Chapter IV: Part 4

It is impossible for Boosey in a masque to feel tropical. Champagne, and not blood, is the natural current through his veins. Disguised as a gorgeous Harlequin, in cap and bells, he is not at home. He is inchoate, crude and lonesome. He may talk soft things to the unknown Blanche, hanging upon his arm in the black tarletan, gold stars and crescent, but the liquid eyes and beaming face tell no story through the grinning, goggle-eyed pasteboard, and do not disturb the placidity of the manly breast of Harlequin, or make any intellectual impression upon him, further than to confirm us in our original statement that he is an idiot. What Boosey may do when the masques are off and church-yards begin to yawn, as he and the unknown Blanche say matins at the shrine of the jolly King Gambrinus, concerns us not.

Neither does it concern you who are reading these lines, who never take your masque off at all.

Although my German friends sandwiched their carnival into a funny place, making sin follow repentance, and mixing up scarlet Mardi Gras and gray Ash Wednesday with a frightful negligence of proprieties, it was enjoyable and delightfully sinful. Celeste, when she came to my confessional the other day, complained of it. She was clad in russet and serge, had sprinkled herself with ashes, was mortifying the flesh by concealing those white shoulders and marble arms, which are the envy of our set, and eating lentils as if she liked them. Could I do anything but pity her when she cried _peccavi, mea culpa, mea culpa_. And as she told me, with those pretty lips, of her melon-colored dress, how superbly it hung; of her pearl neck-lace, which actually looked dark on her neck; of an unknown cavalier, who whispered something transporting over his bouquet, and then vanished; of the wild waltz with Mephisto, whose sneering gibes were alchemized into delicious flattery--and as the Dear Creature told me that she had followed too much the devices and desires of her own heart, and that all was vanity, was it a wonder that I, even in the garb of the confessor, cheered and consoled her, and said:

My dear young friend, the only trouble with you is that Divine Providence, instead of Canova, made you, and, in making you, gave you a human nature. He was also at fault in making flowers that die of their own sweetness, and grapes that burst of their own voluptuousness, and swans that expire in their own melody. The moralists have got hold of you, my dear, and, with their mallets and chisels, are trying to make you into a cold, senseless, white statue of virtue, while all the while the blood is bounding to your finger-tips, and every pulsation of your heart is in waltz _tempo_. Enjoy your carnivals, my dear, for soon come the snow and the chilling winds, which will wrinkle your pretty face, and film your bright eyes, and turn those white shoulders to parchment, and deaden all the fire of life. Then may you wrap yourself in your black robes and weep over the dead carnivals in the gray ashes.

And if you know of any of your friends who are so miserably unfortunate as to be without fault, let them cast stones at you. I may say, _entre nous_, that I do not think you will be much hurt. The stone-throwing will be the feeblest you ever saw.

And the Dear Creature went away, as one not utterly bereft of consolation.

March 7, 1868.

_THE MIRACLE OF CREATION._

We were sitting at the opera the other evening, Celeste and I. Celeste was _ennuyee_. Not even the Garden music of Faust--music which so deftly pictures the grand struggle between the Angel and the Fiend, which is waged on the battle-field of each man's soul--music which so vividly paints the lapse from guilelessness to guilt; not even the closing duo, an outburst of sensuous rapture with an under-tone of the wildest despair, seemed to have any effect upon her. So she twirled her fan impatiently, flirted with Fitz-Herbert opposite, through her lorgnette, and listlessly pulled the waxen petals out of the camelia in her bouquet.

And she turned to me and said: "Don't you think this is very stupid? Everything is so _blase_. I would give a year of my life for a new sensation. How happy Eve must have been, when everything was bright and fresh and new, and for the first time;" and, the camelia destroyed, she commenced upon roses and heliotropes.

And, after the opera, I freed my mind to the Dear Creature, upon the foolish idea--which not only she but the majority of people have--that the world was any brighter or fresher, or any more for the first time, in the days of Adam and Eve than now, speaking somewhat after the following fashion:

My dear Celeste, the fault is not in the world, but in yourself, that nothing seems bright, and fresh, and new. The miracle of creation and the process of life are new every morning and every evening, and are performed for the first time for each human being, yourself included. But you have allowed conventionality and form and artificiality to dim your eyes, destroy your taste, and blunt all your sensibilities. The world is just as beautiful, the mountains just as grand, the flowers just as lovely, the streams just as sparkling, the songs of the birds just as sweet, this spring day of 1868, _Anno Domini_, as they were on the same spring day of the year 1, _Ante Christum_. Adam and Eve saw them for the first time, and you are seeing them for the first time. The first sunrise which Adam and Eve saw, as they took their morning walk in the garden, was not a whit more beautiful than the sunrise this morning; and if that was given to them for the first time, this was given to you for the first time--only your eyes, albeit they are very pretty, are totally blind to the fact; and, equally, the light of the sunset which filtered through the leaves of the trees, and stained the whole flowery floor of the Garden with golden glory, what time the first man and woman said vespers in God's grand temple of Nature, was not more golden than that which flooded the earth last evening, what time, my dear, you were yawningly doing up your back-hair, preparatory to Mrs. Fitz-Boodle's hop, utterly unconscious that there was a sun in the heavens, or that Nature was painting for you for the first time the miracle of a sunset, which she did for Adam for the first time.

The same analogy holds good in all the operations of life. Eve, holding the wicked Cain in the cradle of her arms, experienced the same joys and griefs of maternity; the same concentration of all that is beautiful in the world, in the blue eyes of the nestling; the same mysterious yearnings; the same strong, deep love; the same foreboding pain that is experienced by the last fair-browed mother "in marble halls," or by some tawny, wild-eyed Indian mother, crooning weird songs to her little one under torrid palms.

And when, my dear Madame, you laid your little Johnny or Susie, all covered with immortelles and rosebuds, under the violets; or when you received a letter, written in a strange hand, that your first and only one, who had grown to man's estate, and who went sailing over the seas, was down among the sea-tangles and the corals; when, as by a sudden breath, every light of joy was blown out; when that terrible silence of death lay on the household; when, in the night watches, you listened for some tidings from that far-off shore of the To Be, whither the child had sailed all alone, without your watchful care over him; when it seemed to you that the heavens should be hung with black, and you wondered that the sun could shine, and the birds sing, and men and women come and go as if nothing had occurred--when all this happened, you were experiencing, for the first time, the same feelings that Eve experienced for the first time, as she looked into the stark face of Abel.

March 24, 1868.

_FASHIONABLE WEDDINGS._

I was sitting last evening in the library, absorbed in that wonderful book of Auerbach's--"On the Heights"--a book which always has the charm of being new whenever I take it up, and always gives me some fresh insight into the beauties of this world, and the sublimity of human nature. It was twilight, the time to read it. Minerva on the one shelf was drowsily nodding at Clytie on the other, and Dante on his bracket was looking out of the window into the sky, as if momentarily expecting Beatrice to float luminously down in shining garments. The flowers in the window were shutting up their petals for the night. And thus we sat there--Auerbach, Clytie, Minerva, Dante, the flowers, and I; and as the lines of the book dimmed over in the receding light, our star appeared goldening in the Western sky, just over the crimson of the dying day.

When who should walk in but the Dear Children, Boosey and Celeste, arm in arm! Minerva at once woke up and looked wisely at B., and my calla, which always recognizes Celeste as a butterfly, leaned lovingly towards her, as if inviting her to fly into her milk-white bosom and sleep there for the night.

They cautiously and modestly informed me of their engagement, and had come to ask me for some advice relative to the wedding and how it should be celebrated. Whereupon I laid Auerbach down, and spoke to them somewhat after the following manner:

My Dear Children, I will give you some views on weddings in general, which you may apply to your own case. While it is eminently proper to invite personal friends to a wedding, and the more the merrier, avoid publicity. Publicity in private matters inevitably tends towards snobbishness, and often towards vulgarity. You may lay the gilt on vulgarity just as thickly as you please and it will only make it the more glaring, just as the process of varnishing a poor picture makes its defects more obvious. A wedding will always be public enough without any courting of publicity, and it is a very poor way of starting off in life, by trying to outdo some one else in the way of show and expense. It is like throwing out your ace of trumps without stopping to see whether you have got suit in your hand to win the game with. The lavish expenditure of money on a wedding, merely to outdo some one else, is only for popular effect, and what is done only for popular effect is very apt to be vulgar. By vulgarity, of course I do not mean anything that is morally wrong, but simply common and snobbish. The motive is a very cheap one, and is apparent to the most superficial observer; and the least justifiable occasion for the exercise of that motive is a wedding, which should be free from tinsel and frippery. An event so important, and in a certain degree so sacred, should be celebrated with a delicacy and dignity befitting its character. It is the turning-point for weal or wo in two lives, and it is not well to make it a public show. The occasions in society-life for display of gilt and gingerbread, sugar candy and gewgaws, are amply sufficient, without seizing upon the hymeneal altar and exhibiting the sacred fire to a curious public, with blare of trumpets and glare of trappings.

One of the worst features of our fashionable weddings is the insane desire of the parties to it to make their appearance in the public prints, and figure with stunning head-lines among the announcements of the last raid upon gamblers, police court trials, sensational divorces, murders, rapes and suicides. The avidity with which this publicity is sought will be astonishing to the general reader. In some instances printed, and in others written invitations, have been sent to the reporters of the daily press, stating the exact time and place when and where they can visit the dressmaker and have the mysteries of the bridal toilet explained to them, when and where they can inspect other toilets, and when and where they can see the wedding gifts and be informed of their nature and cost; all of which, of course, will be unfolded in due time to the admiring public, and small female vanity and large female curiosity will be gratified.

Unless, as is always the case, reporters are human and printers capricious; whereupon it happens that great expectations are not always realized--as, for instance, when that diamond pin, which cost $2,000, appears in print at the ridiculously small figure of $200; when Mrs. Croesus, who has devoted days of toil and nights of anxiety, and has distracted her dressmakers over her superb silk--who has flattered herself upon the sensation her point lace will make, and the universal admiration which will greet her diamond set--appears in print clad in blue tarletan, with Brussels lace and pearl jewelry; when the two thousand invitations appear on paper as two hundred; when the reporter, who came late, mistakes a bridesmaid for the bride, and goes into glowing raptures over the loveliness of the young creature; when another reporter, who has not had an opportunity of writing up the gifts beforehand, gets into a chaos of ormolu clocks, bronzes, and silverware, and mixes them up indiscriminately; when John Thomas, the family driver, who is not free from the failings of human nature any more than his superiors, by a quiet little reportorial bribe, or a secret visit to the place so dear to every well-organized reporter--the wine cellar--gets his name mentioned for the graceful manner in which he presided over the white ribbons and the rosetted steeds; when all these things happen, as happen they will, and people laugh, then the great expectations are not realized; and Mrs. Midas, who lives next door to Mrs. Croesus, had a small difficulty with her and was not invited to the wedding, has her revenge.

On general principles, this avidity of people to get their garments advertised in the public prints, while it may minister to their foolish vanity, is pernicious in its effects, and a positive injury to society. It has one of two effects. It will either keep a great many ladies away from places of public amusement, who cannot afford to dress in a showy manner, and are too sensitive to have their plain toilets spread before the universal eye; or it will encourage them to foolishly fling away money, in order that they may make a presentable appearance. And beyond these effects, it directly encourages, or rather compels a competition in dress which is ruinous to good taste, not to speak of purses.

And now, my Dear Children, let me advise you to avoid all show. A house full of wedding presents and dear friends, and detectives to watch the costly presents, lest the dear friends steal them, is not desirable. A wedding _trousseau_ constructed regardless of expense, to outdo some other _trousseau_ and to create popular effect, is very vulgar. A lavish display of diamonds and silver, and glittering gewgaws, exhibited merely for ostentation, may make your curious friends envious, but it will make your judicious friends grieve. A clean flag-stone walk to the church will not injure your dainty feet any more than the Brussels carpet, and I would not favor your feet too much, for they may have to walk in some very flinty places yet. It is well, also, to have some regard to the proprieties of the church itself, and not transform it so much, that if St. Paul should happen to drop in, he wouldn't know whether he was in a circus or a menagerie.

I always tremble for the bride who starts off in life in this manner. We cannot always float smoothly along, reclining on velvet cushions, with favoring winds swelling silken sails, and golden oars keeping time to music. It has been discreetly ordered that reverses shall overtake us all before we get into the snug haven of old age. And in that night of tempests, when the whole heavens seem shutting grimly down, and not a star of hope can peep through the wild wrack, the fate of a Canary bird in a thunder-storm is the fate of this bride. The first move is the key to all the rest. It is well, therefore, to have that move made calmly, deliberately and thoughtfully, without any reference to the opinions or the curiosities of others, with all the contingencies of life steadily in view, and with the two lives in one, braced and fortified to meet them.

My say was ended, and as Boosey and Celeste thanked me and went out seriously, she with a little faster hold upon his arm, and he with a firmer look of resolution upon his face, as if he were mentally bidding good bye to his follies, I sent my blessing out with them, for I was sure that he would get the vessel into such good trim that he and the Butterfly would be uninjured in any storm.

March 28, 1868.

_APRIL._

Although this snivelling humbug, April, as I write, has spread out one of the bluest and softest of skies, and is coaxing the leaves to unroll their little green packages, and the grass to shoot up through the brown sod, and the birds to come up from the warm South, I can only say with the Rabbi in Uriel Acosta, "We have seen all this before."

She has dallied so long with that wild roysterer, March, that there is suspicion in the hem of her garments. She has indulged in boisterous and disgraceful revelries with him. She has listened to his bold license of speech. She has allowed him entrance at unseasonable hours. And she comes from the contact, no longer the coy, bashful, weeping maiden of yore, but a bold, unblushing hoyden, clothing herself to-day in her old beauty and softness, but still with the vile breath of March upon her lips.

And, worst of all, while couched in the fierce passion of March, she forgot her old friends who have never forgotten her, and so the buds were blasted, and the birds who had listened to her syren song died, and the flowers turned over and went back to their odorous sleep; and the arbutus which should be now showing its little pink and white face, under the dead leaves, shrunk back affrighted from her, as she went noisily through the woods, boasting her shame in the robes with which March covered her nakedness as he thrust her away.

It is only a few Sundays ago that I told you of the little blue trumpeter who was heralding spring from the dry boughs. He, too, was sacrificed, and yesterday I saw him lying upon his back in the brown stubble, his claws bent with the pain of the cold, the light of his eyes quenched, his song forever hushed, and his soul fled to the Bird Heaven, where all the good blue birds, robins, orioles, and nightingales go; where they sing forever among the asphodels and in the lotuses to those who loved them and cared for them among the elms and the oaks; and where all the little captives who are caged here below regain their liberty and soar and sing untrammelled.

The blue trumpeter suffered the fate of all reformers. He came before his time. He was heralding the truth before the world was ready for it, and he died unheard and neglected. And hundreds of other heralds are lying dead to-day in the fields, victims to the merciless rigor of the rain and the snow and the cold.

And I therefore plead for all the birds who have come to us from the South. Shelter them whenever you can. Feed them and care for them. Summer, without its choir of birds, will be as blank as heaven without stars, a house without a child, a garden without flowers. The clearest indications of Paradise we get on earth, are the birds, the flowers, and the little children, and the man or woman who doesn't love them will have a trying time in Paradise, if he or she ever gets there.

I have never seen it recorded that they have any of these things in the other place.

Therefore, again I say, deal gently with the birds and the flowers, for not a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice, and Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the lilies of the fields.

April 17, 1868.

_A SUMMER REVERIE._

Can you inform me why it was necessary for every man, woman and child whom I have met to-day, to remind me that it was hot? Why had all these people the right to assume that I did not know it was hot?

I am serious on this subject. I have been used this way before. I am continually informed by somebody that it is hot, or it is cold, or it rains, or it snows. To be informed once in the course of twenty-four hours that it is hot, is bad enough of itself; but to be apprised of that fact by every person you meet, is an improper interference with the funeral.

Now, for the benefit of the public at large, which is so eager to inform me that it is hot, I want to announce that I know it is hot. My knowledge on that score is positive, large and satisfactory. I am prepared, if necessary, to make a statement in writing that it is hot; to get me to a notary and make affidavit that it is hot.

Do I not know that it is hot, sitting here, with a vista of brick walls on every side, from which the sun glares at me; fanned through the open window by zephyrs, which bear on their wings nothing less cooling than coal smoke and caloric; with the hot whirling of machinery on one side and the rumble of the dusty, sweltering street on the other? Through an open space in the walls, I can see a patch of sky as large as a lady's pocket-handkerchief, across which bits of cloud go with thoughts of rain in them; and with the infinite longing with which poor Marie Stuart watched the clouds which were floating across from her prison to France, and as she, prisoned in Fotheringay, sent her thoughts and wishes by those cloudy messengers, with that kind of longing, I think of distant fields and woods, of cooling waters and leafy shades to which they are hastening, and so I send messages to the trees, and the rocks, and the flowers, and to the least living thing that "praises God by rubbing its legs together," as Thackeray so finely puts it.

On such a day as this, it would be supreme delight to eat lotus in the woods; to lie, stretched prone upon the grass, in the grateful shade, with no heavier task than to watch a sluggish beetle, or an ant carrying its burden, in imminent danger of collision with every tiny stalk; to listen to all the sounds in nature's orchestra, the stringed instruments of the insects floating in the air, and the reeds of the insects crawling in the grass, the flutes of the birds, the horns of the wind blowing through the tree-tops, and all those sweet, indefinable sounds you only hear when your ear is close to the ground, but which play their part in the grand symphony; to lie upon the grass, with not a sound from the great world jarring upon your Arcadia; to dream of Satyrs, and Fauns, and wood-nymphs, and water-nymphs, and the great god Pan, piping upon his pastoral reeds; to think of absent friends who are thinking of you, and will return, and of absent friends who are thinking of you, but will never return, as no road leads back from that country whither they have journeyed, and the daisies tell no stories, nor even the rustle of the grass which grows above them; to remember a chord of music long forgotten, and let its subtle melancholy weave a vision in the Past, when the chord was a sound and not a sigh, and the vision was a reality and not a shadow.

And to let the little bugs crawl in your ear and shiver the whole beautiful Dream-Fabric.

June 13, 1868.

_THE GERMANS AND MUSIC._

To make a good German, four things are requisite, viz: Music, beer, Rhine wine and _Gemuethlichkeit_. In regard to the first and last qualities, I think that I am half a German. For four days past, I have been trying to achieve the other two qualities, and thus Teutonize myself _in toto_.

I have fought the white beer of Berlin with an energy worthy of a better cause. I have wrestled with the red beer of Chicago. I have struggled with Hocheimer, Rudesheimer and Johannisberg, until I was Black, White and Red in the face, and hung out the German flag in my countenance. I have wished, with Mein Herr Von Dunk, that my trough was as deep as the rolling Zuyder Zee. But when I had accomplished my fifth glass of the mantling beer with internal satisfaction, and then beheld a German friend call for his thirtieth, just by way of an appetizer for the half barrel he had ordered, I saw at once the futility of my undertaking.

In fact, I was not equal to the beer capacity of a small German baby, and when I saw great, jolly Teutons, flaxen-haired, deep-lunged and stout-handed, with a whole case of Rhenish hidden away under their jackets, is it proper for me to allude to the poor little bottle of Steinberger I had demolished, or to have any other feeling in regard to that feat than one of intense mortification? The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Nature was against me.

On the tenth glass of beer, the German is serene; on the twentieth, he is philosophical and will discuss the problem of how many angels can stand upon the point of a needle; on the thirtieth, he is full of _Bruderlichkeit_; on the fortieth, he reaches _Freiheit_; on the fiftieth, he will troll you a _Trinklied_ in the manner of Hermanns with his Golden Calf; on the sixtieth he is a little weary, but his heart is in the right place, and he pronounces _zwei glass_ with a strong emphasis on the _zwei_; on the seventieth, he is tired, but he recovers from it with the eightieth; on the ninetieth, he feels _gut_; and on the hundredth he is himself again, _frisch, frei und froh_, and is then prepared to drink some beer with you, to sing you one of Abt's best, to criticise a statue, or discuss the everlasting essence of the negative pole of infinity. Set him down to the glorious Rhenish vintages and the pile of old bottles he will leave behind him would have gone a great ways towards building the tower of Babel.

Your German is essentially a talker, and it is astonishing, considering the "schs," and "achs," and "ichs," and other gutturals distressing to an American windpipe, which are continually in his way, how much ground he will talk over in an hour. He talks with his tongue, his arms and his legs, and throws in the punctuation points as he goes along, with nods of his head. When he is the most social and affectionate, when his heart warms towards you, then he appears as if he were immediately about to demolish you, and the more affectionate he grows, the more alarmed you become for your personal safety and anxious to inform your family that you may be brought home feet foremost. A company of Germans together, when they are inspired with _Gemuethlichkeit_, and when social feeling is at its highest temperature, exactly resemble Americans at the other extreme, preparing for a general fight, and you wonder the police do not interfere. And _vice versa_, when the German is excited to pugnacity, he does not seem to be excited at all. He appears to be serene, but beneath all the calm outside there is a terrible rage.

The German is addicted to Fatherland, and if any human being on the face of the earth has a right to be, it is the German. If any other nationality has a better literature, grander poets, more inspired dreamers, sublimer musicians, better artists, or deeper thinkers, I have not heard of it. The ties which bind him to the Fatherland are too strong ever to be broken, and on the invisible strings which stretch from his heart to Germany are continually sounding the home melodies. Could any more beautiful idea be conceived than the fact that on Friday evening, when the grand chorus at the Fest Hall[1] were singing the glorious German poem, "What is the German's Fatherland," in every part of Germany, in every city, village and hamlet, wherever there was a singing society, this same song was being sung on the same evening, in honor of their brethren assembled at Chicago?

We may laugh at the peculiarities of the Germans, but when we approach German art, it must give us pause. Berlioz and Scribe took the skull of a fool, who had once laughed at the incantation music of Der Freischutz, and when the orchestra had reached that point, placed it before them and said: "Now, laugh if you dare. The music of Von Weber is thundering round you." No man who was not destitute of a soul, and utterly wedded to all gross things, could have felt any other than a religious feeling in the great swell of human voices on Thursday evening, as it surged in great waves of harmony, as it rose like the march of a storm in the Battle Hymn of Rienzi, full of martial inspiration and clarion cries, or died away in the gentle and placid melody of the Lindenbaum of Schubert, sweetest of all song-writers. The man who could go away from that concert without feeling that he was a better man, without having recognized that human nature may soar to the infinite on the wings of song, has sunk his soul so far into the uncleaness of life, that Gabriel will have some difficulty in finding it, what time he sounds his final trumpet call.

The Fest was a notable event, from the bare fact that it gave us the immortal Seventh Symphony of Beethoven, about which the critics and rhapsodists have loved to dream in searching for its hidden meaning, and around which they have woven so many delicate and tender fancies. No two persons probably will ever agree upon the exact event it is intended to illustrate, but it seems to me that there is one idea which must be patent to all. To me, the Seventh Symphony appears to be a true picture of a beautiful life--its _allegro_ full of the longings and joyousness of youth; its _allegretto_ filled with the delicious melancholy of love; its _scherzo_ buoyant with the gladness and ecstasy of living; and its final _allegro_ summing all up in a climax of contentment and hope. It seems to me that when the grand old Master, the Jupiter Tonans of music, whose soul pierced the sublimity of the infinite, wrote this symphony, he must have forgotten all the trials and troubles of life. All the joy of nature, her sunlight and breezes, and the hidden melodies of inanimate things; all the glow and elasticity of life's morning; a passionate love for some golden-haired Gretchen; a rhythm to which fairies might have danced in the moonlight, seem to me to be expressed in this wonderful production--the whole bathed in sunlight and clothed with supernatural beauty. In the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven does not sadden you with the profound melancholy, or inspire you with the sublimity of some of his works, but he gives you new ideas of the beauty and joy of living. And as I sat listening to the masterly performance of the _Allegretto_ by the great orchestra--every player's face lit up with the enthusiasm of the music--every instrument moving in perfect precision--the whole air full of the bewitching, almost supernatural music--there occurred to me a letter which I have received this week, in which the writer wants to know if it is the duty of a Christian to encourage the Saengerfest. Although the letter was signed "A Christian,"--in the presence of the great Master's work the question seemed to me utterly profane. Why! Music is full of religion! The first tidings that ever came from Heaven to man came in music on the plains of Bethlehem. It reaches far down into the soul. It fills it with longings for the Unknown. It reveals the Infinite more clearly than the spoken word. Its tendency is upward. It gives birth to aspirations. It makes a true man, truer. It makes a bad man, better.

If the writer of that letter does not appreciate music, let me commend to him the dictum of the father of modern Protestantism:

"Who loves not wine, woman and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long."

I should not care to deny that Martin Luther was a Christian, even in the face of his rather generous platform--in fact, his specifications would rather go to show that he was. I would advise my letter-writing friend, therefore, if he cannot love wine and woman, at least to love song, and see if it does not make a better Christian out of him. I think he could love every plank in Martin Luther's platform, and still be as good a Christian as Martin Luther was, and pitch ink-stands at the devil quite as vigorously. Before a man is thoroughly fitted for Heaven, he ought to be thoroughly fitted for earth. A great many people who think themselves good enough for Heaven, and are all the time wanting to go there, are not half good enough for earth. It is sheer ingratitude to Divine Providence--this lifting of the eyes so high as never to see the sublime world He has placed you in, with its never-ending scenes of beauty and sublimity, and never to see this life with its joys and possibilities. Fling your theologies to the winds. Unloosen your stiff neck. Don't forever snuff evil in everything around you. Up, and out into the world. Throw yourself into the arms of the loving mother, Nature, and see if there is no religion in her eyes. Get to the secret heart of music, and see if it is not anchored hard by the eternal throne. Draw yourself closer to humanity and to universal brotherhood, and see if there is no religion in it. If your soul does not expand in the operation, and if it does not make a better Christian out of you, then you are hardly good enough for this world, and the sooner you are out of it the better.

June 20, 1868.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The Northwestern Saengerfest, held at Chicago, June, 1868.

_THE OLD STORY._

In these fast days of the period, when human life is of so little account that we sever its frail thread with as little compunction as we would pick a flower from its stem; when, in our hot haste, we drain the cup clear to the bitter lees, and, disappointed, plunge ourselves into the outer darkness; when a mist of error and frenzy settles down upon us, so dense that it hides from our gaze all that is True and Beautiful; when, in all the heavens, there is only the angriness of driving clouds, and no star shining--in these fast days, the mere recital of a solitary case, where a tired human being has gone to rest voluntarily, rather than bear the great burden of agony and scorn upon her weak shoulders any longer, only causes the indulgence of a moment's curiosity and wonderment. The case published in the columns of the TRIBUNE this morning, of the suicide of "Augusta," seems to me, however, one over which we should pause and think.

Very little is given of her history, and yet enough to indicate that she was but eighteen years of age--that time in life when the world is clad in its brightest colors, when the heart is full of hope and the body full of the buoyancy of youth; that she was very intelligent; that she was very pretty; that she was very amiable, and beloved by all who knew her; that she had been utterly deserted by a brute; and that she still wanted to live--for, in her sad note, she says: "And yet, if there seemed the shadow of a hope to regain your love, once so true and tender, I would longer suffer the agony you have so ruthlessly thrown upon me."

To me, there is something inexpressibly sad in that last note:

"My Darling Percy: The dark clouds are gathering around the little girl you once loved, and who still clings to you in hope that your heart will soften; but, oh! dear one, to suffer the agony of this suspense is worse than death. You trifled with my susceptible heart, but I forgive you. I court death; and yet, if there seemed the shadow of a hope to regain your love, once so true and tender, I would longer suffer the agony you have so ruthlessly thrown upon me. O, come, come! Press me to your heart again, and then let me die.

Loving and true,

AUGUSTA."

Deserted! And, alone in the world, she attempts to ward off, with her weak, little hands, those dark clouds gathering around her. Deserted! She still clings to all he has left her--a bitter memory. Deserted! She bears an agony which is worse than death. Deserted! She still loves and forgives him, who has utterly blotted out her bright young life. Deserted! She would still bear the great agony, if there was only the shadow of a hope that, at some day, she might regain that love. Deserted! And from her white lips comes that last mournful appeal--"Come! come! and let me die"--and then utter despair sets in, which is only another name for utter madness, for when hope dies, the light of reason goes out, too, and she goes to her death, "rashly importunate," out of the world, and out of life, to the arms of the Great Father.

To the Great Father, notwithstanding the technical notions of my theological brethren, whose cold, hard formulæ, in a case like this, must give way. They dare not assert them in the presence of this little girl, around whom the clouds are gathering. If they should, it would only argue a soul which has run entirely to brain.

Her last words, "loving and true," have nothing of the romantic about them, no flavor of the boarding-school, no characteristic of the gushing young misses just into their teens and chignons. It is the full strength of a woman's love, which knows no abatement, even in the face of scorn, abuse and desertion. If, by an exceedingly remote possibility, this little girl should meet her betrayer in Paradise, I do not believe she would avert her face. The vine clings to the tree when its trunk is sturdy with sap and its branches are full of leaves and nests, and it clings to it, also, when it is only a jagged stump, riven and shattered by the lightnings.

The force of this passion is best illustrated by the fact that there could be no compensation but death, for the loss of its object; no compensation in all this great world, with its beauty of sunrises, woods, rivers and mountains. The flowers bloomed no longer for her. There was no soothing in the melancholy of music. The stars in Heaven went out. All sweet sounds grew strangely silent. It was a living death. She stretched out her hand for help, and it only met the cold hand of a dead love. She could only see in the darkness the ghost of a memory. There was only one escape out of this passion, and that way she fled--and it led out of life.

The great world moves on undisturbed. The great woods are not disturbed when a single leaf drops off a tree and flutters down to its death. The eagle, in his flight, does not miss a feather that drops from his plumage. Men will still buy and sell, and women will gossip and dress. We shall all walk, and talk, and sing, and dance, and flirt, and laugh, each in our own little world, happy as ever, so long as dark Care does not ride behind the horseman.

But among us there will be one who can never again go companionless. There is a ghost forever chained to him, which he cannot shake off. It will sit by him and follow him into the land of dreams. It will walk by his side. It will echo his faintest whisper and his loudest laugh. He may wander like Ahasuerus, but he cannot escape from it. He may plunge into excess, but he will see its face at the bottom of every cup. There is no place so remote, under the blessed heavens, where he can escape from it. There is no darkness so intense that he will not see its sad, reproachful eyes looking at him. It will follow him here, to meet him There. He carries his punishment with him forever. In Faustus, there is an account of a memorable banquet given by Satan, at which the viands were composed of souls cooked in divers ways, and the wines were the tears of those who had suffered on earth--a glowing story it is, told in excellent fashion, which I would commend to him. I need not urge this handsomely-named man to think sometimes of his victim. He will have no difficulty in remembering, but very much in forgetting. A man who commits murder is not very apt to forget. Society conveniently glosses over these crimes with mild names, but the crime is just the same. Society individually knows, and he knows, that he has committed murder, just as surely as if he had plunged a knife into his victim, whose only crime was love.

I think it would be an excellent practice, in these cases, to place upon the tombstone some such epitaph as this:

Sacred to the Memory

OF

AUGUSTA,

_Murdered in her 18th year by Percy_.

She was Beautiful, Intelligent and Amiable, but was guilty of

LOVE.

_IN MEMORIAM._

To-day, in this crystal atmosphere, in these glorious, invigorating breaths from the North, full of suggestions of cool pine woods--of brooks dancing over the shallows--of rivers flashing down to the great lakes--of a fisherman rocking upon the waves--of breezes which have journeyed all the way from the pole, whispering stories to the trees of the weird things done in the Northern glow--in this perfection of a new-created day, created for the first time for you and for me, thus ever renewing the wonder of the first morning, life is no longer a burden, but a blessing. Not the life social, mental or moral, but the life physical. The mere fact of living, of breathing, of feeling the blood coursing in your veins, of allying yourself with the waves of the lake, which are sparkling with smiles; with the leaves, which are dancing on the tree-tops; with the flowers bursting into richer bloom, and lifting up their drooping cups to catch the wine of the morning; with the birds, curving through the invigorating air; with the insects, no longer droning their hot, dry notes in the burnt grass, but making a Babel of little sweet sounds in every hillock; the mere fact of living in this world, when every tint, from the Iris in a foam-bell to the haze on a hill-side, is perfect; when every sound, from the buzz of a grasshopper to the diapason of the waves or the swell of the wind-smitten trees, is in unison, is a blessing. On such a day, Donatello, the Faun, would have called the animals to him with that universal language which makes us and them kin. On such a day, Memnon sings more grandly to the sun. On such a day, Heine's pine tree in the northern snows dreams of the palm in the burning sands. Such a day comes like a benediction, after the long, tedious sermon, and it brings with it benisons from the Great Father to the parched, burning leaves, to the poor sufferers tossing upon beds of pain, to tired, toiling humanity.

The last week has been a reign of terror. It is stated that the birds have never died so fast, especially the singing birds. The flowers, too, have died. And with the flowers and the birds, their companions, the little children have passed away, until it makes one sad to think into how many homes a shadow has come within the past short week. Death, like another Herod, has knocked at every door, save where some protecting angel guards the threshold. We fain would have kept him out, but our hands were powerless, and in almost every household where he entered, he smote the youngest and the fairest--little eyes, in which the light of Heaven had never faded--little hands, untaxed by any of life's burdens--little feet, unstained by any of the dust of life's highway, in which we elder ones are so sadly begrimed that we have lost much of the semblance of our former selves. And I think this morning that, if earth is sadder for the loss of the children, Heaven must be brighter and more beautiful for the troops of little ones that have passed through the Gate Beautiful, and now walk in Paradise, among the birds and flowers which died when they died. And I think that, along the invisible strings which stretch from our hearts to the little green waves of turf in the Acres of God, and thence reach heavenward, will come songs in the night-watches, and pulses of music we shall recognize, and, recognizing, become better men and better women.

I am sure that some loving angel will tenderly watch each of these new mounds of earth, and that, on each recurring spring, we shall see the blue of their eyes in the blue of the violet, and the gold of their hair in the gold of the daisies; that we shall hear their voices in the songs of the robin, and that they will live for us evermore, in all things beautiful.

And may the Great Father stretch His hands in infinite tenderness and blessing over all bowed heads and darkened homes, and in benison over all beds of suffering.

July 25, 1868.

* * * * *

Last summer, in those hot days, when the cruel weather killed the birds, and flowers, and little children, I wrote to you of the death of a little one, as fragile as the rose-bud she held in her little waxen hand, and how the sunshine was extinguished in the house when we carried her out and tenderly laid her away under the turf, on which the golden and scarlet glories of autumn have fallen, the storms of winter have beaten, and the promises of spring are now brightening. There were with us, on that sad day, those to whom Heaven had consigned a little one, and now the messenger has come for it and taken it home again. In the mysterious dispensations of the Great Father, it was ordained that the little life of the one should flash out and expire like the light of the glow-worm; that the other should wear his life slowly out through a weary year and pass away, trying to fashion the words "Papa" and "Mamma" on his thin lips. The one went when the birds went and the flowers were fading--when the reapers were among the sheaves, and the golden glow of summer was dissolving into the purple haze of autumn. She never saw the spring, except in that land where the spring is eternal; just across that River we sometimes hear in the mists of the Valley of the Shadow, and shall some day see. The other went away when the birds were coming, and the leaves were bursting into emerald bloom on the trees, and the flowers were opening their cups to catch the sunshine and the rain. And to-day, on this blessed Sabbath, the two are together again in that far-off land which is brought so near to us when the little ones go there.

May 29, 1869.

_LAKE MICHIGAN._

I need not tell you of the general appearance of Lake Michigan. I take it for granted everyone knows it, but how many have studied it in its details, watched its rare combinations with the clouds, or discovered the subtle changes and colors, all the time at work upon its surface?

How many, for instance, have seen the Lake when it was apparently all green--not its ordinary green, but a peculiar, light green which it only wears on state occasions, and especially at this season of the year? Your first glance leads you to suppose it is simply green, but look steadily at it, and you will find that the green is suffused with purple, giving a color which I do not think can be matched elsewhere in nature. You may possibly find it in some of the endless varieties of color in wild roses. This is the royal color of the Lake, because the rarest. You may look for weeks and months and not see it, for it requires a peculiar combination of cloud, and wind, and sunlight to produce it. But if you are only patient, some day it will flash upon you in all its beauty, and richly repay you for waiting.