Chapter I: PUSHED my chair back, drew up another, stretched out my feet cozily (1)

upon it, rested my elbows on the chair arms, leaned my head on one hand, and looked straight into the leaping and dancing flame.

—Love is a flame—ruminated I; and (glancing round the room) how a flame brightens up a man’s habitation.

“Carlo,” said I, calling up my dog into the light, “good fellow, Carlo!” and I patted him kindly, and he wagged his tail, and laid his nose across my knee, and looked wistfully up in my face; then strode away—turned to look again, and lay down to sleep.

“Pho, the brute!” said I, “it is not enough, after all, to like a dog.”

—If now in that chair yonder, not the one your feet lie upon, but the other, beside you—closer yet—were seated a sweet-faced girl, with a pretty little foot lying out upon the hearth—a bit of lace running round the swelling throat—the hair parted to a charm over a forehead fair as any of your dreams; and if you could reach an arm around that chair back, without fear of giving offense, and suffer your fingers to play idly with those curls that escape down the neck; and if you could clasp with your other hand those little white, taper fingers of hers, which lie so temptingly within reach—and so, talk softly and low in presence of the blaze, while the hours slip without knowledge, and the winter winds whistle uncared for; if, in short, you were no bachelor, but the husband of some such sweet image (dream, call it rather), would it not be far pleasanter than this cold single night-sitting—counting the sticks—reckoning the length of the blaze, and the height of the falling snow?

And if, some or all of those wild vagaries that grow on your fancy at such an hour, you could whisper into listening, because loving ears—ears not tired with listening, because it is you who whisper—ears ever indulgent because eager to praise; and if your darkest fancies were lit up, not merely with bright wood fire, but with a ringing laugh of that sweet face turned up in fond rebuke—how far better than to be waxing black and sour over pestilential humors—alone—your very dog asleep.

And if, when a glowing thought comes into your brain, quick and sudden, you could tell it over as to a second self, to that sweet creature, who is not away, because she loves to be there; and if you could watch the thought catching that girlish mind, illuming that fair brow, sparkling in those pleasantest of eyes—how far better than to feel it slumbering, and going out, heavy, lifeless, and dead, in your own selfish fancy. And if a generous emotion steals over you—coming, you know not whither, would there not be a richer charm in lavishing it in caress, or endearing word, upon that fondest, and most dear one, than in patting your glossy-coated dog, or sinking lonely to smiling slumbers?

How would not benevolence ripen with such monitor to task it! How would not selfishness grow faint and dull, leaning ever to that second self, which is the loved one! How would not guile shiver, and grow weak, before that girl-brow and eye of innocence! How would not all that boyhood prized of enthusiasm, and quick blood, and life, renew itself in such presence!

The fire was getting hotter, and I moved into the middle of the room. The shadows the flames made were playing like fairy forms over floor, and wall, and ceiling.

My fancy would surely quicken, thought I, if such being were in attendance. Surely imagination would be stronger and purer if it could have the playful fancies of dawning womanhood to delight it. All toil would be torn from mind-labor, if but another heart grew into this present soul, quickening it, warming it, cheering it, bidding it ever—God speed!

_Her_ face would make a halo, rich as a rainbow, atop of all such noisome things, as we lonely souls call trouble. Her smile would illumine the blackest of crowding cares; and darkness that now seats you despondent, in your solitary chair for days together, weaving bitter fancies, dreaming bitter dreams, would grow light and thin, and spread, and float away—chased by that beloved smile.

Your friend—poor fellow! dies: never mind, that gentle clasp of _her_ fingers, as she steals behind you, telling you not to weep—it is worth ten friends!

Your sister, sweet one, is dead—buried. The worms are busy with all her fairness. How it makes you think earth nothing but a spot to dig graves upon!

—It is more: _she_, she says, will be a sister; and the waving curls as she leans upon your shoulder, touch your cheek, and your wet eyes turn to meet those other eyes—God has sent his angel, surely!

Your mother, alas for it, she is gone! Is there any bitterness to a youth, alone, and homeless, like this!

But you are not homeless; you are not alone; _she_ is there—her tears softening yours, her smile lighting yours, her grief killing yours; and you live again, to assuage that kind sorrow of hers.

Then—those children, rosy, fair-haired; no, they do not disturb you with their prattle now—they are yours! Toss away there on the greensward—never mind the hyacinths, the snowdrops, the violets, if so be any are there; the perfume of their healthful lips is worth all the flowers of the world. No need now to gather wild bouquets to love and cherish: flower, tree, gun, are all dead things; things livelier hold your soul.

And she, the mother, sweetest and fairest of all, watching, tending, caressing, loving, till your own heart grows pained with tenderest jealousy, and cures itself with loving.

You have no need now of any cold lecture to teach thankfulness; your heart is full of it. No need now, as once, of bursting blossoms of trees taking leaf and greenness, to turn thought kindly and thankfully; for, ever beside you, there is bloom, and ever beside you there is fruit—for which eye, heart and soul are full of unknown, and unspoken, because unspeakable thank-offering.

And if sickness catches you, binds you, lays you down—no lonely moanings and wicked curses at careless-stepping nurses. _The_ step is noiseless, and yet distinct beside you. The white curtains are drawn, or withdrawn by the magic of that other presence; and the soft, cool hand is upon your brow.

No cold comfortings of friend-watchers, merely come in to steal a word away from that outer world, which is pulling at their skirts; but, ever the sad, shaded brow of her, whose lightest sorrow for your sake is your greatest grief—if it were not a greater joy.

The blaze was leaping light and high, and the wood falling under the growing heat.

—So, continued I, this heart would be at length itself—striving with everything gross, even now as it clings to grossness. Love would make its strength native and progressive. Earth’s cares would fly. Joys would double. Susceptibilities be quickened; love master self; and having made the mastery, stretch onward, and upward toward infinitude.

And if the end came, and sickness brought that follower—Great Follower—which sooner or later is sure to come after, then the heart, and the hand of love, ever near, are giving to your tired soul, daily and hourly, lessons of that love which consoles, which triumphs, which circleth all and centereth in all—love infinite and divine!

Kind hands—none but _hers_—will smooth the hair upon your brow as the chill grows damp and heavy on it; and her fingers—none but hers—will lie in yours as the wasted flesh stiffens and hardens for the ground. _Her_ tears—you could feel no others, if oceans fell—will warm your drooping features once more to life; once more your eye, lighted in joyous triumph, kindles in her smile, and then—

The fire fell upon the hearth; the blaze gave a last leap—a flicker—then another—caught a little remaining twig—blazed up—wavered—went out.

There was nothing but a bed of glowing embers, over which the white ashes gathered fast. I was alone, with only my dog for company.

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III
ASHES—SIGNIFYING DESOLATION

AFTER all, thought I, ashes follow blaze inevitably as death follows life. Misery treads on the heels of joy; anguish rides swift after pleasure.

“Come to me again, Carlo,” said I to my dog; and I patted him fondly once more, but now only by the light of the dying embers.

It is very little pleasure one takes in fondling brute favorites; but it is a pleasure that when it passes, leaves no void. It is only a little alleviating redundance in your solitary heart-life which, if lost, another can be supplied.

But if your heart, not solitary—not quieting its humors with mere love of chase, or dog—not repressing, year after year, its earnest yearnings after something better and more spiritual—has fairly linked itself by bonds strong as life, to another heart—is the casting off easy then?

Is it then only a little heart-redundancy cut off, which the next bright sunset will fill up?

And my fancy, as it had painted doubt under the smoke, and cheer under warmth of the blaze, so now it began under the faint light of the smoldering embers, to picture heart-desolation.

What kind, congratulatory letters, hosts of them, coming from old and half-forgotten friends, now that your happiness is a year, or two years old!

“Beautiful.”

—Ay, to be sure, beautiful!

“Rich.”

—Pho, the dawdler! how little he knows of heart-treasure, who speaks of wealth to a man who loves his wife as a wife only should be loved!

“Young.”

—Young indeed; guileless as infancy; charming as the morning.

Ah, these letters bear a sting: they bring to mind, with new and newer freshness, if it be possible, the value of that which you tremble lest you lose.

How anxiously you watch that step—if it lose not its buoyancy. How you study the color on that cheek, if it grow not fainter. How you tremble at the luster in those eyes, if it be not the luster of death. How you totter under the weight of that muslin sleeve—a phantom weight! How you fear to do it, and yet press forward, to note if that breathing be quickened, as you ascend the home-heights, to look off on the sunset lighting the plain.

Is your sleep, quiet sleep, after that she has whispered to you her fears, and in the same breath—soft as a sigh, sharp as an arrow—bid you bear it bravely?

Perhaps—the embers were now glowing fresher, a little kindling, before the ashes—she triumphs over disease.

But Poverty, the world’s almoner, has come to you with ready, spare hand.

Alone, with your dog living on bones, and you on hope—kindling each morning, dying slowly each night—this could be borne. Philosophy would bring home its stores to the lone man. Money is not in his hand, but knowledge is in his brain! and from that brain he draws out faster, as he draws slower from his pocket. He remembers; and on remembrance he can live for days and weeks. The garret, if a garret covers him, is rich in fancies. The rain, if it pelts, pelts only him used to rain-peltings. And his dog crouches not in dread, but in companionship. His crust he divides with him, and laughs. He crowns himself with glorious memories of Cervantes, though he begs; if he nights it under the stars, he dreams heaven-sent dreams of the prisoned and homeless Galileo.

He hums old sonnets, and snatches of poor Jonson’s plays. He chants Dryden’s odes, and dwells on Otway’s rhyme. He reasons with Bolingbroke or Diogenes as the humor takes him, and laughs at the world, for the world, thank Heaven, has left him alone!

Keep your money, old misers, and your palaces, old princes—the world is mine!

I care not, fortune, what you me deny.
You cannot rob me of free nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living streams, at eve,
Let health, my nerves and finer fibers brace,
And I, their toys, to the great children, leave.
Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can we bereave!

But—if not alone?

If _she_ is clinging to you for support, for consolation, for home, for life—she, reared in luxury, perhaps, is faint for bread?

Then the iron enters the soul; then the nights darken under any skylight. Then the days grow long, even in the solstice of winter.

She may not complain; what then?

Will your heart grow strong, if the strength of her love can dam up the fountains of tears, and the tied tongue not tell of bereavement? Will it solace you to find her parting the poor treasure of food you have stolen for her, with begging, foodless children?

But this ill, strong hands and Heaven’s help will put down. Wealth again; flowers again; patrimonial acres again; brightness again. But your little Bessie, your favorite child, is pining.

Would to God! you say in agony, that wealth could bring fullness again into that blanched cheek, or round those little thin lips once more; but it can not. Thinner and thinner they grow; plaintive and more plaintive her sweet voice.

“Dear Bessie”—and your tones tremble; you feel that she is on the edge of the grave? Can you pluck her back? Can endearments stay her? Business is heavy, away from the loved child; home, you go, to fondle while yet time is left—but _this_ time you are too late. She is gone. She can not hear you; she can not thank you for the violets you put within her stiff white hand.

And then—the grassy mound—the cold shadow of head-stone!

The wind, growing with the night, is rattling at the window panes, and whistles dismally. I wipe a tear, and in the interval of my reverie, thank God, that I am no such mourner.

But gaiety, snail-footed, creeps back to the household. All is bright again:

The violet bed’s not sweeter
Than the delicious breath marriage sends forth.

_Her_ lip is rich and full; her cheek delicate as a flower. Her frailty doubles your love.

And the little one she clasps—frail too—too frail: the boy you had set your hopes and heart on. You have watched him growing, ever prettier, ever winning more and more upon your soul. The love you bore to him when he first lisped names—your name and hers—has doubled in strength now that he asks innocently to be taught of this, of that, and promises you by that quick curiosity that flashes in his eye, a mind full of intelligence.

And some hair-breadth escape by sea, or flood, that he perhaps may have had—which unstrung your soul to such tears as you pray God may be spared you again—has endeared the little fellow to your heart a thousandfold.

And, now with his pale sister in the grave, all _that_ love has come away from the mound, where worms feast, and centers on the boy.

How you watch the storms lest they harm him! How often you steal to his bed late at night and lay your hand lightly upon the brow, where the curls cluster thick, rising and falling with the throbbing temples, and watch, for minutes together, the little lips half-parted, and listen—your ear close to them—if the breathing be regular and sweet!

But the day comes—the night rather—when you can catch no breathing.

Aye, put your hair away—compose yourself—listen again.

No, there is nothing!

Put your hand now to his brow—damp indeed—but not with healthful night sleep: it is not your hand, no, do not deceive yourself—it is your loved boy’s forehead that is so cold; and your loved boy will never speak to you again—never play again—he is dead!

Oh, the tears—the tears: what blessed things are tears! Never fear now to let them fall on his forehead, or his lip, lest you waken him! Clasp him—clasp him harder—you can not hurt, you can not waken him! Lay him down, gently or not, it is the same; he is stiff; he is stark and cold.

* * * * *

But courage and patience, faith and hope recovers itself easier, thought I, than these embers will get into blaze again.

But courage, and patience, faith, and hope have their limit. Blessed be the man who escapes such trial as will determine limit!

To a lone man it comes not near; for how can trial take hold where there is nothing by which to try?

A funeral? You reason with philosophy. A graveyard? You read Hervey and muse upon the wall. A friend dies? You sigh, you pat your dog—it is over. Losses? You retrench—you light your pipe—it is forgotten. Calumny? You laugh—you sleep.

But with that childless wife clinging to you in love and sorrow—what then?

Can you take down Seneca now, and coolly blow the dust from the leaf-tops? Can you crimp your lip with Voltaire? Can you smoke idly, your feet dangling with the ivies, your thoughts all waving fancies upon a church-yard wall—a wall that borders the grave of your boy?

Can you amuse yourself by turning stinging Martial into rhyme? Can you pat your dog, and seeing him wakeful and kind, say, “It is enough?” Can you sneer at calumny, and sit by your fire dozing?

Blessed, thought I again, is the man who escapes such trial as will measure the limit of patience and the limit of courage!

But the trial comes—colder and colder were growing the embers.

That wife, over whom your love broods, is fading. Not beauty fading—that, now that your heart is wrapped in her being, would be nothing.

She sees with quick eye your dawning apprehension, and she tries hard to make that step of hers elastic.

Your trials and your loves together have centered your affections. They are not now as when you were a lone man, wide-spread and superficial. They have caught from domestic attachments a finer tone and touch. They cannot shoot out tendrils into barren world-soil and suck up thence strengthening nutriment. They have grown under the forcing-glass of home-roof, they will not now bear exposure.

You do not now look men in the face as if a heart-bond was linking you—as if a community of feeling lay between. There is a heart-bond that absorbs all others; there is a community that monopolizes your feeling. When the heart lay wide open, before it had grown upon, and closed around particular objects, it could take strength and cheer from a hundred connections that now seem colder than ice.

And now those particular objects—alas for you!—are failing.

What anxiety pursues you! How you struggle to fancy—there is no danger; how she struggles to persuade you—there is no danger!

How it grates now on your ear—the toil and turmoil of the city! It was music when you were alone; it was pleasant even, when from the din you were elaborating comforts for the cherished objects—when you had such sweet escape as evening drew on.

Now it maddens you to see the world careless while you are steeped in care. They hustle you in the street; they smile at you across the table; they bow carelessly over the way; they do not know what canker is at your heart.

The undertaker comes with his bill for the dead boy’s funeral. He knows your grief; he is respectful. You bless him in your soul. You wish the laughing street-goers were all undertakers.

Your eye follows the physician as he leaves your house: is he wise, you ask yourself; is he prudent? Is he the best? Did he never fail—is he never forgetful?

And now the hand that touches yours, is it no thinner—no whiter than yesterday? Sunny days come when she revives; color comes back; she breathes freer; she picks flowers; she meets you with a smile. Hope lives again.

But the next day of storm she is fallen. She cannot talk even; she presses your hand.

You hurry away from business before your time. What matter for clients—who is to reap the rewards? What matter for fame—whose eye will it brighten? What matter for riches—whose is the inheritance?

You find her propped with pillows; she is looking over a little picture-book be-thumbed by the dear boy she has lost. She hides it in her chair; she has pity on you.

—Another day of revival, when the spring sun shines, and flowers open out of doors; she leans on your arm, and strolls into the garden where the first birds are singing. Listen to them with her—what memories are in bird-songs! You need not shudder at her tears—they are tears of thanksgiving. Press the hand that lies light upon your arm, and you, too, thank God, while yet you may!

* * * * *

You are early home—mid-afternoon. Your step is not light; it is heavy, terrible.

They have sent for you.

She is lying down; her eyes half closed; her breathing long and interrupted.

She hears you; her eye opens; you put your hand in hers; yours trembles—hers does not. Her lips move; it is your name.

“Be strong,” she says, “God will help you!”

She presses harder your hand: “Adieu!”

A long breath—another; you are alone again. No tears now; poor man! You cannot find them!

* * * * *

—Again home early. There is a smell of varnish in your house. A coffin is there; they have clothed the body in decent grave clothes, and the undertaker is screwing down the lid, slipping round on tip-toe. Does he fear to waken her?

He asks you a simple question about the inscription upon the plate, rubbing it with his coat cuff. You look him straight in the eye; you motion to the door; you dare not speak.

He takes up his hat and glides out stealthful as a cat.

The man has done his work well for all. It is a nice coffin—a very nice coffin! Pass your hand over it—how smooth!

Some sprigs of mignonette are lying carelessly in a little gilt-edged saucer. She loved mignonette.

It is a good stanch table the coffin rests on; it is your table; you are a housekeeper—a man of family!

Ay, of family! keep down outcry, or the nurse will be in. Look over at the pinched features; is this all that is left of her? And where is your heart now? No, don’t thrust your nails into your hands, nor mangle your lip, nor grate your teeth together. If you could only weep!

—Another day. The coffin is gone out. The stupid mourners have wept—what idle tears! She with your crushed heart, has gone out!

Will you have pleasant evenings at your home now?

Go into your parlor that your prim housekeeper has made comfortable with clean hearth and blaze of sticks.

Sit down in your chair; there is another velvet cushioned one, over against yours—empty. You press your fingers on your eye-balls, as if you would press out something that hurt the brain; but you cannot. Your head leans upon your hand; your eye rests upon the flashing blaze.

Ashes always come after blaze.

Go now into the room where she was sick—softly, lest the prim housekeeper come after.

They have put new dimity upon her chair; they have hung new curtains over the bed. They have removed from the stand its vials, and silver bell; they have put a little vase of flowers in their place; the perfume will not offend the sick sense now. They have half opened the window, that the room so long closed may have air. It will not be too cold.

She is not there.

—Oh, God! thou who dost temper the wind to the shorn lamb—be kind!

The embers were dark; I stirred them; there was no sign of life. My dog was asleep. The clock in my tenant’s chamber had struck one.

I dashed a tear or two from my eyes; how they came there I know not. I half ejaculated a prayer of thanks, that such desolation had not yet come nigh me; and a prayer of hope—that it might never come.

In a half hour more, I was sleeping soundly. My reverie was ended.

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BY A CITY GRATE

BLESSED be letters—they are the monitors, they are also the comforters, and they are the only true heart-talkers! Your speech, and their speeches, are conventional; they are molded by circumstance; they are suggested by the observation, remark, and influence of the parties to whom the speaking is addressed, or by whom it may be overheard.

Your truest thought is modified half through its utterance by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual; it is not integral: it is social and mixed—half of you, and half of others. It bends, it sways, it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens.

But it is not so of letters—there you are, with only the soulless pen, and the snow-white, virgin paper. Your soul is measuring itself by itself, and saying its own sayings; there are no sneers to modify its utterance—no scowl to scare—nothing is present but you, and your thought.

Utter it then freely—write it down—stamp it—burn it in the ink!—There it is, a true soul-print!

Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter! It is worth all the lip-talk in the world. Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, artistic?

Let me see it, then; let me run it over; tell me age, sex, circumstance, and I will tell you if it be studied or real—if it be the merest lip-slang put into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper.

I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with narrow, crimson ribbon, now soiled with frequent handling, which far into some winter’s night, I take down from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and run over, with such sorrow, and such joy—such tears and such smiles, as I am sure make me for weeks after, a kinder and holier man.

There are in this little packet, letters in the familiar hand of a mother—what gentle admonition—what tender affection!—God have mercy on him who outlives the tears that such admonitions, and such affection call up to the eye! There are others in the budget, in the delicate, and unformed hand of a loved, and lost sister—written when she, and you were full of glee, and the best mirth of youthfulness; does it harm you to recall that mirthfulness? or to trace again, for the hundredth time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom, with its _i’s_ so carefully dotted, and its gigantic _t’s_ so carefully crossed, by the childish hand of a little brother?

I have added latterly to that packet of letters; I almost need a new and longer ribbon; the old one is getting too short. Not a few of these new and cherished letters, a former reverie[1] has brought to me; not letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully executed, prettily imagined—no such thing: but letters of sympathy—of sympathy which means sympathy—the παθημί and the συν.

Footnote 1:

The first reverie—_Smoke, Flame and Ashes_—was published some months
previous to this, in the _Southern Literary Messenger_.

It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them; I am too selfish for that. It is enough to say that they, the kind writers, have seen a heart in the reverie—have felt that it was real, true. They know it; a secret influence has told it. What matters it, pray, if, literally, there was no wife, and no dead child, and no coffin in the house? Is not feeling, feeling; and heart, heart? Are not these fancies thronging on my brain, bringing tears to my eyes, bringing joy to my soul, as living, as anything human can be living? What if they have no material type—no objective form? All that is crude—a mere reduction of ideality to sense—a transformation of the spiritual to the earthy—a leveling of soul to matter.

Are we not creatures of thought and passion? Is anything about us more earnest than that same thought and passion? Is there anything more real—more characteristic of that great and dim destiny to which we are born, and which may be written down in that terrible word—Forever?

Let those who will then, sneer at what in their wisdom they call untruth—at what is false, because it has no material presence: this does not create falsity; would to Heaven that it did!

And yet if there was actual, material truth, superadded to reverie, would such objectors sympathize the more? No! a thousand times, no; the heart that has no sympathy with thoughts and feelings that scorch the soul, is dead also—whatever its mocking tears, and gestures may say—to a coffin or a grave!

Let them pass, and we will come back to these cherished letters.

A mother, who has lost a child, has, she says, shed a tear—not one, but many—over the dead boy’s coldness. And another, who has not lost, but who trembles lest she lose, has found the words failing as she read, and a dim, sorrow-borne mist spreading over the page.

Another, yet rejoicing in all those family ties, that make life a charm, has listened nervously to careful reading, until the husband is called home, and the coffin is in the house—“Stop!”—she says; and a gush of tears tells the rest.

Yet the cold critic will say—“It was artfully done.” A curse on him!—it was not art: it was nature.

Another, a young, fresh, healthful girl-mind, has seen something in the love-picture—albeit so weak—of truth; and has kindly believed that it must be earnest. Ay, indeed is it, fair, and generous one—earnest as life and hope! Who, indeed, with a heart at all, that has not yet slipped away irreparably and forever from the shores of youth—from that fairyland which young enthusiasm creates, and over which bright dreams hover—but knows it to be real? And so such things will be read, till hopes are dashed, and death is come.

Another, a father, has laid down the book in tears.

—God bless them all! How far better this, than the cold praise of newspaper paragraphs, or the critically contrived approval of colder friends!

Let me gather up these letters, carefully—to be read when the heart is faint, and sick of all that there is unreal, and selfish in the world. Let me tie them together, with a new and longer bit of ribbon—not by a love-knot, that is too hard—but by an easy-slipping knot, that so I may get at them the better. And now, they are all together, a snug packet, and we will label them, not sentimentally (I pity the one who thinks it!), but earnestly, and in the best meaning of the term—SOUVENIRS DU COEUR.

Thanks to my first reverie, which has added to such a treasure!

And now to my SECOND REVERIE.

I am no longer in the country. The fields, the trees, the brooks are far away from me, and yet they are very present. A letter from my tenant—how different from those other letters!—lies upon my table, telling me what fields he has broken up for the autumn grain, and how many beeves he is fattening, and how the potatoes are turning out.

But I am in a garret of the city. From my window I look over a mass of crowded house-tops—moralizing often upon the scene, but in a strain too long and somber to be set down here. In place of the wide country chimney, with its iron fire-dogs, is a snug grate, where the maid makes me a fire in the morning, and rekindles it in the afternoon.

I am usually fairly seated in my chair—a cozily stuffed office chair—by five or six o’clock of the evening. The fire has been newly made, perhaps an hour before: first, the maid drops a withe of paper in the bottom of the grate, then a stick or two of pine-wood, and after it a hod of Liverpool coal; so that by the time I am seated for the evening, the sea-coal is fairly in a blaze.

When this has sunk to a level with the second bar of the grate, the maid replenishes it with a hod of anthracite; and I sit musing and reading, while the new coal warms and kindles—not leaving my place, until it has sunk to the third bar of the grate, which marks my bedtime.

I love these accidental measures of the hours, which belong to you, and your life, and not to the world. A watch is no more the measure of your time, than of the time of your neighbors; a church clock is as public and vulgar as a church-warden. I would as soon think of hiring the parish sexton to make my bed, as to regulate my time by the parish clock.

A shadow that the sun casts upon your carpet, or a streak of light on the slated roof yonder, or the burning of your fire, are pleasant time-keepers full of presence, full of companionship, and full of the warning—time is passing!

In the summer season I have even measured my reading, and my night-watch, by the burning of a taper; and I have scratched upon the handle to the little bronze taper-holder, that meaning passage of the New Testament—Νυξ γαρ ερχεται—the night cometh!

But I must get upon my reverie; it was a drizzly evening; I had worked hard during the day, and had drawn my boots—thrust my feet into slippers—thrown on a Turkish loose dress, and Greek cap—souvenirs to me of other times, and other places, and sat watching the lively, uncertain yellow play of the bituminous flame.

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I
SEA-COAL

IT is like a flirt—mused I; lively, uncertain, bright-colored, waving here and there, melting the coal into black shapeless mass, making foul, sooty smoke, and pasty, trashy residuum! Yet withal—pleasantly sparkling, dancing, prettily waving, and leaping like a roebuck from point to point.

How like a flirt! And yet is not this tossing caprice of girlhood, to which I liken my sea-coal flame, a native play of life, and belonging by nature to the playtime of life? Is it not a sort of essential fire-kindling to the weightier and truer passions—even as Jenny puts the soft coal first, the better to kindle the anthracite? Is it not a sort of necessary consumption of young vapors, which float in the soul, and which is left thereafter the purer? Is there not a stage somewhere in every man’s youth, for just such waving, idle, heart-blaze, which means nothing, yet which must be got over?

Lamartine says, somewhere, very prettily, that there is more of quick running sap, and floating shade in a young tree; but more of fire in the heart of a sturdy oak—_Il y a plus de sève folle et d’ombre flottante dans les jeunes plants de la forêt; il y a plus de feu dans le vieux cœur du chêne_.

Is Lamartine playing off his prettiness of expression, dressing up with his poetry—making a good conscience against the ghost of some accusing Graziella, or is there truth in the matter?

A man who has seen sixty years, whether widower or bachelor, may well put such sentiment into words: it feeds his wasted heart with hope; it renews the exultation of youth by the pleasantest of equivocation, and the most charming of self-confidence. But after all, is it not true? Is not the heart like new blossoming field-plants, whose first flowers are half-formed, one-sided perhaps, but by and by, in maturity of season, putting out wholesome, well-formed blossoms that will hold their leaves long and bravely?

Bulwer in his story of _The Caxtons_, has counted first heart-flights mere fancy-passages—a dalliance with the breezes of love, which pass, and leave healthful heart appetite. Half the reading world has read the story of Trevanion and Pisistratus. But Bulwer is—past; his heart-life is used up—_épuisé_. Such a man can very safely rant about the cool judgment of after years.

Where does Shakespeare put the unripe heart-age? All of it before the ambition, that alone makes the hero-soul. The Shakespeare man “sighs like a furnace,” before he stretches his arm to achieve the “bauble, reputation.”

Yet Shakespeare has meted a soul-love, mature and ripe, without any young furnace sighs to Desdemona and Othello. Cordelia, the sweetest of his play creations, loves without any of the mawkish matter, which makes the whining love of a Juliet. And Florizel in the _Winter’s Tale_, says to Perdita in the true spirit of a most sound heart:

My desires
Run not before mine honor, nor my wishes
Burn hotter than my faith.

How is it with Hector and Andromache? no sea-coal blaze, but one that is constant, enduring, pervading: a pair of hearts full of esteem, and best love—good, honest, and sound.

Look now at Adam and Eve, in God’s presence, with Milton for showman. Shall we quote by this sparkling blaze, a gem from the _Paradise Lost_? We will hum it to ourselves—what Raphael sings to Adam—a classic song.

——Him, serve and fear!
Of other creatures, as Him pleases best
Wherever placed, let Him dispose; joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And thy fair Eve!

And again:

——Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges; hath his seat
In reason, and is judicious: is the scale
By which to Heavenly love thou may’st ascend!

None of the playing sparkle in this love, which belongs to the flame of my sea-coal fire that is now dancing, lively as a cricket. But on looking about my garret chamber, I can see nothing that resembles the archangel Raphael, or “thy fair Eve.”

There is a degree of moisture about the sea-coal flame, which with the most earnest of my musing, I find it impossible to attach to that idea of a waving sparkling heart which my fire suggests. A damp heart must be a foul thing to be sure. But whoever heard of one?

Wordsworth somewhere in the _Excursion_ says:

The good die first,
And they whose hearts are _dry_ as summer dust
Burn to the socket!

What, in the name of Rydal Mount, is a dry heart? A dusty one, I can conceive of: a bachelor’s heart must be somewhat dusty, as he nears the sixtieth summer of his pilgrimage—and hung over with cobwebs, in which sit such watchful gray old spiders as avarice, and selfishness, forever on the lookout for such bottle-green flies as lust.

“I will never”—said I—gripping at the elbows of my chair—“live a bachelor till sixty—never, so surely as there is hope in man, or charity in woman, or faith in both!”

And with that thought my heart leaped about in playful coruscations, even like the flame of the sea-coal—rising, and wrapping round old and tender memories and images that were present to me—trying to cling, and yet no sooner fastened than off—dancing again, riotous in its exultation—a succession of heart-sparkles, blazing, and going out!

—And is there not—mused I—a portion of this world forever blazing in just such lively sparkles, waving here and there as the air-currents fan them?

Take, for instance, your heart of sentiment, and quick sensibility, a weak, warm-working heart, flying off in tangents of unhappy influence, unguided by prudence, and perhaps virtue. There is a paper by Mackenzie, in the _Mirror_ for April, 1780, which sets this untoward sensibility in a strong light.

And the more it is indulged, the more strong and binding such a habit of sensibility becomes. Poor Mackenzie himself must have suffered thus; you can not read his books without feeling it; your eye, in spite of you, runs over with his sensitive griefs, while you are half-ashamed of his success at picture-making. It is a terrible inheritance; and one that a strong man or woman will study to subdue: it is a vain sea-coal sparkling, which will count no good. The world is made of much hard, flinty substance, against which your better and holier thoughts will be striking fire—see to it that the sparks do not burn you!

But what a happy, careless life belongs to this bachelorhood in which you may strike out boldly right and left! Your heart is not bound to another which may be full of only sickly vapors of feeling; nor is it frozen to a cold, man’s heart under a silk bodice—knowing nothing of tenderness but the name, to prate of; and nothing of soul-confidence but clumsy confession. And if in your careless outgoings of feeling you get here only a little lip vapidity in return, be sure that you will find, elsewhere, a true heart utterance. This last you will cherish in your inner soul—a nucleus for a new group of affections; and the other will pass with a whiff of your cigar.

Or if your feelings are touched, struck, hurt, who is the wiser, or the worse, but you only? And have you not the whole skein of your heart-life in your own fingers to wind, or unwind, in what shape you please? Shake it, or twine it, or tangle it, by the light of your fire, as you fancy best. He is a weak man who can not twist and weave the threads of his feeling—however fine, however tangled, however strained, or however strong—into the great cable of purpose, by which he lies moored to his life of action.

Reading is a great and happy disentangler of all those knotted snarls—those extravagant vagaries, which belong to a heart sparkling with sensibility; but the reading must be cautiously directed. There is old, placid Burton, when your soul is weak, and its digestion of life’s humors is bad; there is Cowper, when your spirit runs into kindly, half-sad, religious musing; there is Crabbe, when you would shake off vagary, by a little handling of sharp actualities. There is Voltaire, a homeopathic doctor, whom you can read when you want to make a play of life, and crack jokes at nature, and be witty with destiny; there is Rousseau, when you want to lose yourself in a mental dreamland, and be beguiled by the harmony of soul-music and soul-culture.

And when you would shake off this, and be sturdiest among the battlers for hard, world-success, and be forewarned of rocks against which you must surely smite—read Bolingbroke—run over the letters of Lyttleton; read, and think of what you read, in the cracking lines of Rochefoucauld. How he sums us up in his stinging words!—how he puts the scalpel between the nerves—yet he never hurts; for he is dissecting dead matter.

If you are in a genial, careless mood, who is better than such extemporizers of feeling and nature—good-hearted fellows—as Sterne and Fielding?

And then, again, there are Milton and Isaiah, to lift up one’s soul until it touches cloud-land, and you wander with their guidance, on swift feet, to the very gates of heaven.

But this sparkling sensibility to one struggling under infirmity, or with grief or poverty, is very dreadful. The soul is too nicely and keenly hinged to be wrenched without mischief. How it shrinks, like a hurt child, from all that is vulgar, harsh and crude! Alas, for such a man!—he will be buffeted, from beginning to end; his life will be a sea of troubles. The poor victim of his own quick spirit he wanders with a great shield of doubt hung before him, so that none, not even friends, can see the goodness of such kindly qualities as belong to him. Poverty, if it comes upon him, he wrestles with in secret, with strong, frenzied struggles. He wraps his scant clothes about him to keep him from the cold; and eyes the world, as if every creature in it was breathing chill blasts at him, from every opened mouth. He threads the crowded ways of the city, proud in his griefs, vain in his weakness, not stopping to do good. Bulwer, in the _New Timon_, has painted in a pair of stinging Pope-like lines, this feeling in a woman:

Her vengeful pride, a kind of madness grown,
She hugged her wrongs, her sorrow was her throne!

Cold picture! yet the heart was sparkling under it, like my sea-coal fire; lifting and blazing, and lighting and falling—but with no object; and only such little heat as begins and ends within.

Those fine sensibilities, ever active, are chasing and observing all; they catch a hue from what the dull and callous pass by unnoticed—because unknown. They blunder at the great variety of the world’s opinions; they see tokens of belief where others see none. That delicate organization is a curse to a man: and yet, poor fool, he does not see where his cure lies; he wonders at his griefs, and has never reckoned with himself their source. He studies others, without studying himself. He eats the leaves that sicken, and never plucks up the root that will cure.

With a woman it is worse; with her, this delicate susceptibility is like a frail flower, that quivers at every rough blast of heaven; her own delicacy wounds her; her highest charm is perverted to a curse.

She listens with fear; she reads with trembling; she looks with dread. Her sympathies give a tone, like the harp of Æolus, to the slightest breath. Her sensibility lights up, and quivers and falls like the flame of a sea-coal fire.

If she loves (and may not a bachelor reason on this daintiest of topics), her love is a gushing, wavy flame, lit up with hope that has only a little kindling matter to light it; and this soon burns out. Yet intense sensibility will persuade her that the flame still scorches. She will mistake the annoyance of affection unrequited for the sting of a passion that she fancies still burns. She does not look deep enough to see that the passion is gone, and the shocked sensitiveness emits only faint, yellowish sparkles in its place; her high-wrought organization makes those sparks seem a veritable flame.

With her, judgment, prudence and discretion are cold measured terms, which have no meaning, except as they attach to the actions of others. Of her own acts she never predicates them; feeling is much too high to allow her to submit to any such obtrusive guides of conduct. She needs disappointment to teach her truth; to teach that all is not gold that glitters—to teach that all warmth does not blaze. But let her beware how she sinks under any fancied disappointments: she who sinks under real disappointment, lacks philosophy; but she who sinks under a fancied one, lacks purpose. Let her flee as the plague such brooding thoughts as she will love to cherish; let her spurn dark fancies as visitants of hell; let the soul rise with the blaze of new-kindled, active and world-wide emotions, and so brighten into steady and constant flame. Let her abjure such poets as Cowper, or Byron, or even Wordsworth; and if she must poetize, let her lay her mind to such manly verse as Pope’s, or to such sound and ringing organry as _Comus_.

My fire was getting dull, and I thrust in the poker: it started up on the instant into a hundred little angry tongues of flame.

—Just so—thought I—the oversensitive heart once cruelly disturbed, will fling out a score of flaming passions, darting here and darting there—half-smoke, half-flame—love and hate—canker and joy—wild in its madness, not knowing whither its sparks are flying. Once break roughly upon the affections, or even the fancied affections of such a soul, and you breed a tornado of maddened action—a whirlwind of fire that hisses and sends out jets of wild, impulsive combustion that make the bystanders—even those most friendly—stand aloof until the storm is past.

But this is not all the dashing flame of my sea-coal suggests.

—How like a flirt! mused I again, recurring to my first thought—so lively, yet uncertain; so bright yet so flickering! Your true flirt plays with sparkles; her heart, much as there is of it, spends itself in sparkles; she measures it to sparkle, and habit grows into nature, so that anon, it can only sparkle. How carefully she cramps it, if the flames show too great a heat; how dexterously she flings its blaze here and there; how coyly she subdues it; how winningly she lights it!

All this is the entire reverse of the unpremeditated dartings of the soul at which I have been looking; sensibility scorns heart-curbings and heart-teachings; sensibility inquires not—how much! but only—where?

Your true flirt has a coarse-grained soul; well modulated and well tutored, but there is no fineness in it. All its native fineness is made coarse by coarse efforts of the will. True feeling is a rustic vulgarity, the flirt does not tolerate; she counts its healthiest and most honest manifestation, all sentiment. Yet she will play you off a pretty string of sentiment, which she has gathered from the poets; she adjusts it prettily as a Gobelin weaver adjusts the colors in his _tapis_. She shades it off delightfully; there are no bold contrasts, but a most artistic mellowing of _nuances_.

She smiles like a wizard, and jingles it with a laugh, such as tolled the poor home-bound Ulysses to the Circean bower. She has a cast of the head, apt and artful as the most dexterous cast of the best trout-killing rod. Her words sparkle and flow hurriedly, and with the prettiest doubleness of meaning. Naturalness she copies and she scorns. She accuses herself of a single expression or regard, which nature prompts. She prides herself on her schooling. She measures her wit by the triumphs of her art; she chuckles over her own falsity to herself. And if by chance her soul—such germ as is left of it—betrays her into untoward confidence, she condemns herself, as if she had committed crime.

She is always gay, because she has no depth of feeling to be stirred. The brook that runs shallow over hard pebbly bottom always rustles. She is light-hearted, because her heart floats in sparkles—like my sea-coal fire. She counts on marriage, not as the great absorbent of a heart’s love and life, but as a happy, feasible, and orderly conventionality, to be played with, and kept at distance, and finally to be accepted as a cover for the faint and tawdry sparkles of an old and cherished heartlessness.

She will not pine under any regrets, because she has no appreciation of any loss: she will not chafe at indifference, because it is her art; she will not be worried with jealousies, because she is ignorant of love. With no conception of the soul in its strength and fullness, she sees no lack of its demands. A thrill, she does not know; a passion, she can not imagine; joy is a name; grief is another; and life, with its crowding scenes of love and bitterness, is a play upon the stage.

I think it is Madame Dudevant who says, in something like the same connection: _Les hiboux ne connaissent pas le chemin par où les aigles vont au soleil_.

—Poor Ned! mused I, looking at the play of the fire—was a victim and a conqueror. He was a man of a full, strong nature—not a little impulsive—with action too full of earnestness for most of men to see its drift. He had known little of what is called the world; he was fresh in feeling and high of hope; he had been encircled always by friends who loved him, and who, maybe, flattered him. Scarce had he entered upon the tangled life of the city before he met with a sparkling face and an airy step that stirred something in poor Ned that he had never felt before. With him, to feel was to act. He was not one to be despised; for, notwithstanding he wore a country air, and the awkwardness of a man who has yet the _bienséance_ of social life before him, he had the soul, the courage, and the talent of a strong man. Little gifted in the knowledge of face-play, he easily mistook those coy manœuvers of a sparkling heart for something kindred to his own true emotions.

She was proud of the attentions of a man who carried a mind in his brain; and flattered poor Ned almost into servility. Ned had no friends to counsel him; or, if he had them, his impulses would have blinded him. Never was dodger more artful at the Olympic Games than the Peggy of Ned’s heart-affection. He was charmed, beguiled, entranced.

When Ned spoke of love, she staved it off with the prettiest of sly looks that only bewildered him the more. A charming creature to be sure; coy as a dove!

So he went on, poor fool, until one day—he told me of it with the blood mounting to his temples, and his eye shooting flame—he suffered his feelings to run out in passionate avowal—entreaty—everything. She gave a pleasant, noisy laugh, and manifested—such pretty surprise!

He was looking for the intense glow of passion; and lo, there was nothing but the shifting sparkle of a sea-coal flame.