The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 11, September, 1858

"Who do you want to see most, Anny?"

Somehow the question kind of upset me;—I got choked, and then I bu'st out a-cryin'.

"Oh, mother and Major!" says I; and I hadn't more'n spoke the word before mother had both her good strong arms round me, and Major's real cheery face was a-lookin' up at me from the little pine cricket, where she'd sot down as nateral as life. Well, I was glad, and so was Russell, and the house seemed as shiny as a hang-bird's-nest, and by-and-by the baby came;—but I had mother.

'Twas 'long about in March when I was sick, and by the end of April I was well, and so's to be stirrin' round again. And mother and Major begun to talk about goin' home; and I declare, my heart was up in my mouth every time they spoke on't, and I begun to be miserable ag'in. One day I was settin' beside of mother; Major was out in the garden, fixin' up things, and settin' out a lot of blows she'd got in the woods, and singin' away, and says I to mother,—

"What be I going to do, mother, without you and Major? I 'most died of clear lonesomeness before you come!"

Mother laid down her knittin', and looked straight at me.

"I wish you'd got a little of Major's good cheer, Anny," says she. "You haven't any call to be lonely here; it's a real good country, and you've got a nice house, and the best of husbands, and a dear little baby, and you'd oughter try to give up frettin'. I wish you was pious, Anny; you wouldn't fault the Lord's goodness the way you do."

"Well, Major don't have nothin' to trouble her, mother," says I.

"She's all safe and pleasant to home; she a'n't homesick."

Mother spoke up pretty resolute:—

"There a'n't nobody in the world, Anny, but what has troubles. I didn't calculate to tell you about Major's; but sence you lay her lively ways to luck, may-be you'd better know 'em. She's been engaged this six months to Reuben Potter, and he's goin' off in a slow consumption; he won't never live to marry her, and she knows it."

"And she come away to see me, mother?"

"Yes, she did. I can't say I thought she need to, but Russell wrote you was pinin' for both of us, and I didn't think you could get along without me, but I told her to stay with Reuben, and I'd come on alone. And says she, 'No, mother, you a'n't young and spry enough to go alone so fur, and the Lord made you my mother and Anny my sister before I picked out Reuben for myself. I can't never have any kin but you, and I might have had somebody beside Reuben, though it don't seem likely now; but he's got four sisters to take care of him, and he thinks and I think it's what I ought to do; so I'm goin' with you.' So she come, Anny; and you see how lively she keeps, just because she don't want to dishearten you none. I don't know as you can blame her for kinder hankerin' to get home."

I hadn't nothin' to say; I was beat. So mother she went on:—

"Fact is, Anny, Major's always a-thinkin' about other folks; it comes kind of nateral to her, and then bein' pious helps it. I guess, dear, when you get to thinkin' more about Russell an' the baby, you'll forget some of your troubles. I hope the Lord won't have to give you no harder lesson than lovin', to teach you Major's ways."

So, after that, I couldn't say no more to mother about stayin'; but when they went away, I like to have cried myself sick,—only baby had to be looked after, and I couldn't dodge her.

Bym-by we had letters from home; they got there all safe, and Reuben wa'n't no worse, Major said;—ef't had been me wrote the letter, I should have said he wa'n't no better!—And I fell back into the old lonesome days, for baby slept mostly; and the summer come on extreme hot; and in July, Russell, bein' forced to go to Cumberton on some land business, left me to home with baby and the hired man, calculatin' to be gone three days and two nights.

The first day he was away was dreadful sultry; the sun went down away over the woods in a kind of a red-hot fog, and it seemed as though the stars were dull and coppery at night; even the whip-poor-wills was too hot to sing; nothin' but a doleful screech-owl quavered away, a half a mile off, a good hour, steady. When it got to be mornin', it didn't seem no cooler; there wa'n't a breath of wind, and the locusts in the woods chittered as though they was fryin'. Our hired man was an old Scotchman, by name Simon Grant; and when he'd got his breakfast, he said he'd go down the clearin' and bring up a load of brush for me to burn. So he drove off with the team, and, havin' cleared up the dishes, I put baby to sleep, and took my pail to the barn to milk the cow,—for we kept her in a kind of a home-lot like, a part that had been cleared afore we come, lest she should stray away in the woods, if we turned her loose; she was put in the barn, too, nights, for fear some stray wild-cat or bear might come along and do her a harm. So I let her into the yard, and was jest a-goin' to milk her when she begun to snort and shake, and finally giv' the pail a kick, and set off, full swing, for the fence to the lot. I looked round to see what was a-comin', and there, about a quarter of a mile off, I see the most curus thing I ever see before or since,—a cloud as black as ink in the sky, and hangin' down from it a long spout like, something like an elephant's trunk, and the whole world under it looked to be all beat to dust. Before I could get my eyes off on't, or stir to run, I see it was comin' as fast as a locomotive; I heerd a great roar and rush,—first a hot wind, and then a cold one, and then a crash,—an' 'twas all as dark as death all round, and the roar appeared to be a-passin' off.

I didn't know for quite a spell where I was. I was flat on my face, and when I come to a little, I felt the grass against my cheek, and I smelt the earth; but I couldn't move, no way; I couldn't turn over, nor raise my head more'n two inches, nor draw myself up one. I was comfortable so long as I laid still; but if I went to move, I couldn't. It wasn't no use to wriggle; and when I'd settled that, I jest went to work to figger out where I was and how I got there, and the best I could make out was that the barn-roof had blowed off and lighted right over me, jest so as not to hurt me, but so't I could'nt move.

Well, there I lay. I knew baby was asleep in the trundle-bed, and there wa'n't no fire in the house; but how did I know the house wa'n't blowed down? I thought that as quick as a flash of lightnin'; it kinder struck me; I couldn't even see, so as to be certain! I wasn't naterally fond of children, but somehow one's own is different, and baby was just gettin' big enough to be pretty; and there I lay, feelin' about as bad as I could, but hangin' on to one hope,—that old Simon, seein' the tornado, would come pretty soon to see where we was.

I lay still quite a spell, listenin'. Presently I heerd a low, whimperin', pantin' noise, comin' nearer and nearer, and I knew it was old Lu, a yeller hound of Simon's, that he'd set great store by, because he brought him from the Old Country. I heerd the dog come pretty near to where I was, and then stop, and give a long howl. I tried to call him, but I was all choked up with dust, and for a while I couldn't make no sound. Finally I called, "Lu! Lu! here, Sir!" and if ever you heerd a dumb creature laugh, he barked a real laugh, and come springin' along over towards me. I called ag'in, and he begun to scratch and tear and pull,—at boards, I guessed, for it sounded like that; but it wa'n't no use, he couldn't get at me, and he give up at length and set down right over my head and give another howl, so long and so dismal I thought I'd as lieves hear the bell a-tollin' my age.

Pretty soon, I heerd another sound,—the baby cryin'; and with that Lu jumped off whatever 'twas that buried me up, and run. "At any rate," thinks I, "baby's alive." And then I bethought myself if 'twa'n't a painter, after all; they scream jest like a baby, and there's a lot of them, or there was then, right round in our woods; and Lu was dreadful fond to hunt 'em; and he never took no notice of baby;—and I couldn't stir to see!

Oh, dear! the sweat stood all over me! And there I lay, and Simon didn't come, nor I didn't hear a mouse stir; the air was as still as death, and I got nigh distracted. Seemed as if all my life riz right up there in the dark and looked at me. Here I was, all helpless, may-be never to get out alive; for Simon didn't come, and Russell was gone away. I'd had a good home, and a kind husband, and all I could ask; but I hadn't had a contented mind; I'd quarrelled with Providence, 'cause I hadn't got everything,—and now I hadn't got nothing. I see just as clear as daylight how I'd nussed up every little trouble till it growed to a big one,—how I'd sp'ilt Russell's life, and made him wretched,—how I'd been cross to him a great many times when I had ought to have been a comfort; and now it was like enough I shouldn't never see him again,—nor baby, nor mother, nor Major. And how could I look the Lord in the face, if I did die? That took all my strength out. I lay shakin' and chokin' with the idee, I don't know how long; it kind of got hold of me and ground me down; it was worse than all. I wished to gracious I didn't believe in hell; but then it come to mind, What should I do in heaven, ef I was there? I didn't love nothin' that folks in heaven love, except the baby; I hadn't been suited with the Lord's will on earth, and 'twa'n't likely I was goin' to like it any better in heaven; and I should be ashamed to show my face where I didn't belong, neither by right nor by want. So I lay. Presently I heerd in my mind this verse, that I'd learned years back in Sabbath School,—

"Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost"—

there it stopped, but it was a plenty for me. I see at once there wasn't no help anywhere else, and for once in my life I did pray, real earnest, and—queer enough—not to get out, but to be made good. I kind of forgot where I was, I see so complete what I was; but after a while I did pray to live in the flesh; I wanted to make some amends to Russell for pesterin' on him so.

It seemed to me as though I'd laid there two days. A rain finally come on, with a good even-down pour, that washed in a little, and cooled my hot head; and after it passed by I heerd one whip-poor-will singin', so't I knew it was night. And pretty soon I heerd the tramp of a horse's feet;—it come up; it stopped; I heerd Russell say out loud, "O Lord!" and give a groan, and then I called to him. I declare, he jumped!

So I got him to go look for baby first, because I could wait; and lo! she was all safe in the trundle-bed, with Lu beside of her, both on 'em stretched out together, one of her little hands on his nose; and when Russell looked in to the door she stirred a bit, and Lu licked her hand to keep her quiet. It tells in the Bible about children's angels always seein' the face of God, so's to know quick what to do for 'em, I suppose; and I'm sure her'n got to her afore the tornado; for though the house-roof had blowed off, and the chimbley tumbled down, there wa'n't a splinter nor a brick on her bed, only close by the head on't a great hunk of stone had fell down, and steadied up the clothes-press from tumblin' right on top of her.

So then Russell rode over, six miles, to a neighbor's, and got two men, and betwixt 'em all they pried up the beams of the barn, that had blowed on to the roof and pinned it down over me, and then lifted up the boards and got me out; and I wa'n't hurt, except a few bruises: but after that day I begun to get gray hairs.

Well, Russell was pretty thankful, I b'lieve,—more so'n he need to be for such a wife. We fixed up some kind of a shelter, but Lu howled so all night we couldn't sleep. It seems Russell had seen the tornado to Cumberton, and, judgin' from its course 'twould come past the clearin', he didn't wait a minute, but saddled up and come off; but it had crossed the road once or twice, so it was nigh about eleven o'clock afore he got home; but it was broad moonlight. So I hadn't been under the roof only about fifteen hours; but it seemed more.

In the mornin' Russell set out to find Simon, and I was so trembly I couldn't bear to stay alone, and I went with him, he carryin' baby, and Lu goin' before, as tickled as he could be. We went a long spell through the woods, keepin' on the edge of the tornado's road; for't had made a clean track about a quarter of a mile wide, and felled the trees flat,—great tulips cut off as sharp as pipe-stems, oaks twisted like dandelion-stems, and hickories curled right up in a heap. Presently Lu give a bark, and then such a howl! and there was Simon, dead enough; a big oak had blowed down, with the trunk right acrost his legs above the knees, and smashed them almost off. 'Twas plain it hadn't killed him to once, for the ground all about his head was tore up as though he'd fought with it, and Russell said his teeth and hands was full of grass and grit where he'd bit and tore, a-dyin' so hard. I declare, I shan't never forget that sight! Seems as if my body was full of little ice-spickles every time I think on't.

Well, Russell couldn't do nothin'; we had no chance to lift the tree, so we went back to the house, and he rode away after neighbors; and while he was gone, I had a long spell of thinkin'. Mother said she hoped I wouldn't have no hard lesson to teach me Major's ways; but I had got it, and I know I needed it, 'cause it did come so hard. I b'lieve I was a better woman after that. I got to think more of other folks's comfort than I did afore, and whenever I got goin' to be dismal ag'in I used to try 'n' find somebody to help; it was a sure cure.

When the neighbors come, Russell and they blasted and chopped the tree off of Simon, and buried him under a big pine that we calculated not to fell. Lu pined, and howled, and moaned for his master, till I got him to look after baby now and then, when I was hangin' out clothes or makin' garden, and he got to like her in the end on't near as well as Simon.

After a while there come more settlers out our way, and we got a church to go to; and the minister, Mr. Jones, he come to know if I was a member, and when I said I wa'n't, he put in to know if I wasn't a pious woman.

"Well," says I, "I don't know, Sir." So I up and told him all about it, and how I had had a hard lesson; and he smiled once or twice, and says he,—

"Your husband thinks you are a Christian, Sister Potter, don't he?"

"Yes, I do," says Russell, a-comin' in behind me to the door,—for he'd just stepped out to get the minister a basket of plums. "I ha'n't a doubt on't, Mr. Jones."

The minister looked at him, and I see he was kinder pleased.

"Well," says he, "I don't think there's much doubt of a woman's bein' pious when she's pious to home; and I don't want no better testimony'n yours, Mr. Potter. I shall admit you to full fellowship, sister, when we have a church-meetin' next; for it's my belief you experienced religion under that blowed-down barn."

And I guess I did.

LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.1

  A blush as of roses    Where rose never grew!  Great drops on the bunch-grass,    But not of the dew!  A taint in the sweet air    For wild bees to shun!  A stain that shall never    Bleach out in the sun!  Back, steed of the prairies!    Sweet song-bird, fly back!  Wheel hither, bald vulture!    Gray wolf, call thy pack!  The foul human vultures    Have feasted and fled;  The wolves of the Border    Have crept from the dead.  From the hearths of their cabins,    The fields of their corn,  Unwarned and unweaponed,    The victims were torn,—  By the whirlwind of murder    Swooped up and swept on  To the low, reedy fen-lands,    The Marsh of the Swan.  With a vain plea for mercy    No stout knee was crooked;  In the mouths of the rifles    Right manly they looked.  How paled the May sunshine,    Green Marais du Cygne,  When the death-smoke blew over    Thy lonely ravine!  In the homes of their rearing,    Yet warm with their lives,  Ye wait the dead only,    Poor children and wives!  Put out the red forge-fire,    The smith shall not come;  Unyoke the brown oxen,    The ploughman lies dumb.  Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh,    O dreary death-train,  With pressed lips as bloodless    As lips of the slain!  Kiss down the young eyelids,    Smooth down the gray hairs;  Let tears quench the curses    That burn through your prayers.  Strong man of the prairies,    Mourn bitter and wild!  Wail, desolate woman!    Weep, fatherless child!  But the grain of God springs up    From ashes beneath,  And the crown of His harvest    Is life out of death.  Not in vain on the dial    The shade moves along  To point the great contrasts    Of right and of wrong:  Free homes and free altars    And fields of ripe food;  The reeds of the Swan's Marsh,    Whose bloom is of blood.  On the lintels of Kansas    That blood shall not dry;  Henceforth the Bad Angel    Shall harmless go by:  Henceforth to the sunset,    Unchecked on her way,  Shall Liberty follow    The march of the day.

YOUTH

The ancient statue of Minerva, in the Villa Albani, was characterized as the Goddess of Wisdom by an aged countenance. Phidias reformed this idea, and gave to her beauty and youth. Previous artists had imitated Nature too carelessly,—not deeply perceiving that wisdom and virtue, striving in man to resist senescence and decay, must in a goddess accomplish their purpose, and preserve her in perpetual bloom. Yet even decay and disease are often ineffectual; the young soul gleams through these impediments, and would be poorly expressed in figures of age. Accepting, therefore, this ideal representation, age and wisdom can never be companions; youth is wise, and age is imbecile.

Our childhood grows in value as we grow in years. It is to that time that every one refers the influence which reaches to his present and somehow moulds it. It may have been an insignificant circumstance,—a word,—a book,—praise or reproof; but from it has flowed all that he is. We should seem ridiculous in men's eyes, were we known to give that importance to certain trifles which in our private and inmost thought they really have. Each finds somewhat in his childhood peculiar and remarkable, on which he loves to dwell. It gives him a secret importance in his own eyes, and he bears it about with him as a kind of inspiring genius. Intimations of his destiny, gathered from early memories, float dimly before him, and are ever beckoning him on. That which he really is no one knows save himself. His words and actions do but inadequately reveal the being he is. We are all greater than we seem to each other. The heart's deepest secrets will not be told. The secret of the interest and delight we take in romances and poetry is that they realize the expectations and hopes of youth. It is the world we had painted and expected. He is unhappy who has never known the eagerness of childish anticipation.

Full of anticipations, full of simple, sweet delights, are these years, the most valuable of lifetime. Then wisdom and religion are intuitive. But the child hastens to leave its beautiful time and state, and watches its own growth with impatient eye. Soon he will seek to return. The expectation of the future has been disappointed. Manhood is not that free, powerful, and commanding state the imagination had delineated. And the world, too, disappoints his hope. He finds there things which none of his teachers ever hinted to him. He beholds a universal system of compromise and conformity, and in a fatal day he learns to compromise and conform. At eighteen the youth requires much stricter truth of men than at twenty-four.

At twenty-four the prophecies of childhood and boyhood begin to be fulfilled, the longings of the heart to be satisfied. He finds and tastes that life which once seemed to him so full of satisfaction and advantage. The inclination to speak in the first person passes away, and his composition is less autobiographical. The claims of society and friends begin to be respected. Solitude and musing are less sweet. The morbid effusions of earlier years, once so precious, no longer please. Now he regards most his unwritten thought. He uses fewer adjectives and alliterations, more verbs and dogmatism. There was a time when his genius was not domesticated, and he did his work somewhat awkwardly, yet with a fervor prophetic of settled wisdom and eloquence. The youth is almost too much in earnest. He aims at nothing less than all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. Perchance the end of all this is that he may discover his own proper work and tendency, and learn to know himself from the revelations of his own nature in universal nature.

For it is by this sign we choose companions and books. Not that they are the best persons or the best thoughts; but some subtile affinity attracts and invites as to another self. In the choosing of companions there seems to be no choice at all. "We meet, we know not how or when; and though we should remember the history, yet friendship has an anterior history we know not of. We all have friends, but the one want of the soul is a friend,—that other self, that one without whom man is incomplete and but the opaque face of a planet. For such we patiently wait and hope, knowing that when we become worthy of him, continents, nor caste, nor opinion can separate us."

A like experience is known to the young man in his reading. 'Tis in vain to advise as to reading; a higher power controls the matter. Of course there are some books all must read, as every one learns the alphabet and spelling-book; but his use and combination of them he shall share with no one. Some spiritual power is ever drawing us towards what we love. Thus in books one constantly meets his own idea, his own feelings, even his most private ones, which he thought could not be known or appreciated beyond his own bosom. Therefore he quickly falls in love with those books that discover him to himself, and that are the keepers of his secrets. Here is a part of himself written out in immortal letters. Here is that thought long dimly haunting the mind, but which never before found adequate expression. Here is a memorable passage transcribed out of his experience.

The fascination of books consists in their revelations of the half-conscious images of the reader's mind. There is a wonderful likeness and coincidence in the thoughts of men. But not alone in books does one meet his own image at every turn. He beholds himself strewn in a thousand fragments throughout the world; and all his culture is nothing but assimilation of himself to them, until he can say with wise Ulysses, "I am a part of all that I have met."

Thus Nature compels the youth to seek every means of stimulating himself to activity. He has learned that in periods of transition and change fresh life flows in upon him, dilating the heart and disclosing new realms of thought. He thanks the gods for every mood, Doric or dithyrambic, for each new relation, for each new friend, and even for his sorrows and misfortunes. Out of these comes the complete wisdom which shall make old age but another more fair and perfect youth. Even the face and form shall be fortified against time and fate. In the physiognomy of age much personal history is revealed. The dimples and folds of infancy have become the furrows of thought and care. Yet, sometimes retaining their original beauty, they are an ornament, and in them we read the record of deep thought and experience.

But the wrinkles of some old people are characterless; running in all directions, appearing as though a finely-woven cloth had left its impress upon the face, revealing a life aimless and idle, or distracted by a thousand cross-purposes and weaknesses.

If now youth will permit us to look a little deeper into its heart, we will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written there. Age does us only indirect justice,—by the value it gives to memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein it learned and felt and suffered;—so the circles, which are the tree's memories of its own growth, are more distinct near the centre, where its growth began, than in the outer and later development. Give age the past, and let us be content with our legacy, which is the future. Still shall youth cast one retrospective glance at the experience of its nonage, ere it assumes its prerogative, and quite forgets it.

When the first surprise at the discovery of the faculties is over, begins the era of experience. The aspiration conducting to experiment has revealed the power or the inability. Henceforth the youth will know his relations to the world. But as yet men are ignorant how it stands between them. There has been only a closet performance, a morning rehearsal. He sees the tribute to genius, to industry, to birth, to fortune. At first he yields reluctantly to novitiate and culture; he yearns for action. His masters tell him that the world is coy, must be approached cautiously, and with something substantial in the hand. The old bird will not be caught with chaff. He does not yet understand the process of accumulation and transmutation. The fate of the Danaides is his, and he draws long with a bottomless bucket. But at last his incompetency can no further be concealed. Then he either submits to the suggestions of despair and oblivion or bravely begins his work. The exhilaration and satisfaction which he felt at his first performances, in this hour of renunciation, are changed to bitterness and disgust. He remembers the old oracle: "In the Bacchic procession many carry the thyrsus, but few are inspired." The possibility of ultimate failure threatens him more and more while he reflects; as the chasm which you wish to leap grows impassable, if you measure and deliberate. But the vivacity of youth preserves him from any permanent misanthropy or doubt. Nature makes us blind where we should be injured by seeing. We partake of the lead of Saturn, the activity of fire, the forgetfulness of water. His academic praises console him, maugre his depreciation of them. His little fame, the homage of his little world, have in them the same sweetness as the reverberation of ages. Heaven would show him his capacity for those things to which he aspires by giving him an early and representative realization of them. It is a happy confidence. Reality is tyrannous. Let him construe everything in the poet's mood. He shall dream, and the day will have more significance. Youth belongs to the Muse.