Chapter L: M. C (4)

There is a reason for governing our tempers which is still more important than our own happiness, or even the happiness of others. I allude to its influence on the characters of those around us; an influence which may mar their whole destiny here, and perhaps hinder their progress hereafter. None of us are sufficiently careful to keep pure and wholesome the spiritual atmosphere which surrounds every human being, and which must be more or less inhaled by the spiritual lungs of all those with whom he enters into the various relations of life. Jean Paul said: “Newton, who uncovered his head whenever the name of God was pronounced, thus became, without words, a teacher of religion to children.” Many a girl has formed an injudicious marriage, in consequence of hearing sneering remarks, or vulgar jokes, about “old maids.” Poisonous prejudices against nations, races, sects, and classes are often instilled by thoughtless incidental expressions. There is education for evil in the very words “Nigger,” “Paddy,” “old Jew,” “old maid,” &c. It is recorded of the Rabbi Sera, that when he was asked how he had attained to such a serene and lovable old age, he replied: “I have never rejoiced at any evil which happened to my neighbor; and I never called any man by a nickname given to him in derision or sport.”

False ideas with regard to the importance of wealth and rank are very generally, though often unconsciously inculcated by modes of speech, or habits of action. To treat _mere_ wealth with more respect than honest poverty; to speak more deferentially of a man whose _only_ claim is a distinguished ancestry, than you do of the faithful laborer who ditches your meadows, is a slow but sure process of education, which sermons and catechisms will never be able entirely to undo. It is important to realize fully that all merely conventional distinctions are false and illusory; that only worth and usefulness can really ennoble man or woman. If we look at the subject from a rational point of view, the artificial classifications of society appear even in a ludicrous light. It would be considered a shocking violation of etiquette for the baronet’s lady to call upon the queen. The wife of the wealthy banker, or merchant, cannot be admitted to the baronet’s social circle. The intelligent mechanic and prosperous farmer is excluded from the merchant’s parlor. The farmer and mechanic would think they let themselves down by inviting a worthy day-laborer to their parties. And the day-laborer, though he were an ignoramus and a drunkard, would feel authorized to treat with contempt any intelligent and excellent man whose complexion happened to be black or brown. I once knew a grocer’s wife, who, with infinite condescension of manner, said to the wife of her neighbor the cobbler, “Why don’t you come in to see me sometimes? You needn’t keep away because my house is carpeted all over.” Hannah More tells us that the Duchess of Gloucester, wishing to circulate some tracts and verses, requested one of her ladies in waiting to stop a woman who was wheeling a barrow of oranges past the window, and ask her if she would take some ballads to sell. “No indeed!” replied the orange-woman, with an air of offended dignity. “I don’t do anything so mean as that. I don’t even sell apples.” The Duchess was much amused by her ideas of rank; but they were in fact no more absurd than her own. It is the same mean, selfish spirit which manifests itself through all these gradations. External rank belongs to the “phantom dynasties”; and if we wish our children to enjoy sound moral health, we should be careful not to teach any deference for it, either in our words or our habits. Mrs. Gaskell, in her sketch of a very conservative and prejudiced English gentlewoman, “one of the olden time,” gives a lovely touch to the picture, indicating that true natural refinement was not stifled by the prejudices of rank. Lady Ludlow had, with patronizing kindness, invited several of her social inferiors to tea. Among them was the wife of a rich baker, who, being unaccustomed to the etiquette of such company, spread a silk handkerchief in her lap, when she took a piece of cake; whereupon some of the curate’s wives began to titter, in order to show that they knew polite manners better than she did. Lady Ludlow, perceiving this, immediately spread her own handkerchief in her lap; and when the baker’s wife went to the fireplace to shake out her crumbs, my lady did the same. This silent rebuke was sufficient to prevent any further rudeness to the unsophisticated wife of the baker. No elaborate rules are necessary to teach us true natural politeness. We need only remember two short texts of Scripture: “Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.” “God is your Father, and all ye are brethren.”

Elderly people are apt to think that their years exempt them from paying so much attention to good manners as the young are required to do. On the contrary, they ought to be more careful in their deportment and conversation, because their influence is greater. Impure words or stories repeated by parents or grandparents may make indelible stains on the minds of their descendants, and perhaps give a sensual direction to their characters through life. No story, however funny, should ever be told, if it will leave in the memory unclean associations, either physically or morally.

A love of gossiping about other people’s affairs is apt to grow upon those who have retired from the active pursuits of life; and this is one among many reasons why it is best to keep constantly occupied. A great deal of trouble is made in neighborhoods, from no malicious motives, but from the mere excitement of telling news, and the temporary importance derived therefrom. Most village gossip, when sifted down, amounts to the little school-girl’s definition. Being asked what it was to bear false witness against thy neighbor, she replied: “It’s when nobody don’t do nothing, and somebody goes and tells of it.” One of the best and most genial of the Boston merchants, when he heard people discussing themes of scandal, was accustomed to interrupt them, by saying: “Don’t talk any more about it! Perhaps they didn’t do it; and may be they couldn’t help it.” For myself, I deem it the greatest unkindness to be told of anything said against me. I may prevent its exciting resentment in my mind; but the consciousness of not being liked unavoidably disturbs my relations with the person implicated. There is no better safeguard against the injurious habit of gossiping, than the being interested in _principles_ and _occupations_; if you have these to employ your mind, you will have no inclination to talk about matters merely personal.

When we reflect that life is so full of neglected little opportunities to improve ourselves and others, we shall feel that there is no need of aspiring after great occasions to do good.

“The _trivial_ round, the _common_ task,
Would furnish all we need to ask;
Room to deny ourselves,--a road
To bring us daily nearer God.”

THE BOYS.

WRITTEN FOR A MEETING OF COLLEGE CLASSMATES.

BY OLIVER W. HOLMES.

Has there any _old_ fellow got mixed with the boys?
If there has, take him out, without making a noise!
Hang the Almanac’s cheat, and the Catalogue’s spite!
Old Time is a liar! We’re twenty to-night.

We’re twenty! We’re twenty! Who says we are more?
He’s tipsy, young jackanapes! Show him the door!
“Gray temples at twenty?” Yes! _white_, if we please;
Where the snow-flakes fall thickest, there’s nothing can freeze.

Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!
Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake;
We want some new garlands for those we have shed,--
And these are white roses in place of the red.

We’ve a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,
Of talking (in public) as if we were old;--
That boy we call “Doctor,” and this we call “Judge”;--
It’s a neat little fiction,--of course, it’s all fudge.

That fellow’s “the Speaker,”--the one on the right;
“Mr. Mayor,” my young one, how are you to-night?
That’s our “Member of Congress,” we say when we chaff;
There’s the “Reverend” What’s his name? Don’t make me laugh!

* * * * *

Yes, we’re boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,--
And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful, and laughing and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!

ODE OF ANACREON.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK.

I love a mellow, cheerful sage,
Whose feelings are unchilled by age;
I love a youth who dances well
To music of the sounding shell;
But when a man of years, like me,
Joins with the dancers playfully,
Though age in silvery hair appears,
His heart is young, despite of years.

MYSTERIOUSNESS OF LIFE.

FROM MOUNTFORD’S EUTHANASY.

About the world to come, it ought not to be as though we did not know _surely_, because we do not know _much_. From the nearest star, our earth, if it is seen, looks hardly anything at all. It shines, or rather it twinkles, and that is all. To them afar off, this earth is only a shining point. But to us who live in it, it is wide and various. It is sea and land; it is Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; it is the lair of the lion, and the pasture of the ox, and the pathway of the worm, and the support of the robin; it is what has day and night in it; it is what customs and languages obtain in; it is many countries; it is the habitation of a thousand million men; and it is our home. All this the world is to _us_; though, looked at from one of the stars, it is only a something that twinkles in the distance. It is seen only as a few intermittent rays of light; though, to us who live in it, it is hill and valley, and land and water, and many thousands of miles wide. So that if the future world is a star of guidance for us, it is enough; because it is not for us to _know_, but to _believe_, that it will prove our dear home.

* * * * *

We live mortal lives for immortal good. And really this world is so mysterious, that there is not one of its commonest ways but is perhaps sublimer to walk on than we at all think. At night, when we walk about and see at all, it is by the light of _other_ worlds; though we do not often think of this. It is the same in life. There is many a matter concerning us that is little thought of, but which is ours, as it were, from out of the infinite. Yes, our lives are to be felt as being very great, even in their nothingness. Even our mortal lives are as wonderful as immortality. Is the next life a mystery? So it is. But then how mysterious even _now_ life is. Food is not all that a man lives by. There is some way by which food has to turn to strength in him; and that way is something else than his own will. I am hungry, I sit down to a meal, and I enjoy it. And the next day, from what I ate and drank for my pleasure, there is blood in my veins, and moisture on my skin, and new flesh making in all my limbs. And this is not my doing or willing; for I do not even know how my nails grow from under the skin of my fingers. I can well believe in my being to live hereafter. _How_, indeed, I am to live, I do not know; but, then, neither do I know how I do live _now_. When I am asleep, my lungs keep breathing, my heart keeps beating, my stomach keeps digesting, and my whole body keeps making anew. And in the morning, when I look in the glass, it is as though I see myself a new creature; and really, for the wonder of it, it is all the same as though another body had grown about me in my sleep. This living from day to day is astonishing, when it is thought of; and we are let feel the miracle of it, so, perhaps, that our being to live again may not be too wonderful for our belief.

Though there be storm and turbulence on this earth, one would
rise but little way, through the blackened air, before he would
come to a region of calm and peace, where the stars shine
unobstructed, and where there is no storm. And a little above
our cloud, a little higher than our darkness, a little beyond
our storm, is God’s upper region of tranquil peace and calm.
And when we have had the discipline of winter here, it will be
possible for us to have eternal summer there.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

EXTRACTS FROM

THE GRANDMOTHER’S APOLOGY.

BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

And Willy, my eldest born, is gone you say, little Ann?
Ruddy and white and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
“Here’s a leg for a babe of a week!” says doctor; and he would be bound
There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.

Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue!
I ought to have gone before him; I wonder he went so young.
I cannot cry for him, Annie; I have not long to stay;
Perhaps I shall see him the sooner, for he lived far away.

Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold;
But all my children have gone before me, I am so old:
I cannot weep for Willy, nor can I weep for the rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.

The first child that ever I bore was dead before he was born:
Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn.
I had not wept, little Annie, not since I had been a wife;
But I wept like a child, that day; for the babe had fought for his life.

His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain;
I looked at the still little body,--his trouble had all been in vain.
For Willy I cannot weep; I shall see him another morn;
But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born.

But he cheered me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay:
Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have his way;
Never jealous,--not he: we had many a happy year:
And he died, and I could not weep,--my own time seemed so near.

But I wished it had been God’s will that I, too, then could have died:
I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side;
And that was ten years back, or more, if I don’t forget:
But as for the children, Annie, they are all about me yet.

Pattering over the boards, my Annie, who left me at two;
Patter she goes, my own little Annie,--an Annie like you.
Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will,
While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing the hill.

And Harry and Charlie, I hear them, too,--they sing to their team;
Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of dream.
They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed:
I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.

And yet I know for a truth, there’s none of them left alive;
For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five;
And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and ten;
I knew them all as babies, and now they are elderly men.

For mine is a time of peace; it is not often I grieve;
I am oftener sitting at home in my father’s farm at eve:
And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;
I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.

To be sure the preacher says our sins should make us sad;
But mine is a time of peace, and there is grace to be had;
And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;
And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of peace.

And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain;
And happy has been my life, but I would not live it again.
I seem to be tired a little, that’s all, and long for rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.

So Willy has gone,--my beauty, my eldest born, my flower;
But how can I weep for Willy? he has but gone for an hour,--
Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;
I too shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?

THE ANCIENT MAN.

TRANSLATED BY L. O. FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL RICHTER’S
MEMOIR OF FIBEL, AUTHOR OF THE BIENENRODA SPELLING-BOOK.

“He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet. He is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by Nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy what the old man hardly feels.”

WORDSWORTH.

The stream of Fibel’s history having vanished under ground, like a second river Rhone, I was obliged to explore where story or stream again burst forth, and for this purpose I questioned every one. I was told that no one could better inform me than an exceedingly aged man, more than a hundred and twenty-five years old, who lived a few miles from the village of Bienenroda, and who, having been young at the same time with Fibel, must know all about him. The prospect of shaking hands with the very oldest man living on the face of the earth enraptured me. I said to myself that a most novel and peculiar sensation must be excited by having a whole past century before you, bodily present, compact and alive, in the century now passing; by holding, hand to hand, a man of the age of the antediluvians, over whose head so many entire generations of young mornings and old evenings have fled, and before whom one stands, in fact, as neither young nor old; to listen to a human spirit, outlandish, behind the time, almost mysteriously awful; sole survivor of the thousand gray, cold sleepers, coevals of his own remote, hoary age; standing as sentinel before the ancient dead, looking coldly and strangely on life’s silly novelties; finding in the present no cooling for his inborn spirit-thirst, no more enchanting yesterdays or to-morrows, but only the day-before-yesterday of youth, and the day-after-to-morrow of death. It may consequently be imagined that so very old a man would speak only of his _farthest_ past, of his early day-dawn, which, of course, in the long evening of his protracted day, must now be blending with his midnight. On the other hand, that one like myself would not feel particularly younger before such a millionnaire of hours, as the Bienenroda Patriarch must be; and that his presence must make one feel more conscious of death than of immortality. A very aged man is a more powerful memento than a grave; for the older a grave is, the farther we look back to the succession of young persons who have mouldered in it; sometimes a maiden is concealed in an ancient grave; but an ancient dwindled body hides only an imprisoned spirit.

An opportunity for visiting the Patriarch was presented by a return coach-and-six, belonging to a count, on which I was admitted to a seat with the coachman. Just before arriving at Bienenroda, he pointed with his whip toward an orchard, tuneful with song, and said, “There sits the old man with his little animals around him.” I sprang from the noble equipage and went toward him. I ventured to expect that the Count’s six horses would give me, before the old man, the appearance of a person of rank, apart from the simplicity of my dress, whereby princes and heroes are wont to distinguish themselves from their tinselled lackeys. I was, therefore, a little surprised that the old man kept on playing with his pet hare, not even checking the barking of his poodle, as if counts were his daily bread, until, at last, he lifted his oil-cloth hat from his head. A buttoned overcoat, which gave room to see his vest, a long pair of knit over-alls, which were, in fact, enormous stockings, and a neckerchief, which hung down to his bosom, made his dress look modern enough. His time-worn frame was far more peculiar. The inner part of the eye, which is black in childhood, was quite white; his tallness, more than his years, seemed to bow him over into an arch; the out-turned point of his chin gave to his speech the appearance of mumbling; yet the expression of his countenance was lively, his eyes bright, his jaws full of white teeth, and his head covered with light hair.

I began by saying: “I came here solely on your account to see a man for whom there can assuredly be little new under the sun, though he himself is something very new under it. You are now strictly in your five and twenties; a man in your best years; since after a century a _new_ reckoning commences. For myself, I confess that after once clambering over the century terminus, or church-wall of a hundred years, I should neither know how old I was, nor whether I was myself. I should begin fresh and free, just as the world’s history has often done, counting again from the year one, in the middle of a thousand years. Yet why can not a man live to be as old as is many a giant tree of India still standing? It is well to question very old people concerning the methods by which they have prolonged their lives. How do you account for it, dear old sir?”

I was beginning to be vexed at the good man’s silence, when he softly replied: “Some suppose it is because I have always been cheerful; because I have adopted the maxim, ‘Never sad, ever glad’; but I ascribe it wholly to our dear Lord God; since the animals, which here surround us, though never sad, but happy for the most part, by no means so frequently exceed the usual boundary of their life, as does man. He exhibits an image of the eternal God, even in the length of his duration.”

Such words concerning God, uttered by a tongue one hundred and twenty-five years old, had great weight and consolation; and I at once felt their beautiful attraction. On mentioning animals, the old man turned again to his own; and, as though indifferent to him who had come in a coach-and-six, he began again to play with his menagerie, the hare, the spaniel, the silky poodle, the starling, and a couple of turtle-doves on his bosom; a pleasant bee-colony in the orchard also gave heed to him; with one whistle he sent the bees away, and with another summoned them into the ring of creatures, which surrounded him like a court-circle.

At last, he said: “No one need be surprised that a very old man, who has forgotten everything, and whom no one but the dear God knows or cares for, should give himself wholly to the dear animals. To whom can such an old man be of much use? I wander about in the villages, as in cities, wholly strange. If I see children, they come before me like my own remote childhood. If I meet old men, they seem like my past hoary years. I do not quite know where I now belong. I hang between heaven and earth. Yet God ever looks upon me bright and lovingly, with his two eyes, the sun and the moon. Moreover, animals lead into no sin, but rather to devotion. When my turtle-doves brood over their young and feed them, it seems to me just as if I saw God himself doing a great deal; for they derive their love and instinct toward their young, as a gift from him.”

The old man became silent, and looked pensively before him, as was his wont. A ringing of christening bells sounded from Bienenroda among the trees in the garden. He wept a little. I know not how I could have been so simple, after the beautiful words he had uttered, as to have mistaken his tears for a sign of weakness in his eyes. “I do not hear well, on account of my great age,” said he; “and it seems to me as if the baptismal bell from the distant sanctuary sounded up here very faintly. The old years of my childhood, more than a hundred years ago, ascend from the ancient depths of time, and gaze on me in wonder, while I and they know not whether we ought to weep or laugh.” Then, addressing his silky poodle, he called out, “Ho! ho! come here old fellow!”

The allusion to his childhood brought me to the purpose of my visit. “Excellent sir,” said I, “I am preparing the biography of the deceased Master Gotthelf Fibel, author of the famous Spelling-Book; and all I now need to complete it is the account of his death.” The old man smiled, and made a low bow. I continued, “No one is more likely to know the particulars of his decease than yourself; and you are the only person who can enrich me with the rare traits of his childhood; because every incident inscribed on a child’s brain grows deeper with years, like names cut into a gourd, while later inscriptions disappear. Tell me, I pray you, all that you know concerning the departed man; for I am to publish his Life at the Michaelmas Fair.”

He murmured, “Excellent genius; scholar; man of letters; author most famous; these and other fine titles I learned by heart and applied to myself, while I was that vain, blinded Fibel, who wrote and published the ordinary Spelling-Book in question.”

So then, this old man was the blessed Fibel himself! A hundred and twenty-five notes of admiration, ay, eighteen hundred and eleven notes in a row, would but feebly express my astonishment.

[Here follows a long conversation concerning Fibel, after which the narrative continues as follows:--]

The old man went into his little garden-house, and I followed him. He whistled, and instantly his black squirrel came down from a tree, whither it had gone more for pleasure than for food. Nightingales, thrushes, starlings, and other birds, flew back into the open window from the tops of the trees. A bulfinch, whose color had been changed by age from red to black, strutted about the room, uttering droll sounds, which it could not make distinct. The hare pattered about in the twilight, sometimes on his hind feet, sometimes on all fours. Every dog in the house bounded forward in glad, loving, human glee. But the most joyful of all was the poodle; for he knew he was to have a box with compartments fastened to his neck, containing a list of the articles wanted for supper, which it was his business to bring from the inn in Bienenroda. He was Fibel’s victualler, or provision-wagon. Children, who ran back and forth, were the only other ones who ministered to his wants.

In allusion to his pets, he said: “We ought to assist the circumscribed faculties of animals, by educating them, as far as we can, since we stand toward them, in a certain degree, as their Lord God; and we ought to train them to good morals, too; for very possibly they may continue to live after death. God and the animals are always good; but not so with man.”

Aged men impart spiritual things, as they give material things, with a shaking hand, which drops half. In the effort to gather up his recollections, he permitted me to quicken his memory with my own; and thus I obtained a connected account of some particulars in his experience. He said he might have been about a hundred years old, when he cut a new set of teeth, the pain of which disturbed him with wild dreams. One night he seemed to be holding in his hands a large sieve, and it was his task to pull the meshes apart, one by one. The close net-work, and the fastening to the wooden rim, gave him indescribable trouble. But as his dream went on, he seemed to hold in his hand the great bright sun, which flamed up into his face. He woke with a new-born feeling, and slumbered again, as if on waving tulips. He dreamed again that he was a hundred years old, and that he died as an innocent yearling child, without any of the sin or woe of earth; that he found his parents on high, who brought before him a long procession of his children, who had remained invisible to him while he was in this world, because they were transparent, like the angels. He rose from his bed with new teeth and new ideas. The old Fibel was consumed, and a true Phœnix stood in his place, sunning its colored wings. He had risen glorified out of no other grave than his own body. The world retreated; heaven came down.

When he had related these things, he at once bade me good night. Without waiting for the return of his ministering poodle, and with hands folded for prayer, he showed me the road. I withdrew, but I rambled a long time round the orchard, which had sprung entirely from seed of his own planting. Indeed he seldom ate a cherry without smuggling the stone and burying it in the ground for a resurrection. This habit often annoyed the neighboring peasants, who did not want high things growing on their boundaries. “But,” said he, “I cannot destroy a fruit-stone. If the peasants pull up the tree it produces, it will still have lived a little while, and die as a child dies.”

While loitering in the orchard, I heard an evening hymn played and sung. I returned near Fibel’s window, and saw him slowly turning a hand-organ, and accompanying the tune by softly singing an evening hymn. This organ, aided by his fragment of a voice, sufficed, in its monotonous uniformity, for his domestic devotion. I went away repeating the song.

Beautiful was the orchard when I returned the next morning. And the hoar-frost of age seemed thawed and fluid, and to glisten only as morning dew on Fibel’s after-blossom. The affection of his animals toward him rendered the morning still more beautiful, in an orchard every tree of which had for its mother the stone of some fruit that he had enjoyed. His animals were an inheritance from his parents; though, of course they were the great, great, great grandchildren of those which had belonged to them. The trees were full of brooding birds, and by a slight whistle he could lure down to his shoulders this tame posterity of his father’s singing-school. It was refreshing to the heart to see how quickly the tender flutterers surrounded him.

With the infantine satisfaction of a gray-headed child, he was accustomed to hang up on sticks, or in the trees, wherever the rays of the sun could best shine upon them, little balls of colored glass; and he took indescribable delight in this accordion of silver, gold, and jewel hues. These parti-colored sun-balls, varying the green with many flaming tints, were like crystal tulip-beds. Some of the red ones seemed like ripe apples among the branches. But what charmed the old man most were reflections of the landscape from these little world-spheres. They resembled the moving prospects shadowed forth in a diminishing mirror. “Ah,” said he, “when I contemplate the colors produced by the sunshine, which God gives to this dark world, it seems to me as if I had departed, and were already with God. And yet, since He is _in_ us, we are always with God.”

I asked him how it happened that, at his age, he spoke German almost purer than that used even by our best writers. Counting his birth from the end of his century [the new birth described in his dream], he replied: “I was somewhere about two years old, when I happened to hear a holy, spiritual minister, who spoke German with such an angel tongue, that he would not have needed a better in heaven. I heard him every Sabbath during several years.” He could not tell me the preacher’s name, but he vividly described his manner in the pulpit. He told how he spoke with no superfluity of words, airs, or gestures; how he uttered, in mild tones, things the most beautiful and forcible; how, like the Apostle John, with his resting-place close to heaven, this man spoke to the world, laying his hands calmly on the pulpit-desk, as an arm-case; how his every tone was a heart, and his every look a blessing; how the energy of this disciple of Christ was embedded in love, as the firm diamond is encased in ductile gold; how the pulpit was to him a Mount Tabor, whereon he transfigured both himself and his hearers; and how, of all clergymen, he best performed that which is the most difficult,--the _praying_ worthily.

My feelings grew constantly warmer toward this time-worn man, while I did not require a full return of affection from him any more than I should from a little child. But I remembered that I ought not to disturb the evening of his days with things of the world, and that I ought to depart. I would have him preserve undisturbed that sublime position of old age, where man lives, as it were, at the pole; where no star rises or sets; where the whole firmament is motionless and clear, while the Pole-Star of another world shines fixedly overhead. I therefore said to him, that I would return in the evening, and take my leave. To my surprise, he replied, that perhaps he should himself take leave of the whole world at evening, and that he wished not to be disturbed when dying. He said that he should that evening read to the end of the Revelation of St. John, and perhaps it might be the end with _him_ also. I ought to have mentioned previously that he read continually, and read nothing but the Bible, regularly through from the beginning to the end; and he had a fixed impression that he should depart on concluding the twentieth and twenty-first verses of the twenty-second chapter of the Revelation of John: “He which testifieth of these things saith, Surely I come quickly: Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” In consequence of this belief, he was in the habit of reading the last books of the Bible faster.

Little as I believed in so sudden a withering of his protracted after-blossom, I obeyed his latest-formed wish. Whenever a right wish is expressed by any man, we should do well to remember that it may be his _last_. I took my leave, requesting him to intrust me with his testamentary commissions for the village. He said they had been taken charge of long ago, and the children knew them. He cut a twig from a Christmas-tree, coeval with his childhood, and presented me with it as a keepsake.

In the beautiful summer evening, I could not refrain from stealthily approaching the house, through the orchard, to ascertain whether the good old man had ended his Bible and his life together. On the way, I found the torn envelope of a letter sealed with a black seal, and over me the white storks were speeding their way to a warmer country. I was not much encouraged when I heard all the birds singing in his orchard; for their ancestors had done the same when his father died. A towering cloud, full of the latest twilight, spread itself before my short-sighted vision, like a far-off, blooming, foreign landscape; and I could not comprehend how it was that I had never before noticed this strange-looking, reddish land; so much the more easily did it occur to me that this might be his Orient, whither God was leading the weary one. I had become so confused, as actually to mistake red bean-blossoms for a bit of fallen sunset. Presently, I heard a man singing to the accompaniment of an organ. It was the aged man singing his evening hymn:

“Lord of my life, another day
Once more hath sped away.”

The birds in the room, and those on the distant branches also, chimed in with his song. The bees, too, joined in with their humming, as in the warm summer evening they dived into the cups of the linden-blossoms. My joy kindled into a flame. He was alive! But I would not disturb his holy evening. I would let him remain with Him who had surrounded him with gifts and with years, and not call upon him to think of any man here below. I listened to the last verse of his hymn, that I might be still more certain of the actual continuance of his life, and then tardily I slipped away. To my joy, I still found, in the eternal youth of Nature, beautiful references to his lengthened age; from the everlasting rippling of the brook in the meadow, to a late swarm of bees, which had settled themselves on a linden-tree, probably in the forenoon, before two o’clock, as if, by taking their lodging with him, he was to be their bee-father, and continue to live. Every star twinkled to me a hope.

I went to the orchard very early in the morning, wishing to look upon the aged man in sleep; death’s ancient prelude, the warm dream of cold death. But he was reading, and had read, in his large-printed Bible, far beyond the Deluge, as I could see by the engravings. I held it to be a duty not to interrupt his solitude long. I told him I was going away, and gave him a little farewell billet, instead of farewell words. I was much moved, though silent. It was not the kind of emotion with which we take leave of a friend, or a youth, or an old man; it was like parting from a remote stranger-being, who scarcely glances at us from the high, cold clouds which hold him between the earth and the sun. There is a stillness of soul which resembles the stillness of bodies on a frozen sea, or on high mountains; every loud tone is an interruption too prosaically harsh, as in the softest adagio. Even those words, “for the last time,” the old man had long since left behind him. Yet he hastily presented to me my favorite flower, a blue Spanish vetch, in an earthen pot. This butterfly-flower is the sweeter, inasmuch as it so easily exhales its perfume and dies. He said he had not yet sung the usual morning-hymn, which followed the survival of his death-evening; and he begged me not to take it amiss that he did not accompany me, or even once look after me, especially as he could not see very well. He then added, almost with emotion, “O friend, may you live virtuously! We shall meet again, where my departed relatives will be present, and also that great preacher, whose name I have forgotten. We meet again.”

He turned immediately, quite tranquilly, to his organ. I parted from him, as from a life. He played on his organ beneath the trees, and his face was turned toward me; but to his dim eyes I knew that I should soon become as a motionless cloud. So I remained until he began his morning hymn, from old Neander:

“The Lord still leaves me living,
I hasten Him to praise;
My joyful spirit giving,
He hears my early lays.”

While he was singing, the birds flew round him; the dogs accustomed to the music, were silent; and it even wafted the swarm of bees into their hive. Bowed down as he was by age, his figure was so tall, that from the distance where I stood he looked sufficiently erect. I remained until the old man had sung the twelfth and last verse of his morning hymn:

“Ready my course to finish,
And come, O God, to Thee;
A conscience pure I cherish,
Till death shall summon me.”

* * * * *

Nothing of God’s making can a man love rightly, without being
the surer of God’s loving himself; neither the moon, nor the
stars, nor a rock, nor a tree, nor a flower, nor a bird. Not
the least grateful of my thanksgivings have been hymns that
have come to my lips while I have been listening to the birds
of an evening. Only let us love what God loves, and then His
love of ourselves will feel certain, and the sight of his face
we shall be sure of; and immortality, and heaven, and the
freedom of the universe, will be as easy for us to believe in,
as a father’s giving good gifts to his children.--MOUNTFORD.

MILTON’S HYMN OF PATIENCE.

BY ELIZABETH LLOYD HOWELL.

I am old and blind!
Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown;
Afflicted, and deserted of my kind,
Yet I am not cast down.

I am weak, yet strong;
I murmur not, that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father supreme! to thee.

O merciful One!
When men are farthest, then thou art most near;
When friends pass by, my weaknesses to shun,
Thy chariot I hear.

Thy glorious face
Is leaning towards me, and its holy light
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling-place;
And there is no more night.

On my bended knees,
I recognize thy purpose, clearly shown;
My vision thou hast dimmed, that I may see
Thyself, thyself alone.

I have naught to fear;
This darkness is the shadow of thy wing;
Beneath it I am almost sacred; here
Can come no evil thing.

O, I seem to stand
Trembling, where foot of mortal ne’er hath been;
Wrapped in the radiance from the sinless land.
Which eye hath never seen.

Visions come and go;
Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng;
From angel lips I seem to hear the flow
Of soft and holy song.

It is nothing now,--
When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes,
When airs from paradise refresh my brow,--
That earth in darkness lies.

In a purer clime,
My being fills with rapture! waves of thought
Roll in upon my spirit! strains sublime
Break over me unsought.

Give me now my lyre!
I feel the stirrings of a gift divine;
Within my bosom glows unearthly fire,
Lit by no skill of mine.

LETTER FROM AN OLD WOMAN, ON HER BIRTHDAY.

BY L. MARIA CHILD.

You ask me, dear friend, whether it does not make me sad to grow old. I tell you frankly it did make me sad for a while; but that time has long since past. The _name_ of being old I never dreaded. I am not aware that there ever was a time when I should have made the slightest objection to having my age proclaimed by the town-crier, if people had had any curiosity to know it. But I suppose every human being sympathizes with the sentiment expressed by Wordsworth:

“Life’s Autumn past, I stand on Winter’s verge,
And daily lose what I desire to keep.”

The first white streaks in my hair, and the spectre of a small black spider floating before my eyes, foreboding diminished clearness of vision, certainly did induce melancholy reflections. At that period, it made me nervous to think about the approaches of old age; and when young people thoughtlessly reminded me of it, they cast a shadow over the remainder of the day. It was mournful as the monotonous rasping of crickets, which tells that “the year is wearing from its prime.” I dreaded age in the same way that I always dread the coming of winter; because I want to keep the light, the warmth, the flowers, and the growth of summer. But, after all, when winter comes, I soon get used to him, and am obliged to acknowledge that he is a handsome old fellow, and by no means destitute of pleasant qualities. And just so it has proved with old age. Now that it has come upon me, I find it full of friendly compensations for all that it takes away.

The period of sadness and nervous dread on this subject, which I suppose to be a very general experience, is of longer or shorter duration, according to habits previously formed. From observation, I judge that those whose happiness has mainly depended on balls, parties, fashionable intercourse, and attentions flattering to vanity, usually experience a prolonged and querulous sadness, as years advance upon them; because, in the nature of things, such enjoyments pass out of the reach of the old, when it is too late to form a taste for less transient pleasures. The temporary depression to which I have alluded soon passed from my spirit, and I attribute it largely to the fact that I have always been pleased with very simple and accessible things. I always shudder a little at the approach of winter; yet, when it comes, the trees, dressed in feathery snow, or prismatic icicles, give me far more enjoyment, than I could find in a ball-room full of duchesses, decorated with marabout-feathers, opals, and diamonds. No costly bridal-veil sold in Broadway would interest me so much as the fairy lace-work which frost leaves upon the windows, in an unceasing variety of patterns. The air, filled with minute snow-stars, falling softly, ever falling, to beautify the earth, is to me a far lovelier sight, than would have been Prince Esterhazy, who dropped seed-pearls from his embroidered coat, as he moved in the measured mazes of the dance.

Speaking of the beautiful phenomenon of snow, reminds me how often the question has been asked what snow _is_, and what _makes_ it. I have never seen a satisfactory answer; but I happen to know what snow is, because I once saw the process of its formation. I was at the house of a Quaker, whose neat wife washed in an unfinished back-room all winter, that the kitchen might be kept in good order. I passed through the wash-room on the 16th of December, 1835, a day still remembered by many for its remarkable intensity of cold. Clouds of steam, rising from the tubs and boiling kettle, ascended to the ceiling, and fell from thence in the form of a miniature snow-storm. Here was an answer to the question, What _is_ snow? This plainly proved it to be frozen _vapor_, as ice is frozen _water_. The particles of water, expanded by heat, and floating in the air, were arrested in their separated state, and congealed in particles. It does not snow when the weather is intensely cold; for the lower part of the atmosphere must have some degree of warmth, if vapor is floating in it. When this vapor ascends, and meets a colder stratum of air, it is congealed, and falls downward in the form of snow.

“The snow! The snow! The beautiful snow!” How handsome do meadows and fields look in their pure, sparkling robe! I do not deny that the winter of the year and the winter of life both have intervals of dreariness. The _miserere_ howled by stormy winds is not pleasing to the ear, nor are the cold gray river and the dark brown hills refreshing to the eye. But the reading of Whittier’s Psalm drowns the howling of the winds, as “the clear tones of a bell are heard above the carts and drays of a city.” Even simple voices of mutual affection, by the fireside, have such musical and pervasive power, that the outside storm often passes by unheard. The absence of colors in the landscape is rather dismal, especially in the latter part of the winter. Shall I tell you what I do when I feel a longing for bright hues? I suspend glass prisms in the windows, and they make the light blossom into rainbows all over the room. Childish! you will say. I grant it. But is childishness the greatest folly? I told you I was satisfied with very simple pleasures; and whether it be wise or not, I consider it great good fortune. It is more fortunate certainly to have home-made rainbows _within_, especially when one is old; but even outward home-made rainbows are not to be despised, when flowers have hidden themselves, and the sun cannot manifest his prismatic glories, for want of mediums appropriate for their transmission.

But Nature does not leave us long to pine for variety. Before the snow-lustre quite passes away, March comes, sombre in dress, but with a cheerful voice of promise:

“The beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue-bird’s warble know.”

Here and there a Lady’s Delight peeps forth, smiling at me “right peert,” as Westerners say; and the first sight of the bright little thing gladdens my heart, like the crowing of a babe. The phenomena of spring have never yet failed to replenish the fountains of my inward life:

“Spring still makes spring in the _mind_,
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.”

As the season of Nature’s renovation advances, it multiplies within me spiritual photographs, never to be destroyed. Last year I saw a striped squirrel hopping along with a green apple in his paws, hugged up to his pretty little white breast. My mind daguerrotyped him instantaneously. It is there now; and I expect to find a more vivid copy when my soul opens its portfolio of pictures in the other world.

The wonders which summer brings are more and more suggestive of thought as I grow older. What mysterious vitality, what provident care, what lavishness of ornament, does Nature manifest, even in her most common productions! Look at a dry bean-pod, and observe what a delicate little strip of silver tissue is tenderly placed above and below the seed! Examine the clusters of Sweet-Williams, and you will find an endless variety of minute embroidery-patterns, prettily dotted into the petals with diverse shades of colors. The shining black seed they produce look all alike; but scatter them in the ground, and there will spring forth new combinations of form and color, exceeding the multiform changes of a kaleidoscope. I never can be sufficiently thankful that I early formed the habit of working in the garden with loving good-will. It has contributed more than anything else to promote healthiness of mind and body.