Chapter V: Part 5

There are days, when the hour is about sunset, and a gentle north-east wind is blowing, that the Lake is of a light green, except a blue strip in the far north. The eastern horizon joins the water by an almost indefinable white line, as if they had been welded together, but all is vague and indistinct and vailed in a haze into which a vessel here and there melts like a phantom. There is hardly wind enough to form waves, but there is regular motion of the water--as regular as the rhythm of music--and in the distance you will see, now and then, a wave breaking white upon the shore, like the white hand of some spent swimmer, clutching at the sand in mortal agony. In the eastern sky, the lower strata of clouds are ragged and angular in shape, and dark gray in color, and only afford you glimpses, here and there, of the clouds above them, which are round and billowy, and would be white but for the roseate glow with which they are suffused by the sun, which is sinking into an angry bank of clouds, such as Dore loves to paint, like a great crimson stain upon the sky. Wherever the tips of these upper clouds appear, they cast a faint reflection upon the green of the water, not producing a duplicate of color, but bronzing the water in spots, which are continually changing. Sometimes, for a moment, the lower clouds part, and reveal a golden glory behind them, which, for only an instant, illumines the water beneath. This is peculiarly the dreamy feeling of the Lake. There is a dreamy tone in the wash of the waves. The rhythm is perfectly uniform, and the key is in accord with melancholy and tenderness. The flow is peaceful, only now and then you may hear a tone in the hazy distance, a little louder than the rest, like a drum-beat in a far-off orchestra. You may be so near the Lake that the foam of the spent waves will crawl over your feet, and their sound will still be dreamy, and apparently in the distance. It is like nothing so much as the voices and the faces which come to you in the night out of the Past. Its cadence is mournful and yet beautiful. It is then the time to be alone, to cast yourself upon the sand and listen to the stories of these waves--stories of the sailors who sailed the Spanish main, and never came home again--of vessels which went down, and left no one to tell the tale--of phantom ships, which suddenly loom up before affrighted sailors in the darkness--of storms, driving their black chariots over the deep--of Mermaids, and Sirens, and Undines, luring on their victims to destruction, with their white bosoms and voluptuous melodies--of the beautiful fabrics you reared years ago--all gone, as the wave washes out the print of your feet in the sands. And, as you lie there and dream, the moon, yet silvery-gray in the early evening, passes behind a cloud. The distant city is hidden by a curtain of gray mist--hidden, with all its men and women, toiling, struggling, loving, cursing and praying--hidden, with all its squat misery in the alleys and by-ways, and with all its splendid wretchedness in the high places. All sounds die away. The cruel mist creeps over the water, and you are alone upon the sand, with only the melancholy moaning of the immemorial waves, which will moan thus when you and I are gone--which have moaned thus since the youth of the years.

Have you seen the Lake when thunder-storms are brooding all around the horizon, and the wrath of the tempest is sweeping up from the west, where, in thundering caverns, the Titans are forging the bolts? You may, now and then, hear the clang of their hammers, and see the fire from their anvils, what time gigantic masses of clouds, assuming fantastic shapes and dark forms of demons, come tearing their way to the zenith. In the east all is quiet, and the fleecy, cumulous clouds, towering up like peaks of snow, and illuminated by the waning sun, send straight pink shafts of light across the dull, blue surface of the Lake. In the distance, this blue is changed to the most delicate green. Watch it, and in a moment it will change to blue again, and then again to green; and the shafts of pink light on its surface will come and go like the blushes upon a girl's cheek. Never mind the near approach of the storm. You cannot afford to lose the Lake yet. As the black clouds gather in the east, the blues and the greens disappear, and the Lake turns to black, reflecting the wrath of the clouds above. The darts of the lightning descend into it, and the crash of the thunder borne over its surface is almost deafening. The sound of the waves dies away. Long, smooth, irregular patches appear, looking as if the air had died above them. A few heavy spats of rain strike here and there. A dense mist begins to settle down. Faster and faster the rain-drops fall, and now the mad gods are all abroad; and in the mists there, the lightnings are rending the bosom of the Lake. But, in the midst of all the din, if you only listen acutely, you will hear the steady patter of the rain in the water--a soothing, tranquilizing sound; and in some dense forest, if you were lying upon the needle-covered ground, you would hear exactly the same sound made by the wind in the tree-tops. And now, if you could sleep in some old-fashioned attic, without a care or a trouble in your breast, where you could hear the rain playing its merry fantasie on the shingles, you would sleep the most refreshing of all sleeps.

And then there are days when the heavens are cloudless, the temperature cool, and the breeze blowing briskly and steadily from the north, that the Lake is a very kaleidoscope of colors, and puts on a habit it has borrowed from fairy-land. Start with the extreme eastern limit, and you may trace nearly all the primitive colors of the prism, with their variations at intervals--blue, light green, grass-green, and the green of the waters in which the icebergs float, light and dark bronze, silvery gray, pink and purple, and a dull, dead gray color, close by you. Let but the breeze be strong enough to comb the crest of the waves into foam, and a more beautiful sight it would be impossible to conceive. These colors are not fixed. The smallest cloud which passes over the sky will agitate and intermingle them in a very chaos of beauty, but as the cloud disappears they will return to their original order. Sometimes a larger cloud will hurry across the sky, fleeing from its shadow, which skims over the lake, as you have seen the same shadows skim over a meadow, and this shadow will absorb color after color and leave a new one in its place, so that the whole of them will often be reversed. In such seasons, the lake is a perfect picture of life, with its phases of trouble, of mirth, of youthful vivacity, of ambition, of hope, and of despair. Your life and my life are there, with all the dreams we have dreamed and the loves we have loved--with the bubbles which fancy has blown, and the castles we have built in the air--with the ties which have been formed and been broken--with the fates which have brought you and me together, like ships upon the ocean, to meet for a minute and hold converse, and then sail again and apart into the opposite horizons; and yet always teaching the lesson that, in the darkest moments, there is compensation in the great beauty and blessing of nature, and that the Great Mother, who always clothes every material wreck with loveliness, and makes it beautiful and sacred to the eye, can also bring balm to every wrecked life, if we only approach her with loving hearts and outstretched arms.

There is another aspect of the Lake, which I hope you will never see. It is when the air is sultry and heavy with moisture; when a chill, penetrating wind has settled down upon it, as in the late falls; when you can see only a stone's throw from the shore; when the water is of a dull, milky color, and its wash against the sand is sullen and despondent, and there is not a pleasant sound or sight. The Lake then is suicidal in its tendencies, and is deliberately inviting you or Atropos to sever the thread in your web of life. Keep away from the Lake at such times, for it is a very monster, and you can have no good thoughts in its presence.

August 1, 1868.

_RIP VAN WINKLE._

In this world of amusement in which we dwell, palpably the finest piece of dramatic art is the "Rip Van Winkle" of Mr. Joseph Jefferson. We are accustomed to compare the personations of other actors. We establish degrees of merit in the efforts of Booth, Adams, Couldock, and Forrest, in tragedy, and Warren, Hackett, Owens, and Brougham in comedy. But when we come to Mr. Jefferson's "Rip," comparisons cease. It stands by itself, as sharply defined, as superbly drawn, as the Venus di Medici in statuary, one of Raphael's cartoons in painting, or Jenny Lind's Bird Song in music; and, if we ransack the records of the stage, we find nothing to which we can compare it.

For the reason that his personation belongs to an entirely new school. It is the commencement of that dramatic era which Shakspeare foreshadowed in his advice to the players. It is the dissolution of that system against which Charles Lamb and Addison wrote so powerfully in "Elia" and the "Spectator." I verily believe if Charles Lamb had seen Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle," although he was denouncing such great artists as Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, he would never have written that essay on the plays of Shakspeare; and that, if Addison had seen it, the "Spectator" would have been minus some of those sketchy papers on the playhouses. I believe that gentle soul, Charles Lamb, would have taken his sister to see "Rip," and that they would have talked to each other as no two ever talked before; that great-hearted Addison would have taken off his hat and made his best bow to him; that watery Sterne would have shed a Niagara of tears over the simple narrative, and Steele would have gone and got drunk, out of sheer inability to do justice to the subject in any other way.

Mr. Jefferson's personation is totally unlike anything on the modern stage. Matilda Heron's "Camille," in her younger days, approximated to it somewhat, but at present there is nothing that resembles it on the stage. Mr. Jefferson has quietly ignored all the rules, regulations and precedents of the stage. The stereotyped stage-walk--a sort of comico-heroic strut, which has been pressed into service for all sorts of characters, from "Harlequin" to "Hamlet;" the stage gestures; the stage attitudes, which "Mrs. Toodles," curtain-lecturing her intoxicated spouse, and "Lucrezia Borgia," shielding "Genarro" from the "Duke," both assume; the rolling of the eyes in a fine frenzy; the mouthing of phrases in a set manner, to catch the praise of the groundlings; the hackneyed entrances and exits; the rant, and the making of points, are all foreign to Mr. Jefferson. With him, the stage is merely an accident and no more essential to his personation than it was to Irving's conception.

This school of acting which Mr. Jefferson has adopted is the very highest form of dramatic art. In it, he realizes the truth of the old adage, that it is the province of art to conceal art. _He completely identifies himself with the character._ That is the secret of his success--of his potent sway over the emotions of his auditors. It is this faculty which enables him so to blend humor with pathos that smiles follow tears in as quick succession as light follows shadow over a field on a summer afternoon. It is, perhaps, impossible for any person who has seen Booth to form any original conception of Hamlet. He invariably connects Hamlet with Booth, and the result is a theatrical Hamlet; and the poor Ghost always walks into our memories with a theatrical stride, and smells of the calcium. So with Couldock's "Luke Fielding," Charlotte Cushman's "Meg Merrilies," Forrest's "Coriolanus," or Burton's "Toodles." All these personations were unusually fine, but the actors could not always merge themselves in the characters, because there was always the partition of theatrical necessities and precedents in the way. This is not the case with Mr. Jefferson. We do not connect "Rip Van Winkle" with Jefferson, but Jefferson with "Rip Van Winkle." The transformation is complete. He acts, talks, walks, laughs, rejoices and mourns just as "Rip Van Winkle" would have done--just as any human being would have done in "Rip Van Winkle's" place. In looking at this personation--and I own to having laughed and cried over it many times--I never think of Jefferson. I never think of his art. I never get "enthused" enough even to applaud, for I should never think of applauding "Rip," were he alive and walking to-day the streets of the village of Falling Waters. To me, there is no Jefferson on the stage, but the magnificent creation of Irving, moving before me. And all this is done without the show of art. Mr. Jefferson never talks above the ordinary conversational tone of voice, uses only a few gestures, and those of the simplest description, attempts no tricks of facial expression, and makes less fuss than the veriest supernumerary on the stage; and yet I question whether any living artist has such an instantaneous command of the smiles and tears of an audience as he.

In fact, I confess I should be afraid of that man or woman who was not affected by this personation. It has been my good or bad luck, as the case may be, for many years past to have written on every actor and actress who have come to this city, and to have witnessed thousands of dramatic performances. Constant dropping of water wears away the rock, and I confess until I saw Mr. Jefferson, I have looked upon stage murders and all sorts of villainies with a large degree of composure; have even smiled at the lachrymose Mrs. Haller, beloved of young women, and have studied with all my might to discover the fun in the stage situation at which the audience was laughing; and instances are on record where I have slept the sleep of the just all through a five-act tragedy, overrunning with murders, suicides, rapes, burglaries, divorces and _crim. con._ enough to have started a second Boston in business. And when I first went to see Mr. Jefferson, I went all calloused with dramatic labor. But if that man didn't have me laughing and crying alternately the whole evening, then I'm a sinner.

The entire personation is so complete and individualized that it is very difficult to select any particular scene as better than others, for Mr. Jefferson is so thorough an artist that he neglects not even the smallest detail. But there are two or three scenes which seem to me to stand out more prominently than the rest. One in particular is the episode where he is ordered to leave the house of his wife. Most actors would have torn a passion to tatters at this point, ranted and rushed round the stage, delivered mock heroics and dashed off in an ecstasy of blue fire with their arms flourished in the air, utterly forgetful of unities or proprieties. How different, Jefferson! He is sitting upon a chair, partially turned from the audience, in a maudlin state. His wife orders him to leave her house and never return. Perhaps she has ordered him that way before, for he pays little heed to it. She repeats the order in a louder tone of voice, but still he pays no heed to it. He has stretched out his arm and raised his head as if to speak, when she again issues her order in an unmistakable manner. It strikes him like a thunder-bolt. Without changing the position of a limb, he sits as if that instant petrified. He is dumb with amazement, as the terrible truth gradually becomes clear in his muddled brains. The silence, the motionlessness, the fixed look of the face, are literally terrible. And when he rises slowly, quietly tells the wife he shall never return--for he has been driven away--stoops and kisses the little one, and so easily passes from the doorstep to the outer darkness, that it might have been the flitting of a shadow, you inevitably draw a breath of relief that the scene is over, and indulge in a genuine feeling of the most hearty sympathy for this good-for-nothing, lazy, drunken, good-hearted vagabond.

Equally, can there be anything more affecting than the scene when, after his sleep, he returns to his native village to find that no one remembers him? Or anything more sadly eloquent than the simple phrase, "Are we, then, so soon forgotten when we are gone?" pronounced so simply and quietly, and with such a gentle vein of sadness running through it? This appeal, which any other actor would have thrust into the face of his audience as the place for "a point," Mr. Jefferson delivers so simply that you hardly at first catch the full force of its meaning, or become aware how much of life is summed up in the few simple words. It is a page out of real life, only another proof of the folly of supposing that you or I are at all essential to the rest of the world.

Mr. Jefferson's make up is very remarkable. He must have studied the character with remarkable earnestness and closeness to draw it so perfectly. Before the sleep, his face is a thorough picture of the good-for-nothing vagabond who exists in every village and is remarkable for nothing but his big heart, which draws to him all the children and dogs of the neighborhood--a sure proof of the humanity of the dog. In general I think that big dogs and small children are the most perfect instances of thorough humanity in the world. A man who has a big heart will always be recognized by a dog quicker than by the two-legged humans. Equally, dogs and small children always recognize each other. After the sleep, the picture of the old man is just as perfect. In every detail of age--the pains in the joints, the shambling gait, the wrinkled face and the childish expression--he is the counterpart of old age. In neither phase of the character does he ever forget himself. He is always "Rip Van Winkle." His forgetfulness of the audience amounts almost to impudence, and he is equally forgetful of the actors. Off the stage, Jefferson is the most genial of men; like Yorick, full of jest and humor. On the stage, he never forgets that he is playing a character. He is "Rip Van Winkle" in front of the audience, behind the scenes, in the dressing room, and in the _entr' actes_ even. He never lets himself down for an instant from the necessities of the _role_ until the curtain falls on the last act. He believes that an actor can never become too familiar with a part, never study it too much, and the result is that he plays just as conscientiously now, as he did when he commenced, and is constantly making the personation better.

Another singular feature of Mr. Jefferson's acting, is, that he not only makes "Rip Van Winkle" an actual living personage, but the dog "Snyder" also. Although "Snyder" never puts in an appearance upon the stage, he is as important a _dramatis persona_ as any on the stage. I think I have a perfect conception of that dog "Snyder"--a long, lank, shaggy, ill favored, yellow cur, loving "Rip" with all his heart, hating "Mrs. Rip," a sworn friend of all the children in the village, one ear bitten off in an unpleasantness with "Nick Vedder's" mean bull dog, but with a big heart after all in his carcass, and a dog who would always take the part of a small dog in a quarrel with a bigger one. Jefferson succeeds in making "Snyder" an actual canine, although he is never visible to the eye; and when "Snyder" goes rattling down the hill, scared out of his senses by Hendrick Hudson's phantom crew, I acknowledge to a feeling of sadness for the poor beast who is "Rip's" only friend.

Although Mr. Jefferson never makes a point of theatrical attitudes for mere effect, some of his poses are remarkably beautiful and artistic, especially that one as he stands shading his eyes with his hands, looking with amazement at the village of Falling Waters, after waking up from his sleep; also the careless way in which he sits upon the table in the first act, and the peculiar attitude in the chair when he is ordered from the house, to which I have already alluded. They are just such attitudes as a painter would choose to paint, or a sculptor to chisel. They are thoroughly artistic, and much of this is undoubtedly due to the fact that Mr. Jefferson has very excellent talent in, and knowledge of, the sculptor's art. Had he followed it as a profession he would undoubtedly have achieved an eminence quite as elevated as that which he enjoys in the dramatic world.

If I have devoted considerable of this letter's space to Mr. Jefferson, it is because his "Rip Van Winkle" is a production of art worthy more than passing notice, in the presence of which, the gauze and tinsel of the spectacular drama seem very tawdry, and mock heroics of the sensational and romantic schools of action very false. He stands the only embodiment of the natural school of action--the only true school. Who will be the next to follow him, and assist to reform and restore the stage to its proper place as a great educator of the people and exponent of art?

September 5, 1868.

_AN AUTUMN REVERIE._

It seems only a little handful of days ago that I was writing you of the note of the little blue trumpeter, announcing from the bare boughs the advent of Spring, and now the Autumn is here. And holding the days in our hands like grains of sand, there was now and then a golden one which you and I would have kept; but, alas! they, too, slipped through our powerless fingers, and the gold in the sand was but a dream within a dream.

I told Mignon the Fall was here, for our trees have commenced to lose their yellowing leaves, and show here and there in their boughs, hectic flushes, and harbingers of speedy dissolution.

But Mignon said that the flowers were still blossoming brightly in the garden, and that there was some happiness yet.

But I replied: "It is only for a few days my dear. The great trees are nearer the heart of nature and learn her secrets first. But the flowers will soon feel the dying breath of the year, and, smitten with the cruel arrows of the frost, will bow their heads in recognition of the great mystery, and the dahlias, and the asters, and the marigolds will strew the earth with the souvenirs of the summer sunshine. Some of the shrubs, to be sure, will decorate themselves with berries in a childish way, and the pines and ever-greens, clad in sombre green, will stand moodily thinking of their gay friends who have left them--bearing the winter's white burden on their bent branches as the penalty of life in death, condemned to live forever, like Ahasuerus, with the recollection of numberless summers and companions--strong, firm and inflexible, to bear the storms of winter, but without a leaf which may stir next spring in glad recognition of the breezes and the birds coming back again.

"The birds, too, have learned the mystery, and have flown, all save the brown sparrow, and other sober, songless little fellows, who know that they have no business here when the flowers are in bloom, and little winged bunches of blue and crimson and gold, are filling all the air with their trills and roulades. You may listen very earnestly now, and you will only hear in the day a chirp from the cricket, that little black undertaker of the insects, who tries to be very cheerful, but only succeeds in being sad."

And I further said to Mignon: "These latter days of the year are akin to music, which is only music when there runs through it a vein of melancholy--a melancholy like Tennyson's 'tender grace of a day that's dead'--not sorrow nor grief, but that indefinable sadness which is to sorrow what the twilight is to the blackness of darkness. But we will make these days the happiest, for believe me, the chattering bobolink is not as happy as the sparrow, nor the shrill, noisy, cicada as happy as the chirping cricket; and the truest happiness will be found in those lives which are shadowed with regrets, or veined with melancholy memories to which hope's tendrils may cling."

September 19, 1868.

_THE BEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD._

I think old women--I don't quite like the word "lady," because it don't mean anything now-a-days--are the most beautiful and lovable things in the world. They are so near heaven that they catch the glow and the brightness which radiate from the pearly gates and illuminate their faces. When the hair begins to silver, and the embers in the fire grow gray and cold, and the sun has got so far around in life's horizon that the present makes no shadow, while the past stretches down the hillside to a little mound of earth, where we will rest for a season--a little mound not big enough to hold our corner lots, and marble fronts, and safes, which we shall have to leave on the other side of the hill, but big enough, I trust, to hold our memories, and fancies, our air castles and secrets; and when the journey is nearly done, and the night is setting in, and the darkness begins to gather around us without any stars, and the birds sing low in the trees, and the flowers wither and die, and the music we hear comes from afar, strangely sweet, like sounds coming over the water, and like little children we live in ourselves, and the world gradually recedes from us--then I should like to be an old woman, full of blessed memories and peaceful anticipations.

I think I know the best woman in the world, and I think every other man knows her. I think the one I know has the kindest heart, and the dearest face, and the most caressing hand, and the most undying devotion among all women. Her eyes were once to me the boundaries of the world, and were the first things I ever looked into, and pray Heaven they may also be the last I shall look into. And I think the best woman every other man knows has all these qualities in the same degree. And I think there is not one of us who has strayed so far from that woman--the best of all women--not one of us so calloused with the strife and toil of life, not one of us in the midst of difficulty and danger, who does not feel the invisible arms around him to shield him, and who does not long to go back to the arms and the love of that woman, and to rest, as we rested before our feet got into the flinty roads, upon the breast of our MOTHER.

October 3, 1868.

_THE SCHOOL HOUSE._

In the round of my daily walks, it is my pleasure to pass a school-house, and I try to arrange my walks that I may happen to be there when school is opening and closing. The little men and women who compose the miniature world in the schoolyard, and make sunlight for me, undoubtedly have no idea of the great pleasure they afford me, or how rapidly my thoughts, under the magic influence of their bright eyes, lithe forms, and merry games, go back into the past, the morning-red of life, when the beautiful glamor of morning brightened every object it touched; when the flowers bloomed perennially; when the birds sang the sweetest of melodies; and when the brooks went laughing and dancing over the pebbles, full soon to broaden into sad, serene rivers, too soon to be hurled and beaten against the grey crags in eternal unrest; and forward, into the future, a hazy, twilight land, full of indefinable shapes and perplexing uncertainties. And yet, as our shadows lengthen in the journey towards it, there is always one certainty: that we shall find there, those who have gone before. Some who traveled the whole weary journey, and arrived footsore and travel-stained, and some who never became old, and were spared the toilsome journey, because the angels loved them better than we and better than us.

And I think, as I watch those children at play, how many unseen agencies are at work around them--of avarice which will corrode and blacken this young life, and of charity which will make that young life beautiful; of ambition, which some day with its trumpet blasts will wake this thoughtful one into action, and make the world wonder at him; of love, which will make this one's pathway smooth, thinking of what is; which will interlace cypress in the myrtle, thinking of what might have been; which will darken all God's Heaven for this one, thinking of what never should have been; of fame which will send the name of this one sounding round the world; of skill which will enable this one to see and know the very heart of nature; of misery which will follow this one like a Mephistophiles; and of despair, which never stops short of the grave.

And all this time, as I watch these children, chasing each other at play, as the yellow skeletons of the leaves chase each other in the wind in these memorial mornings, the fates sit spinning in the air above them, and weaving the tangled web of their destinies, some of them all white, some with here and there a black thread, while Atropos sits by with her fatal shears, which will sever this thread too soon and that too late.

It is only a few days, and this chase in the schoolyard will be transferred into life, where no walls will hem them in, and away they will go to the four winds of Heaven, and another set will take their places as they took ours. Ours! Do you remember anything about those days in the midst of your invoices and bills of lading, your Berlin wools and Grecian Bends, and somebody coming home to tea and nothing in the house to eat? Do you remember the little red school-house on the hill, with poplar trees in front of it, that you used to think almost touched the sky? Do you remember the school mistress, with her pale face and sweet smile, and her little blue ribbon, now sleeping under the flowers, for school's out forever, and she has a long vacation? Do you remember the little girl in white apron and blue gown, with blue eyes and golden curls, whose satchel you carried up the hill, and whose name you cut into the bark of the apple-trees, vowing an eternal constancy--an eternity which lasted until the apple-trees lost the last of their pink-and-white blossoms? Do you remember the swallows which twittered round the eaves of the school house all the spring and summer, and suddenly one bright morning all left together, scared by a little brown bird, who came from the far north, and told them a story of something coming, which made them all shiver? And when that something came, do you remember the old box stove piled up with logs, and the snow-houses, and the nuts and cider, and the forfeits at the parties, especially that one where you carried the pillow to the girl with black hair, instead of little Gold Curls, not being on speaking terms with her, and the school mistress, with cheeks paler, and eyes brighter than ever, and flushes in the face which came and went like lightnings in the western sky in summer eves, for the little brown bird did not warn her that she ought to go with the swallows? You remember that when the swallows came back one sunny morning in the next May, they did not find the school-mistress, for she went away with the brown bird.

If you don't remember any of these things, I pity you, for the friction of life must have worn you quite smooth, and the outlook must be very dreary.

October 11, 1868.

_A NEW LIFE._

In these latter days of the year, so full of melancholy, it occurs to me that we do not altogether die when we shuffle off this mortal coil. Is not physical death only a change to vegetable birth? We are born, we mature, flourish, and decay, and are laid away in the mould, only to reappear in the flower, the shrub, and the tree. That little child whom you buried when the leaves were falling, as you weep over its grave, in the bright springtime, when the leaves are repeating the miracle of the new creation, may look at you out of the golden petals of the dandelion and the butter-cup. There may be remembrance for you in the leaves of the shrub at the headstone, as they are ruffled by the breeze. There may be the _souvenir_ of a familiar smile in the tremor of a daisy.

The generations of men come and go, but their life is not all gone. Life does not cease to exist. It is eternal in its revolutions, its changes, and its new forms. Down under the sod this active principle of life is still at work. Mysterious chemical processes are operating in that silent darkness. The old life shoots up in the grasses. All the lives, and loves, and passions of long ago blossom in the flowers. The life you once knew is giving strength to the sturdy trunks of trees. It flows through the veins of the branches with the sap, and gives color to the leaves. In mythology, the Fauns and Dryads, Naiads and Hamadryads, typified this idea to a certain extent, and were the most beautiful creatures of that beautiful mythology--so beautiful, indeed, that I am heretic enough to acknowledge I would like to have known all those dear divine creatures, so full of good, old-fashioned mortal failings; to have sipped nectar from Hebe's cup, and lunched on ambrosia with the Thunder Bearer himself; to have gone to the opera with Apollo, flirted with the naughty Venus, philosophized with Minerva, taken tea with Juno, and had one roaring old supper with Bacchus.

Thus there are whole races of men in the boundless forests, and friends of yours and mine in the flowers. It seems to me a very pleasant thought to believe that those whom we have loved, and whose lives were so beautiful and graceful, are still growing in the beauty of the flowers, and the grace of the vines; that those whose lives were bad and ungracious, yet exist in the nightshade and hemlock; that those whose lives never blossomed in the shadow of great misfortunes, still live for us in those flowerless plants whose leaves are full of perfume; that Nero is in the Upas, and Marat is in the dogwood.

It is a pleasant fancy to me to think that some friend whom I love will not altogether die, but will live in a rose; that I shall see the red of her cheeks in its petals, and that her grace will continue in its form; that the fragrance of her memory will come to me in the fragrance of its perfume, and that the tears which have stood in her eyes will be forever sacred in the dew drops on its leaves.

There are strong, upright, and sturdy lives, which live again in the firs and pines, which are proof against all storms, and are green when all others are bare and sere; there are far-reaching, all-embracing lives, which live again in the umbrageous oaks; there are lives, which were warped in childhood, which live again in the crooked, gnarled trunks; there are lives full of the gall of bitterness, which never sweeten in the crab and wormwood; there are graceful lives, which curve and undulate in the vines; there are black lives which grow blacker in the poisonous plants, and the birds avoid the vegetable life as the children avoided the human, for birds and children are very much alike; and I think sometimes that the souls of the musicians are still sentient in the murmuring waves of the sea, and in the diapason of the wind-swept pines.

November 14, 1868.

_OLD BLOBBS--HIS SPEECH._

Fitz-Herbert happened in this morning, and was lounging against the mantel, trying to look interesting. Old Blobbs was very much disgusted with the fellow, and begged to be allowed to have his say. So I yielded the floor to him.

And Old Blobbs' screed ran somewhat as follows: "I think it is every woman's duty to look as pretty as she can, and, so long as she doesn't carry fashion to an extreme and commit the mistake of making herself ridiculous, she is excusable. I don't see any particular necessity in a young man's looking pretty. In fact, it has been my experience that when a young man does try to look pretty, he generally succeeds in making an ass of himself. It should be the duty of every man to do something before he dies of which he may be proud, and which may be of some benefit to the world or to the individual, so that when he gets up to the gates, and St. Peter questions his right to come in, he may have something to show for himself. I think a young man who is merely a walking advertisement for his tailor and barber, and who has degenerated into a fashionable dawdler, is in a poor way to accomplish anything for _himself_, let alone the world. And I furthermore think that if I were St. Peter, and such a specimen came before me, I would lift my blessed angelic foot and send him flying into Chaos, without asking to see his credentials at all. A small, black-backed beetle, pushing his lump of dirt before him, is praising God more with those busy legs of his, fulfilling the duty which God gave him to do, and conferring more benefit upon mankind in general, than an army of fashionable dawdling young men, the energy of whose enormous natures is mainly confined to murdering King's English, and endangering the integrity of looking-glasses. And when this fashionable young man lets his fashion run him into fashionable expenditure, there isn't a fashionable young woman in the city who can keep up with him. If he cannot have his Grecian Bend, he can have his benders, which, if not so Grecian, are vastly more expensive. Dress, dinners, fast horses, betting, gambling, and the elegant vices which follow in their train, are ten thousand fold worse than all the pleasant little sillinesses of which Araminta may be guilty. The extremely fashionable young woman is pitiable, but she is only trying to make herself look handsome, and that is the object of her life; but the extremely fashionable young man is disgusting, because he has no right to look pretty, and is simply squandering away opportunities he has no right to waste."

Old Blobbs, as is his wont, grew excited as he talked, and, bringing his fist down upon the table with a vim which made the glasses fairly dance in their fright, and sent the condiments of the castor and the contents of the sugar bowl into promiscuous ruin, added: "Yes sir! a man with nothing to do but to entertain himself and exhibit himself to society, is the most contemptible object on God's footstool, and the sooner he gets off from it, and makes room for somebody else, the better." And here he grew slightly personal, and very red as to the face. "Yes sir! You, Mr. Fitz-Herbert, holding up the mantel-piece! You think you are of some importance in the world, and yet I will wager that your direst responsibility to-day will be the parting of your back hair. I will wager that you never had an opinion in your life of more consequence than the relative merits of Macassar and Ursine! I will wager that you are not capable of feeling any distress keener than the anxiety of a doubt relative to the exact condition of your neck-tie. I will wager that Timothy Maloney, scraping dirt on the avenue to-day, although he may get drunk to-night and beat his wife, like the brute that he is, is of more service to the world than you are. That is my opinion of you, Mr. Fitz-what's-your-name, and if an opinion on any conceivable subject can be of any service to you, you are heartily welcome to it, sir. I repeat it, welcome to it, sir."

I think Fitz-Herbert got an idea through his head that Old Blobbs was talking about him, for he actually took his tooth-pick out of his mouth and himself out of the room.

December 5, 1868.

_DEATH OF THE MAIDEN AUNT._

A little black-bordered billet reached us yesterday, and a cloud has settled down upon all of us, for it brought the news of the death of the Maiden Aunt.

She died in the night, by the side of the sea, which she always loved, and the last sounds she heard were its waves moaning on the beach, as her own life ebbed away on the strand of death; and, after that, such music as Raphael's St. Cecilia would sing, or the angels who hover around his Madonnas.

She died by the side of the church-yard, in which for thirty years the daisies have bloomed over him, to whom she promised always to be loyal, and for whom she always wore the forget-me-not in the silken floss of her hair, in eternal remembrance. The forget-me-not is now quite withered, for memory has blossomed into realization, and hope is lost in possession, and the snow now covers them side by side here, and, for all that, they are side by side There.

Her life was so hidden from the world, that few knew her except the children and the house-dog, and some birds which were pets, and they mourn her loss. The children miss her, and it is something to be missed by the children, for it shows that however the body may have been tossed about and weather-beaten in the tempest of life, the soul has preserved itself in the repose of childhood. The dog misses her, and goes about the house moaning, and stirs uneasily in his sleep as if dreaming of her, just as Florence Dombey's dog did, in her and his first sorrow. And it is something to be missed by a dog, for it argues a great deal of humanity. The birds miss her, and have ceased their songs; and it is something to be missed by the birds, for no ungracious souls care for them or their songs.

The heavens were mantled with grey, and the air was full of snow, and the black harbor waves moaned on the bar like a knell, when they buried her by the side of him who took away all her sunshine when he died, and left her life in the shadow. She sent some little remembrances to us--a curl of her hair to Aurelia; a bit of blue ribbon, full of memories, to Celeste; a turquoise ring, which he had worn, to Blanche; and the faded forget-me-not to Mignon. For the Maiden Aunt was rich only in memories.

She did not die like a saint, for she was not a saint; neither like a sinner, for she was not a sinner; but like a true woman, full of courage and dignity, contented to cross the River, because she knew she would find him waiting for her on the other side, and wherever he went she would go.

The Maiden Aunt always regarded human nature as something very sacred and sublime, and she regulated herself by that regard. I remember she used to tell me that she believed there was no nature so bad, but that it had a chord which would vibrate to goodness, provided the finger was skilled to find and touch that chord; and that there was no soul so barren, but that somewhere in it a flower was blooming. She did not believe that the divine spark which God implanted in each nature could ever be utterly quenched, however its light might be concealed in life's confusion and chaos. She had faith in His omnipotence.

She had her faults and her frailties, which proved her humanity. She was intensely human. The dead were to her as the living, and he who had gone before her, I think was always with her. He was only absent on a journey, and would send for her when the time came, and she waited in patience. Her knowledge, like the knowledge of the most of us, was bounded by this life; and she used to say that, when her thoughts reached that boundary where knowledge ceased, her thoughts ceased also. Consequently, she gave her work to this life, and her love to him, whom she kept in this life, although absent; and, notwithstanding all her faults and her frailties, I think, in the presence of the great sorrow which had eclipsed her inward being, the angels at the Celestial Gate did not question her--for the faults and the frailties were of the body, and under the snow with his, and never soiled the spirit, which had been sanctified and purified by the grief which she had carried as a burden at her heart. I think the angels recognized her at once, as they recognized the Beatrices who died--the one in glory, the other in agony--or that Irmgard, who found repose on the Heights.

Our lives are twofold. There is the active, every-day life in ourselves, and the life which we live in sleep, and is made up of the tangled web of dreams. One of her lives was in herself, hidden to the outward gaze, and yet manifesting its presence in a thousand graceful ways. The other, which no one ever saw or knew but herself, went even beyond the realm of dreams, and in the place left vacant in her heart, by the absence of that life, there was eternal snow.

What was beautiful a thousand years ago, is beautiful now, and if there were saints a thousand years ago, there must be saints now, although their record may be unchronicled, save in some human heart. I think the Maiden Aunt was as worthy of canonization as Ursula or Agatha, and that in this common, homely human life, there are many worthy of it, whose saintliness will not be known until that day when we are all brought upon a common level. The homeliest humanity is full of contests as fierce as those Tamerlane waged; full of deeds as glorious as those achieved by the gods and demigods we set up for worship. They are never known to the world, for they have no historians or singers to chronicle them, but when they come to be known as they will be one day, we shall be surprised to find that they were the real victors.

December 12, 1868.

_THE NEW YEAR._

I suppose this old world will revolve about its axis in 1869, just as it did in 1868, and that we shall revolve with it just the same. I suppose we shall go on loving, hating, praying, cursing, marrying, dying, and doing foolish things in the new, as we did in the old; that Old Midas and Gunnybags will chase the Almighty Dollar just as hard, and swindle just as much; that Mrs. Blobbs will continue to lecture Old Blobbs on the proprieties, and that Old Blobbs will continue to grow worse and worse; that Aurelia will have another baby in the new year just as she did in the old, and will think there never was such a baby born before; that Celeste will continue to do foolish things, and be the most delightfully wicked little creature in the world, for she is just wicked enough to be completely good; that Fitz-Herbert will make an ass of himself next year as he did this; that Mignon will be just as sweet and lovely, and keep all the rest of us in sunshine, and that Blanche will still search for the lost melody in her life.

In general, I suppose, men and women will do in the new year just as they did in the last, and will continue to air their vices in the courts as if they were of any interest to other people who have vices of their own, which are a great deal more interesting, and boasting their virtues, when everybody knows that under the cuticle they are just as shabby as the rest of the world. This is the one grand mistake which people make, viz: To suppose their virtues or their vices are of any earthly interest to other people.

As a general rule, you are only essential to yourself, and the man who takes off your boots, and puts on your coat, or the young woman who does up your coiffure, and looks after your toilet, and knows you best, will tell you this. Some people succeed in making heroes of themselves, and are worshipped by some other people, but they are never heroes to those who know them best. Strip your hero of his decorations, bid him come down from his pedestal, undress him, and stand him up by the side of Terence Maloney, and you can't tell one from the other.

You see the whole thing is conventional.

So I suppose the sun will rise and set, and the world go on just the same, until suddenly it stops going, for you and for me, and we shall go out of it like gentlemen, I trust.

We shall make the usual number of resolutions, I suppose, on New Year's Day, and break them before the next with our usual success. We shall firmly persuade ourselves next Friday morning that we are hereafter to be models of goodness, and pinks of propriety. We shall appropriate to ourselves the most of virtue and decency in the world, and set examples for the rest of mankind. We shall all be shining instances of temperance and godliness. We shall confine ourselves to a proper use of King's English. We shall attend upon Parson Primrose's ministrations twice each Sunday. We shall no longer ruin the characters of others with our idle, foolish gossip. We shall take off our masks and wear our souls upon our sleeves. And before the year is over, there isn't one of us who will do anything of the kind. Our cemeteries, next New Year's Day, will be just as full of head-stones set up to mark where our broken resolutions _lie_, as they have ever been.

And a hundred years hence, it is extremely doubtful whether any one will care for our resolutions, whether they were kept or broken, or for us, whether we have lived or died. But I suppose, for all that, it will be necessary for us, during the coming year, to conceive that we are of some importance, and that the curious looker-on in Jupiter, and the Man in the Moon, will wonder what we are all doing on our ant-hills, and why we are making such a fuss.

And I suppose when you and I retire from the stage, and the curtain comes down on the little farce we have been playing, that the great audience will not go home, nor the manager close up the theatre, but that other actors will step into our buskins, and thus the play will be kept up, and men will laugh, and women will weep, and others will love and hate, and do brave deeds and naughty deeds, although the call-boy may never summon us again behind the lights.

Now, I might go on from this point and preach you a sermon, as my brethren in the pulpit will do, upon the brevity of time and the stern realities of life, but I am not going to do anything of the kind. Life is not measured by years, nor by flight of time. He lives most who loves most, and lives longest who appreciates what is best. Some men live longer in a year than others in a lifetime.

December 26, 1868.

_PUBLIC PARTIES._