you are seeking At the first touch, the delicate edges of the cigai crimple, a thin line of smoke rises, — doubtfully for a while, and with a coy delay ; but after a hearty respi- ration or two, it grows strong, and my cigar is fairly lighted. That first taste of the new smoke and of the fragrant leaf is very grateful ; it has a bloom about it that you wish might last It is like your first love, — fresh, gen- ial, and rapturous. Like that, it fills up all the craving of your soul ; and thp. light, blue wi-eaths of smoke, like the roseate clouds that hang around the morning of your heart-life, cut you off from the chill atmosphere of mere worldly companionship, and make a gorgeous firmament for your fancy to riot in. I do not speak now of those later and manlier pas sions, into which judgment must be thrusting its cold tones, and when all the sweet tumult of your heart has mellowed into the sober ripeness of affection. But I mean that boyish burning which belongs to every poor mortal's lifetime, and which bewilders him with the Ihoufht that he has reached tlie highest point of hu- 102 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. man joy, before he has tasted any of that bitterness 7 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 ^ve some adequate expression to your agonized feelings. At such a stage, you are quite certain that you are deeply and madly in love ; you persist, in the face of heaven and earth. You would like to meet the indi- vidual who dared to doubt it. Tou 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 I You half question if it could have been actually so, — and how you could have dared ; and you wonder if you would have courage to do the same thing again ? and upon second thought are quite sure you would, and snap your fingers at the thought of it. What sweet little hats she does wear; and in the school - room, when the hat is hung up, what curls ! LIGHTED WITH A COAL 103 golden curls, worth a hundred Golcondas ! How bravely you study the top lines of the spelling-book, that your eyes may run over the edge of the cover without the schoolmaster's notice, and feast upon her! You half wish that somebody would run away with her, as they did with Amanda, in the " Children of the Abbey"; and then you might ride up on a splendid black horse, and draw a pistol or blunderbuss, and shoot the villains, and carry her back, all in tears, fainting and languishing upon your shoulder, and have her fa- ther (who is Judge of the County Court) take your hand in both of his, and make some eloquent remarks. A great many such recaptures you run over in your mind, and think how delightful it would be to peril your life, either by flood or fire, — to cut off your arm, or your head, or any such trifle, for your dear Louise. You can hardly think of anything more joyous in life than to live with her in some old castle, very far away from steamboats and post-offices^ and pick wild geraniums for her hair, and read poetry with her under 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 104 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. perhaps, with saying, " It is n't so ; " but afterward, in your chamber, or under the tree where you have cut her name, you take Heaven to witness that it is so, and think. What a cold world it is, to be so careless about such holy emotions ! You perfectly hate a certain 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 way, you bear it very proudly, and with a feeling as if you could bear a great deal more for her sake. And when the minister reads off marriage announcements in the church, you think how it will sound, one of these days, to have your name and hers read from the pulpit ; and how the people wOl all look at you, and how prettily she will blush ; and how poor little Dick — who you know loves her, but is afraid to say so — will squirm upon his bench. Heigho ! mused I, — as the blue smoke rolled up around my head, — these first kindlings of the love that is in one are very pleasant ! but will they last ? You love to listen to the rustle of her dress, as she 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 footmark, on your way to the school; and what a dear little footmark it is! And from that single point, if she be out of your sight LIGHTED WITH A COAL. 106 for days, you conjure up the whole image : the elastic, lithe little figure, — the springy step, — the dotted mus lin, so light and flowing, — the sUk kerchief, with its most tempting fringe playing upon the clear white of her throat ; how you envy that fringe ! And her chin is as round as a peach ; and the lips, — such lips ! and you sigh, and -hang your head, and wonder when you ■ shaM see her again ! Tou would like to write her a letter ; but then, people would talk so coldly about it ; and, beside, you are not quite sure you could write such billets as Thaddeus of Warsaw used to write, and anything less warm or ele- gant would not do at all. You talk about this one or that one, whom they call pretty, in the coolest way in the world : you see very little of their prettiness ; they are good girls, to be sure ; and you hope they will get good husbands some day or other ; but it is not a mat- ter that concerns you very much. They do not live in your world of romance ; they are not the angels of that sky which your, heart makes rosy, and to which I have Ukened the blue waves of this rolling smoke. Tou can even joke as you talk of others ; you can smile — as you think — very graciously ; you can say laughingly that you are deeply in love with them, and think it a most capital joke ; you can touch their hands, or steal a kiss from them in your games, most imper- turbably ; — they are very dead coals. 5» 106 REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. But the live one is very lively. When you taki