Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848

An hour of painful reverie had passed, when the door of the apartment was noiselessly opened, and with silent steps, the dark-robed figure of a woman entered and approached Theresa.

"I have intruded on you most unceremoniously," said the stranger, in a voice singularly soft and melodious, "and I have no apology to plead but the interest I feel in youth and genius, and this privileged garb;" and as Theresa glanced at her dress, she saw it was that of a Sister of Charity. It was an attire she had grown familiar with, during her abode at the convent, and the winning kindness usually distinguishing its wearers, had invested it in her mind with pleasant associations.

"You are welcome, nevertheless," replied Theresa, "for I know that in admitting your sisterhood we often entertain angels unawares."

The new comer seated herself, and the young artist strove in vain to recall her features; they were those of a stranger.

"You are personally unknown to me, Theresa," said the lady, after a brief silence, "but your father was one of my earliest friends. Nay – it matters not to ask my name; the one I then bore, is parted with now, and I would not willingly speak it again; under a different appellation I have been lowlier and happier."

"You knew my father, then," rejoined Theresa, eagerly, "in his younger and more prosperous days. His loss I feel more keenly as my experience increases; for I was too young at his death to appreciate in reality, as I now do in memory, all his character's high, and generous, and spiritual beauty."

"We met often in the gay world," replied the guest – and her words were uttered less to Theresa than to herself – "and our acquaintance was formed under circumstances which ripened into intimacy what might otherwise have proved only one of those commonplace associations that lightly link society together; but it is of yourself I would speak. I have opportunities in the fulfillment of my duties of hearing and seeing much that passes in the busy world about me; and I have been prompted by the old memories still clinging around me, to proffer you the counsel of a friend. Will you forgive me, if I address you candidly and unreservedly?"

And then, as Theresa wonderingly granted the desired permission, she proceeded gently to detail some of the efforts of malice, and to utter words of kind warning to one who, enfolded within her own illusions, saw nothing of the shadows gathering about her path.

"You are not happy, Theresa!" continued the sister; "I know too much of woman's life to believe you are. I am aware of the motives from which you act; and while I reverence your purity of heart, and the pride which has tempted you to work out your own destiny, I easily trace the weariness your spirit feels. I, too, have had my visions; they are God's gift to youth, but I have lived sadly and patiently to watch dream after dream fade away. I see you have forgotten me, although I saw you frequently at the convent of – ; but I am not surprised at your forgetfulness, for the nun's sombre veil shuts her out alike from hearts and memories."

"Are you, too, then unhappy?" asked Theresa, as the low and musical voice beside her trembled in its tone; "you, whose footsteps are followed by blessings, whose life is hallowed by doing good? I have long ago learned to doubt the peace of the cloister, but I have ever loved to believe there was recompense in your more active career, and that if happiness exists on earth, the Sisters of Charity deserve and win it."

"In part, you are right," answered the nun, "but you have yet to realize that the penalties of humanity are beyond mortal control; that we cannot, by any mode of life, pass beyond their influence. All we can do, is prayerfully to acquire patient forbearance and upward hope; many a heavy heart beats beneath a veil like this, and carries its own woes silently within, while it whispers to others of promise and rest." The visiter paused, and Theresa interrupted a silence that began to be painful to both.

"I feel," she said, "that I have acted injudiciously in braving remark, and in proudly dreaming I could shape out my own course. But you, who seem to have divined my thoughts so truly, doubtless read also the one reason which renders my return home most depressing."

"I know it well," was the reply; and the speaker pressed Theresa's trembling hand within her own, "but your prolonged stay here will be fraught with continually increasing evils; and if you expect repose, it cannot be here, where envy and detraction are rising against you. We cannot sway the prejudices of society, Theresa; and in some respects even the most gifted must submit to their decrees. And now," she said, as she rose to take leave, "I must bid you farewell. I have followed an impulse of kindness in undertaking the dangerous task to warn and counsel. If you will listen to one fatally versed in the world's ways, you will cease to defy public opinion, and amid the more tranquil scenes of your home, you will acquire a truer repose than ever fame bestowed. In all probability we shall meet no more, yet I would fain carry with me the consolation of having rescued from confirmed bitterness of spirit, the child of a faithful friend, and pointed a yearning heart to its only rest." And before Theresa could reply, the door had closed, and the visiter was gone.

THERESA'S LETTER

"My friend! the credulity is ended, the illusion is over, and I shall return to you again. There are reasons I need not mention now, which would render a residence with my sister painful, and with my old waywardness I would come to you, the kind sharer of my young impulses, and to your home, the quiet scene of my happiest days. I am listless and sick at heart; and the hopes that once made my future radiant, appear false and idle to my gaze. Success has bestowed but momentary satisfaction, while failure has produced permanent pain; and I would fain cease my restless strivings, and be tranquil once more. This is no hasty resolve; several weeks have elapsed since I was prompted to it first; and I believe it is wiser to submit than to struggle – to learn endurance, than to strive for reward. In a few days more I shall be with you, saddened and disheartened, and changed in all things but in love and gratitude."

She had, indeed, changed since I saw her last, nearly three years before. The world had wrought its work, hope had been crushed by reality. Her health was evidently fatally affected, and her voice, once so gay and joyous, was low and subdued. It was mournful to my loving eyes to mark the contrast between the sisters now; Amy, in the noiseless routine of domestic duties, found all her wishes satisfied; she was rendered happy by trifles, and her nature demanded nothing they could not offer. Without one rare mental endowment, or a single lofty trait, she had followed her appointed path, a serene and contented woman. A glance at the household circles around us, will prove this contrast a common one; the most gifted are not the most blessed – and the earth has no fulfillment for the aspirations that rise above it.

And what of Theresa, the richly and fatally endowed, she who, with all the faculties for feeling and bestowing gladness, yet wasted her youth away; she who sadly tested the beautiful combination of genius with womanhood, yet lavished her powers in vain – why need I trace the passing away of one beloved so well? My task is finished; and I willingly lay aside a record, written through tears. Wouldst thou know more? There is a grave in yonder church-yard that can tell thee all!

SONNETS

BY JAMES LAWSONI. – HOPEI mark, as April days serenely smile,Clouds heaped on clouds in mountain-like array,While radiant sunbeams with their summits play,Gilding with gorgeous tints the mighty pile;And earth partakes of every hue the while!Oft have I felt on such a day as this,The sudden shower down-pouring on my head,Though in the distance all is loveliness.Thither, in vain, with rapid step I've sped.I liken this to Hope: although with sorrowThe heart is overcast, and dim the eye;Delusive Hope – not present, ever nigh,Presages gladness on a coming morrow,And lures us onward, till our latest sigh.II. – A PREDICTIONThe day approaches, when a mystic power,Shall summon mute Antiquity, to tellThe buried glories of the long lost hour;And she will answer the enchanter's spell – Then shallwe hear what wondrous things befellWhen the young world existed in its prime.The truths revealed will turn the wisest pale,That ignorance so long abused their time.Vainly may Error blessed Truth assailWith specious argument, and looking wiseExult, as millions worship at her shrine;Yet, in the time ordained, shall Truth ariseAnd walk in beauty over earth and skies,While man in reverence bows before her power divine!

PHANTASMAGORIA

BY JOHN NEAL

I don't believe in night-caps. That is, I don't believe in stopping the ears, in shutting the eyes, in sealing up the senses, nor in going to sleep in the midst of God's everyday wonders. We are put here to look about us. We are apprentices to Him whose workshop is the universe. And if we mean to be useful, or happy, or to make others happy, which, after all, is the only way of being happy ourselves, we must do nothing blindfold. Our eyes and our ears must be always open. We must be always up and doing, or, in the language of the day, wide awake. We must have our wits about us. We must learn to use, not our eyes and our ears only, but our understandings – our thinkers.

There is a diviner alchemy wanted, and there is room for a bolder and a more patient spirit of investigation, amid the drudgery and bustle of common life, than was ever yet employed, or ever needed, in ransacking the earth for gems and gold, or the deep sea for pearls. Would you shovel diamonds and rubies, or turn up "as it were fire," you have but to dig into and sift the rubbish that lies heaped up in your very streets – or to drive the ploughshare through the busiest places ever trodden by the multitude. You need not blast the mountains, nor turn up the foundations of the sea, nor smelt the constellations. You have but to open your eyes, and to look about you with a thankful heart; and you will find no such thing as worthless ore – no baseness unallied with something precious; with hidden virtue, or with unchangeable splendor.

The golden air you breathe toward evening, after a bright, rattling summer-shower – the golden motes you may see playing in the sunshine with clouds of common dust, if you but take the trouble to lift your eyes, when you are lying half asleep in your easy-chair, just after dinner – are part and parcel of the atmosphere and the earth; and yet have they fellowship with the stars, and with the light that trembleth forever upon the wing of the cherubim. Be ye of the towering and the steadfast upon earth, and these will be to you in the darkness of midnight as revelations from the sky; as unforetold glimpses of the Imperishable and the Pure that inhabit the Empyrean.

But, being one of those who go about the world for three score years and ten, with their night-caps pulled over their eyes – and ears – you don't believe a word of this. And when you are told with all seriousness that there is room for more wonderful and comforting transmutations, of the baser earth just under your window, or just round the corner, than was ever dreamed of by the wisest of those who have grown old among furnaces and crucibles and retorts; wearing their lives away in a search after perpetual youth, and their substance in that which sooner and more surely than "riotous living" impoverisheth a man – the transmutation of the baser metals into gold – you fall a whistling maybe – or beg leave to suggest the word fudge. If so, take my word for it, like a pretty woman with the small-pox, the probability is, you are very much to be pitted.

All stuff and nonsense! you say – downright rigmarole – can't for the life of you understand what the fellow's driving at.

Indeed.

As sure as you are sitting there.

Well, then, we must try to convince you. One of the pleasantest things for a man who does believe in night-caps, you will grant me, though, at the best, he may be nothing more than a bachelor, is to lie out in the open air, on a smooth sloping hill-side, when the earth is fragrant, and the wind south, on a long drowsy summer afternoon – with his great-coat under him if the earth is damp – and with the long rich grass bending over him, and the blossoming clover swinging between him and a clear blue sky, starred all over with golden dandelions, buttercups and white-weed —

Faugh!

One moment if you please – with golden dandelions, buttercups and white-weed —

Poh! – pish! – Why don't you say with the dent-de-lion, the ranunculus and the crysanthimum?

Simply because I prefer bumble-bees to humble-bees, and even to honey-bees, notwithstanding the dictionaries, and never lie down in the long rich grass, with a great-coat under me; and am not afraid of catching cold though I may sit upon damp roses, or tread upon the sweet-scented earth, or tumble about in the newly-mown hay – with my children about me.

Children! – oh! – ah! – might have known you were not one of us – only half a man therefore.

How so?

That you had a better-half somewhere, to which you belong when you are at home.

In other words you might have known that I was no bachelor.

Precisely.

Sir! you are very obliging. And now, perhaps, I may be allowed to finish the demonstration. I undertook to convince you, if you remember, that every human being, with his eyes about him, has, under all circumstances, and at all times, within his reach, and subject to his order, a heap of amusement, a whole treasury of unappropriated wisdom. And all I have asked of you thus far is to admit, that if a man will but go forth into the solitary place and lie down, and stretch himself out, and look up into the sky, and watch the flowers and leaves pictured and playing there – provided he be not more than half asleep, and has a duffel great-coat under him, water-proof shoes and a snug umbrella within reach, and no fear of the rheumatism; he may find it one of the pleasantest things in the world; though it may happen that he has no idea of poetry, and cares for nothing on earth beyond a pair of embroidered slippers, a warm, padded, comfortable dressing-gown, or a snuff-colored cigar if at home; or a fishing-rod, a doubtful sky, and a bit of a brook, all to himself, when he is out in the open air. And in short, for I love to come to the point, (in these matters,) all I ask of you, being a bachelor, is to admit —

I'll admit any thing, if you'll stop there.

Agreed. You admit, then, that an old bachelor, wedded to trout-fishing and tobacco-smoke; familiar with nothing but whist, yarn stockings, flannels and shooting-jackets; without the least possible relish for landscape or color, for the twittering of birds, or the swarming of bumble-bees and forest-leaves; with no sense of poetry, and a mortal hatred of rigmarole, may nevertheless and notwithstanding —

Better take breath, sir.

May notwithstanding and nevertheless, I say, find something worth looking at, on a warm summer afternoon, though he be lying half asleep on his back, with the clover-blossoms and buttercups nodding over him; to say nothing of thistle-tops, dandelions or white-weed —

I do – I do! – I'll admit any thing, as I told you before.

Well, then – in that case – I do not see what difficulty there would be in supposing that any man might find something to be good-natured with anywhere.

Not so fast, if you please. Would you have it inferred, because an old bachelor, whose comforts are few – and far between! – and whose habits – and opinions – are fixed forever, could put up with Nature for a short summer afternoon, under the circumstances you mention – with a great-coat under him, and a reasonable share of other comforts within reach, that, therefore, anybody on earth, a married man, for example, should find it a very easy thing to be happy any where, under any circumstances? – even at home now, for instance, with his wife and children about him?

Precisely. And now, sir, to convince you. If you will but place yourself at an open window in the "leafy month of June," and watch the play of her green leaves upon the busy countenances of men, as you may in some of our eastern cities, and in most of our villages all over the country, where the trees and the houses, and the boys and the girls have grown up together, playfellows from the beginning – playfellows with every thing that lives and breathes in the neighborhood; or if you will but stand where you are, and look up into the blue sky, and watch the clouds that are now drifting, as before a strong wind, over the driest and busiest thoroughfares of your crowded city; changing from shadow to sunshine, and from sunshine to shadow, every uplifted countenance over which they pass, you will find yourself at the very next breath a wiser, a better, and a happier man. You will undergo a transfiguration upon the spot? You will see a mighty angel sitting in the sun. You will hear the rush of wings overshadowing the whole firmament. And, take my word for it, you will be so much better satisfied with yourself! But mind though – never do this in company.

Beware lest you are caught in the fact. They will set you down for a lunatic, a contributor to the magazines, or a star-gazer – if you permit them to believe that you can see a single hairsbreadth beyond your nose, or a single inch further by lifting your eyes to Heaven than by fixing them steadfastly upon the earth. One might as well be overheard talking to himself; or be caught peeping into a letter just handed him by a sweet girl he has been dying to flirt with; but, for reasons best known to himself – and his wife – durst not, although perfectly satisfied in his own mind, from her way of looking at him, when she handed him the letter, that she would give the world to have him see it without her knowledge; and that either she did not know he was a married man – or was willing to overlook that objection.

Tut, tut! my boy – you will never coax me into the trap, though I admit your cleverness, by contriving to let me understand, as it were by chance, what are regarded everywhere as the privileges of the married.

Permit me to finish, will you?

With all my heart!

But pleasant as all these things are – the green fields and the blue sky, the ripple of bright water, and the changeable glories of a landscape in mid-summer; or the upturned countenances of men, looking for signs in the heavens, when they have ships at sea – or wives and children getting ready for a drive – or new hats and no umbrellas – or houses afire, which may not happen to be over-insured – a pleasanter thing by far it is to sit by the same window, when the summer is over, and the clouds have lost their transparency, and go wandering heavily athwart the sky, and the green leaves are no more, and the songs of the water are changed, and the very birds have departed, and watch by the hour together whatever may happen to be overlooked by all the rest of the world; the bushels of dry leaves that eddy and whirl about your large empty squares, or huddle together in heaps at every sheltered corner, as if to get away from the wind; the changed livery of the shops – the golden tissues of summer, the delicately-tinted shawls, and gossamer ribbons, and flaunting muslins, woven of nobody knows what – whether of "mist and moonlight mingling fitfully," or of sunset shadows overshot with gold, giving way to gorgeous velvet, and fur, and sumptuous drapery glowing and burning with the tints of autumn, and, like distant fires seen through a fall of snow in mid-winter, full of comfort and warmth; and all the other preparations of double-windows and heavy curtains, and newly invented stoves, that find their own fuel for the season and leave something for next year; and porticoes that come and go with the cold weather, blocking up your path and besetting your eyes at every turn, with signs and hints of "dreadful preparation."

Go to the window, if you are troubled in spirit; if the wind is the wrong way; if you have been jilted or hen-pecked – no matter which – or if you find yourself growing poorer every hour, and all your wisest plans, and best-considered projects for getting rich in a hurry turned topsy-turvy by a change in the market-value of bubbles warranted never to burst; or if you have a note to pay for a man you never saw but once in your life, and hope never to see again – to the window with you! and lean back in your chair with a disposition to be pleased, and watch the different systems of progression – or, in plain English, the walk of the people going by. A single quarter of an hour so spent will put you in spirits for the day, and furnish you with materials for thought, which, well-husbanded, may last you for a twelvemonth; yea, abide with you for life, like that wisdom which is better than fine gold, and more precious than rubies.

Well, you have taken my advice; you are at the window. Now catch up your pen and describe what you see, as you see it; or take your pencil if you are good for any thing in that way, and let us see what you can do. A free, bold, happy and faithful sketch of that which in itself would be worthless, or even loathsome, shall make your fortune. Morland's pigs and pig-styes, on paper or canvas, were always worth half a hundred of the originals. One of Tenier's inside-out pictures of a village feast, with drunken boors – not worth a groat apiece when alive – would now fetch its weight in gold three times over.

Look you now. There goes a man with a large bundle under his arm, tied up in a yellow bandanna handkerchief, faded and weather-worn, and looking as if ready to burst – the bundle I mean. What would you give to know the history of that bundle and what there is in it? Observe the man's eye, the swing of his right arm – the carriage of his body – the dip of his hat. You would swear, or might if your conscience, or your habits as a gentleman, would let you, that he was a proud and a happy fellow, though you never saw his face before in all your life. The tread of his foot is enough – the very swing of his coat-tail as he clears the corner. It is Saturday night, and he is carrying the bundle home to his own house – of that you may be sure. And you may be equally sure that whatever else there may be in it, there is nothing for him to be ashamed of, and therefore nothing for the man himself. My notion is, that he has bought a ready-made cloak for his wife, without her knowledge, or got a friend to choose the cloth and be measured for it, who will be found at his fire-side when he gets home, holding forth upon the comfort of such an outside garment in our dreadful winters, with a perseverance which leads the good woman of the house to suspect her neighbor of being better off than herself, in one particular at least, for the coming Sabbath. But just now the door opens – the gossiping neighbor springs up with a laugh – the bundle is untied – the children scream, and the wife jumps about her husband's neck as if he had been absent a twelvemonth.

Where! – where!

Can't you see them for yourself! Can't you see the fire-light flash over the newly-papered walls! can't you hear the children laugh as mother swings round with her new cloak – scattering the ashes, and almost puffing out their only lamp, which she has set upon the floor to see how the garment hangs! and now she drops into a chair. Take my word for it, sir, that is a very worthy woman – and the man himself is a Washingtonian.

What man?

What man! Why the man that just turned the corner, with a great yellow bundle under his arm.

Indeed! you know him then?

Never saw his face in all my life. But stay – what have we here? Get your paper ready! Here comes a thick-set fellow, in a blue round-about, with his hat pulled over his eyes, and one hand in his trowsers' pocket – poor fellow! There he goes! But why one hand? He had his reasons for it, I'll warrant ye, if the truth were known. He walked by with bent knees, you observed, and with a most unpromising stoop. He was feeling for his last four-pence; and found a hole in his pocket. Can't you read the whole story in the man's gait? – in the slow, sullen footfall – in the clutch of his fingers – in the stiffened elbow, and the bent knees?