p134-012 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. THE OLD MANSE. The Author makes the Reader acquainted with his Abode.

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Between two tall gate-posts of rough hewn stone (the gate itself
having fallen from its hinges, at some unknown epoch), we beheld
the grey front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an
avenue of black ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the
funeral procession of the venerable clergyman, its last inhabitant,
had turned from that gate-way towards the village burying-ground.
The wheel-track, leading to the door, as well as the
whole breadth of the avenue, was almost overgrown with grass,
affording dainty mouthfuls to two or three vagrant cows, and an
old white horse, who had his own living to pick up along the roadside.
The glimmering shadows, that lay half asleep between the
door of the house and the public highway, were a kind of spiritual
medium, seen through which, the edifice had not quite the aspect
of belonging to the material world. Certainly, it had little in
common with those ordinary abodes, which stand so imminent
upon the road that every passer-by can thrust his head, as it
were, into the domestic circle. From these quiet windows, the
figures of passing travellers looked too remote and dim to disturb
the sense of privacy. In its near retirement, and accessible
seclusion, it was the very spot for the residence of a clergyman;
a man not estranged from human life, yet enveloped, in the midst
of it, with a veil woven of intermingled gloom and brightness. It

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was worthy to have been one of the time-honored parsonages of
England, in which, through many generations, a succession of
holy occupants pass from youth to age, and bequeath each an
inheritance of sanctity to pervade the house and hover over it, as
with an atmosphere.

Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse ever been profaned by a
lay occupant, until that memorable summer-afternoon when I
entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded
to it; other priestly men, from time to time, had dwelt in
it; and children, born in its chambers, had grown up to assume
the priestly character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons
must have been written there. The latest inhabitant alone—he,
by whose translation to Paradise the dwelling was left vacant—
had penned nearly three thousand discourses, besides the better,
if not the greater number, that gushed living from his lips. How
often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue, attuning
his meditations, to the sighs and gentle murmurs, and deep and
solemn peals of the wind, among the lofty tops of the trees! In
that variety of natural utterances, he could find something accordant
with every passage of his sermon, were it of tenderness or
reverential fear. The boughs over my head seemed shadowy
with solemn thoughts, as well as with rustling leaves. I took
shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories,
and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with
the falling leaves of the avenue; and that I should light upon an
intellectual treasure in the Old Manse, well worth those hoards
of long hidden gold, which people seek for in moss-grown houses.
Profound treatises of morality—a layman's unprofessional, and
therefore unprejudiced views of religion;—histories (such as
Bancroft might have written, had he taken up his abode here, as
he once purposed), bright with picture, gleaming over a depth of
philosophic thought;—these were the works that might fitly have
flowed from such a retirement. In the humblest event, I resolved

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at least to achieve a novel, that should evolve some deep lesson,
and should possess physical substance enough to stand alone.

In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext
for not fulfilling it, there was, in the rear of the house, the most
delightful little nook of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion
to a scholar. It was here that Emerson wrote “Nature;” for he
was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the
Assyrian dawn and the Paphian sunset and moonrise, from the
summit of our eastern hill. When I first saw the room, its walls
were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made
still blacker by the grim prints of puritan ministers that hung
around. These worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or, at
least, like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly
with the devil, that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been
imparted to their own visages. They had all vanished now; a
cheerful coat of paint, and golden tinted paper hangings, lighted
up the small apartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree, that
swept against the overhanging eves, attempered the cheery western
sunshine. In place of the grim prints, there was the sweet
and lovely head of one of Raphael's Madonnas, and two pleasant
little pictures of the Lake of Como. The only other decorations
were a purple vase of flowers, always fresh, and a bronze one
containing graceful ferns. My books (few, and by no means
choice; for they were chiefly such waifs as chance had thrown
in my way) stood in order about the room, seldom to be disturbed.

The study had three windows, set with little old fashioned
panes of glass, each with a crack across it. The two on the
western side looked, or rather peeped, between the willow
branches, down into the orchard, with glimpses of the river
through the trees. The third, facing northward, commanded a
broader view of the river, at a spot where its hitherto obscure waters
gleam forth into the light of history. It was at this window that

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the clergyman, who then dwelt in the Manse, stood watching the
outbreak of a long and deadly struggle between two nations; he
saw the irregular array of his parishioners on the farther side of
the river, and the glittering line of the British, on the hither
bank; he awaited, in an agony of suspense, the rattle of the
musketry. It came—and there needed but a gentle wind to
sweep the battle smoke around this quiet house.

Perhaps the reader—whom I cannot help considering as my
guest in the Old Manse, and entitled to all courtesy, in the way
of sight-showing—perhaps he will choose to take a nearer view
of the memorable spot. We stand now on the river's brink. It
may well be called the Concord—the river of peace and quietness—
for it is certainly the most unexcitable and sluggish stream
that ever loitered, imperceptibly, towards its eternity, the sea.
Positively, I had lived three weeks beside it, before it grew quite
clear to my perception which way the current flowed. It never
has a vivacious aspect, except when a northwestern breeze is
vexing its surface, on a sunshiny day. From the incurable
indolence of its nature, the stream is happily incapable of becoming
the slave of human ingenuity, as is the fate of so many a wild
free mountain torrent. While all things else are compelled to
subserve some useful purpose, it idles its sluggish life away, in
lazy liberty, without turning a solitary spindle, or affording even
water power enough to grind the corn that grows upon its banks.
The torpor of its movement allows it nowhere a bright pebbly
shore, nor so much as a narrow strip of glistening sand, in any
part of its course. It slumbers between broad prairies, kissing
the long meadow grass, and bathes the overhanging boughs of
elder bushes and willows, or the roots of elms and ash trees, and
clumps of maples. Flags and rushes grow along its plashy shore;
the yellow water-lily spreads its broad flat leaves on the margin;
and the fragrant white pond-lily abounds, generally selecting a

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position just so far from the river's brink, that it cannot be grasped,
save at the hazard of plunging in.

It is a marvel whence this perfect flower derives its loveliness
and perfume, springing, as it does, from the black mud over
which the river sleeps, and where lurk the slimy eel, and speckled
frog, and the mud turtle, whom continual washing cannot cleanse.
It is the very same black mud out of which the yellow lily sucks
its obscene life and noisome odor. Thus we see, too, in the
world, that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil
from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautified
results—the fragrance of celestial flowers—to the daily life
of others.

The reader must not, from any testimony of mine, contract a
dislike towards our slumberous stream. In the light of a calm
and golden sunset, it becomes lovely beyond expression; the
more lovely for the quietude that so well accords with the hour,
when even the wind, after blustering all day long, usually hushes
itself to rest. Each tree and rock, and every blade of grass, is
distinctly imaged, and, however unsightly in reality, assumes
ideal beauty in the reflection. The minutest things of earth,
and the broad aspect of the firmament, are pictured equally without
effort, and with the same felicity of success. All the sky
glows downward at our feet; the rich clouds float through the
unruffled bosom of the stream, like heavenly thoughts through a
peaceful heart. We will not, then, malign our river as gross and
impure, while it can glorify itself with so adequate a picture of
the Heaven that broods above it; or, if we remember its tawny
hue and the muddiness of its bed, let it be a symbol that the
earthliest human soul has an infinite spiritual capacity, and may
contain the better world within its depths. But, indeed, the same
lesson might be drawn out of any mud-puddle in the streets of a
city—and, being taught us everywhere, it must be true.

Come; we have pursued a somewhat devious track, in our

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walk to the battle-ground. Here we are, at the point where the
river was crossed by the old bridge, the possession of which was
the immediate object of the contest. On the hither side, grow
two or three elms, throwing a wide circumference of shade, but
which must have been planted at some period within the three-score
years and ten that have passed since the battle-day.
On the farther shore, overhung by a clump of elder-bushes, we
discern the stone abutment of the bridge. Looking down into
the river, I once discovered some heavy fragment of the timbers,
all green with half a century's growth of water-moss; for, during
that length of time, the tramp of horses and human footsteps have
ceased, along this ancient highway. The stream has here about
the breadth of twenty strokes of a swimmer's arm; a space not
too wide, when the bullets were whistling across. Old people,
who dwell hereabouts, will point out the very spots, on the
western bank, where our countrymen fell down and died; and,
on this side of the river, an obelisk of granite has grown up from
the soil that was fertilized with British blood. The monument,
not more than twenty feet in height, is such as it befitted the
inhabitants of a village to erect, in illustration of a matter of local
interest, rather than what was suitable to commemorate an epoch
of national history. Still, by the fathers of the village this famous
deed was done; and their descendants might rightfully claim the
privilege of building a memorial.

An humbler token of the fight, yet a more interesting one than
the granite obelisk, may be seen close under the stone-wall, which
separates the battle-ground from the precincts of the parsonage.
It is the grave—marked by a small, moss-grown fragment of
stone at the head, and another at the foot—the grave of two
British soldiers, who were slain in the skirmish, and have ever
since slept peacefully where Zechariah Brown and Thomas Davis
buried them. Soon was their warfare ended;—a weary night-march
from Boston—a rattling volley of musketry across the

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river;—and then these many years of rest! In the long procession
of slain invaders, who passed into eternity from the battlefields
of the Revolution, these two nameless soldiers led the way.

Lowell, the poet, as we were once standing over this grave,
told me a tradition in reference to one of the inhabitants below.
The story has something deeply impressive, though its circumstances
cannot altogether be reconciled with probability. A
youth, in the service of the clergyman, happened to be chopping
wood, that April morning, at the back door of the Manse; and
when the noise of battle rang from side to side of the bridge, he
hastened across the intervening field, to see what might be going
forward. It is rather strange, by the way, that this lad should
have been so diligently at work, when the whole population of
town and country were startled out of their customary business
by the advance of the British troops. Be that as it might, the
tradition says that the lad now left his task, and hurried to the
battle-field, with the axe still in his hand. The British had by
this time retreated—the Americans were in pursuit—and the late
scene of strife was thus deserted by both parties. Two soldiers
lay on the ground; one was a corpse; but, as the young New
Englander drew nigh, the other Briton raised himself painfully
upon his hands and knees, and gave a ghastly stare into his face.
The boy—it must have been a nervous impulse, without purpose,
without thought, and betokening a sensitive and impressible
nature, rather than a hardened one—the boy uplifted his axe, and
dealt the wounded soldier a fierce and fatal blow upon the head.

I could wish that the grave might be opened; for I would fain
know whether either of the skeleton soldiers has the mark of an
axe in his skull. The story comes home to me like truth.
Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, I have sought
to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career, and
observe how his soul was tortured by the blood stain, contracted,
as it had been, before the long custom of war had robbed human

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life of its sanctity, and while it still seemed murderous to slay a
brother man. This one circumstance has borne more fruit for
me than all that history tells us of the fight.

Many strangers come, in the summer-time, to view the battleground.
For my own part, I have never found my imagination
much excited by this, or any other scene of historic celebrity;
nor would the placid margin of the river have lost any of its
charm for me, had men never fought and died there. There is a
wilder interest in the tract of land—perhaps a hundred yards in
breadth—which extends between the battle-field and the northern
face of our old Manse, with its contiguous avenue and orchard.
Here, in some unknown age, before the white man came, stood
an Indian village, convenient to the river, whence its inhabitants
must have drawn so large a part of their substance. The site is
identified by the spear and arrow-heads, the chisels, and other
implements of war, labor, and the chase, which the plough turns
up from the soil. You see a splinter of stone, half hidden beneath
a sod; it looks like nothing worthy of note; but, if you have faith
enough to pick it up—behold a relic! Thoreau, who has a strange
faculty of finding what the Indians have left behind them, first
set me on the search; and I afterwards enriched myself with
some very perfect specimens, so rudely wrought that it seemed
almost as if chance had fashioned them. Their great charm
consists in this rudeness, and in the individuality of each article,
so different from the productions of civilized machinery, which
shapes everything on one pattern. There is exquisite delight,
too, in picking up, for one's self, an arrow-head that was dropt
centuries ago, and has never been handled since, and which we
thus receive directly from the hand of the red hunter, who purposed
to shoot it at his game, or at an enemy. Such an incident
builds up again the Indian village, and its encircling forest, and
recalls to life the painted chiefs and warriors, the squaws at their
household toil, and the children sporting among the wigwams;

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while the little wind-rocked papoose swings from the branch of a
tree. It can hardly be told whether it is a joy or a pain, after
such a momentary vision, to gaze around in the broad daylight
of reality, and see stone-fences, white houses, potatoe-fields,
and men doggedly hoeing, in their shirt-sleeves and homespun
pantaloons. But this is nonsense. The old Manse is better
than athousand wigwams.

The Old Manse!—we had almost forgotten it, but will return
thither through the orchard. This was set out by the last clergyman,
in the decline of his life, when the neighbors laughed at the
hoary-headed man for planting trees, from which he could have
no prospect of gathering fruit. Even had that been the case,
there was only so much the better motive for planting them, in
the pure and unselfish hope of benefiting his successors: an end
so seldom achieved by more ambitious efforts. But the old minister,
before reaching his patriarchal age of ninety, ate the apples
from this orchard during many years, and added silver and gold
to his annual stipend, by disposing of the superfluity. It is pleasant
to think of him, walking among the trees in the quiet afternoons
of early autumn, and picking up here and there a windfall;
while he observes how heavily the branches are weighed down,
and computes the number of empty flour-barrels that will be
filled by their burthen. He loved each tree, doubtless, as if it
had been his own child. An orchard has a relation to mankind,
and readily connects itself with matters of the heart. The trees
possess a domestic character; they have lost the wild nature of
their forest-kindred, and have grown humanized by receiving the
care of man, as well as by contributing to his wants. There is
so much individuality of character, too, among apple-trees, that
it gives them an additional claim to be the objects of human interest.
One is harsh and crabbed in its manifestations; another
gives us fruit as mild as charity. One is churlish and illiberal,
evidently grudging the few apples that it bears: another exhausts

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itself in free-hearted benevolence. The variety of grotesque
shapes into which apple-trees contort themselves, has its effect
on those who get acquainted with them: they stretch out their
crooked branches, and take such hold of the imagination, that we
remember them as humorists and odd fellows. And what is more
melancholy than the old apple-trees, that linger about the spot
where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined
chimney, rising out of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They
offer their fruit to every wayfarer—apples that are bitter-sweet
with the moral of time's vicissitude.

I have met with no other such pleasant trouble in the world, as
that of finding myself, with only the two or three mouths which
it was my privilege to feed, the sole inheritor of the old clergyman's
wealth of fruits. Throughout the summer, there were
cherries and currants; and then came autumn, with his immense
burthen of apples, dropping them continually from his over-laden
shoulders, as he trudged along. In the stillest afternoon, if I
listened, the thump of a great apple was audible, falling without
a breath of wind, from the mere necessity of perfect ripeness.
And, besides, there were pear-trees, that flung down bushels upon
bushels of heavy pears; and peach-trees, which, in a good year,
tormented me with peaches, neither to be eaten nor kept, nor,
without labor and perplexity, to be given away. The idea of an
infinite generosity and exhaustless bounty, on the part of our Mother
Nature, was well worth obtaining through such cares as these.
That feeling can be enjoyed in perfection only by the natives of
summer islands, where the bread-fruit, the cocoa, the palm and the
orange, grow spontaneously, and hold forth the ever-ready meal;
but, likewise, almost as well, by a man long habituated to city
life, who plunges into such a solitude as that of the Old Manse,
where he plucks the fruit of trees that he did not plant; and
which, therefore, to my heterodox taste, bear the closer resemblance
to those that grew in Eden. It has been an apophthegm,

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these five thousand years, that toil sweetens the bread it earns.
For my part (speaking from hard experience, acquired while belaboring
the rugged furrows of Brook Farm), I relish best the
free gifts of Providence.

Not that it can be disputed that the light toil, requisite to cultivate
a moderately-sized garden, imparts such zest to kitchen-vegetables
as is never found in those of the market-gardener.
Childless men, if they would know something of the bliss of paternity,
should plant a seed—be it squash, bean, Indian-corn, or
perhaps a mere flower, or worthless weed—should plant it with
their own hands, and nurse it from infancy to maturity, altogether
by their own care. If there be not too many of them, each individual
plant becomes an object of separate interest. My garden,
that skirted the avenue of the Manse, was of precisely the
right extent. An hour or two of morning labor was all that it
required. But I used to visit and re-visit it a dozen times a-day,
and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny, with
a love that nobody could share or conceive of, who had never
taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching
sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting
aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently
to trace a line of delicate green. Later in the season, the humming-birds
were attracted by the blossoms of a peculiar variety
of bean; and they were a joy to me, those little spiritual visitants,
for deigning to sip any food out of my nectar-cups. Multitudes
of bees used to bury themselves in the yellow-blossoms of the
summer-squashes. This, too, was a deep satisfaction; although,
when they had laden themselves with sweets, they flew away to
some unknown hive, which would give back nothing in requital
of what my garden had contributed. But I was glad thus to
fling a benefaction upon the passing breeze, with the certainty that
somebody must profit by it, and that there would be a little more
honey in the world, to allay the sourness and bitterness which

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mankind is always complaining of. Yes, indeed; my life was the
sweeter for that honey.

Speaking of summer-squashes, I must say a word of their
beautiful and varied forms. They presented an endless diversity
of urns and vases, shallow or deep, scalloped or plain, moulded
in patterns which a sculptor would do well to copy, since art has
never invented anything more graceful. A hundred squashes in
the garden were worthy—in my eyes, at least—of being rendered
indestructible in marble. If ever Providence (but I know it never
will) should assign me a superfluity of gold, part of it shall be
expended for a service of plate, or most delicate porcelain, to be
wrought into the shapes of summer-squashes, gathered from vines
which I will plant with my own hands. As dishes for containing
vegetables, they would be peculiarly appropriate.

But not merely the squeamish love of the Beautiful was gratified
by my toil in the kitchen-garden. There was a hearty enjoyment,
likewise, in observing the growth of the crook-necked
winter-squashes, from the first little bulb, with the withered blossom
adhering to it, until they lay strewn upon the soil, big, round
fellows, hiding their heads beneath the leaves, but turning up their
great yellow rotundities to the noon-tide sun. Gazing at them, I
felt that, by my agency, something worth living for had been done.
A new substance was born into the world. They were real and
tangible existences, which the mind could seize hold of and rejoice
in. A cabbage, too,—especially the early Dutch cabbage, which
swells to a monstrous circumference, until its ambitious heart often
bursts asunder,—is a matter to be proud of, when we can claim a
share with the earth and sky in producing it. But, after all, the
hugest pleasure is reserved until these vegetable children of ours
are smoking on the table, and we, like Saturn, make a meal of
them.

What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and the garden,
the reader begins to despair of finding his way back into the Old

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Manse. But, in agreeable weather, it is the truest hospitality to
keep him out of doors. I never grew quite acquainted with my
habitation till a long spell of sulky rain had confined me beneath
its roof. There could not be a more sombre aspect of external
nature than as seen from the windows of my study. The great
willow-tree had caught and retained among its leaves a whole
cataract of water to be shaken down, at intervals, by the frequent
gusts of wind. All day long, and for a week together, the rain
was drip-drip-dripping and splash-splash-splashing from the eaves,
and bubbling and foaming into the tubs beneath the spouts. The
old, unpainted shingles of the house and out-buildings were black
with moisture; and the mosses, of ancient growth upon the walls,
looked green and fresh, as if they were the newest things and
after-thought of time. The usually mirrored surface of the
river was blurred by an infinity of rain-drops. The whole landscape
had a completely water-soaked appearance, conveying the
impression that the earth was wet through, like a sponge; while
the summit of a wooded hill, about a mile distant, was enveloped
in a dense mist, where the demon of the tempest seemed to have
his abiding-place, and to be plotting still direr inclemencies.

Nature has no kindness—no hospitality—during a rain. In
the fiercest heat of sunny days, she retains a secret mercy, and
welcomes the wayfarer to shady nooks of the woods, whither the
sun cannot penetrate. But she provides no shelter against her
storms. It makes us shiver to think of those deep, umbrageous
recesses—those overshadowing banks—where we found such
enjoyment during the sultry afternoons. Not a twig of foliage
there, but would dash a little shower into our faces. Looking
reproachfully towards the impenetrable sky—if sky there be,
above that dismal uniformity of cloud—we are apt to murmur
against the whole system of the universe; since it involves the
extinction of so many summer days, in so short a life, by the hissing
and spluttering rain. In such spells of weather—and it is

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to be supposed, such weather came—Eve's bower in Paradise
must have been but a cheerless and aguish kind of shelter;
nowise comparable to the old parsonage, which had resources of
its own, to beguile the week's imprisonment. The idea of sleeping
on a couch of wet roses!

Happy the man who, in a rainy day, can betake himself to a
huge garret, stored, like that of the Manse, with lumber that
each generation has left behind it, from a period before the Revolution.
Our garret was an arched hall, dimly illuminated
through small and dusty windows; it was but a twilight, at the
best; and there were nooks, or rather caverns of deep obscurity,
the secrets of which I never learned, being too reverent of their
dust and cobwebs. The beams and rafters, roughly hewn, and
with strips of bark still on them, and the rude masonry of the
chimneys, made the garret look wild and uncivilized; an aspect
unlike what was seen elsewhere, in the quiet and decorous old
house. But, on one side, there was a little white-washed apartment
which bore the traditionary title of the Saint's chamber,
because holy men, in their youth, had slept, and studied, and
prayed there. With its elevated retirement, its one window, its
small fireplace, and its closet, convenient for an oratory, it was
the very spot where a young man might inspire himself with
solemn enthusiasm, and cherish saintly dreams. The occupants,
at various epochs had left brief records and speculations, inscribed
upon the walls. There, too, hung a tattered and shriveled roll of
canvass, which, on inspection, proved to be the forcibly wrought
picture of a clergyman, in wig, band, and gown, holding a bible
in his hand. As I turned his face toward the light, he eyed me
with an air of authority such as men of his profession seldom
assume, in our days. The original had been pastor of the parish
more than a century ago, a friend of Whitefield, and almost his
equal in fervid eloquence. I bowed before the effigy of the dignified
divine, and felt as if I had now met face to face with the

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ghost, by whom, as there was reason to apprehend, the Manse was
haunted.

Houses of any antiquity, in New England, are so invariably
possessed with spirits, that the matter seems hardly worth alluding
to. Our ghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner
of the parlor; and sometimes rustled paper, as if he were turning
over a sermon, in the long upper entry;—where, nevertheless, he
was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine that fell through
the eastern window. Not improbably, he wished me to edit and
publish a selection from a chest full of manuscript discourses,
that stood in the garret. Once, while Hillard and other friends
sat talking with us in the twilight, there came a rustling noise, as
of a minister's silk gown, sweeping through the very midst of the
company, so closely as almost to brush against the chairs. Still,
there was nothing visible. A yet stranger business was that of
a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen, at
deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing—performing,
in short, all kinds of domestic labor—although no traces of anything
accomplished could be detected the next morning. Some
neglected duty of her servitude—some ill-starched ministerial
band—disturbed the poor damsel in her grave, and kept her to
work without any wages.

But to return from this digression. A part of my predecessor's
library was stored in the garret; no unfit receptacle, indeed, for
such dreary trash as comprised the greater number of volumes.
The old books would have been worth nothing at an auction. In
this venerable garret, however, they possessed an interest quite
apart from their literary value, as heirlooms, many of which had
been transmitted down through a series of consecrated hands, from
the days of the mighty Puritan divines. Autographs of famous
names were to be seen, in faded ink, on some of their fly-leaves;
and there were marginal observations, or interpolated pages
closely covered with manuscript, in illegible short-hand, perhaps

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

concealing matter of profound truth and wisdom. The world
will never be the better for it. A few of the books were Latin
folios, written by Catholic authors; others demolished papistry
as with a sledge-hammer, in plain English. A dissertation on
the book of Job—which only Job himself could have had patience
to read—filled at least a score of small, thickset quartos, at the
rate of two or three volumes to a chapter. Then there was a
vast folio Body of Divinity; too corpulent a body, it might be
feared, to comprehend the spiritual element of religion. Volumes
of this form dated back two hundred years, or more, and
were generally bound in black leather, exhibiting precisely such
an appearance as we should attribute to books of enchantment.
Others equally antique, were of a size proper to be carried in the
large waistcoat pockets of old times; diminutive, but as black as
their bulkier brethren, and abundantly interfused with Greek
and Latin quotations. These little old volumes impressed me as
if they had been intended for very large ones, but had been unfortunately
blighted at an early stage of their growth.

The rain pattered upon the roof, and the sky gloomed through
the dusty garret windows; while I burrowed among these venerable
books, in search of any living thought, which should burn like
a coal of fire, or glow like an inextinguishable gem, beneath the
dead trumpery that had long hidden it. But I found no such
treasure; all was dead alike; and I could not but muse deeply
and wonderingly upon the humiliating fact, that the works of
man's intellect decay like those of his hands. Thought grows
mouldy. What was good and nourishing food for the spirits of
one generation, affords no sustenance for the next. Books of
religion, however, cannot be considered a fair test of the enduring
and vivacious properties of human thought; because such
books so seldom really touch upon their ostensible subject, and
have therefore so little business to be written at all. So long as
an unlettered soul can attain to saving grace, there would seem

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

to be no deadly error in holding theological libraries to be accumulations
of, for the most part, stupendous impertinence.

Many of the books had accrued in the latter years of the last
clergyman's lifetime. These threatened to be of even less interest
than the elder works, a century hence, to any curious inquirer
who should then rummage them, as I was doing now. Volumes
of the Liberal Preacher and Christian Examiner, occasional sermons,
controversial pamphlets, tracts, and other productions of a
like fugitive nature, took the place of the thick and heavy volumes
of past time. In a physical point of view, there was much the
same difference as between a feather and a lump of lead; but,
intellectually regarded, the specific gravity of old and new was
about upon a par. Both, also, were alike frigid. The elder
books, nevertheless, seemed to have been earnestly written, and
might be conceived to have possessed warmth at some former
period; although, with the lapse of time, the heated masses had
cooled down even to the freezing point. The frigidity of the
modern productions, on the other hand, was characteristic and
inherent, and evidently had little to do with the writers' qualities
of mind and heart. In fine, of this whole dusty heap of literature,
I tossed aside all the sacred part, and felt myself none the
less a Christian for eschewing it. There appeared no hope of
either mounting to the better world on a Gothic staircase of
ancient folios, or of flying thither on the wings of a modern tract.

Nothing, strange to say, retained any sap, except what had
been written for the passing day and year, without the remotest
pretension or idea of permanence. There were a few old newspapers,
and still older almanacs, which re-produced, to my mental
eye, the epochs when they had issued from the press, with a distinctness
that was altogether unaccountable. It was as if I had
found bits of magic looking-glass among the books, with the
images of a vanished century in them. I turned my eyes towards
the tattered picture, above-mentioned, and asked of the austere

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

divine, wherefore it was that he and his brethren, after the most
painful rummaging and groping into their minds, had been able to
produce nothing half so real as these newspaper scribblers and
almanac-makers had thrown off, in the effervescence of a moment.
The portrait responded not; so I sought an answer for myself.
It is the age itself that writes newspapers and almanacs, which
therefore have a distinct purpose and meaning at the time,
and a kind of intelligible truth for all times; whereas, most
other works—being written by men who, in the very act, set
themselves apart from their age—are likely to possess little significance
when new, and none at all when old. Genius, indeed,
melts many ages into one, and thus effects something permanent,
yet still with a similarity of office to that of the more ephemeral
writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century, or
perchance of a hundred centuries.

Lightly as I have spoken of these old books, there yet lingers
with me a superstitious reverence for literature of all kinds. A
bound volume has a charm in my eyes, similar to what scraps of
manuscript possess for the good Mussulman; he imagines that
those wind-wafted records are perhaps hallowed by some sacred
verse; and I, that every new book, or antique one, may contain
the “Open Sesame”—the spell to disclose treasures, hidden in
some unsuspected cave of Truth. Thus, it was not without sadness
that I turned away from the library of the Old Manse.

Blessed was the sunshine when it came again, at the close of
another stormy day, beaming from the edge of the western horizon;
while the massive firmament of clouds threw down all the
gloom it could, but served only to kindle the golden light into a
more brilliant glow, by the strongly contrasted shadows. Heaven
smiled at the earth, long unseen from beneath its heavy eyelid.
To-morrow for the hilltops and the woodpaths!

Or it might be that Ellery Channing came up the avenue, to
join me in a fishing excursion on the river. Strange and happy

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

times were those, when we cast aside all irksome forms and
strait-laced habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free
air, to live like the Indians or any less conventional race, during
one bright semicircle of the sun. Rowing our boat against the
current, between wide meadows, we turned aside into the Assabeth.
A more lonely stream than this, for a mile above its junction
with the Concord, has never flowed on earth—nowhere,
indeed, except to lave the interior regions of a poet's imagination.
It is sheltered from the breeze by woods and a hillside; so that
elsewhere there might be a hurricane, and here scarcely a ripple
across the shaded water. The current lingers along so gently,
that the mere force of the boatman's will seems sufficient to propel
his craft against it. It comes flowing softly through the
midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood, which whispers it
to be quiet, while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy
borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another to sleep.
Yes; the river sleeps along its course, and dreams of the sky,
and of the clustering foliage; amid which fall showers of broken
sunlight, imparting specks of vivid cheerfulness, in contrast with
the quiet depth of the prevailing tint. Of all this scene, the
slumbering river had a dream-picture in its bosom. Which,
after all, was the most real—the picture, or the original?—the
objects palpable to our grosser senses, or their apotheosis in the
stream beneath? Surely the disembodied images stand in closer
relation to the soul. But both the original and the reflection had
here an ideal charm; and had it been a thought more wild, I
could have fancied that this river had strayed forth out of the
rich scenery of my companion's inner world;—only the vegetation
along its banks should then have had an oriental character.

Gentle and unobtrusive as the river is, yet the tranquil woods
seem hardly satisfied to allow it passage. The trees are rooted
on the very verge of the water, and dip their pendant branches
into it. At one spot, there is a lofty bank, on the slope of which

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

grow some hemlocks, declining across the stream, with outstretched
arms, as if resolute to take the plunge. In other places, the
banks are almost on a level with the water; so that the quiet
congregation of trees set their feet in the flood, and are fringed
with foliage down to the surface. Cardinal flowers kindle their
spiral flames, and illuminate the dark nooks among the shrubbery.
The pond-lily grows abundantly along the margin; that delicious
flower which, as Thoreau tells me, opens its virgin bosom to the
first sunlight, and perfects its being through the magic of that
genial kiss. He has beheld beds of them unfolding in due succession,
as the sunrise stole gradually from flower to flower; a
sight not to be hoped for, unless when a poet adjusts his inward
eye to a proper focus with the outward organ. Grape-vines,
here and there, twine themselves around shrub and tree, and hang
their clusters over the water, within reach of the boatman's hand.
Oftentimes, they unite two trees of alien race in an inextricable
twine, marrying the hemlock and the maple against their will,
and enriching them with a purple offspring, of which neither is
the parent. One of these ambitious parasites has climbed into
the upper branches of a tall white pine, and is still ascending
from bough to bough, unsatisfied, till it shall crown the tree's airy
summit with a wreath of its broad foliage and a cluster of its
grapes.

The winding course of the stream continually shut out the
scene behind us, and revealed as calm and lovely a one before.
We glided from depth to depth, and breathed new seclusion at
every turn. The shy kingfisher flew from the withered branch
close at hand, to another at a distance, uttering a shrill cry of
anger or alarm. Ducks—that had been floating there since the
preceding eve—were startled at our approach, and skimmed along
the glassy river, breaking its dark surface with a bright streak.
The pickerel leaped from among the lily-pads. The turtle, sunning
itself upon a rock, or at the root of a tree, slid suddenly into

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

the water with a plunge. The painted Indian, who paddled his
canoe along the Assabeth three hundred years ago, could hardly
have seen a wilder gentleness displayed upon its banks, and
reflected in its bosom, than we did.

Nor could the same Indian have prepared his noontide meal
with more simplicity. We drew up our skiff at some point where
the over-arching shade formed a natural bower, and there kindled
a fire with the pine-cones and decayed branches that lay strewn
plentifully around. Soon the smoke ascended among the trees,
impregnated with a savory incense, not heavy, dull, and surfeiting,
like the steam of cookery within doors, but sprightly and
piquant. The smell of our feast was akin to the woodland odors
with which it mingled; there was no sacrilege committed by our
intrusion there; the sacred solitude was hospitable, and granted
us free leave to cook and eat, in the recess that was at once our
kitchen and banqueting hall. It is strange what humble offices
may be performed, in a beautiful scene, without destroying its
poetry. Our fire, red gleaming among the trees, and we beside
it, busied with culinary rites and spreading out our meal on a
moss-grown log, all seemed in unison with the river gliding by,
and the foliage rustling over us. And, what was strangest,
neither did our mirth seem to disturb the propriety of the solemn
woods; although the hobgoblins of the old wilderness, and the
will-of-the-wisps that glimmered in the marshy places, might
have come trooping to share our table-talk, and have added their
shrill laughter to our merriment. It was the very spot in which
to utter the extremest nonsense, or the profoundest wisdom—or
that ethereal product of the mind which partakes of both, and
may become one or the other, in correspondence with the faith and
insight of the auditor.

So, amid sunshine and shadow, rustling leaves, and sighing
waters, up-gushed our talk, like the babble of a fountain. The
evanescent spray was Ellery's; and his, too, the lumps of golden

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

thought, that lay glimmering in the fountain's bed, and brightened
both our faces by the reflection. Could he have drawn out that
virgin gold, and stamped it with the mint-mark that alone gives
currency, the world might have had the profit, and he the fame.
My mind was the richer, merely by the knowledge that it was
there. But the chief profit of those wild days, to him and me,
lay—not in any definite idea—not in any angular or rounded
truth, which we dug out of the shapeless mass of problematical
stuff—but in the freedom which we thereby won from all custom
and conventionalism, and fettering influences of man on man.
We were so free to-day, that it was impossible to be slaves again
to-morrow. When we crossed the threshold of the house, or trod
the thronged pavements of a city, still the leaves of the trees
that overhang the Assabeth, were whispering to us—“Be free!
Be free!” Therefore, along that shady river bank, there are
spots, marked with a heap of ashes and half-consumed brands,
only less sacred in my remembrance than the hearth of a household
fire.

And yet how sweet—as we floated homeward adown the golden
river, at sunset—how sweet was it to return within the system of
human society, not as to a dungeon and a chain, but as to a
stately edifice, where we could go forth at will into statelier simplicity!
How gently, too, did the sight of the old Manse—best
seen from the river, overshadowed with its willow, and all environed
about with the foliage of its orchard and avenue—how gently
did its grey, homely aspect rebuke the speculative extravagances
of the day! It had grown sacred, in connection with the artificial
life against which we inveighed; it had been a home, for
many years, in spite of all; it was my home, too; and, with these
thoughts, it seemed to me that all the artifice and conventionalism
of life was but an impalpable thinness upon its surface, and
that the depth below was none the worse for it. Once as we
turned our boat to the bank, there was a cloud in the shape of an

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

immensely gigantic figure of a hound, couched above the house,
as if keeping guard over it. Gazing at this symbol, I prayed
that the upper influences might long protect the institutions that
had grown out of the heart of mankind.

If ever my readers should decide to give up civilized life, cities,
houses, and whatever moral or material enormities, in addition to
these, the perverted ingenuity of our race has contrived,—let it
be in the early autumn. Then nature will love him better than
at any other season, and will take him to her bosom with a more
motherly tenderness. I could scarcely endure the roof of the
old house above me, in those first autumnal days. How early in
the summer, too, the prophecy of autumn comes!—earlier in
some years than in others,—sometimes even in the first weeks of
July. There is no other feeling like what is caused by this faint,
doubtful, yet real perception, if it be not rather a foreboding, of
the year's decay—so blessedly sweet and sad, in the same breath.
Did I say that there was no feeling like it? Ah; but there is a
half-acknowledged melancholy, like to this, when we stand in the
perfected vigor of our life, and feel that Time has now given us
all his flowers, and that the next work of his never idle fingers
must be—to steal them, one by one, away!

I have forgotten whether the song of the cricket be not as early
a token of autumn's approach as any other;—that song, which
may be called an audible stillness; for, though very loud and
heard afar, yet the mind does not take note of it as a sound; so
completely is its individual existence merged among the accompanying
characteristics of the season. Alas, for the pleasant
summertime! In August, the grass is still verdant on the hills
and in the valleys; the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever,
and as green; the flowers gleam forth in richer abundance along
the margin of the river, and by the stone-walls, and deep among
the woods; the days, too, are as fervid now as they were a month
ago;—and yet, in every breath of wind, and in every beam of

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

sunshine, we hear the whispered farewell, and behold the parting
smile, of a dear friend. There is a coolness amid all the heat;
a mildness in the blazing noon. Not a breeze can stir, but it
thrills us with the breath of autumn. A pensive glory is seen
in the far, golden gleams, among the shadows of the trees. The
flowers—even the brightest of them, and they are the most gorgeous
of the year—have this gentle sandness wedded to their pomp,
and typify the character of the delicious time, each within itself.
The brilliant Cardinal flower has never seemed gay to me.

Still later in the season, Nature's tenderness waxes stronger.
It is impossible not to be fond of our Mother now; for she is so
fond of us! At other periods, she does not make this impression
on me, or only at rare intervals; but, in those genial days of
autumn, when she has perfected her harvests, and accomplished
every needful thing that was given her to do, then she overflows
with a blessed superfluity of love. She has leisure to caress her
children now. It is good to be alive, and at such times. Thank
heaven for breath!—yes, for mere breath!—when it is made up
of a heavenly breeze like this. It comes with a real kiss upon
our cheeks; it would linger fondly around us, if it might; but,
since it must be gone, it embraces us with its whole kindly heart,
and passes onward, to embrace likewise the next thing that it
meets. A blessing is flung abroad, and scattered far and wide
over the earth, to be gathered up by all who choose. I recline
upon the still unwithered grass, and whisper to myself:—“Oh,
perfect day!—Oh, beautiful world!—Oh, beneficent God!” And
it is the promise of a blessed Eternity; for our Creator would
never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep
hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we
were meant to be immortal. This sunshine is the golden pledge
thereof. It beams through the gates of Paradise, and shows us
glimpses far inward.

By-and-by—in a little time—the outward world puts on a drear

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

austerity. On some October morning, there is a heavy hoarfrost
on the grass, and along the tops of the fences; and, at sunrise,
the leaves fall from the trees of our avenue without a breath
of wind, quietly descending by their own weight. All summer
long, they have murmured like the noise of waters; they have
roared loudly, while the branches were wrestling with the thundergust;
they have made music, both glad and solemn; they have
attuned my thoughts by their quiet sound, as I paced to-and-fro
beneath the arch of intermingling boughs. Now, they can only
rustle under my feet. Henceforth, the grey parsonage begins to
assume a larger importance, and draws to its fireside—for the
abomination of the air-tight stove is reserved till wintry weather—
draws closer and closer to its fireside the vagrant impulses,
that had gone wandering about, through the summer.

When summer was dead and buried, the old Manse became as
lonely as a hermitage. Not that ever—in my time, at least—it
had been thronged with company. But, at no rare intervals, we
welcomed some friend out of the dusty glare and tumult of the
world, and rejoiced to share with him the transparent obscurity
that was floating over us. In one respect, our precincts were
like the Enchanted Ground, through which the pilgrim travelled
on his way to the Celestial City. The guests, each and all, felt
a slumberous influence upon them; they fell asleep in chairs, or
took a more deliberate siesta on the sofa; or were seen stretched
among the shadows of the orchard, looking up dreamily through
the boughs. They could not have paid a more acceptable compliment
to my abode, nor to my own qualities as a host. I held
it as a proof that they left their cares behind them, as they passed
between the stone gate-posts, at the entrance of our avenue; and
that the so powerful opiate was the abundance of peace and quiet
within and all around us. Others could give them pleasure and
amusement, or instruction—these could be picked up anywhere—
but it was for me to give them rest. Rest, in a life of trouble!

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

What better could be done for those weary and world-worn
spirits?—for him, whose career of perpetual action was impeded
and harassed by the rarest of his powers, and the richest of his
acquirements?—for another, who had thrown his ardent heart,
from earliest youth, into the strife of politics, and now, perchance,
began to suspect that one lifetime is too brief for the accomplishment
of any lofty aim?—for her, on whose feminine nature had
been imposed the heavy gift of intellectual power, such as a
strong man might have staggered under, and with it the necessity
to act upon the world?—in a word, not to multiply instances,
what better could be done for anybody, who came within our
magic circle, than to throw the spell of a magic spirit over him!
And when it had wrought its full effect, then we dismissed him,
with but misty reminiscences, as if he had been dreaming of us.

Were I to adopt a pet idea, as so many people do, and fondle
it in my embraces to the exclusion of all others, it would be, that
the great want which mankind labors under, at this present
period, is—Sleep! The world should recline its vast head on
the first convenient pillow, and take an age-long nap. It has
gone distracted, through a morbid activity, and, while preternaturally
wide-awake, is nevertheless tormented by visions, that seem
real to it now, but would assume their true aspect and character,
were all things once set right by an interval of sound repose.
This is the only method of getting rid of old delusions, and
avoiding new ones—of regenerating our race, so that it might is
due time awake, as an infant out of dewy slumber—of restoring
to us the simple perception of what is right, and the single-hearted
desire to achieve it; both of which have long been lost, in
consequence of this weary activity of brain, and torpor or passion
of the heart, that now afflict the universe. Stimulants, the only
mode of treatment hitherto attempted, cannot quell the disease;
they do but heighten the delirium.

Let not the above paragraph ever be quoted against the author;

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

for, though tinctured with its modicum of truth, it is the result
and expression of what he knew, while he was writing it, to be
but a distorted survey of the state and prospects of mankind.
There were circumstances around me, which made it difficult to
view the world precisely as it exists; for, severe and sober as
was the old Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond
its threshold, before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men
than might have been encountered elsewhere, in a circuit of a
thousand miles.

These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by
the wide-spreading influence of a great original Thinker, who
had his earthly abode at the opposite extremity of our village.
His mind acted upon other minds, of a certain constitution, with
wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages,
to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries—to whom
just so much of insight had been imparted, as to make life all a
labyrinth around them—came to seek the clue that should guide
them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Grey-headed theorists—
whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in
an iron frame-work—travelled painfully to his door, not to ask
deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom.
People that had lighted on a new thought, or a thought that they
fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem
hastens to a lapidary, to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain,
troubled, earnest wanderers, through the midnight of the
moral world, beheld his intellectual fire, as a beacon burning on
a hill-top, and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the
surrounding obscurity, more hopefully than hitherto. The light
revealed objects unseen before—mountains, gleaming lakes,
glimpses of a creation among the chaos—but also, as was unavoidable,
it attracted bats and owls, and the whole host of night-birds,
which flapped their dusky wings against the gazer's eyes,
and sometimes were mistaken for fowls of angelic feather. Such

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

delusions always hover nigh, whenever a beacon fire of truth is
kindled.

For myself, there had been epochs of my life, when I, too,
might have asked of this prophet the master-word that should
solve me the riddle of the universe. But now, being happy, I
felt as if there were no question to be put, and therefore admired
Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but
sought nothing from his as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless,
to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue,
with that pure, intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like
the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so simple, so
without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting
to receive more than he could impart. And, in truth, the heart
of many an ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he
could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity,
without inhaling, more or less, the mountain atmosphere of his
lofty thought, which, in the brains of some people, wrought a
singular giddiness—new truth being as heady as new wine.
Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety
of queer, strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom
took upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny,
yet were simply bores, of a very intense water. Such, I
imagine, is the invariable character of persons who crowd so
closely about an original thinker, as to draw in his unuttered
breath, and thus become imbued with a false originality. This
triteness of novelty is enough to make any man, of common
sense, blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century's standing;
and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable,
in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet
arrived at, rather than be benefited by such schemes of such
philosophers.

And now, I begin to feel—and perhaps should have sooner felt—
that we have talked enough of the Old Manse. Mine honored

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

reader, it may be, will vilify the poor author as an egotist, for
babbling through so many pages about a moss-grown country
parsonage, and his life within its walls, and on the river, and in
the woods,—and the influences that wrought upon him, from all
these sources. My conscience, however, does not reproach me
with betraying anything too sacredly individual to be revealed
by a human spirit to its brother or sister spirit. How narrow—
how shallow and scanty too—is the stream of thought that has
been flowing from my pen, compared with the broad tide of dim
emotions, ideas, and associations, which swell around me from
that portion of my existence! How little have I told!—and of
that little, how almost nothing is even tinctured with any quality
that makes it exclusively my own! Has the reader gone wandering,
hand in hand with me, through the inner passages of my
being, and have we groped together into all its chambers, and
examined their treasures or their rubbish? Not so. We have
been standing on the green sward, but just within the cavern's
mouth, where the common sunshine is free to penetrate, and
where every footstep is therefore free to come. I have appealed
to no sentiment or sensibilities, save such as are diffused among
us all. So far as I am a man of really individual attributes, I
veil my face; nor am I, nor have I ever been, one of those supremely
hospitable people, who serve up their own hearts delicately
fried, with brain-sauce, as a tidbit for their beloved public.

Glancing back over what I have written, it seems but the
scattered reminiscences of a single summer. In fairy-land, there
is no measurement of time; and, in a spot so sheltered from the
turmoil of life's ocean, three years hasten away with a noiseless
flight, as the breezy sunshine chases the cloud-shadows across
the depths of a still valley. Now came hints, growing more and
more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his
native air. Carpenters next appeared, making a tremendous
racket among the outbuildings, strewing green grass with

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

pine-shavings and chips of chestnut joists, and vexing the whole antiquity
of the place with their discordant renovations. Soon,
moreover, they divested our abode of the veil of woodbine which
had crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the aged
mosses were cleared unsparingly away; and there were horrible
whispers about brushing up the external walls with a coat of
paint—a purpose as little to my taste as might be that of rouging
the venerable cheeks of one's grandmother. But the hand that
renovates is always more sacrilegious than that which destroys.
In fine, we gathered up our household goods, drank a farewell
cup of tea in our pleasant little breakfast-room—delicately fragrant
tea, an unpurchaseable luxury, one of the many angel-gifts
that had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between
the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs
where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by
the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is
no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers
announce while I am writing, from the Old Manse into a Custom-House!
As a storyteller, I have often contrived strange vicissitudes
for my imaginary personages, but none like this.

The treasure of intellectual gold, which I had hoped to find in
our secluded dwelling, had never come to light. No profound
treatise of ethics—no philosophic history—no novel, even, that
could stand unsupported on its edges—all that I had to show, as
a man of letters, were these few tales and essays, which had
blossomed out like flowers in the calm summer of my heart and
mind. Save editing (an easy task) the journal of my friend of
many years, the African Cruiser, I had done nothing else. With
these idle weeds and withering blossoms, I have intermixed some
that were produced long ago—old, faded things, reminding me of
flowers pressed between the leaves of a book—and now offer the
bouquet, such as it is, to any whom it may please. These fitful
sketches, with so little of external life about them, yet claiming

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

no profundity of purpose,—so reserved, even while they sometimes
seem so frank,—often but half in earnest, and never, when
most so, expressing satisfactorily the thoughts which they profess
to image—such trifles, I truly feel, afford no solid basis for a
literary reputation. Nevertheless, the public—if my limited
number of readers, whom I venture to regard rather as a circle
of friends, may be termed a public—will receive them the more
kindly, as the last offering, the last collection of this nature,
which it is my purpose ever to put forth. Unless I could do
better, I have done enough, in this kind. For myself, the book
will always retain one charm, as reminding me of the river, with
its delightful solitudes, and of the avenue, the garden and the
orchard, and especially the dear Old Manse, with the little study
on its western side, and the sunshine glimmering through the
willow-branches, while I wrote.

Let the reader, if he will do me so much honor, imagine himself
my guest, and that, having seen whatever may be worthy of
notice, within and about the Old Manse, he has finally been
ushered into my study. There, after seating him in an antique
elbow-chair, an heir-loom of the house, I take forth a roll of
manuscript, and entreat his attention to the following tales:—
an act of personal inhospitality, however, which I never was
guilty of, nor ever will be, even to my worst enemy.

p134-043 THE BIRTH-MARK.

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

In the latter part of the last century, there lived a man of science—
an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy—who,
not long before our story opens, had made experience of a spiritual:
affinity, more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his,
laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance
from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers,
and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those
days, when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity, and
other kindred mysteries of nature, seemed to open paths into the
region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival
the love of woman, in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher
intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart, might all-find
their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their
ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful
intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand
on the secret of creative force, and perhaps make new worlds for
himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of
faith in man's ultimate control over nature. He had devoted himself,
however, too unreservedly to scientific studies, ever to be weaned
from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife
might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by
intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength
of the latter to its own.

Such an union accordingly took place, and was attended with

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

truly remarkable consequences, and a deeply impressive moral.
One day, very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his
wife, with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger, until
he spoke.

“Georgiana,” said he, “has it never occurred to you that the
mark upon your cheek might be removed?”

“No, indeed,” said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness
of his manner, she blushed deeply. “To tell you the truth, it has
been so often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine
it might be so.”

“Ah, upon another face, perhaps it might,” replied her husband.
“But never on yours! No, dearest Georgiana, you came so
nearly perfect from the hand of Nature, that this slightest possible
defect—which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty—
shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection.”

“Shocks you, my husband!” cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at
first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears.
“Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot
love what shocks you!”

To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned, that, in the
centre of Georgiana's left cheek, there was a singular mark,
deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of
her face. In the usual state of her complexion,—a healthy,
though delicate bloom,—the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson,
which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness.
When she blushed, it gradually became more indistinct, and finally
vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood, that bathed the whole
cheek with its brilliant glow. But, if any shifting emotion caused
her to turn pale, there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon
the snow, in what Aylmar sometimes deemed an almost fearful
distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human
hand, though of the smallest pigmy size. Georgiana's lovers
were wont to say, that some fairy, at her birth-hour, had laid her

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left this impress there, is
token of the magic endowments that were to give her such away
over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life
for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It
must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by
this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference
of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons—
but they were exclusively of her own sex—affirmed that
the Bloody Hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the
effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her countenance even
hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say, that one of those
small blue stains, which sometimes occur in the purest statuary
marble, would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine
observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration,
contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might
possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance
of a flaw. After his marriage—for he thought little or
nothing of the matter before—Aylmer discovered that this was the
case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful—if Envy's self could have found
aught else to sneer at—he might have felt his affection heightened
by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now
lost, now stealing forth again, and glimmering to-and-fro with
every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart. But,
seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow
more and more intolerable, with every moment of their united
lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one
shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions,
either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their
perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The Crimson Hand
expressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality clutches the
highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred
with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the
symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death,
Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birth-mark
a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than
ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him
delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he
invariably, and without intending it—nay, in spite of a purpose to
the contrary—reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it
at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
thought, and modes of feeling, that it became the central point of
all. With the morning twilight, Aylmer opened his eyes upon
his wife's face, and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and
when they sat together at the evening hearth, his eyes wandered
stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of
the wood fire, the spectral Hand that wrote mortality where he
would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder
at his gaze. It needed but a glance, with the peculiar expression
that his face often wore, to change the roses of her cheek into a
deathlike paleness, amid which the Crimson Hand was brought
strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late, one night, when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly
to betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the
first time, voluntarily took up the subject.

“Do you remember, my dear Aylmer,” said she, with a feeble
attempt at a smile—“have you any recollection of a dream, last
night, about this odious Hand?”

“None!—none whatever!” replied Aylmer, starting; but then
he added in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing
the real depth of his emotion:—“I might well dream of it; for,
before I fell asleep, it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy.”

“And you did dream of it,” continued Georgiana, hastily; for
she dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

say—“A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is
it possible to forget this one expression?—`It is in her heart now—
we must have it out!'—Reflect, my husband; for by all means I
would have you recall that dream.”

The mind is in a sad state, when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but
suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets
that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered
his dream. He had fancied himself, with his servant Aminadab,
attempting an operation for the removal of the birth-mark. But
the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the Hand, until at
length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana's
heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to
cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory,
Aylmer sat in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth
often finds its way to the mind close-muffled in robes of sleep, and
then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard
to which we practise an unconscious self-deception, during our
waking moments. Until now, he had not been aware of the
tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of
the lengths which he might find in his heart to go, for the sake of
giving himself peace.

“Aylmer,” resumed Georgiana, solemnly, “I know not what
may be the cost to both of us, to rid me of this fatal birth-mark.
Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity. Or, it may
be, the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again, do we know that
there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe
of this little Hand, which was laid upon me before I came into the
world?”

“Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,”
hastily interrupted Aylmer—“I am convinced of the perfect
practicability of its removal.”

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

“If there be the remotest possibility of it,” continued Georgiana,
“let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing
to me; for life—while this hateful mark makes me the object of
your horror and disgust—life is a burthen which I would fling
down with joy. Either remove this dreadful Hand, or take my
wretched life! You have deep science! All the world bears
witness of it. You have achieved great wonders! Cannot you
remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two
small fingers! Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your
own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?”

“Noblest—dearest—tenderest wife!” cried Aylmer, rapturously.
“Doubt not my power. I have already given this
matter the deepest thought—thought which might almost have
enlightened me to create a being less perfect than yourself.
Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of
science. I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek
as faultless as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be
my triumph, when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect,
in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured
woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be.”

“It is resolved, then,” said Georgiana, faintly smiling,—“And,
Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find the birth-mark take
refuge in my heart at last.”

Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek—her right cheek—not
that which bore the impress of the Crimson Hand.

The next day, Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had
formed, whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought
and constant watchfulness which the proposed operation would
require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose
essential to its success. They were to seclude themselves
in the extensive apartments occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory,
and where, during his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in
the elemental powers of nature, that had roused the admiration

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this
laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the
highest cloud-region, and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied
himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires
of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and
how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others
with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth.
Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the
human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which
Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air,
and from the spiritual world, to create and foster Man, her masterpiece.
The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside,
in unwilling recognition of the truth, against which all seekers
sooner or later stumble, that our great creative Mother, while she
amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is
yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her
pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us
indeed to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, no
no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes
as first suggested them; but because they involved much physiological
truth, and lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the
treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana
was cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face,
with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense
glow of the birth-mark upon the whiteness of her cheek, that
he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife
fainted.

“Aminadab! Aminadab!” shouted Aylmer, stamping violently
on the floor.

Forthwith, there issued from an inner apartment a man of low
stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This
personage had been Aylmer's under-worker during his whole
scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by his
great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable
of comprehending a single principle, he executed all the
practical details of his master's experiments. With his vast
strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable
earthiness that encrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical
nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual
face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

“Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab,” said Aylmer,
“and burn a pastille.”

“Yes, master,” answered Aminadab, looking intently at the
lifeless form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself:—
“If she were my wife, I'd never part with that birth-mark.”

When Georgiana recovered consciousness, she found herself
breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency
of which had recalled her from her death-like faintness.
The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had
converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent
his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful
apartments, not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman.
The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted the
combination of grandeur and grace, that no other species of adornment
can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor,
their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight
lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For
aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds.
And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered
with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with
perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting
in a soft, empurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side,
watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round
her, within which no evil might intrude.

“Where am I?—Ah, I remember!” said Georgiana, faintly;
and she placed her hand over her cheek, to hide the terrible mark
from her husband's eyes.

“Fear not, dearest!” exclaimed he. “Do not shrink from me!
Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection,
since it will be such a rapture to remove it.”

“Oh, spare me!” sadly replied his wife. “Pray do not look
at it again. I never can forget that convulsive shudder.”

In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her
mind from the burthen of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice
some of the light and playful secrets which science had taught
him among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless
ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty, came and danced before
her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light.
Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical
phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant
the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual
world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her
seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the
procession of external existence flitted across a screen. The
scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented,
but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference, which always
makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more
attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade
her cast her eyes upon a vessel, containing a quantity of earth.
She did so, with little interest at first, but was soon startled, to
perceive the germ of a plant, shooting upward from the soil.
Then came the slender stalk—the leaves gradually unfolded
themselves—and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower.

“It is magical!” cried Georgiana, “I dare not touch it.”

“Nay, pluck it,” answered Aylmer, “pluck it, and inhale its

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

brief perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few
moments, and leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels—but
thence may be perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself.”

But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole
plant suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black, as if by the
agency of fire.

“There was too powerful a stimulus,” said Aylmer thoughtfully.

To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take
her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was
to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of
metal. Georgiana assented—but, on looking at the result, was
affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable;
while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek
should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate, and threw
it into a jar of corrosive acid.

Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals
of study and chemical experiment, he came to her, flushed
and exhausted, but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke
in glowing language of the resources of his art. He gave a
history of the long dynasty of the Alchemists, who spent so many
ages in quest of the universal solvent, by which the Golden Principle
might be elicited from all things vile and base. Aylmer
appeared to believe, that, by the plainest scientific logic, it was
altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long-sought
medium; but, he added, a philosopher who should go
deep enough to acquire the power, would attain too lofty a wisdom
to stoop to the exercise of it. Not less singular were his opinions
in regard to the Elixir Vitæ. He more than intimated, that it
was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for
years—perhaps interminably—but that it would produce a discord
in nature, which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal
nostrum, would find cause to curse.

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

“Aylmer, are you in earnest?” asked Georgiana, looking at
him with amazement and fear; “it is terrible to possess such
power, or even to dream of possessing it!”

“Oh, do not tremble, my love!” said her husband, “I would
not wrong either you or myself, by working such inharmonious
effects upon our lives. But I would have you consider how
trifling, in comparison, is the skill requisite to remove this little
Hand.”

At the mention of the birth-mark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank,
as if a red-hot iron had touched her cheek.

Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear
his voice in the distant furnace-room, giving directions to Aminadab,
whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response,
more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech.
After hours of absence, Aylmer re-appeared, and proposed that
she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products, and
natural treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her
a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a gentle yet
most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the breezes
that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value,
the contents of that little vial; and, as he said, so, he threw some
of the perfume into the air, and filled the room with piercing and
invigorating delight.

“And what is this?” asked Georgiana, pointing to a small
crystal globe, containing a gold-colored liquid. “It is so beautiful
to the eye, that I could imagine it the Elixir of Life.”

“In one sense it is,” replied Aylmer, “or rather the Elixir of
Immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted
in this world. By its aid, I could apportion the life-time
of any mortal at whom you might point your finger. The strength
of the dose would determine whether he were to linger out years,
or drop dead in the midst of a breath. No king, on his guarded
throne, could keep his life, if I, in my private station, should

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

deem that the welfare of millions justified me in depriving him
of it.”

“Why do you keep such a terrific drug?” inquired Georgiana
in horror.

“Do not mistrust me, dearest!” said her husband, smiling;
“its virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But,
see! here is a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this, in
a vase of water, freckles may be washed away as easily as the
hands are cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood
out of the cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale ghost.”

“Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?”
asked Georgiana, anxiously.

“Oh, no!” hastily replied her husband,—“this is merely superficial.
Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper.”

In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement
of the rooms, and the temperature of the atmosphere, agreed with
her. These questions had such a particular drift, that Georgiana
began to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain
physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air, or
taken with her food. She fancied, likewise—but it might be altogether
fancy—that there was a stirring up of her system: a
strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling,
half-painfully, half-pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever
she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself,
pale as a white rose, and with the crimson birth-mark stamped
upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as
she.

To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it
necessary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis,
Georgiana turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In
many dark old tomes, she met with chapters full of romance and
poetry. They were the works of the philosophers of the middle

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus,
and the famous friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head.
All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries,
yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were
believed, and perhaps imagined themselves, to have acquired from
the investigation of nature a power above nature, and from physics
a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and imaginative
were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal
Society, in which the members, knowing little of the limits of
natural possibility, were continually recording wonders, or proposing
methods whereby wonders might be wrought.

But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio
from her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every
experiment of his scientific career, with its original aim, the
methods adopted for its development, and its final success or
failure, with the circumstances to which either event was attributable.
The book, in truth, was both the history and emblem
of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious,
life. He handled physical details, as if there were nothing beyond
them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from
materialism, by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite.
In his grasp, the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul. Georgiana,
as she read, reverenced Aylmer, and loved him more profoundly
than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than
heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but
observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably
failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His
brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by
himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden
beyond his reach. The volume, rich with achievements that
had won renown for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as
ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad confession, and
continual exemplification, of the short-comings of the composite

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

man—the spirit burthened with clay and working in matter; and
of the despair that assails the higher nature, at finding itself so
miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of
genius, in whatever sphere, might recognize the image of his own
experience in Aylmer's journal.

So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana, that she laid
her face upon the open volume, and burst into tears. In this
situation she was found by her husband.

“It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books,” said he, with
a smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased.
“Georgiana, there are pages in that volume, which I can scarcely
glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as
detrimental to you!”

“It has made me worship you more than ever,” said she.

“Ah! wait for this one success,” rejoined he, “then worship
me if you will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But,
come! I have sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to
me, dearest!”

So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the
thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave, with a boyish exuberance
of gaiety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but
a little longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely
had he departed, when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow
him. She had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom,
which, for two or three hours past, had begun to excite her attention.
It was a sensation in the fatal birth-mark, not painful, but
which induced a restlessness throughout her system. Hastening
after her husband, she intruded, for the first time, into the
laboratory.

The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot
and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which, by
the quantities of soot clustered above it, seemed to have been
burning for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles,
and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine
stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively
close, and was tainted with gaseous odors, which had been tormented
forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity
of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement,
looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic
elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost
solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.

He was pale as death, anxious, and absorbed, and hung over
the furnace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness
whether the liquid, which it was distilling, should be the draught
of immortal happiness or misery. How different from the sanguine
and joyous mein that he had assumed for Georgiana's
encouragement!

“Carefully now, Aminadab! Carefully, thou human machine!
Carefully, thou man of clay!” muttered Aylmer, more to himself
than his assistant. “Now, if there be a thought too much or too
little, it is all over!”

“Hoh! hoh!” mumbled Aminadab—“look, master, look!”

Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew
paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards
her, and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his
fingers upon it.

“Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your
husband?” cried he impetuously. “Would you throw the blight
of that fatal birth-mark over my labors? It is not well done.
Go, prying woman, go!”

“Nay, Aylmer,” said Georgiana, with the firmness of which
she possessed no stinted endowment, “it is not you that have a
right to complain. You mistrust your wife! You have concealed
the anxiety with which you watch the development of this
experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my husband!

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

Tell me all the risk we run; and fear not that I shall shrink, for
my share in it is far less than your own!”

“No, no, Georgiana!” said Aylmer impatiently, “it must
not be.”

“I submit,” replied she calmly. “And, Aylmer, I shall quaff
whatever draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle
that would induce me to take a dose of poison, if offered by
your hand.”

“My noble wife,” said Aylmer, deeply moved, “I knew not
the height and depth of your nature, until now. Nothing shall
be concealed. Know, then, that this Crimson Hand, superficial
as it seems, has clutched its grasp into your being, with a strength
of which I had no previous conception. I have already administered
agents powerful enough to do aught except to change your
entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If
that fail us, we are ruined!”

“Why did you hesitate to tell me this?” asked she.

“Because, Georgiana,” said Aylmer, in a low voice, “there is
danger!”

“Danger? There is but one danger—that this horrible stigma
shall be left upon my cheek!” cried Georgiana. “Remove it!
remove it!—whatever be the cost—or we shall both go mad!”

“Heaven knows, your words are too true,” said Aylmer,
sadly. “And now, dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little
while, all will be tested.”

He conducted her back, and took leave of her with a solemn
tenderness, which spoke far more than his words how much was
now at stake. After his departure, Georgiana became wrapt in
musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it
completer justice than at any previous moment. Her heart
exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love, so pure and lofty
that it would accept nothing less than perfection, nor miserably
make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment,
than that meaner kind which would have borne with the
imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy
love, by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual.
And, with her whole spirit, she prayed, that, for a single moment,
she might satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer
than one moment, she well knew, it could not be; for his spirit
was ever on the march—ever ascending—and each instant required
something that was beyond the scope of the instant before.

The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a
crystal goblet, containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright
enough to be the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale;
but it seemed rather the consequence of a highly wrought state of
mind, and tension of spirit, than of fear or doubt.

“The concoction of the draught has been perfect,” said he, in
answer to Georgiana's look. “Unless all my science have
deceived me, it cannot fail.”

“Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer,” observed his
wife, “I might wish to put off this birth-mark of mortality by
relinquishing mortality itself, in preference to any other mode.
Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely
the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I
weaker and blinder, it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it
might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself,
methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die.”

“You are fit for heaven without tasting death!” replied her
husband. “But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot
fail. Behold its effect upon this plant!”

On the window-seat there stood a geranium, diseased with
yellow blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer
poured a small quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it
grew. In a little time, when the roots of the plant had taken up

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

the moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a
living verdure.

“There needed no proof,” said Georgiana, quietly. “Give me
the goblet. I joyfully stake all upon your word.”

“Drink, then, thou lofty creature!” exclaimed Aylmer, with
fervid admiration. “There is no taint of imperfection on thy
spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect!”

She quaffed the liquid, and returned the goblet to his hand.

“It is grateful,” said she, with a placid smile. “Methinks it
is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know
not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a
feverish thirst, that had parched me for many days. Now,
dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my
spirit, like the leaves around the heart of a rose, at sunset.”

She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
almost more energy than she could command to pronounce
the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered
through her lips, ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her
side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man, the
whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now
to be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic
investigation, characteristic of the man of science. Not
the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the
cheek—a slight irregularity of breath—a quiver of the eyelid—
a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame—such were the
details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio
volume. Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous
page of that volume; but the thoughts of years were all concentrated
upon the last.

While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal
Hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and
unaccountable impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit
recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured, as if in
remonstrance. Again, Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was
it without avail. The Crimson Hand, which at first had been
strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's check
now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than
ever; but the birth-mark, with every breath that came and
went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had
been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain
of the rainbow fading out of the sky; and you will know how
that mysterious symbol passed away.

“By Heaven, it is well-nigh gone!” said Aylmer to himself, in
almost irrepressible ecstasy. “I can scarcely trace it now.
Success! Success! And now it is like the faintest rose-color.
The slightest flush of blood across her cheek would overcome it.
But she is so pale!”

He drew aside the window-curtain, and suffered the light of
natural day to fall into the room, and rest upon her cheek. At
the same time, he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had
long known as his servant Aminadab's expression of delight.

“Ah, clod! Ah, earthly mass!” cried Aylmer, laughing in a
sort of frenzy. “You have served me well! Matter and Spirit—
Earth and Heaven—have both done their part in this! Laugh,
thing of the senses! You have earned the right to laugh.”

These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed
her eyes, and gazed into the mirror, which her husband
had arranged for that purpose. A faint smile fitted over her
lips, when she recognized how barely perceptible was now that
Crimson Hand, which had once blazed forth with such disastrous
brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness. But then her
eyes sought Aylmer's face, with a trouble and anxiety that he
could by no means account for.

“My poor Aylmer!” murmured she.

“Poor? Nay, richest! Happiest! Most favored!”

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

exclaimed he. “My peerless bride, it is successful! You are
perfect!”

“My poor Aylmer!” she repeated, with a more than human
tenderness. “You have aimed loftily!—you have done nobly!
Do not repent, that, with so high and pure a feeling, you have
rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer—dearest Aylmer,
I am dying!”

Alas, it was too true! The fatal Hand had grappled with the
mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept
itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of
the birth-mark—that sole token of human imperfection—faded
from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman
passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment
near her husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse,
chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross
Fatality of Earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal
essence, which, in this dim sphere of half-development, demands
the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a
profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness,
which would have woven his mortal life of the self-same
texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was
too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope
of Time, and living once for all in Eternity, to find the perfect
Future in the present.

p134-063 A SELECT PARTY.

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

A Man of Fancy made an entertainment at one of his castles in
the air, and invited a select number of distinguished personages
to favor him with their presence. The mansion, though less
splendid than many that have been situated in the same region,
was, nevertheless, of a magnificence such as is seldom witnessed
by those acquainted only with terrestrial architecture. Its strong
foundations and massive walls were quarried out of a ledge of
heavy and sombre clouds, which had hung brooding over the
earth, apparently as dense and ponderous as its own granite,
throughout a whole autumnal day. Perceiving that the general
effect was gloomy—so that the airy castle looked like a feudal
fortress, or a monastery of the middle ages, or a state-prison of
our own times, rather than the home of pleasure and repose which
he intended it to be—the owner, regardless of expense, resolved
to gild the exterior from top to bottom. Fortunately, there was
just then a flood of evening sunshine in the air. This being
gathered up and poured abundantly upon the roof and walls, imbued
them with a kind of solemn cheerfulness; while the cupolas
and pinnacles were made to glitter with the purest gold, and all
the hundred windows gleamed with a glad light, as if the edifice
itself were rejoicing in its heart. And now, if the people of the
lower world chanced to be looking upward, out of the turmoil of
their petty perplexities, they probably mistook the castle in the
air for a heap of sunset clouds, to which the magic of light and
shade had imparted the aspect of a fanatically constructed

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

mansion. To such beholders it was unreal, because they lacked the
imaginative faith. Had they been worthy to pass within its portal,
they would have recognized the truth, that the dominions
which the spirit conquers for itself among unrealities, become a
thousand times more real than the earth whereon they stamp their
feet, saying, “This is solid and substantial!—this may be called
a fact!”

At the appointed hour, the host stood in his great saloon to
receive the company. It was a vast and noble room, the vaulted
ceiling of which was supported by double rows of gigantic pillars,
that had been hewn entire out of masses of variegated
clouds. So brilliantly were they polished, and so exquisitely
wrought by the sculptor's skill, as to resemble the finest specimens
of emerald, porphyry, opal, and chrysolite, thus producing
a delicate richness of effect, which their immense size rendered
not incompatible with grandeur. To each of these pillars a
meteor was suspended. Thousands of these ethereal lustres are
continually wandering about the firmament, burning out to waste,
yet capable of imparting a useful radiance to any person who has
the art of converting them to domestic purposes. As managed in
the saloon, they are far more economical than ordinary lamp-light.
Such, however, was the intensity of their blaze, that it had been
found expedient to cover each meteor with a globe of evening mist,
thereby muffling the too potent glow, and soothing it into a mild
and comfortable splendor. It was like the brilliancy of a powerful,
yet chastened, imagination; a light which seemed to hide
whatever was unworthy to be noticed, and give effect to every
beautiful and noble attribute. The guests, therefore, as they
advanced up the centre of the saloon, appeared to better advantage
than ever before in their lives.

The first that entered, with old-fashioned punctuality, was a
venerable figure in the costume of by-gone days, with his white
hair flowing down over his shoulders, and a reverend beard upon

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

his breast. He leaned upon a staff, the tremulous stroke of which,
as he set it carefully upon the floor, re-echoed through the saloon
at every footstep. Recognizing at once this celebrated personage,
whom it had cost him a vast deal of trouble and research to discover,
the host advanced nearly three-fourths of the distance,
down between the pillars, to meet and welcome him.

“Venerable sir,” said the Man of Fancy, bending to the floor,
“the honor of this visit would never be forgotten, were my term
of existence to be as happily prolonged as your own.”

The old gentleman received the compliment with gracious condescension;
he then thrust up his spectacles over his forehead,
and appeared to take a critical survey of the saloon.

“Never, within my recollection,” observed he, “have I entered
a more spacious and noble hall. But are you sure that it
is built of solid materials, and that the structure will be permanent?”

“Oh, never fear, my venerable friend,” replied the host. “In
reference to a lifetime like your own, it is true, my castle may
well be called a temporary edifice. But it will endure long
enough to answer all the purposes for which it was erected.”

But we forget that the reader has not yet been made acquainted
with the guest. It was no other than that universally accredited
character, so constantly referred to in all seasons of intense cold
or heat—he that remembers the hot Sunday and the cold Friday—
the witness of a past age, whose negative reminiscences find
their way into every newspaper, yet whose antiquated and dusky
abode is so overshadowed by accumulated years, and crowded
back by modern edifices, that none but the Man of Fancy could
have discovered it—it was, in short, that twin-brother of Time,
and great-grandsire of mankind, and hand-and-glove associate
of all forgotten men and things, the Oldest Inhabitant! The host
would willingly have drawn him into conversation, but succeeded
only in eliciting a few remarks as to the oppressive atmosphere

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

of this present summer evening, compared with one which the
guest had experienced about fourscore years ago. The old
gentleman, in fact, was a good deal overcome by his journey
among the clouds, which, to a frame so earth-encrusted by long
continuance in a lower region, was unavoidably more fatiguing
than to younger spirits. He was therefore conducted to an easy-chair,
well-cushioned, and stuffed with vaporous softness, and left
to take a little repose.

The Man of Fancy now discerned another guest, who stood
so quietly in the shadow of one of the pillars, that he might easily
have been overlooked.

“My dear sir,” exclaimed the host, grasping him warmly by
the hand, “allow me to greet you as the hero of the evening.
Pray do not take it as an empty compliment; for if there were
not another guest in my castle, it would be entirely pervaded with
your presence!”

“I thank you,” answered the unpretending stranger, “but,
though you happened to overlook me, I have not just arrived. I
came very early, and, with your permission, shall remain after
the rest of the company have retired.”

And who does the reader imagine was this unobtrusive guest?
It was the famous performer of acknowledged impossibilities; a
character of superhuman capacity and virtue, and, if his enemies
are to be credited, of no less remarkable weaknesses and defects.
With a generosity of which he alone sets us the example, we will
glance merely at his nobler attributes. He it is, then, who prefers
the interests of others to his own, and an humble station to
an exalted one. Careless of fashion, custom, the opinions of men,
and the influence of the press, he assimilates his life to the standard
of ideal rectitude, and thus proves himself the one independent
citizen of our free country. In point of ability, many people
declare him to be the only mathematician capable of squaring the
circle; the only mechanic acquainted with the principle of

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

perpetual motion; the only scientific philosopher who can compel
water to run up hill; the only writer of the age whose genius is
equal to the production of an epic poem; and, finally—so various
are his accomplishments—the only professor of gymnastics who
has succeeded in jumping down his own throat. With all these
talents, however, he is so far from being considered a member of
good society, that it is the severest censure of any fashionable
assemblage, to affirm that this remarkable individual was present.
Public orators, lecturers, and theatrical performers, particularly
eschew his company. For especial reasons, we are not at liberty
to disclose his name, and shall mention only one other trait—a
most singular phenomenon in natural philosophy—that when he
happens to cast his eyes upon a looking-glass he beholds Nobody
reflected there!

Several other guests now made their appearance, and among
them, chattering with immense volubility, a brisk little gentleman
of universal vogue in private society, and not unknown in the
public journals, under the title of Monsieur On-Dit. The name
would seem to indicate a Frenchman; but whatever be his
country, he is thoroughly versed in all the languages of the day,
and can express himself quite as much to the purpose in English
as in any other tongue. No sooner were the ceremonies of salutation
over, than this talkative little person put his mouth to the
host's ear, and whispered three secrets of state, an important piece
of commercial intelligence, and a rich item of fashionable scandal.
He then assured the Man of Fancy that he would not fail to circulate
in the society of the lower world a minute description of
this magnificent castle in the air, and of the festivities at which
he had the honor to be a guest. So saying, Monsieur On-Dit
made his bow and hurried from one to another of the company,
with all of whom he seemed to be acquainted, and to possess some
topic of interest or amusement for every individual. Coming at

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

last to the Oldest Inhabitant, who was slumbering comfortably in
the easy chair, he applied his mouth to that venerable ear.

“What do you say?” cried the old gentleman, starting from
his nap, and putting up his hand to serve the purpose of an eartrumpet.

Monsieur On-Dit bent forward again, and repeated his communication.

“Never, within my memory,” exclaimed the Oldest Inhabitant,
lifting his hands in astonishment, “has so remarkable an
incident been heard of!”

Now came in the Clerk of the Weather, who had been invited
out of deference to his official station, although the host was well
aware that his conversation was likely to contribute but little to
the general enjoyment. He soon, indeed, got into a corner with
his acquaintance of long ago, the Oldest Inhabitant, and began to
compare notes with him in reference to the great storms, gales
of wind, and other atmospherical facts that had occurred during
a century past. It rejoiced the Man of Fancy, that his venerable
and much respected guest had met with so congenial an associate.
Entreating them both to make themselves perfectly at home, he
now turned to receive the Wandering Jew. This personage,
however, had latterly grown so common, by mingling in all sorts
of society, and appearing at the beck of every entertainer, that
he could hardly be deemed a proper guest in a very exclusive
circle. Besides, being covered with dust from his continual wanderings
along the highways of the world, he really looked out of
place in a dress party, so that the host felt relieved of an incommodity,
when the restless individual in question, after a brief
stay, took his departure on a ramble towards Oregon.

The portal was now thronged by a crowd of shadowy people,
with whom the Man of Fancy had been acquainted in his visionary
youth. He had invited them hither for the sake of observing
how they would compare, whether advantageously or otherwise,

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

with the real characters to whom his maturer life had introduced
him. They were beings of crude imagination, such as glide before
a young man's eye, and pretend to be actual inhabitants of
the earth; the wise and witty, with whom he would hereafter
hold intercourse; the generous and heroic friends, whose devotion
would be requited with his own; the beautiful dream-woman,
who would become the help-mate of his human toils and sorrows,
and at once the source and partaker of his happiness. Alas! it
is not good for the full grown man to look too closely at these old
acquaintances, but rather to reverence them at a distance, through
the medium of years that have gathered duskily between. There
was something laughably untrue in their pompous stride and exaggerated
sentiment; they were neither human, nor tolerable
likenesses of humanity, but fantastic masquers, rendering heroism
and nature alike ridiculous by the grave absurdity of their pretensions
to such attributes. And as for the peerless dream-lady,
behold! there advanced up the saloon, with a movement like a
jointed-doll, a sort of wax figure of an angel—a creature as cold
as moonshine—an artifice in petticoats, with an intellect of pretty
phrases, and only the semblance of a heart—yet, in all these particulars,
the true type of a young man's imaginary mistress.
Hardly could the host's punctilious courtesy restrain a smile, as
he paid his respects to this unreality, and met the sentimental
glance with which the Dream sought to remind him of their former
love-passages.

“No, no, fair lady,” murmured he, betwixt sighing and
smiling; “my taste is changed! I have learned to love what
Nature makes, better than my own creations in the guise of womanhood.”

“Ah, false one!” shrieked the dream-lady, pretending to faint,
but dissolving into thin air, out of which came the deplorable
murmur of her voice—“your inconstancy has annihilated me!”

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

“So be it,” said the cruel Man of Fancy to himself—“and a
good riddance, too!”

Together with these shadows, and from the same region, there
had come an uninvited multitude of shapes, which, at any time
during his life, had tormented the Man of Fancy in his moods of
morbid melancholy, or had haunted him in the delirium of fever.
The walls of his castle in the air were not dense enough to keep
them out; nor would the strongest of earthly architecture have
availed to their exclusion. Here were those forms of dim terror,
which had beset him at the entrance of life, waging warfare with
his hopes. Here were strange uglinesses of earlier date, such as
haunt children in the night time. He was particularly startled
by the vision of a deformed old black woman, whom he imagined
as lurking in the garret of his native home, and who, when he
was an infant, had once come to his bedside and grinned at him,
in the crisis of a scarlet fever. This same black shadow, with
others almost as hideous, now glided among the pillars of the
magnificent saloon, grinning recognition, until the man shuddered
anew at the forgotten terrors of his childhood. It amused him,
however, to observe the black woman, with the mischievous
caprice peculiar to such beings, steal up to the chair of the Oldest
Inhabitant, and peep into his half-dreamy mind.

“Never within my memory,” muttered that venerable personage,
aghast, “did I see such a face!”

Almost immediately after the unrealities just described, arrived
a number of guests, whom incredulous readers may be inclined to
rank equally among creatures of imagination. The most noteworthy
were an incorruptible Patriot; a Scholar without pedantry;
a Priest without worldly ambition, and a Beautiful Woman without
pride or coquetry; a Married Pair, whose life had never been
disturbed by incongruity of feeling; a Reformer, untrammelled
by his theory; and a Poet, who felt no jealousy towards other
votaries of the lyre. In truth, however, the host was not one of

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

the cynics who consider these patterns of excellence, without the
fatal flaw, such rarities in the world; and he had invited them to
his select party chiefly out of humble deference to the judgment
of society, which pronounces them almost impossible to be met
with.

“In my younger days,” observed the Oldest Inhabitant, “such
characters might be seen at the corner of every street.”

Be that as it might, these specimens of perfection proved to be
not half so entertaining companions as people with the ordinary
allowance of faults.

But now appeared a stranger, whom the host had no sooner recognized,
than, with an abundance of courtesy unlavished on any
other, he hastened down the whole length of the saloon, in order
to pay him emphatic honor. Yet he was a young man in poor
attire, with no insignia of rank or acknowledged eminence, nor
anything to distinguish him among the crowd except a high, white
forehead, beneath which a pair of deep-set eyes were glowing
with warm light. It was such a light as never illuminates the
earth, save when a great heart burns as the household fire of a
grand intellect. And who was he? Who, but the Master Genius,
for whom our country is looking anxiously into the mist of
time, as destined to fulfil the great mission of creating an American
literature, hewing it, as it were, out of the unwrought granite
of our intellectual quarries. From him, whether moulded in the
form of an epic poem, or assuming a guise altogether new, as the
spirit itself may determine, we are to receive our first great original
work, which shall do all that remains to be achieved for our
glory among the nations. How this child of a mighty destiny
had been discovered by the Man of Fancy, it is of little consequence
to mention. Suffice it, that he dwells as yet unhonored
among men, unrecognized by those who have known him from
his cradle;—the noble countenance, which should be distinguished
by a halo diffused around it, passes daily amid the throng of

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

people, toiling and troubling themselves about the trifles of a moment—
and none pay reverence to the worker of immortality. Nor
does it matter much to him, in his triumph over all the ages,
though a generation or two of his own times shall do themselves
the wrong to disregard him.

By this time, Monsieur On-Dit had caught up the stranger's
name and destiny, and was busily whispering the intelligence
among the other guests.

“Pshaw!” said one, “there can never be an American Genius.”

“Pish!” cried another, “we have already as good poets as any
in the world. For my part, I desire to see no better.”

And the Oldest Inhabitant, when it was proposed to introduce
him to the Master Genius, begged to be excused, observing, that a
man who had been honored with the acquaintance of Dwight,
Freneau, and Joel Barlow, might be allowed a little austerity of
taste.

The saloon was now fast filling up, by the arrival of other
remarkable characters; among whom were noticed Davy Jones,
the distinguished nautical personage, and a rude, carelessly
dressed, harum-scarum sort of elderly fellow, known by the
nickname of Old Harry. The latter, however, after being shown
to a dressing-room, re-appeared with his grey hair nicely combed,
his clothes brushed, a clean dicky on his neck, and altogether so
changed in aspect as to merit the more respectful appellation of
Venerable Henry. John Doe and Richard Roe came arm-in-arm,
accompanied by a Man of Straw, a fictitious endorser, and several
persons who had no existence except as voters in closely contested
elections. The celebrated Seatsfield, who now entered, was at
first supposed to belong to the same brotherhood, until he made it
apparent that he was a real man of flesh and blood, and had his
earthly domicile in Germany. Among the latest comers, as

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

might reasonably be expected, arrived a guest from the far
future.

“Do you know him?—do you know him?” whispered Monsieur
On-Dit, who seemed to be acquainted with everybody.
“He is the representative of Posterity—the man of an age to
come!”

“And how came he here?” asked a figure who was evidently
the prototype of the fashion-plate in a magazine, and might be
taken to represent the vanities of the passing moment. “The
fellow infringes upon our rights by coming before his time.”

“But you forget where we are,” answered the Man of Fancy,
who overheard the remark; “the lower earth, it is true, will be
forbidden ground to him for many long years hence; but a castle
in the air is a sort of no-man's land, where Posterity may make
acquaintance with us on equal terms.”

No sooner was his identity known, than a throng of guests
gathered about Posterity, all expressing the most generous interest
in his welfare, and many boasting of the sacrifices which they
had made, or were willing to make, in his behalf. Some, with as
much secresy as possible, desired his judgment upon certain
copies of verses, or great manuscript rolls of prose; others accosted
him with the familiarity of old friends, taking it for granted
that he was perfectly cognizant of their names and characters.
At length, finding himself thus beset, Posterity was put quite beside
his patience.

“Gentlemen, my good friends,” cried he, breaking loose from
a misty poet, who strove to hold him by the button, “I pray you
to attend to your own business, and leave me to take care of
mine! I expect to owe you nothing, unless it be certain national
debts, and other incumbrances and impediments, physical and
moral, which I shall find it troublesome enough to remove from
my path. As to your verses, pray read them to your contemporaries.
Your names are as strange to me as your faces; and even

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were it otherwise—let me whisper you a secret—the cold, icy
memory which one generation may retain of another, is but a poor
recompense to barter life for. Yet, if your heart is set on being
known to me, the surest, the only method, is, to live truly and
wisely for your own age, whereby, if the native force be in you,
you may likewise live for posterity!”

“It is nonsense,” murmured the Oldest Inhabitant, who, as a
man of the past, felt jealous that all notice should be withdrawn
from himself, to be lavished on the future,—“sheer nonsense, to
waste so much thought on what only is to be!”

To divert the minds of his guests, who were considerably
abashed by this little incident, the Man of Fancy led them through
several apartments of the castle, receiving their compliments upon
the taste and varied magnificenee that were displayed in each.
One of these rooms was filled with moonlight, which did not enter
through the window, but was the aggregate of all the moonshine
that is scattered around the earth on a summer-night, while no
eyes are awake to enjoy its beauty. Airy spirits had gathered it
up, wherever they found it gleaming on the broad bosom of a
lake, or silvering the meanders of a stream, or glimmering among
the wind-stirred boughs of a wood, and had garnered it in one
spacious hall. Along the walls, illuminated by the mild intensity
of the moonshine, stood a multitude of ideal statues, the
original conceptions of the great works of ancient or modern art,
which the sculptors did but imperfectly succeed in putting into
marble. For it is not to be supposed that the pure idea of an
immortal creation ceases to exist; it is only necessary to know
where they are deposited, in order to obtain possession of them.
In the alcoves of another vast apartment was arranged a splendid
library, the volumes of which were inestimable, because they
consisted not of actual performances, but of the works which the
authors only planned, without ever finding the happy season to
achieve them. To take familiar instances, here were the untold

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tales of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims; the unwritten Cantos of
the Fairy Queen; the conclusion of Coleridge's Christabel; and
the whole of Dryden's projected Epic on the subject of King
Arthur. The shelves were crowded; for it would not be too
much to affirm that every author has imagined, and shaped out in
his thought, more and far better works than those which actually
proceeded from his pen. And here, likewise, were the unrealized
conceptions of youthful poets, who died of the very strength of
their own genius, before the world had caught one inspired murmur
from their lips.

When the peculiarities of the library and statue-gallery were
explained to the Oldest Inhabitant, he appeared infinitely perplexed,
and exclaimed, with more energy than usual, that he had
never heard of such a thing within his memory, and, moreover,
did not at all understand how it could be.

“But my brain, I think,” said the good old gentleman, “is getting
not so clear as it used to be. You young folks, I suppose,
can see your way through these strange matters. For my part I
give it up.”

“And so do I,” muttered the Old Harry. “It is enough to
puzzle the—ahem!”

Making as little reply as possible to these observations, the
Man of Fancy preceded the company to another noble saloon, the
pillars of which were solid golden sunbeams, taken out of the sky
in the first hour in the morning. Thus, as they retained all their
living lustre, the room was filled with the most cheerful radiance
imaginable, yet not too dazzling to be borne with comfort and
delight. The windows were beautifully adorned with curtains,
made of the many-colored clouds of sunrise, all imbued with
virgin light, and hanging in magnificent festoons from the ceiling
to the floor. Moreover, there were fragments of rainbows scattered
through the room; so that the guests, astonished at one
another, reciprocally saw their heads made glorious by the seven

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primary hues; or, if they chose—as who would not?—they could
grasp a rainbow in the air, and convert it to their own apparel and
adornment. But the morning light and scattered rainbows were
only a type and symbol of the real wonders of the apartment.
By an influence akin to magic, yet perfectly natural, whatever
means and opportunities of joy are neglected in the lower world,
had been carefully gathered up, and deposited in the saloon of
morning sunshine. As may well be conceived, therefore, there
was material enough to supply not merely a joyous evening, but
also a happy life-time, to more than as many people as that spacious
apartment could contain. The company seemed to renew
their youth; while that pattern and proverbial standard of innocence,
the Child Unborn, frolicked to and fro among them, communicating
his own unwrinkled gaiety to all who had the good
fortune to witness his gambols.

“My honored friends,” said the Man of Fancy, after they had
enjoyed themselves awhile, “I am now to request your presence
in the banqueting-hall, where a slight collation is awaiting you.”

“Ah, well said!” ejaculated a cadaverous figure, who had
been invited for no other reason than that he was pretty constantly
in the habit of dining with Duke Humphrey. “I was beginning
to wonder whether a castle in the air were provided with a
kitchen.”

It was curious, in truth, to see how instantaneously the guests
were diverted from the high moral enjoyments which they had
been tasting with so much apparent zest, by a suggestion of the
more solid as well as liquid delights of the festive board. They
thronged eagerly in the rear of the host, who now ushered them
into a lofty and extensive hall, from end to end of which was
arranged a table, glittering all over with innumerable dishes and
drinking-vessels of gold. It is an uncertain point, whether these
rich articles of plate were made for the occasion, out of molten
sunbeams, or recovered from the wrecks of Spanish galleons, that

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had lain for ages at the bottom of the sea. The upper end of the
table was overshadowed by a canopy, beneath which was placed
a chair of elaborate magnificence, which the host himself declined
to occupy, and besought his guests to assign it to the worthiest
among them. As a suitable homage to his incalculable antiquity
and eminent distinction, the post of honor was at first tendered to
the Oldest Inhabitant. He, however, eschewed it, and requested
the favor of a bowl of gruel at a side-table, where he could refresh
himself with a quiet nap. There was some little hesitation as to
the next candidate, until Posterity took the Master-Genius of our
country by the hand, and led him to the chair of state, beneath
the princely canopy. When once they beheld him in his true
place, the company acknowledged the justice of the selection by
a long thunder-roll of vehement applause.

Then was served up a banquet, combining, if not all the delicacies
of the season, yet all the rarities which careful purveyors
had met with in the flesh, fish, and vegetable markets of the land
of Nowhere. The bill of fare being unfortunately lost, we can
only mention a Phœnix, roasted in its own flames, cold potted
birds of Paradise, ice-creams from the Milky Way, and whip-syllabubs
and flummery from the Paradise of Fools, whereof
there was a very great consumption. As for drinkables, the
temperance-people contented themselves with water, as usual, but
it was the water of the Fountain of Youth; the ladies sipped
Nepenthe; the love-lorn, the care-worn, and the sorrow-stricken,
were supplied with brimming goblets of Lethe; and it was
shrewdly conjectured that a certain golden vase, from which only
the more distinguished guests were invited to partake, contained
nectar that had been mellowing ever since the days of classical
mythology. The cloth being removed, the company, as usual,
grew eloquent over their liquor, and delivered themselves of a
succession of brilliant speeches; the task of reporting which we
resign to the more adequate ability of Counsellor Gill, whose

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indispensable co-operation the Man of Fancy had taken the precaution
to secure.

When the festivity of the banquet was at its most ethereal point,
the Clerk of the Weather was observed to steal from the table,
and thrust his head between the purple and golden curtains of one
of the windows.

“My fellow-guests,” he remarked aloud, after carefully noting
the signs of the night, “I advise such of you as live at a distance,
to be going as soon as possible; for a thunder-storm is certainly
at hand.”

“Mercy on me!” cried Mother Carey, who had left her brood
of chickens, and come hither in gossamer drapery, with pink silk
stockings, “How shall I ever get home?”

All now was confusion and hasty departure, with but little
superfluous leave-taking. The Oldest Inhabitant, however, true
to the rule of those long-past days in which his courtesy had been
studied, paused on the threshold of the meteor-lighted hall, to
express his vast satisfaction at the entertainment.

“Never, within my memory,” observed the gracious old gentleman,
“has it been my good fortune to spend a pleasanter
evening, or in more select society.”

The wind here took his breath away, whirled his three-cornered
hat into infinite space, and drowned what further compliments it
had been his purpose to bestow. Many of the company had
bespoken Will o' the Wisps to convoy them home; and the host,
in his general beneficence, had engaged the Man in the Moon,
with an immense horn lantern, to be the guide of such desolate
spinsters as could do no better for themselves. But a blast of the
rising tempest blew out all their lights in the twinkling of an eye.
How, in the darkness that ensued, the guests contrived to get
back to earth, or whether the greater part of them contrived to
get back at all, or are still wandering among clouds, mists, and
puffs of tempestuous wind, bruised by the beams and rafters of

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the overthrown castle in the air, and deluded by all sorts of unrealities,
are points that concern themselves, much more than the
writer or the public. People should think of these matters, before
they trust themselves on a pleasure-party into the realm of
Nowhere.

p134-080 YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN.

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Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset, into the street of
Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold,
to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as
the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the
street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap,
while she called to Goodman Brown.

“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when
her lips were close to his ear, “pr'ythee, put off your journey
until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman
is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afeard
of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband,
of all nights in the year!”

“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of
all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee.
My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs
be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife,
dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married!”

“Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons,
“and may you find all well, when you come back.”

“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear
Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee.”

So they parted; and the young man pursued his way, until,
being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked
back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him, with a
melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.

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“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him.
“What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an errand! She
talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she spoke, there was trouble
in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be
done to-night. But, no, no! 't would kill her to think it. Well;
she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I'll
cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.”

With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt
himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose.
He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest
trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path
creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as
lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude,
that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the
innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overheard; so that, with
lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said
Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind
him, as he added, “What if the devil himself should be at my very
elbow!”

His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and
looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and
decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose, at Goodman
Brown's approach, and walked onward, side by side with
him.

“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of
the Old South was striking, as I came through Boston; and that
is full fifteen minutes agone.”

“Faith kept me back awhile,” replied the young man, with a
tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion,
though not wholly unexpected.

It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of

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it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned,
the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently
in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable
resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression
than features. Still, they might have been taken for father and
son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the
younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air
of one who knew the world, and would not have felt abashed at
the governor's dinner-table, or in King William's court, were it
possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only
thing about him, that could be fixed upon as remarkable, was his
staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously
wrought, that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself
like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular
deception, assisted by the uncertain light.

“Come, Goodman Brown!” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is
a dull pace for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if
you are so soon weary.”

“Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full
stop, “having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose
now to return whence I came. I have scruples, touching
the matter thou wot'st of.”

“Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart.
“Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go, and if I convince
thee not, thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in
the forest, yet.”

“Too far, too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously
resuming his walk. “My father never went into the woods on
such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race
of honest men and good Christians, since the days of the martyrs.
And shall I be the first of the name of Brown, that ever took this
path and kept”—

“Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person,

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interrupting his pause. “Well said, Goodman Brown! I have
been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one
among the Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your
grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so
smartly through the streets of Salem. And it was I that brought
your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set
fire to an Indian village, in king Philip's war. They were my
good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along
this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be
friends with you, for their sake.”

“If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel
they never spoke of these matters. Or, verily, I marvel not,
seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them
from New England. We are a people of prayer, and good works
to boot, and abide no such wickedness.”

“Wickedness or not,” said the traveller with the twisted staff,
“I have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The
deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with
me; the selectmen, of divers towns, make me their chairman;
and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters
of my interest. The governor and I, too—but these are statesecrets.”

“Can this be so!” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of
amazement at his undisturbed companion. “Howbeit, I have
nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own
ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But,
were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good
old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would
make me tremble, both Sabbath-day and lecture-day!”

Thus far, the elder traveller had listened with due gravity, but
now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so
violently, that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in
sympathy.

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