The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862

Ah, with what despair did I see the grand secret which had so long hovered before me and led my whole life now threatening to elude and abandon me forever! "But," I cried, "it shall not go so easily, by Heaven! If there be a genius in the casket, unsealed it shall be!"

I resolved to give up steel for some metal or substance of finer grain. I almost impoverished myself in purchasing plates of the finer metals, before it occurred to me to try glass, and had to laugh at my own stupidity when I discovered that in the last analysis glass showed much smoother than any of the rest. I immediately obtained a great many specimens of glass, and spent much time in subjecting them to my lenses only to see how much fibrous appearance, or unevenness, could be brought before the eye from a smooth surface. I found one excellent specimen, and gave myself up to grinding it to the utmost extent consistent with its strength.

I felt now that I was about to make a final test. It would be not only a test of my new plate, but of my own sanity, which I had at various times doubted. I felt, that, unless my idea should be proved true, I could no longer trust my reason, which had at every step beckoned me on to the next. I had studied medicine enough in my father's office long ago to know that either sanity or insanity may come as a reality from a mind's determined verdict on itself. When, therefore, I again sat down to analyze my daguerrotype of the planet, it was with the awe and fear which might beset one standing on a ledge between a frightful chasm and a transcendent height, and not knowing which was to receive him.

From the first burst of the sunlight over the world, I sat at my task. Each instrument, each lens I used, I spent an hour or hours over, giving it the finest polish or nicety of adjustment to which it could be brought. Into that day I had distilled my past; into it I was willing to distil the eternity that was before me. With each now application, the field of the planet shrank a thousand leagues, but each time the light deepened. According to my principle, there was no doubt that some object would be revealed before the space became too limited, provided nothing interfered with the distinctness of the picture. At length I calculated that I was selecting about twenty square miles from about seven hundred. Forms were distinct, but they were rigid, and painfully reminded me of the astronomic maps. About five removes from this, I judged that the space I was looking at must be about ten feet square. I was sure that the objects really occupying those ten feet must be in my picture, if I could evoke them.

On this I placed a mild power, and was startled at finding something new. The picture which had been so full of rigid and sharp outlines now became a confusion of ever-changing forms. Now it was light,–now shadow; angles faded into curves; but out of the swarming mass of shapes I could not, after hours of watching, obtain one that seemed like any form of life or art that I had ever seen.

Had I, then, come to the end of my line? My eyes so pained me, and had been so tried, that I strove to persuade myself that the evanescent forms resulting from my unsatisfactory experiment must be optical illusions. I determined to let matters rest as they were until the next day, when my brain would be less heated and my eye calmer and steadier.

They will never let a man alone,–they, the herd, who cry "Madman!" when any worker and his work which they cannot comprehend rise before them. In the great moment when, after years of climbing, I stood victorious on the summit, they claimed that I had fallen to the chasm's depths, and confined me here at Staunton as a hopeless lunatic. This heart of mine, burning with the grandest discovery ever made, must throb itself away in a cell, because it could not contain its high knowledge, but went forth among men once more to mingle ideal rays with their sunshine, and make every wind, as it passed over the earth, waft a higher secret than was ever before attained. A lunatic! I! But next me in array are the prisons of the only sane ones of history, the cells dug by Inquisitorial Ignorance in every age for its wisest men. Now I understand them; walls cannot impede the hands we stretch out to each other across oceans and centuries. One day the purblind world will invoke in its prayers the holy army of the martyrs of Thought.

Yes, I was mad,–mad to think that the world's horny eyes could not receive the severe light of knowledge,–mad as was he who ran through the streets and cried, "Eureka!" The head and front of my madness have this extent,–no more. And for this I must write the rest of my story here amid iron gratings, through which, however, thank God, my familiars, the stars, and the red, blue, and golden planets, glance kindly, saying, "Courage, brother! soon thou shaft rise to us, to whom thou belongest!" Yet I will write it: one day men will read, and say, "Come, let us garnish the sepulchre of one immured because his stupid age could not understand!" and then, doubtless, they will go forth to stone the seer on whose tongue lies the noblest secret of the Universe for that day.

When I left the last experiment mentioned in these pages, in order to recover steadiness of brain and nerve, and to relieve my overtaxed eyes, I had no hope of reaching success in any other way than that pointed out in the principle which I was pressing,–a principle whose importance is proved in the familiar experiments on stereoscopic views, whereby things entirely invisible to the naked eye are disclosed by lenses. But that night I dreamed out the success which had eluded my waking hours. I have nothing to say here about the phenomenon of dreaming: I state only the fact. In my dream there appeared to me my father, bearing in his left hand a plate of glass, and in his right a phial of bright blue liquid which he seemed to be pouring on the polished surface. The phial was of singular shape, having a long slender neck rising from a round globe. When I awoke, I found myself standing in the middle of the floor with hands stretched out appealingly to the vacant air.

Acknowledging, as I did, nothing but purely scientific methods,–convinced that nothing could be reached but through all the intervening steps fixed by Nature between Reason and Truth,–I should, at any other than such a weary time, have forgotten the vision in an hour. But now it took a deeper hold on my imagination. That my father should be associated in my dream with these experiments was natural; the glass plate which he had held was the same I was using; as for the phial, might it not be some old compound that I had known him or the daguerrotypist use, now casually spun out of the past and woven in with my present pursuits? Nevertheless, I was glad to shove aside this rationalistic interpretation: on the verge of drowning, I magnified the straw to a lifeboat, and caught at it. I pardoned myself for going to the shelves which still held my father's medicines, and examining each of the phials there. But when I turned away without finding one which at all answered to my dream, I felt mean and miserable; deeply disappointed at not having found the phial, I was ashamed at my retrogression to ages which dealt with incantations, and luck, and other impostures. I was shamed to the conclusion that the phial with its blue liquid was something I had read of in the curious old books which my father had hidden away from me, and which, strange to say, I had never been able to find since his death.

Whilst I was meditating thus, there was a knock at my door, and a drayman entered with a chest, which he said had belonged to my father, and had been by him deposited several years before with a friend who lived a few miles from our village. I could scarcely close and bolt the door after the man had departed; as he brought in the chest, I had seen through the lid the phial with the blue liquid. So certain was I of this, that before I opened it I went and withdrew my glass plate, repolished it, and made all ready for a final experiment. Opening the chest, I found the old books which had been abstracted, and a small medicine-box, in which was the phial seen in my dream.

But now the question arose, How was the blue fluid to be applied? I had not looked closely at the plate which my father held to see whether it was already prepared for an impression; and so I was at a loss to know whether this new fluid was to prepare the glass with a more perfect polish, or to mingle with the subtile nitrate itself. Unfortunately I tried the last first, and there was no result at all,–except the destruction of a third of the precious fluid. Cleaning the plate perfectly, I burnt into it, drop by drop, the whole of the contents of the phial. As I drained the last drop from it, it reddened on the glass as if it were the last drop of my heart's blood poured out.

At the first glance on the star-picture thus taken, I knew that I was successful. Jupiter shone like the nucleus of a comet, even before a second power was upon it. As picture after picture was formed, belts of the most exquisite hues surrounded the luminous planet, which seemed rolling up to me, hurled from lens to lens, as if wrested from its orbit by a commanding force. Plainer and plainer grew its surface; mountain-ranges, without crags or chasms, smooth and undulating, emerged; it was zoned with a central sunlit sea. On each scene of the panorama I lingered, and each was retained as well as the poor materials would allow. I was cautious enough to take two pictures of each distinct phase,–one to keep, if this happy voyage should be my last, and the other of course as the subject from which a centre should be selected for a new expansion.

At last there stood plainly before my eye a tower!–a tower, slender and high, with curved dome, the work of Art! A cry burst from my lips,–I fainted with joy. Afraid to touch the instrument with my trembling hand, I walked the floor, imploring back my nervous self-possession. Fixing the tower by photograph, I took the centre of its dome as the next point for expansion. Slowly, slowly, as if the fate of a solar system depended on each turn of the screw, I drew on the final view. An instant of gray confusion,–another of tremulous crystallization,–and, scarcely in contact with the tower's dome, as if about to float from it, hovered an aerial ship, with two round balls suspended above it. Again one little point was taken, for I felt that this was not the culmination of my vision; and now two figures appeared, manifestly human, but their features and dress as yet undistinguishable.

Another turn, and I looked upon the face of a glorious man!

Another, and the illusion, Space, shrank away beneath my feet, my eye soared over her abysses, and gazed into the eye of an immortal.

But now,–oh, horror!–turning back to earth, I remembered that I had not analyzed the precious liquid which could so link world with world. Seized with a sudden agony, I tried to strain one least drop more; but, alas! the power had perished from the earth!

For this loss I deserve all that has happened to me. My haste to fulfil my life's object proved me the victim of a mental lust, and I saw why the highest truth is not revealed: simply, it awaits those who can receive and not be intoxicated by it. And now the planet which I had disobeyed for another avenges itself,–seeing, naturally, in strange results, whose methods are untraceable, nothing but monomania. The photographs, in which the pollens of two planet-flowers mingle, lie in my attic, dust-eaten:–"Above all, the patient must not see anything of that kind," has been the order ever since I published a card announcing my discovery to my fellow-citizens.

But they were gentle; they did not take away all. The old books are with me, each a benison from a brother. The best works of ancient times are, I think, best understood when read by prison-light.

Hist! some visitor comes! Many come from curiosity to see one who thinks he descried a man in a planet "Distinguished man of science from Boston to see me,"–ah, indeed! Celebrated paper on tadpoles, I suppose! But now that I look closer, I like my Boston man-of-science's eye, and his voice is good. I have not yet exhausted the fingers of one hand in counting up all the sane people who have visited me since I have been immured.

How do I test them?

As now I test you.

Here my treasure of treasures I open. It is the old suppressed volume of John de Sacro Bosco, inscribed to that Castilian Alphonso who dared to have the tables of Ptolemy corrected. (Had he not been a king, he had been mad: such men as Bosco were mad after Alphonso died.) And thus to my curious scientific visitor I read what I ask may go into his report along with the description of my case.

"John de Sacro Bosco sendeth this book to Alphonso de Castile. A. D. 1237."

"They alone are kings who know." "Ken and Can are twins." "God will not be hurried."

"Sacred are the fools: God understandeth them."

"Impatient, I cried, 'I will clear the stair that leadeth to God!' Now sit I at His feet, lame and weak, and men scoff at knowledge,–'Aha, this cometh of ascending stairways!'"

"The silk-worm span its way up to wings. I am ashamed and dumb, who would soar ere I had toiled.

"When riseth an Ideal in the concave of some vaulting heart or brain, it is a new heaven and signeth a new earth."

"Each clear Idea that ascendeth the vault of Pure Reason is a Bethlehem star; be sure a Messias is born for it on the Earth; the new sign lit up in the heaven of Vision is a new power set in motion among men; and, do what the Herods will, Earth's incense, myrrh, yea, even its gold, must gather to the feet of the Omnipotent Child,–the IDEA."

IN WAR-TIME

INSCRIBED TO W.BAs they who watch by sick-beds find reliefUnwittingly from the great stress of griefAnd anxious care in fantasies outwroughtFrom the hearth's embers flickering low, or caughtFrom whispering wind, or tread of passing feet,Or vagrant memory calling up some sweetSnatch of old song or romance, whence or whyThey scarcely know or ask,–so, thou and I,Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strongIn the endurance which outwearies Wrong,With meek persistence baffling brutal force,And trusting God against the universe,–We, doomed to watch a strife we may not shareWith other weapons than the patriot's prayer,Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes,The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,And wrung by keenest sympathy for allWho give their loved ones for the living wall'Twixt law and treason,–in this evil dayMay haply find, through automatic playOf pen and pencil, solace to our pain,And hearten others with the strength we gain.I know it has been said our times requireNo play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre,No weak essay with Fancy's chloroformTo calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm,But the stern war-blast rather, such as setsThe battle's teeth of serried bayonets,And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with theseSome softer tints may blend, and milder keysBelieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet,If so we may, our hearts, even while we eatThe bitter harvest of our own deviceAnd half a century's moral cowardice.As Nürnberg sang while Wittenberg defied,And Kranach painted by his Luther's side,And through the war-march of the PuritanThe silver stream of Marvell's music ran,So let the household melodies be sung,The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung,–So let us hold against the hosts of NightAnd Slavery all our vantage-ground of Light.Let Treason boast its savagery, and shakeFrom its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake,Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan,And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man,And make the tale of Fijian banquets dullBy drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,–But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease,(God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace:No foes are conquered who the victors teachTheir vandal manners and barbaric speech.And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bearOf the great common burden our full share,Let none upbraid us that the waves enticeThy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device,Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen awayFrom the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day.Thus, while the east-wind keen from LabradorSings in the leafless elms, and from the shoreOf the great sea comes the monotonous roarOf the long-breaking surf, and all the skyIs gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I tryTo time a simple legend to the soundsOf winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,–A song of breeze and billow, such as mightBe sung by tired sea-painters, who at nightLook from their hemlock camps, by quiet coveOr beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love.(So hast thou looked, when level sunset layOn the calm bosom of some Eastern bay,And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolledUp the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.)Something it has–a flavor of the sea,And the sea's freedom–which reminds of thee.Its faded picture, dimly smiling downFrom the blurred fresco of the ancient town,I have not touched with warmer tints in vain,If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought from pain.

AMY WENTWORTH

Her fingers shame the ivory keysThey dance so light along;The bloom upon her parted lipsIs sweeter than the song.O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles!Her thoughts are not of thee:She better loves the salted wind,The voices of the sea.Her heart is like an outbound shipThat at its anchor swings;The murmur of the stranded shellIs in the song she sings.She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise,But dreams the while of oneWho watches from his sea-blown deckThe icebergs in the sun.She questions all the winds that blow,And every fog-wreath dim,And bids the sea-birds flying northBear messages to him.She speeds them with the thanks of menHe perilled life to save,And grateful prayers like holy oilTo smooth for him the wave.Brown Viking of the fishing-smack!Fair toast of all the town!–The skipper's jerkin ill beseemsThe lady's silken gown!But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wearFor him the blush of shameWho dares to set his manly giftsAgainst her ancient name.The stream is brightest at its spring,And blood is not like wine;Nor honored less than he who heirsIs he who founds a line.Full lightly shall the prize be won,If love be Fortune's spur;And never maiden stoops to himWho lifts himself to her.Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,With stately stair-ways wornBy feet of old Colonial knightsAnd ladies gentle-born.Still green about its ample porchThe English ivy twines,Trained back to show in English oakThe herald's carven signs.And on her, from the wainscot old,Ancestral faces frown,–And this has worn the soldier's sword,And that the judge's gown.But, strong of will and proud as they,She walks the gallery-floorAs if she trod her sailor's deckBy stormy Labrador!The sweet-brier blooms on Kittery-side,And green are Elliot's bowers;Her garden is the pebbled beach,The mosses are her flowers.She looks across the harbor-barTo see the white gulls fly,His greeting from the Northern seaIs in their clanging cry.She hums a song, and dreams that he,As in its romance old,Shall homeward ride with silken sailsAnd masts of beaten gold!Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair,And high and low mate ill;But love has never known a lawBeyond its own sweet will!

THOREAU

Henry David Thoreau was the last male descendant of a French ancestor who came to this country from the Isle of Guernsey. His character exhibited occasional traits drawn from this blood in singular combination with a very strong Saxon genius.

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th of July, 1817. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary distinction. An iconoclast in literature, he seldom thanked colleges for their service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst yet his debt to them was important. After leaving the University, he joined his brother in teaching a private school, which he soon renounced. His father was a manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this craft, believing he could make a better pencil than was then in use. After completing his experiments, he exhibited his work to chemists and artists in Boston, and having obtained their certificates to its excellence and to its equality with the best London manufacture, he returned home contented. His friends congratulated him that he had now opened his way to fortune. But he replied, that he should never make another pencil. "Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once." He resumed his endless walks and miscellaneous studies, making every day some new acquaintance with Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or botany, since, though very studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual science.

At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from college, whilst all his companions were choosing their profession, or eager to begin some lucrative employment, it was inevitable that his thoughts should be exercised on the same question, and it required rare decision to refuse all the accustomed paths, and keep his solitary freedom at the cost of disappointing the natural expectations of his family and friends: all the more difficult that he had a perfect probity, was exact in securing his own independence, and in holding every man to the like duty. But Thoreau never faltered. He was a born protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living well. If he slighted and defied the opinions of others, it was only that he was more intent to reconcile his practice with his own belief. Never idle or self-indulgent, he preferred, when he wanted money, earning it by some piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting, surveying, or other short work, to any long engagements. With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live in any part of the world. It would cost him less time to supply his wants than another. He was therefore secure of his leisure.

A natural skill for mensuration, growing out of his mathematical knowledge, and his habit of ascertaining the measures and distances of objects which interested him, the size of trees, the depth and extent of ponds and rivers, the height of mountains, and the air-line distance of his favorite summits,–this, and his intimate knowledge of the territory about Concord, made him drift into the profession of land-surveyor. It had the advantage for him that it led him continually into new and secluded grounds, and helped his studies of Nature. His accuracy and skill in this work were readily appreciated, and he found all the employment he wanted.

He could easily solve the problems of the surveyor, but he was daily beset with graver questions, which he manfully confronted. He interrogated every custom, and wished to settle all his practice on an ideal foundation. He was a protestant à l'outrance, and few lives contain so many renunciations. He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; be never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely, no doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. Perhaps he fell into his way of living without forecasting it much, but approved it with later wisdom. "I am often reminded," he wrote in his journal, "that, if I had bestowed on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must be still the same, and my means essentially the same." He had no temptations to fight against,–no appetites, no passions, no taste for elegant trifles. A fine house, dress, the manners and talk of highly cultivated people were all thrown away on him. He much preferred a good Indian, and considered these refinements as impediments to conversation, wishing to meet his companion on the simplest terms. He declined invitations to dinner-parties, because there each was in every one's way, and he could not meet the individuals to any purpose. "They make their pride," he said, "in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in making my dinner cost little." When asked at table what dish he preferred, he answered, "The nearest." He did not like the taste of wine, and never had a vice in his life. He said,–"I have a faint recollection of pleasure derived from smoking dried lily-stems, before I was a man. I had commonly a supply of these. I have never smoked anything more noxious."