The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858

The Professor lived in that house a long time,–not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time,–and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof but his; children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to those walls, forever,–the Professor said,–for the many pleasant years he has passed within them!

The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, who has been with him in many of his changes of place, and who follows him in imagination with tender interest wherever he goes.–In that little court, where he lived in gay loneliness so long,–

–-in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from its mountain fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud and swollen and wantons in huge luxurious oxbows about the fair Northampton meadows, and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its lower shores,–up in that caravansary on the banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement processions,–where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor always called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft climbing masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used to look through his old "Dollond" to see if the Shining Ones were not within range of sight,–sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks that carried them by the peaceful common, through the solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the terminus of their harmless stroll,–the patulous fage, in the Professor's classic dialect,–the spreading beech, in more familiar phrase,–[stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not done yet, and we have another long journey before us,]–

–-and again once more up among those other hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic,–dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed demi-blondes,–in the home overlooking the winding stream and the smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, where the tracks of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter snow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North, the highest waves of the great land-storm in all this billowy region,–suggestive to mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of the forest,–in that home where seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific vision of the holy dreamer,–

–-in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its drab and mahogany,–full of great and little boys' playthings from top to bottom,–in all these summer or winter nests he was always at home and always welcome.

This long articulated sigh of reminiscences,–this calenture which shows me the maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire and the mountain-circled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves that come feeling their way along the wall at my feet, restless and soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers,–is for that friend of mine who looks into the waters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them the same visions that paint themselves for me in the green depths of the Charles.

––Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress?–Why, no,–of course not. I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't think I should expect any woman to listen to such a sentence as that long one, without giving her a chance to put in a word?

––What did I say to the schoolmistress?–Permit me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is nullum tui negotii.

When the schoolmistress and I reached the school-room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to let me join her again.

EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL(To be burned unread.)

I am afraid I have been a fool; for I have told as much of myself to this young person as if she were of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence and expansive utterance. I have been low-spirited and listless, lately,–it is coffee, I think,–(I observe that which is bought ready-ground never affects the head,)–and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am downhearted.

There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except at dead-low tide.

There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription!

––Oh, no, no, no! a thousand times, no!–Yet what is this which has been shaping itself in my soul?–Is it a thought?–is it a dream?–is it a passion?–Then I know what comes next.

––The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill; those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all the windows. When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside that very high fence. But I never see much life in those groups I sometimes meet;–and then the careful man watches them so closely! How I remember that sad company I used to pass on fine mornings, when I was a schoolboy!–B., with his arms full of yellow weeds,–ore from the gold mines which he discovered long before we heard of California,–Y., born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive,–made a Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a stick,–(the multi-millionnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks,–and I don't doubt the good people made him easy for life,)–how I remember them all!

I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, in "Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its hand from its breast, showed its heart,–a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder summit. Go there on the next visiting-day, and ask that figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the sitting posture, to lift its hand,–look upon its heart, and behold, not fire, but ashes.–No, I must not think of such an ending! Dying would be a much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping school.–I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she could by any possibility marry.

––It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing.–It is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, I hope, though,–it depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably;–they must have been grinding it at home.–Another morning walk will be good for me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air before school.

––The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermittent have been coming over me from time to time of late. Did you ever see that electrical experiment which consists in passing a flash through letters of gold-leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name or legend springs out of the darkness in characters of fire?

There are songs all written out in my soul, which I could read, if the flash might but pass through them,–but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumulus of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer worship,–the immortal maid, who, name her what you will,–Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty,–sits by the pillow of every youthful poet, and bends over his pale forehead until her tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into his dreams.

MUSAO my lost Beauty!–hast thou folded quiteThy wings of morning lightBeyond those iron gatesWhere Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,And Age upon his mound of ashes waitsTo chill our fiery dreams,Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams?Leave me not fading in these weeds of care,Whose flowers are silvered hair!–Have I not loved thee long,Though my young lips have often done thee wrongAnd vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song?Ah, wilt thou yet return,Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn?Come to me!–I will flood thy silent shrineWith my soul's sacred wine,And heap thy marble floorsAs the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant storesIn leafy islands walled with madreporesAnd lapped in Orient seas,When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze.Come to me!–thou shalt feed on honeyed words,Sweeter than song of birds;–No wailing bulbul's throat,No melting dulcimer's melodious note,When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float,Thy ravished sense might sootheWith flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth.Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen,Sought in those bowers of greenWhere loop the clustered vinesAnd the close-clinging dulcamara twines,–Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines,And Summer's fruited gems,And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems.Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,–Or stretched by grass-grown graves,Whose gray, high-shouldered stones,Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns,Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bonesStill slumbering where they layWhile the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away!Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing!Still let me dream and sing,–Dream of that winding shoreWhere scarlet cardinals bloom,–for me no more,–The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor,And clustering nenupharsSprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars!Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!–Come while the rose is red,–While blue-eyed Summer smilesO'er the green ripples round yon sunken pilesWashed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles,And on the sultry airThe chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer!Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brainWith thrills of wild sweet pain!–On life's autumnal blast,Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast,–Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!–Behold thy new-decked shrine,And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!"

THE TRUSTEE'S LAMENT

Per aspera ad astra

(SCENE.–Outside the gate of the Astronomical Observatory at Albany.)

There was a time when I was blest;The stars might rise in East or WestWith all their sines and wonders;I cared for neither great nor small,As pointedly unmoved by allAs, on the top of steeple tall,A lightning-rod at thunders.What did I care for Science then?I was a man with fellow-men,And called the Bear the Dipper;Segment meant piece of pie,–no more;Cosine, the parallelogram that boreJOHN SMITH & CO. above a door;Arc, what called Noah skipper.No axes weighed upon my mind,(Unless I had a few to grind.)And as for my astronomy,Had Hedgecock's quadrant then been known,I might a lamp-post's height have shownBy gas-tronomic skill,–if noneFind fault with the metonymy.O hours of innocence! O waysHow far from these unhappy daysWhen all is vicy-versy!No flower more peaceful took its dueThan I, who then no difference knew'Twixt Ursy Major and my trueOld crony, Major Hersey.Now in long broils and feuds we roast,Like Strasburg geese that living toastTo make a liver-paté,–And all because we fondly stroveTo set the city of our loveIn scientific fame aboveHer sister Cincinnati!We built our tower and furnished itWith everything folks said was fit,From coping-stone to grounsel;And then, to give a knowing air,Just nominally assigned its careTo that unmanageable affair,A Scientific Council.We built it, not that one or twoAstronomers the stars might viewAnd count the comets' hair-roots,But that it might by all be saidHow very freely we had bled,–We were not laying out a bedTo force their early square-roots.The observations we wished madeWere on the spirit we'd displayed,Worthy of Athens' high days;But they've put in a man who thinksOnly of planets' nodes and winks,So full of astronomic kinksHe eats star-fish on Fridays.The instruments we did not meanFor seeing through, but to be seenAt tap of Trustee's knuckle;But the Director locks the gate,And makes ourselves and strangers waitWhile he is ciphering on a slateThe rust of Saturn's buckle.So on the wall's outside we stand,Admire the keyhole's contour grandAnd gateposts' sturdy granite;–But, ah, is Science safe, we say,With one who treats Trustees this way?Who knows but he may snub, some day,A well-conducted planet?Who knows what mischief he may brewWith such a telescope brand-newAt the four-hundredth power?He may bring some new comet downSo near that it'll singe the townAnd do the Burgess-Corps crisp-brownEre they can storm his tower.We wanted (having got our show)Some man, that had a name or so,To be our public showman;But this one shuts and locks the gate:Who'll answer but he'll peculate,(And, faith, some stars are missed of late,)Now that he's watched by no man?Our own discoveries he may steal,Or put night's candles out, to dealAt junkshops with the sockets:Savants, in other lands or this,If any theory you missWhereon your cipher graven is,Don't fail to search his pockets!Lock up your comets: if that fails,Then notch their ears and clip their tails,That you at need may swear to 'em;And watch your nebulous flocks at night,For, if your palings are not tight,He may, to gratify his spite,Let in the Little Bear to 'em.Then he's so quarrelsome, we've fearsHe'll set the very Twins by the ears,–So mad, if you resist him,He'd get Aquarius to playA milkman's trick, some cloudy day,And water all the Milky WayTo starve some sucking system.But plaints are vain! through wrath or pride,The Council all espouse his sideAnd will our missives con no more;And who that knows what savants are,Each snappish as a Leyden jar,Will hope to soothe the wordy war'Twixt Ologist and Onomer?Search a Reform Convention, whereHe- and she-resiarehs prepareTo get the world in their power,You will not, when 'tis loudest, findSuch gifts to hug and snarl combinedAs drive each astronomic mindWith fifty-score Great-Bear-power!No! put the Bootees on your foot,Elope with Virgo, strive to shootThat arrow of O'Ryan's,Drain Georgian Ciders to the lees,Attempt what crackbrained thing you please,But dream not you can e'er appeaseAn angry man of science!Ah, would I were, as I was once,To fair Astronomy a dunce,Or launching jeux d'esprit at her,Of light zodiacal making light,Deaf to all tales of comets bright,And knowing but such stars as mightRoll r-rs at our theatre!Then calm I drew my night-cap on,Nor bondsman was for what went onEre morning in the heavens;Twas no concern of mine to fixThe Pleiades at seven or six,–But now the omnium genitrixSeems all at sixes and sevens.Alas, 'twas in an evil hourWe signed the paper for the tower,With Mrs. D. to head it!For, if the Council have their way,We've merely had, as Frenchmen say,The painful maladie du pay,While they get all the credit!Boys, henceforth doomed to spell Trustees,Think not it ends in double easeTo those who hold the office;Shun Science as you would Despair,Sit not in Cassiopeia's chair,Nor hope from Berenice's hairTo bring away your trophies!

THE POCKET-CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTH

Well, it has happened, and we have survived it pretty well. The Democratic Almanacs predicted a torrent, a whirlwind, and we know not what meteoric phenomena,–but the next day Nature gave no sign, the dome of the State-House was in its place, the Monument was as plumb as ever, no chimney mourned a ravished brick, and the Republican Party took its morning tea and toast in peace and safety. On the whole, it must be considered a wonderful escape. Since Partridge's time there had been no such prophecies,–since Miller's, no such perverse disobligingness in the event.

But what had happened? Why, the Democratic Young Men's Celebration, to be sure, and Mr. Choate's Oration.

The good city of Boston in New England, for we know not how many years, had been in the habit of celebrating the National Birthday, first, with an oration, as became the Athens of America, and second, with a dinner, as was meet in the descendants of Teutonic forefathers. The forenoon's oration glorified us in the lump as a people, and every man could reckon and appropriate his own share of credit by the simple arithmetical process of dividing the last census by the value he set upon himself, a divisor easily obtained by subtracting from the total of inhabitants in his village the number of neighbors whom he considered ciphers. At the afternoon's dinner, the pudding of praise was served out in slices to favored individuals; dry toasts were drunk by drier dignitaries; the Governor was compared to Solon; the Chief Justice to Brutus; the Orator of the Day to Demosthenes; the Colonel of the Boston Regiment to Julius Cæsar; and everybody went home happy from a feast where the historic parallels were sure to hold out to the last Z in Lemprière.

Gradually matters took a new course; the Union was suddenly supposed to lie at the point of dissolution, and what we may call the Doctor-Brandreth style of oratory began. Every orator mounted the rostrum, like a mountebank at a fair, to proclaim the virtues of his private panacea for the morbid Commonwealth, and, as was natural in young students of political therapeutics, fancied that he saw symptoms of the dread malady of Disunion in a simple eruption of Jethro Furber at a convention of the Catawampusville Come-outers, or of Pyrophagus Quattlebum at a training of the Palmetto Plug-Uglies,–neither of which was skin-deep. The dinners became equally dreary. Did the eye of a speaker light on the national dish of beans, he was reminded of the languid pulse of the sentiment of union; did he see a broiled chicken, it called up to his mind's eye the bird of our uncommon country, with the gridiron on his breast, liable to be reduced at any moment to the heraldic duality of his Austrian congener by the strife of contending sections pulling in opposite directions; an innocent pippin was enough to suggest the apple of discord; and with the removal of the cloth came a dessert of diagnoses on the cancer that was supposed to be preying on the national vitals. The only variety was a cringing compliment, in which Bunker Hill curtsied to King's Mountain, to any Southern brother who chanced to be present, and who replied patronizingly,–while his compatriots at the warmer end of the Union were probably, with amiable sincerity, applying to the Yankees that epithet whose expression in type differs but little from that of a doctorate in divinity, but which precedes the name it qualifies, as that follows it, and was never, except by Beaumarchais and Fielding, reckoned among titles of honor or courtesy.

A delusion seemed to have taken possession of our public men, that the people wanted doctors of the body-politic to rule over them, and, if those were not to be had, would put up with the next best thing,–quacks. Every one who was willing to be an Eminent Statesman issued his circulars, like the Retired Physician, on all public occasions, offering to send his recipe in return for a vote. The cabalistic formula always turned out to be this:–"Take your humble servant for four years at the White House; if no cure is effected, repeat the dose."

Meanwhile were there any symptoms of disease in the Constitution? Not the least. The whole affair was like one of those alarms in a country-town which begin with the rumor of ten cases of confluent small-pox and end with the discovery that the doctor has been called to a case of nettle-rash at Deacon Scudder's. But sober men, who loved the Union in a quiet way, without advertising it in the newspapers, and who were willing to sacrifice everything to the Constitution but the rights it was intended to protect, began to fear that the alarmists might create the disease which they kept up so much excitement about.

This being the posture of affairs, the city of Boston, a twelvemonth since, chose for their annual orator a clergyman distinguished for eloquence, and for that important part of patriotism, at least, which consists in purity of life. This gentleman, being neither a candidate for office nor the canvasser of a candidate, ventured upon a new kind of address. He took for his theme the duties consequent upon the privileges of Freedom, ventured to mention self-respect as one of them, and commented upon the invitation of a Virginia Senator, the author of the Fugitive Slave Bill, to a Seventeenth-of-June Celebration, while the Senators of Massachusetts were neglected. In speaking of this, he used, we believe, the word "flunkeyism." It is not an elegant word; it is not even an English one;–but had the speaker sought for a Saxon correlative, he could hardly have found one that would have seemed more satisfactory, especially to those who deserved it; for Saxon is straightforward, and a reluctance to be classified (fatal to science) is characteristic of the human animal.

An orator who suggests a new view of any topic is a disturber of the digestive organs,–this was very properly a matter of offence to the Aldermen who were to dine after the oration,–but an orator who tampers with the language we have inherited from Shakspeare and Milton, and which we share with Tupper, was an object for deeper reprobation. The Young Men's Democratic Association of Boston are purists; they are jealous for their mother-tongue,–and it is the more disinterested in them as a large proportion of them are Irishmen; they are exclusive,–a generous confusion of ideas as to the meaning of democracy, even more characteristically Hibernian; they are sentimental, too,–melancholy as gibcats,–and feared (from last year's example) that the city might not furnish them with a sufficiently lachrymose Antony to hold up before them the bloody garment of America, and show what rents the envious Blairs and Wilsons and Douglasses had made in it. Accordingly they resolved to have a public celebration all to themselves,–a pocket-edition of the cumbrous civic work,–and as the city provided fireworks in the evening, in order to be beforehand with it in their pyrotechnics, they gave Mr. Choate in the forenoon.

We did not hear Mr. Choate's oration; we only read it in the newspapers. Cold fireworks, the morning after, are not enlivening. You have the form without the fire, and the stick without the soar. But we soon found that we were to expect no such disappointment from Mr. Choate. He seems to announce at the outset that he has closed his laboratory. The Prospero of periods had broken his wand and sunk his book deeper than ever office-hunter sounded. The boys in the street might wander fancy-free, and fire their Chinese crackers as they listed; but for him this was a solemn occasion, and he invited his hearers to a Stoic feast of Medford crackers and water, to a philosophic banquet of metaphors and metaphysics.

We confess that we expected a great deal. Better a crust with Plato than nightingales' tongues with Apicius; and if Mr. Choate promised only the crust, we were sure of one melodious tongue, at least, before the meal was over. He is a man of whom any community might be proud. Were society an organized thing here, as in Europe, no dinner and no drawing-room would be perfect without his talk. He would have been heard gladly at Johnson's club. The Hortensins of our courts, with a cloud of clients, he yet finds time to be a scholar and a critic, and to read Plato and Homer as they were read by Plato's and Homer's countrymen. Unsurpassed in that eloquence which, if it does not convince, intoxicates a jury, he was counted, so long as Webster lived, the second advocate of our bar.