Chapter XVIII: Part II: Miscellanies (6)

_The Flower and the Pearl._---- has written wonders about the mystery of personality. Why do we love it? In the first place, each wishes to embrace a whole, and this seems the readiest way. The intellect soars, the heart clasps; from putting "a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," thou wouldst return to thy own little green isle of emotion, and be the loving and playful fay, rather than the delicate Ariel.

Then most persons are plants, organic. We can predict their growth according to their own law. From the young girl we can predict the lustre, the fragrance of the future flower. It waves gracefully to the breeze, the dew rests upon its petals, the bee busies himself in them, and flies away after a brief rapture, richly laden.

When it fades, its leaves fall softly on the bosom of Mother Earth, to all whose feelings it has so closely conformed. It has lived as a part of nature; its life was music, and we open our hearts to the melody.

But characters like thine and mine are mineral. We are the bone and sinew, these the smiles and glances, of earth. We lie nearer the mighty heart, and boast an existence more enduring than they. The sod lies heavy on us, or, if we show ourselves, the melancholy moss clings to us. If we are to be made into palaces and temples, we must be hewn and chiselled by instruments of unsparing sharpness. The process is mechanical and unpleasing; the noises which accompany it, discordant and obtrusive; the artist is surrounded with rubbish. Yet we may be polished to marble smoothness. In our veins may lie the diamond, the ruby, perhaps the emblematic carbuncle.

The flower is pressed to the bosom with intense emotion, but in the home of love it withers and is cast away.

The gem is worn with less love, but with more pride; if we enjoy its sparkle, the joy is partly from calculation of its value; but if it be lost, we regret it long.

For myself, my name is Pearl.[42] That lies at the beginning, amid slime and foul prodigies from which only its unsightly shell protects. It is cradled and brought to its noblest state amid disease and decay. Only the experienced diver could have known that it was there, and brought it to the strand, where it is valued as pure, round, and, if less brilliant than the diamond, yet an ornament for a kingly head. Were it again immersed in the element where first it dwelt, now that it is stripped of the protecting shell, soon would it blacken into deformity. So what is noblest in my soul has sprung from disease, present defeat, disappointment, and untoward outward circumstance.

For you, I presume, from your want of steady light and brilliancy of sparks which are occasionally struck from you, that you are either a flint or a rough diamond. If the former, I hope you will find a home in some friendly tinder-box, instead of lying in the highway to answer the hasty hoof of the trampling steed. If a diamond, I hope to meet you in some imperishable crown, where we may long remain together; you lighting up my pallid orb, I tempering your blaze.

_Dried Ferns about my Lamp-shade._--"What pleasure do you, who have exiled those paper tissue covers, take in that bouquet of dried ferns? Their colors are less bright, and their shapes less graceful, than those of your shades."

I answer, "They grew beneath the solemn pines. They opened their hearts to the smile of summer, and answered to the sigh of autumn. _They_ remind me of the wealth of nature; the tissues, of the poverty of man. They were gathered by a cherished friend who worships in the woods, and behind them lurks a deep, enthusiastic eye. So my pleasure in seeing them is 'denkende' and 'menschliche.'"

"They are of no use."

"Good! I like useless things: they are to me the vouchers of a different state of existence."

* * * * *

_Light._--My lamp says to me, "Why do you disdain me, and use that candle, which you have the trouble of snuffing every five minutes, and which ever again grows dim, ungrateful for your care? I would burn steadily from sunset to midnight, and be your faithful, vigilant friend, yet never interrupt you an instant."

I reply, "But your steady light is also dull,--while his, at its best, is both brilliant and mellow. Besides, I love him for the trouble he gives; he calls on my sympathy, and admonishes me constantly to use my life, which likewise flickers as if near the socket."

* * * * *

_Wit and Satire._--I cannot endure people who do not distinguish between wit and satire; who think you, of course, laugh at people when you laugh _about_ them; and who have no perception of the peculiar pleasure derived from toying with lovely or tragic figures.

FAREWELL.[43]

Farewell to New York city, where twenty months have presented me with a richer and more varied exercise for thought and life, than twenty years could in any other part of these United States.

It is the common remark about New York, that it has at least nothing petty or provincial in its methods and habits. The place is large enough: there is room enough, and occupation enough, for men to have no need or excuse for small cavils or scrutinies. A person who is independent, and knows what he wants, may lead his proper life here, unimpeded by others.

Vice and crime, if flagrant and frequent, are less thickly coated by hypocrisy than elsewhere. The air comes sometimes to the most infected subjects.

New York is the focus, the point where American and European interests converge. There is no topic of general interest to men, that will not betimes be brought before the thinker by the quick turning of the wheel.

_Too_ quick that revolution,--some object. Life rushes wide and free, but _too fast_. Yet it is in the power of every one to avert from himself the evil that accompanies the good. He must build for his study, as did the German poet, a house beneath the bridge; and then all that passes above and by him will be heard and seen, but he will not be carried away with it.

Earlier views have been confirmed, and many new ones opened. On two great leadings, the superlative importance of promoting national education by heightening and deepening the cultivation of individual minds, and the part which is assigned to woman in the next stage of human progress in this country, where most important achievements are to be effected, I have received much encouragement, much instruction, and the fairest hopes of more.

On various subjects of minor importance, no less than these, I hope for good results, from observation, with my own eyes, of life in the old world, and to bring home some packages of seed for life in the new.

These words I address to my friends, for I feel that I have some. The degree of sympathetic response to the thoughts and suggestions I have offered through the columns of the Tribune, has indeed surprised me, conscious as I am of a natural and acquired aloofness from many, if not most popular tendencies of my time and place. It has greatly encouraged me, for none can sympathize with thoughts like mine, who are permanently insnared in the meshes of sect or party; none who prefer the formation and advancement of mere opinions to the free pursuit of truth. I see, surely, that the topmost bubble or sparkle of the cup is no voucher for the nature of its contents throughout, and shall, in future, feel that in our age, nobler in that respect than most of the preceding ages, each sincere and fervent act or word is secure, not only of a final, but of a speedy response.

I go to behold the wonders of art, and the temples of old religion. But I shall see no forms of beauty and majesty beyond what my country is capable of producing in myriad variety, if she has but the soul to will it; no temple to compare with what she might erect in the ages, if the catchword of the time, a sense of _divine order_, should become no more a mere word of form, but a deeply-rooted and pregnant idea in her life. Beneath the light of a hope that this may be, I say to my friends once more a kind farewell!