Papers from Overlook-House

Then the influence that abode in the mystic cell began to exert its power over him. It was as if a fever had passed away, and a sweet quiet, as of an infant going to its rest had pervaded his frame. Resistance to the good desires passed from him. He began to wish for a glorious transformation.

And now the dream was changed. It was late at night. He drew near his home. The lumbering stage, full of drowsy passengers, had left him at his gate.

He was not compelled to linger long upon his porch. The door was quickly opened by one, whose form glided swiftly along through the hall, summoned by the sounds of the stage. It was his pale and weary wife, a gentle, uncomplaining woman, bearing all his oppressions as void of resistance, and as submissively as the stem, the overgrown bulb, the work of insects deforming the bud or flower, whose weight bends as if it would break it. He entered the dwelling and saluted her, as if her watching was the least service she could render.

And then, though he perceived that she was pale and faint, he imposed on her tasks for his present comfort. The servants were at rest, and she must arrange for his evening meal, and go from room to room to procure the least trifle he might desire.

And again there came over him the spell of the Indian dream-seat.

Just as he was about to pour upon his serving wife the vials of his wrath, because she had misunderstood some one of his multitude of directions, there suddenly was exerted over him a power which gave all his thoughts a bias, and ruled his words and manner as the wind sways the frail reed.

He began to speak to her words of tender commiseration. He insisted that she was in need of his assiduous aid for her present comfort. For her the wine and viands must be procured. She never again should keep these watches for his sake – watches after midnight. Nay, more; with a torrent of glowing words, he promised that all his future conduct should undergo a perfect transformation.

In his struggle, our hero acquired an almost preturnatural quickening of the memory. All thought, however, ran in one single course – in the demonstration of his selfishness. He uttered confessions of his deep and sincere repentance. He enumerated a long series of petty annoyances of which he had been guilty towards his wife, and which had made up the sum of much misery. One confession of a wrong deed revived the remembrance of another. If the chain seemed at an end, as link after link was drawn into light, there was no such termination.

He had no time to observe the effect of this his sorrow and confession.

His internal wrath at this departure from his ordinary habits, from all the course which he, as a reasonable being could pursue, from all the rules he had ever prescribed for his family, – from all that could make the time to come consistent with the comfortable care he had taken of himself in the past, caused such an agitation, that he thought for a moment he must die. His golden age in the past to be supplanted with this coming age of iron! Would he die? A great earthquake had crowded all its might into a mole-hill. It was as if a storm-cloud was just on the eve of being rent asunder, to tear the hills below with its awful bolts, and some angelic messenger was sent to give it the aspect of a quiet summer-cloud, and cause it to send down a gentle rain on all the plants.

He knew well from experience the sense of suffocation. His throat had seemed incapable of allowing a breath to pass to the lungs. But now he had, as it were, a sense of suffocation in every limb. His whole frame had sensations as if pressed to its utmost tension by some expanding power, as by some great hydraulic press.

What was to be the result? Was he to undergo some external transformation like the reptile which he had seen in the plain?

To his horror, he began, in his rhapsody of the dream to recall a huge frog, which he had watched as a boy – swelling – swelling – and about to burst through its old skin, and come out in the sunshine in a new and fashionable coat and a pair of elastic pantaloons, with water-proof boots to match. Then his imagination recalled a snake which he had seen when he sat once by the brook with a fishing-rod in his hand, the hook in the sluggish stream, and the fish, no one could tell where. Thus was it passing through a similar process with the frog – preparing to present itself in the court of the queenly season, making his new toilette as if he had been fattening off the spoils of office, and had ordered his new garb from the tailor without regard to cost.

In his heart there came again a tenderness for his wife and children. And with that deep emotion came peace – for suddenly a golden cup was at his lips, and cooling water, such as he had never tasted. An angel's hand – oh how like the hand of his wife in its gentle touch – was laid upon his head, and all its throbbing misery was gone. The same Being waved his wings, and a cool air, with waves murmuring in some music from a far off, blessed space, and with fragrance that lulled the disturbed senses to repose, passed over him, – and he felt that all his fever and distress had departed from him.

Then he appeared to be surrounded by his wife and children, who were wrapped in a deep sleep. He gazed on them, meditating offices of love in time to come. One and another, in dreams, uttered his name with unspeakable tenderness. His tears fell freely. The great night around him – that used to seem so unsympathizing – and to throw him off far from all its glory, as a poor worthless atom, now entered into accordance with the new found life within. The gleaming stars said to him, we take your purpose into one great mission of reflecting light. All spoke of hope. He was used to the feeling of loneliness and painful humiliation, when in the darkness under the great unchanging canopy. Now was he lowly; but he felt that man was great, as one who bore the relation of a spirit to the Maker of all things. He had never thought, that as great peace dwelt among all the human family, as now pervaded his own heart.

Again the dream was changed. He was in the city. He was seated in the old dusty counting-room. He was the former selfish man. The men in the place, were to him a sea of a multitude of living waves. All that he had to do was to count all created for him, and he for himself; and in that sea he was to seek to gain the pearls which he coveted. As men passed by, he had no blessing in his heart for those tried in life, and to meet death, or be tried still more. That God cared for them was no thought that made an impress on his nature.

As he sat before his table covered with his papers, witnesses of his gains, there was a sound of approaching feet. Then men entered and bore along with them a mummy, – the dead form in its manifold wrappings, as the mourners had left it in the days when Abraham dwelt in the land of promise.

They placed the form on which it was borne in the centre of the room, and then with grave deliberation proceeded to unroll its many integuments.

In a short time they had spread out all the folds of the cloth, and there lay the form which it was difficult to imagine had once been a living man – a being of thoughts, emotions, hope, with ties to life, such as are ours at the present day.

Our hero looked upon the extended covering of the dead. One of those men, of a far distant clime and age, who had belonged to the silent procession that thus presented the mortal remains to the eye, drew from the folds of his dress a stone of exquisite beauty.

He held it before the cloth, and rays of an unearthly light fell upon it, emitted from that precious gem. In a moment, that which had been so dark, became a piece of exquisite tapestry. On it were a series of representations, an endless variety of hieroglyphics.

As the rich merchant gazed on these, he read a history of a life, that strangely condemned his own.

And then the Egyptian Priest came forth from the midst of his associates.

He held in his hand an immense concave mirror in a frame of gold. Taking his position between the window and the dead form, he first gazed upon the sky. A cloud had obscured the sun.

As soon as it had been swept away, and the noon-day beams streamed forth, he held up the mirror, and concentrating the rays of light, threw all the blinding radiance on the dead form.

In a little while it began, under the power of that wonderful glory, to assume the appearance of a living man. Breath came. It moved. It rose. The one thus revived from the power of death gazed on the cloth, and traced out for himself a plan of a beneficent life. He was to live to do good. Tears were to be dried, the hungry to be fed, the heart was to have its perpetual glow of good will, to speak words of blessing, and of peace, of hope to all.

As our rich man gazed on all this scene, – mysterious hands seemed to be unwinding countless wrappings from the soul within, dead to the Creator, dead to the love of man.

A light was poured upon him. A new life was given him. He was preparing to unlock his treasures, to share his possessions with the poor. The home of sorrow became a place of attraction. He was to seek all means of lessening the sin and misery of the human family.

Thus far had his discipline proceeded. The dreams had given activity to the mind. They had bent the spirit of the man in glad submission to a yoke of obedience; and in this submission to all that was pure, he found how the great service was perfect freedom. Holy truths, which had never been great realities, but certainties that were among his deepest convictions, many of them like seeds still capable of life, but floating on the sea in masses of ice, perhaps to be dropped on some island forming in the deep, and there to germinate, now began to be living truth, and to struggle with the soul that it might live. He bowed before the august presence, – now that the great veil that had concealed the kingly visitants was torn away. Now they were not like the magnetic power, affecting dubiously, and without a steady control, the needle of the seaman as he drew near to the coast. They had become the all-pervading power in the needle itself, affecting each particle, and turning all in attraction towards the one star, that is before every bark freighted with the precious trusts, which he now felt to be so grand a responsibility. Are not these sealed with a seal that no enemy can cause to be forged or broken?

A slight change in his dream, and the temptations began to reappear, crowding as the gay tares wind among the eddying wheat heads, and are tossed by the wind and arrest the eye. There was a sense of slight fear and doubt.

Then was he borne onward, and placed on the green sward beneath great overhanging rocks. Their awful majesty was tempered by the endless vines, laden with fruits and flowers that crept along their sides, and waved, as crowns upon their summits.

A lake spread its waters before him. As he looked far off upon its unruffled surface, he saw clouds, now dark, now radiant, floating rapidly in the sky. The wind that impelled them came in great gushes of its power, as their changing shapes, and rapid motion gave full evidence. And when the winds thus swept on, they gave not the slightest ripple to the great blue expanse of the waters. Yet they were no dead sea, but pure and living, from streams on innumerable fertile hill-sides, whose threads of fountain-issues glittered in the sun.

And the great shadows that fell from these floating masses in the air, did not reach to the surface of the lake. They wasted themselves between the clouds and the atmosphere of tranquil light, that rested on the placid, sky-like depths of the blue expanse.

Even at his very feet, these waters seemed in depth ocean-like. His eye was never weary as he gazed into their abyss, and the sight never appeared to have looked down into them, and to have found the limit of its power to penetrate their immeasurable profundity.

Great peace again took possession of his mind! Then he felt the mysterious hand upon him, and he was lifted up from the borders of this lake, for other scenes. He could not but feel regret. He was however convinced, that any new prospect opened before him, would be one that he might earnestly desire to look upon.

The motion of the wings of the angel, as he transported him through the air, was as silent as the calm of the great lake.

They entered into a cave, so vast, that its roofs and sides were at such distance from them, that no object could be distinguished in the evening twilight. But soon he saw before him a high archway, lofty as the summit of the highest mountain, by which they were to emerge into the light. They passed it, and found that it opened into a deep valley.

A plain was here the prospect, and near to him the side of a precipitous hill. It had great sepulchral inscriptions on the surface of the rocks. There was a slight earthquake. Its power caused the sides of the hill to tremble, and revealed the bones of men buried in the sands and crevices.

He proceeded – and soon he saw grave-stones on the plain. Drawing near, he attempted to read the names inscribed upon them. Soon he discovered that they recorded those of his wife and children. Foes, as he imagined, as his eyes rested on objects around, moving to and fro, lurked in the shadows.

And now his sorrow assumed a form, different from all the former remorse of his dream. A vague idea that all was a dream came to his relief. Tears fell, bitter regret for the past continued, but he had a joyous and undefined conviction, that his family were not beyond the reach of his awakened love.

A gentle hand was then laid upon his eyelids. It pointed to the mountain near – on whose summit an eternal light rested. Such light, he thought, must have been seen on the mount of the transfiguration.

He discovered that he had the power to look into the depths of the great mountain. As his eye penetrated those great hidden ways, he found that all was revealed there, as if the earth and rocks were only air more dense than that which he breathed.

His attention was soon arrested by a rock in the centre of the mountain. It became the sole object to which he could direct the eye.

There imbedded were evil forms, on which he looked to feel new sorrow, and to torture himself with self-upbraiding.

These forms were his work. It was evident that they should have been created in exquisite beauty. The material of which they had been made, – so precious – was a witness that this could have been accomplished. The marks of the chisel were a proof that there had been capacity – skill – which could readily have been exercised in creating that which was beautiful, and which had been perverted and abused in the production of the shapes by which he was repelled. And it was also evident, that they had been fashioned in a light, which would have enabled him to judge truly of every new progress of his toil, and under a sky where true inspirations would be fostered. My work! my work! he said – but he added, there is hope for the future.

As his new-found tenderness subdued him, the power that transported him from scene to scene, bore him away.

Soon he found himself standing before another mountain, which was in the process of formation.

It was made of the clearest crystal, and the light was in all its height and breadth. Angels were there, and waiting with a placid but unutterable happiness for labors that were to occupy them.

He could not rest. He must put forth into action the aims, the aspirations to fashion forms of immortal glory. As he moved, in his great ambition from his place, he saw that his dwelling was near at hand – close beneath this great mound of crystal, and that its light was reflected upon it.

He entered the house. His gentleness was the happiness of all. He was now the unselfish and loving husband and parent. He marvelled that so many little acts of love could be done day by day. He marvelled to see how little acts of love made up such a vast sum of happiness, and what moulding influences, whose value could not be estimated, were united with his deeds.

He found that forms were ever taken by the angels and borne away. They reverently bore them – reverencing the beauty, and above all reverencing them as the work of One who had given him aid to think of their creation, and to embody them according to the pure conception. They carried them first to a fountain of waters that flowed from a smitten rock. A crown of thorns, and nails, and a spear, were sculptured there. Washed in this stream every particle was cleansed. Afterwards they held up the form in the most clear light, brighter than the light of any sun, and the beauty became far more perfect.

The angelic laborers then carried each to the mountain of crystal. There it was imbedded, – but in a radiance which was to shine forever, and forever.

And then to his great joy, he found that vast numbers of men came to a summit of an adjoining hill; caring not for the ascent by a narrow and arduous way. They looked into the mountain, and were entranced by the forms that they beheld. He had no thought that they would turn to him in admiration. All that he exulted in, was, that he loved them, and that they turned away to labor to make like forms, for the angelic hands, – for the waters of the cleansing fountain, – for the inexpressible light that purified, – for the place in the mountain, where they should shine eternally.

Just at this moment, a bird perched on the vines around the cell. It poured forth a rich melody of song close to the ear of the sleeper. It awoke him gently from the profound sleep. The first sound which he heard was that of the sweet bell of his village church. Its gushes of sound rolled along the valley, and up the side of the great hills.

He felt that the impressions of his dream were durable. So deeply was he affected, that he scarcely thought of the visions in which the truth had been represented. He descended his path another man. Another man he entered his home. The house was a changed house that day. No one more subdued in spirit than himself, knelt in the church. No one with more determined purpose, heard that day, of the One who "pleased not himself."

IX.

WILD FLOWERS GATHERED FOR MY WIFE

Though these sweet flowers are in their freshest bloom,They had a beauty as I gathered themWhich thine eye sees not. For with every oneNew lustre in the varied colors shone,A purer white melted beneath the eye,A sweeter fragrance came from dew-gemmed leaves,Advanced in beauty as I thought of thee.Thou seest that they grew wild in wood and fieldsTeachers of love and wisdom. Some I foundIn deep pine shades, where the sun's straggling beamsThrough bending boughs may reach them.Holier raysThrough deeper shades can reach the broken heart,Through deeper shades can foster heavenly growthOf beauty for the everlasting fields;Through more dense shades can reach the good unknownTo human fame, yet left to bless the world.These flowers and leaves that ripen unobservedBut for our eyes, had withered with the frost,And none had blessed God for their loveliness.They give their little power unto the windTo purify for men the air they breathe, —Air wafted far by every rising breeze.And so a myriad of the little deeds,Done by the men that walk in Christ's blest steps,Add health unto the living atmosphereWhere men breathe for the strength of highest life.Deeds go out on a sea of human life,And touch a myriad of the rolling waves,Send the great sea a portion of unrest,Which saves its surface from the mould of death.These flowers are memories that I had of theeDuring my wandering to the distant home,Where sickness was, and many an anxious care,Where there was need that Christ's work should be done.Oh! if these paths we tread with our soiled feet,On this world far from scenes where all is pure,Our feet not yet in laver cleansed from soil,In wave by angel stirred and all so bright,Where gleams are on the waves from his own sun,Are skirted with these fragrant beauteous forms,What shall surround our path in Paradise?Flowers have a language; so they choose to say.Each speaks a word of pure significance.Thus in the fields of nature we can print,Where flowers shall be the type, a beauteous book —With joyful eye can read the beauteous book.With all my love of flowers, here is a loreWhich is to me unknown. I have to turnOver the pages of that pictured bookTo spell each letter as a little child.But this I know, that none can e'er mean ill.Flowers are too pure, as angels sowed their seedOn earth in pity for a burdened race.And where their smiles have rested there came forthThese witnesses that men are not alone.And also this is lore from nature's school —That speak they as they may – whate'er they meanOf faith to be unshaken through our life,Of love that never wanes, true as the star,They cannot speak of faith or tender love,Which I – flower-bearer – do not speak to theeIn this my offering of far-gathered spoils.

X.

RIVERSDALE

It was my good fortune to dwell for some years on the banks of the Delaware, with a sturdy old yeoman, who was quite a character in his day. Manly, honest, hospitable, of a dignified bearing as of one who respected himself, and who had no false pride, it was a treasure to have known him.

His nature had been moulded, as far as earthly influences gave their impress by a life spent chiefly on a farm, in days that are called "primitive;" that being one of the words which hold in unfixed solution, some true but very vague impressions. A few years which he spent in the naval service of his country, had no doubt added some lines to the mould that shaped him as he was.

I have said that his characteristics were very prominent. Therein he differed from the mass of the country people. They are like a knoll, where you see at once all the outlines. You must look attentively, to discover more than the eye has taken in at its first glance. He was like one of our rugged hills, having bold varieties of shape, records of time and of great convulsions, of the violence of storms, of changes wrought by other and varied influences.

He had thriven in the world far beyond all his expectations. His life had been one of untiring industry, decision, and ingenious energy. At the time of his marriage, almost every penny was exhausted by the humble fee. As days rolled on, the Creator added to his store, and he purchased the farm on which his father had resided. By a manly appeal to the sense of justice, he prevented a rich neighbor from competing with him at the sale of these broad acres.

In after days he also became the possessor of the farm, called Riversdale. There he spent his last years of life. He lived there in the affluence of a rich farmer. It was strange to see him and his faithful wife so utterly unchanged by prosperity, and by the alterations in the habits of society.

At Riversdale he had a spacious dwelling. There was here a degree of elegance within and without. It had been the country residence of a rich merchant. His furniture was plain, but abundant, and all for use.

Among the curiosities of our house was the old clock, on whose face the sun and moon differed from their prototypes in the heavens, inasmuch as they had a far more distinct representation of the ruddy human countenance, and as they did not rise or set, – for their mechanism had become distracted.

And then there was the famous old gun, – taken from a Hessian at the battle of Princeton, and which had done great service in the deer hunts in the Pocano Mountains, and amid the pines of New Jersey.

Those deer-hunts were great circumstances in the course of the year. He used to narrate with great pleasure, the events that occurred at such excursions in the forests.

Once as he told me, he was alone in the woods with a guide. The darkness was coming apace. He had wounded a deer. The cry of the dogs indicated that they were close upon it. It became evident that the man wished to lead the hunters out of the way; and to disappear in the darkness, that he might appropriate the prey to himself. But all his mean plans were soon baffled. "If you," said the old yeoman, "can run faster than the buck-shot in my gun, slip away in the dark." Never guide, I venture to say, adhered more closely to his party.

His education, like that of so many of the old Pennsylvania farmers, had been very limited. His sympathies were not broad; though a small degree of sentiment pervaded a vein of tenderness which wound its way through the rugged nature of his soul. Sometimes it appeared so attenuated, that few influences seemed to be willing to work for the precious ore.