Chapter D: H. B

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.

BY PETER VON GEIST.

PRELIMINARY.--Sitting in the seat and looking on the scenes of youth; calling back its feelings and thinking over its thoughts; is, we may suppose, seldom pleasing to manhood. Fragments of plans; wrong but captivating views of life; dead hopes which once lived and bloomed; vast schemes dwindled like dry leaves; resolutions broken and re-broken; all covered and lost sight of, under the stream of events that is perpetually flowing into the memory, will come up, bringing a smile and a pang; and the youth of TWENTY will stand in living colors before the man of FORTY.

FORTY. Your face is full of joy, young man; are you thinking of me?

TWENTY. I am thinking of you, and therefore am I full of joy.

FORTY. I know nothing in me that should give you so much pleasure to contemplate.

TWENTY. Do you count, then, honor, wealth, benefactions, and the blessings of your country, as nothing? Do I not see your head encircled with the garland of praise? Are you not enriched with all knowledge and adorned with all graces? Is this a small thing? I would give away ten years of my life, if the space that intervenes between you and me--Now and Then--might be annihilated this instant!

FORTY. It is perhaps as well that that space cannot be annihilated or diminished. But could you spare ten years without feeling the loss? Do you suppose yourself sufficiently armed and equipped already, for the campaign?

TWENTY. On to the combat! What armor would you have, but a quick eye, a steady hand, and a courageous heart?

FORTY. By 'a courageous heart,' you probably mean animal spirits; but they will flag in a little while. Have you thought of that?

TWENTY. No, Sir, I do not mean animal spirits. I mean a bold, unshrinking heart, that goes forth to meet the world, and never faints; one which does not grow weary when it is encompassed with adversity, but looks, and hopes, and fights on, till it gains its high end. Is not that armor enough?

FORTY. It is, no doubt; so hard that it can receive and not be pierced by the darts of the enemy?

TWENTY. There is no need of its being hard. The encounter is not a battle; it is a joust, a tournament, a passage of arms. And cannot brothers and friends tilt, and still be brothers and friends?

FORTY. You regard, then, the business of life as the amusements of a gala-day?

TWENTY. No, Sir! no, Sir! These figures of speech only conceal and disguise its nature. It is neither a battle nor a play; it is labor. By the sweat of his brow must man eat his bread.

FORTY. 'Thorns also, and thistles shall spring up to him.'

TWENTY. I say, by labor must men gain the prize. See! I am standing at this moment on an eminence, from which I overlook the whole plain of life. On whatever side I turn my eyes, the landscape smiles, and the thickly-scattered objects of human desire arrest my attention, and invite my pursuit. All are fair and enticing; but my thoughts are fixed on that fairest and most enticing of all; that verdant hill-top before me. On it are the power of wealth and the respect of men; the consciousness of great actions done, of worth, or nobility; domestic affections throw their warm colors upon it; the power of making loved ones happy; the calm, quiet, fresh, dewy summer evening of my earthly pilgrimage; all that makes existence a blessing is there. Between it and me there may be much hard journeying, and many obstacles difficult to surmount. I cannot see them all from here, and do not care. But with my eye steadfastly fixed on that point, I descend to the plain, and set out on the way. What though it be toilsome? What though I stumble, or am thrust from the path, or fogs envelope me, and clouds overwhelm me? Can any thing turn me aside from the straight course? Can any mists be so dense as to shut out that golden spot from my view? And so I struggle on, through darkness and opposition, always keeping within me a brave heart and a well-braced spirit, and never relaxing my nerves, till I reach that predestined place of repose.

FORTY. _Disjecta membra_ of a boy's dream!

TWENTY. But is it not so? Are you not now there?

FORTY. My dear young friend, there is a slight optical illusion in the case. That promised land of yours lies beyond the boundaries of life: the Styx rolls between.

TWENTY. I do not understand you. Beyond? Have you not reached it?

FORTY. Do I look like one that takes his rest? or these hands, as though I had left off working?

TWENTY. But you cannot now be far from it?

FORTY. To say the truth, I have no such place of happiness and repose in view as you have mentioned. I lost sight of it soon after setting out. The darkness came down on me so thick that I could scarcely see three paces before me, and the road was so rough that I was forced to be content to pick my steps one by one, and had no time to think of the distant future.

TWENTY. I cannot believe it. There is many a lesser prize, many lower heights, in your path, to be gained, which should serve as encouragements and way-marks. I cannot believe that you have lost sight of the ultimate object of your life.

FORTY. You have odd views of things! The fact was, when with much exertion and difficulty I had gained one of those lesser prizes, a little social distinction, for example, I was so fatigued that I was glad to sit down a moment, and enjoy my acquisition. Finding it, however, not in every respect suited to my desire, I pushed on, and attained the next of those luminous points, which to you are only way-marks to a higher one beyond. From these I took a survey of the path before me; and seeing that its length rather increased than diminished as I obtained clearer views of the intervening country, and feeling at the same time my strength diminishing, and that 'courageous heart' of yours, (the hope and spirits of inexperienced youth,) growing fainter in its pulsations, I gave up the chase, and suffered myself to settle down into, and become one of, the million.

TWENTY. Oh! weak of faith and cowardly!

FORTY. Oh! ignorant and presumptuous!

TWENTY. Well; it does not become us to bandy names. So you are content to live for nothing?

FORTY. I live for something; for my daily bread, and for the pleasures that to-morrow, or at the farthest the next day, may bring forth.

TWENTY. And is not that living for nought? You have become an ant, whose thoughts are confined within its cell, and whose cares are centered on its single little kernel of corn. You are a fixture, a vegetable, a sensitive plant, a shell-fish. These are lying words of yours; I will not believe them.

FORTY. If you do not credit my report, you can go forward as you have proposed, and satisfy yourself by experience.

TWENTY. That will I! Go forth on wings, undeterred by timorous and hesitating counsels. I _know_ it is not so. Can I not see with my own eyes?

FORTY. I fancy you see stars that are not in the heavens, and sights that are not on the earth.

TWENTY. I am not so pusilanimous and easily contented as you appear to be. My belief in the omnipotence of will and labor is firm. Yonder object have I set my eye on; and breaking through all obstructions, and deaf to all way-side seductions, I will force myself straight on, till I attain it.

FORTY. Valiantly resolved! Gallant Sir Knight! Will you take the world by storm?

TWENTY. I have told you already that it is not a battle. No passion or strife shall mingle with my motives. Good will to all men, and success to my compeers, even though they triumph in my disappointment, shall be the feeling of my heart.

FORTY. As I said before, a very good resolution.

TWENTY. Nor is it necessary to spend the intervening years in monotonous, cheerless toil. There are a thousand social affections which spring up spontaneously in the human heart, but which wither unless fostered, cherished, and cultivated; there are social duties to be performed; and the whole man is to be polished into the form of grace and nobility. At the same time, from books and men, by the midnight lamp and in the crowded market-place, will I draw treasures of knowledge and skill; from history, poetry, philosophy, human nature; till I can instruct the judge on his bench, and the artisan in his shop; till I make myself such as men have in all ages delighted to honor, and been compelled to esteem. I will fashion my mind by the model of strength and beauty, and will enlarge the capacities of my heart, and fill it with love. In all this, my labors are ordered with principal reference to that ultimate point of which I never lose sight an instant. Men are forced to acknowledge excellence; much more will they acknowledge it when they see that it is amiable, and love it.

FORTY. It is with difficulty that I can refrain from laughter! You have such strange notions!

TWENTY. Do you call the notion of excellence strange? You will next say that virtue itself is an 'Idola!' But I tell you, there is a reality in both; I know it, for I can feel it. Nobility, virtue, respect, and happiness, are not empty names. The last, I am conscious of this moment; and if the others did not exist, I should never have had given to me this desire for them.

FORTY. Ignorance and happiness!

TWENTY. Knowledge and happiness! Why should they not go together? Will the innumerable gifts of nature ever be withdrawn? Or will the capability of receiving pleasure from them ever be taken away? Happiness does not necessarily accompany ignorance, but it _does_ knowledge. And throughout the world, every man has within him a well-toned harp, whose strings nature and society and he himself strike together, making harmonious music. They are sometimes broken; but mine shall be well guarded, and will never produce discord.

FORTY. Foolish and vain!

TWENTY. And have _you_ then become wise?

FORTY. I have become wise enough to know that you are foolish and your thoughts vain; I have become a full grown man.

TWENTY. You have, indeed, attained a full growth in the wisdom of those of sordid views and narrow foreheads! But can it be really so? Are you what you seem to be? I have felt, more than once, a suspicion creeping into my mind, that I might be, after all, mistaken. It must be so; and 'how art thou cast down, O my soul!'

FORTY. Be not disconsolate, my young friend; your soul is not so much cast down, as turned aside into another channel of thought and mode of existence.

TWENTY. Do you mock me, with your 'be not disconsolate?' If you speak the truth, there is nothing in life to live for. Had I not calculated well? Had I not found the means to be used in order to arrive at a certain position? I thought means and the result were connected; but you have undeceived me. Or else, I am too weak and cowardly to follow out my plans: in either case, I am of no worth in the world, and had better quit it at the outset.

FORTY. To quit the field, you think less disgraceful than to suffer defeat in a fair and manful fight?

TWENTY. The world's opinion is nothing to me, and I don't know the meaning of disgrace. Fame, you say, is an empty breath, happiness delusion, and knowledge vanity; these are the chief things that fill the minds of men, and they are false appearances. Why, then, should I value them?

FORTY. You cannot say that all life is not a dream.

TWENTY. Oh, I know it is; and therefore I will have nothing to do with it.

FORTY. You are a wild colt as yet, and kick against your traces. But the whip, the rein, and work, will soon break down that proud spirit of yours, and you will trot along obediently and patiently.

TWENTY. That shall never be; sooner will I leave the world altogether. To suffer this, you call courage! And to be a humble, docile, broken brute, you call becoming wise!

FORTY. You use names without discretion.

TWENTY. Oh, you would give it a softer-sounding designation; but the fact, though you may disguise it to yourself, cannot be concealed. Do you labor or hope for any thing but the present, or beyond the next hour? Do you not live with your eyes fixed on the ground? Do you not thread your devious and obscure way through the world, content to be unknown, and never casting a glance on the millions that surround you? What is that wisdom of which you boast, but to know that every man is a robber, and to bar your door against him; that, friendship is an empty profession, and friends venial, therefore to trust no one; that all love is a youthful folly, unbecoming the 'full grown man;' therefore to guard against its approaches? This, I should say, is to live and think like the beast that perishes, and to die as the fool dies.

FORTY. You were inflated with that exhilarating gas, self-esteem; it is not very pleasant to have it escape, but you will soon be reduced to your own proportions.

TWENTY. And you would really have me think that there is no beauty or loveliness in the world? nothing worth hoping or striving for? Because I believed there was, and was filled with enthusiasm in viewing it, you say I was inflated with self-esteem. If I thought as you do, I should contemn myself, and deserve to be despised by every body like myself. You have lost sight of your high destiny, and defiled your soul, which _was_ in the similitude of its MAKER, by frequent contact with the earth.

FORTY. I was not conscious of that.

TWENTY. Tell me, if you please, what was man made for?

FORTY. I have told you already; to eat of the fruit of his labors in sorrow, to write his name on the sea-sands, and to leave his place to his successor after him.

TWENTY. Think you that you do not defile your soul by such thoughts? To confine his aspirations to the snail-shell in which chance has cast him; to find all his delight therein; to call the three or four inches which his horizon bounds, the world; is _this_ the chief end of man? I know not how it may be with others, but as for me, I was made for something better. I hope, I expect, to have a higher destiny!

FORTY. The chase is after shadows.

TWENTY. My chase is after real, tangible substances. I see them, and hope revives, strong and living, within me. Away! cold Doubt! I must have knowledge, respect, and happiness. No obstacles shall hinder me, and no allurements shall entice me, from my way. _My_ name shall not be written on the sands: I will link it with lessons of wisdom, and grave them on the eternal rock.

FORTY. Glorious dreams, young man! glorious dreams!

TWENTY. They are sober, waking realities.

FORTY. But since you will not be aroused, I would have no one attempt to break them. Sleep on now, for the day cometh; the clear light of morning will beam on your eyes, dispersing the mists, and then you will see your duties and capabilities through a less distorting medium.

TWENTY. Call it a distorting medium if you like; but if it is the mists that make the world appear so much brighter to me than it does to you, they shall always remain before my eyes.

FORTY. Sweet dreams; but alas! they cannot last! This conversation with you has filled me, even me, with strange desires and indefinite longings. But they are all vain. It is my lot to see and deal with the world as it is, and I must be contented with my little routine of daily toil. And to remain so contented, I must hold no more communion with you.

TWENTY. You are a phantom, as of one in troubled slumber--a lying spirit; and I will never again admit you to my thoughts.

FORTY. You shall be dead to me, and I will bury you out of my sight!

THOUGHTS AT TRENTON FALLS.

ART thou still the same,
Or have the lapsing ages stolen away
Thy primal beauty, or but added more?
Beautiful stream! did thy clear waters fall
With the same sound as now, in times remote,
When first the sunlight shimmered on thy wave,
Or ere the warbling of a forest bird
Had echoed through these shades; or did'st thou run
In level quietness, till thy smooth bed
Was broken up by the strong hand of Change?
Or did the sinking Deluge leave thee here,
To fill this broken gorge?

R. S. C.

_New-York, Oct., 1843._

THE MIDNIGHT DREAM.

BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS.