The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 52, February, 1862

Almost sunset now. But the air was suddenly filled with perplexing snow-dust from a heavy squall. A white curtain dropped between the anxious watchers on the wharf and the boatmen.

The same white curtain hid the dark floating object from its pursuers.

There was nothing in sight to steer by, now.

Wade steered by his last glimpse,—by the current,—by the rush of the roaring wind,—by instinct.

How merciful that in such a moment a man is spared the agony of thought!

His agony goes into action, intense as life.

It was bitterly cold. A swash of ice-water filled the bottom of the skiff. She was low enough down without that. They could not stop to bail, and the miniature icebergs they passed began to look significantly over the gunwale. Which would come to the point of foundering first, the boat or the little floe it aimed for?

Bitterly cold! The snow hardly melted upon Tarbox's bare hands. His fingers stiffened to the oars; but there was life in them still, and still he did his work, and never turned to see how the steersman was doing his.

A flight of crows came sailing with the snow-squall. They alighted all about on the hummocks, and curiously watched the two men battling to save life. One black impish bird, more malignant or more sympathetic than his fellows, ventured to poise on the skiff's stern!

Bill hissed off this third passenger. The crow rose on its toes, let the boat slide away from under him, and followed croaking dismal good wishes.

The last sunbeams were now cutting in everywhere. The thick snow-flurry was like a luminous cloud. Suddenly it drew aside.

The industrious skiff had steered so well and made such headway, that there, a hundred yards away, safe still, not gone, thank God! was the woman they sought.

A dusky mass flung together on a waning rood of ice,—Wade could see nothing more.

Weary or benumbed, or sick with pure forlornness and despair, she had drooped down and showed no sign of life.

The great wind shook the river. Her waning rood of ice narrowed, foot by foot, like an unthrifty man's heritage. Inch by inch its edges wore away, until the little space that half-sustained the dark heap was no bigger than a coffin-lid.

Help, now!—now, men, if you are to save! Thrust, Richard Wade, with your boat-hook! Pull, Bill, till your oars snap! Out with your last frenzies of vigor! For the little raft of ice, even that has crumbled beneath its burden, and she sinks,—sinks, with succor close at hand!

Sinks! No,—she rises and floats again.

She clasps something that holds her head just above water. But the unmannerly ice has buffeted her hat off. The fragments toss it about,—that pretty Amazonian hat, with its alert feather, all drooping and draggled. Her fair hair and pure forehead are uncovered for an astonished sunbeam to alight upon.

"It is my love, my life, Bill! Give way, once more!"

"Way enough! Steady! Sit where you are, Bill, and trim boat, while I lift her out. We cannot risk capsizing."

He raised her carefully, tenderly, with his strong arms.

A bit of wood had buoyed her up for that last moment. It was a broken oar with a deep fresh gash in it.

Wade knew his mark,—the cut of his own skate-iron. This busy oar was still resolved to play its part in the drama.

The round little skiff just bore the third person without sinking.

Wade laid Mary Damer against the thwart. She would not let go her buoy. He unclasped her stiffened hands. This friendly touch found its way to her heart. She opened her eyes and knew him.

"The ice shall not carry off her hat to frighten some mother, down stream," says Bill Tarbox, catching it.

All these proceedings Cap'n Ambuster's spy-glass announced to Dunderbunk.

"They're h'istin' her up. They've slumped her into the skiff. They're puttin' for shore. Hooray!"

Pity a spy-glass cannot shoot cheers a mile and a half!

Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half Dunderbunk along the railroad-track to learn who it was and all about it.

All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe and not dangerously frozen,—and that Wade and Tarbox had carried her up the hill to her mother at Peter Skerrett's.

Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a hero of Cap'n Ambuster's skiff. It was transported back on the shoulders of the crowd in triumphal procession. Perry Purtett carried round the hat for a contribution to new paint it, new rib it, new gunwale it, give it new sculls and a new boat-hook,—indeed, to make a new vessel of the brave little bowl.

"I'm afeard," says Cap'n Ambuster, "that, when I git a harnsome new skiff, I shall want a harnsome new steamboat, and then the boat will go to cruisin' round for a harnsome new Cap'n."

And now for the end of this story.

Healthy love-stories always end in happy marriages.

So ends this story, begun as to its love portion by the little romance of a tumble, and continued by the bigger romance of a rescue.

Of course there were incidents enough to fill a volume, obstacles enough to fill a volume, and development of character enough to fill a tome thick as "Webster's Unabridged," before the happy end of the beginning of the Wade-Damer joint history.

But we can safely take for granted that the lover being true and manly, and the lady true and womanly, and both possessed of the high moral qualities necessary to artistic skating, they will go on understanding each other better, until they are as one as two can be.

Masculine reader, attend to the moral of this tale:—

Skate well, be a hero, bravely deserve the fair, prove your deserts by your deeds, find your "perfect woman nobly planned to warm, to comfort, and command," catch her when found, and you are Blest.

Reader of the gentler sex, likewise attend:—

All the essential blessings of life accompany a true heart and a good complexion. Skate vigorously; then your heart will beat true, your cheeks will bloom, your appointed lover will see your beautiful soul shining through your beautiful face, he will tell you so, and after sufficient circumlocution he will Pop, you will accept, and your lives will glide sweetly as skating on virgin ice to silver music.

* * * * *

MIDWINTER

  The speckled sky is dim with snow,  The light flakes falter and fall slow;  Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale,  Silently drops a silvery veil;  The far-off mountain's misty form  Is entering now a tent of storm;  And all the valley is shut in  By flickering curtains gray and thin.  But cheerily the chickadee  Singeth to me on fence and tree;  The snow sails round him, as he sings,  White as the down of angels' wings.  I watch the slow flakes, as they fall  On bank and brier and broken wall;  Over the orchard, waste and brown,  All noiselessly they settle down,  Tipping the apple-boughs, and each  Light quivering twig of plum and peach.  On turf and curb and bower-roof  The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof;  It paves with pearl the garden-walk;  And lovingly round tattered stalk  And shivering stem its magic weaves  A mantle fair as lily-leaves.  The hooded beehive, small and low,  Stands like a maiden in the snow;  And the old door-slab is half hid  Under an alabaster lid.  All day it snows: the sheeted post  Gleams in the dimness like a ghost;  All day the blasted oak has stood  A muffled wizard of the wood;  Garland and airy cap adorn  The sumach and the way-side thorn,  And clustering spangles lodge and shine  In the dark tresses of the pine.  The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old,  Shrinks like a beggar in the cold;  In surplice white the cedar stands,  And blesses him with priestly hands.  Still cheerily the chickadee  Singeth to me on fence and tree:  But in my inmost ear is heard  The music of a holier bird;  And heavenly thoughts, as soft and white  As snow-flakes, on my soul alight,  Clothing with love my lonely heart,  Healing with peace each bruisèd part,  Till all my being seems to be  Transfigured by their purity.* * * * *

EASE IN WORK

To thoughts and expressions of peculiar force and beauty we give the epithets "happy" and "felicitous," as if we esteemed them a product rather of the writer's fortune than of his toil. Thus, Dryden says of Shakspeare, "All the images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew from them, not laboriously, but luckily." And, indeed, when one contemplates a noble creation in art or literature, one seems to receive from the work itself a certain testimony that it was never wrought out with wrestling struggle, but was genially and joyfully produced, as the sun sends forth his beams and the earth her herbage. This appearance of play and ease is sometimes so notable as to cause a curious misapprehension. For example, De Quincey permits himself, if my memory serve me, to say that Plato probably wrote his works not in any seriousness of spirit, but only as a pastime! A pastime for the immortals that were.

The reason of this ease may be that perfect performance is ever more the effluence of a man's nature than the conscious labor of his hands. That the hands are faithfully busy therein, that every faculty contributes its purest industry, no one could for a moment doubt; since there could not be a total action of one's nature without this loyalty of his special powers. Nevertheless, there are times when the presiding intelligence descends into expression by a law and necessity of its own, as clouds descend into rain; and perhaps it is only then that consummate work is done. He who by his particular powers and gifts serves as a conduit for this flowing significance may indeed toil as no drudge ever did or can, yet with such geniality and success, that he shall feel of his toil only the joy, and that we shall see of it only the prosperity. A swan labors in swimming, a pigeon in his flight; yet as no part of this industry is defeated, as it issues momentarily in perfect achievement, it makes upon us the impression, not of the limitation of labor, but of the freedom and liberation of an animal genius.

"Long deliberations," says Goethe, "commonly indicate that we have not the point to be determined clearly in view." So an extreme sense of striving effort, or, in other words, an extreme sense of inward hindrance, in the performance of a high task, usually denotes the presence in us of an element irrelevant to our work, and perhaps unfriendly to it. If a stream flow roughly, you infer obstructions in the channel. Often the explanation may be that one is attempting to-day a task proper to some future time,—to another year, or another century. It is the green fruit that clings tenaciously to the bough; the ripe falls of itself.

But as blighted and worm-eaten apples likewise fall of themselves, so in this ease of execution the falsest work may agree with the best. That the similarity is purely specious needs not be urged; yet in practically distinguishing between the two there are not a few that fail. The most precious work is performed with a noble, though not idle ease, because it is the sincere, seasonable, and, as it were, inevitable flowering into expression of one's inward life; and work utterly, glibly insincere and imitative is often done with ease, because it is so successfully separated from the inward life as not even to recognize its claim. Accordingly, pure art and pure artifice, sincere creation and sheer fabrication, flow; from the mixture of these, or from any mixture of natural and necessary with factitious expression, comes embarrassment. In the mastery of life, or of death, there is peace; the intermediate state, that of sickness, is full of pain and struggle. In Homer and in Tupper, in Cicero and the leaders of the London "Times," in Jeremy Taylor and the latest Reverend Mr. Orotund, you find a liberal and privileged utterance; but honest John Foster, made of powerful, but ill-composed elements, and replete with an intelligence now gleaming and now murky, could wring statements from his mind only as testimony in cruel ages was obtained from unwilling witnesses, namely, by putting himself to the torture.

But it is of prime importance to observe that the aforementioned mature fruit, which so falls at the tenderest touch into the hand, is no sudden, no idle product. It comes, on the contrary, of a depth of operation more profound, and testifies to a genius and sincerity in Nature more subtile and religious, than we can understand or imagine. This apple that in fancy we now pluck, and hardly need to pluck, from the burdened bough,—think what a pedigree it has, what aeons of world-making and world-maturing must elapse, all the genius of God divinely assiduous, ere this could hang in ruddy and golden ripeness here! Think, too, what a concurrence and consent of elements, of sun and soil, of ocean-vapors and laden winds, of misty heats in the torrid zone and condensing blasts from the North, were required before a single apple could grow, before a single blossom could put forth its promise, tender and beautiful amidst the gladness of spring!—and besides these consenting ministries of Nature, how the special genius of the tree must have wrought, making sacrifice of woody growth, and, by marvellous and ineffable alchemies, co-working with the earth beneath, and the heaven above! Ah, not from any indifference, not from any haste or indolence, in Nature, come the fruits of her seasons and her centuries!

Now he who has any faculty of thinking must see that thoughts are before things in the order of existence. True it is, that here as elsewhere, as everywhere, last is first and first is last. That which is innermost, and consequently primary, is last to appear on the surface; and accordingly thoughts per se follow things in the order of manifestation. But how could the thing exist, but for a thought that preceded and begot it? And now that the thought has passed through the material symbol, has passed forward to a new and more consummate expression, first in the soul, and afterwards by the voice, we should be unwise indeed to deny or forget its antiquity. Thoughts are no parvenus or novi homines in Nature, but came in with that Duke William who first struck across the unnamed seas into this island of time and material existence which we inhabit. Accordingly, it is using extreme understatement, to say that every pure original thought has a genesis equally ancient, earnest, vital with any product in Nature,—has present relationships no less broad and cosmical, and an evolution implying the like industries, veritable and precious beyond all scope of affirmation. Even if we quite overlook its pre-personal ancestry, still the roots it has in its immediate author will be of unmeasured depth, and it will still proceed toward its consummate form by energies and assiduities that beggar the estimation of all ordinary toil. With the birth of the man himself was it first born, and to the time of its perfect growth and birth into speech the burden of it was borne by every ruddy drop of his heart's blood, by every vigor of his body,—nerve and artery, eye and ear, and all the admirable servitors of the soul, steadily bringing to that invisible matrix where it houses their costly nutriments, their sacred offices; while every part and act of experience, every gush of jubilance, every stifle of woe, all sweet pangs of love and pity, all high breathings of faith and resolve, contribute to the form and bloom it finally wears. Yet the more profound and necessary product of one's spirit it is, the more likely at last to fall softly from him,—so softly, perhaps, that he himself shall be half-unaware when the separation occurs.

And such only are men of genius as accomplish this divine utterance. The voice itself may be strong or tiny,—that of a seraph, or that of a song-sparrow; the range and power of combination may be Beethoven's, or only such as are found in the hum of bees; but in this genuineness, this depth of ancestry and purity of growth, this unmistakable issue under the patronage of Nature, there is a test of genius that cannot vary. He is not inimitable who imitates. He that speaks only what he has learned speaks what the world will not long or greatly desire to learn from him. "Shakspeare," said Dryden, not having the fear of Locke before his eyes, "was naturally learned"; but whoever is quite destitute of natural learning will never achieve winged words by dint and travail of other erudition. If his soul have not been to school before coming to his body, it is late in life for him to qualify himself for a teacher of mankind. Words that are cups to contain the last essences of a sincere life bear elixirs of life for as many lips as shall touch their brim; they refresh all generations, nor by any quaffing of generations are they to be drained.

To this ease it may be owing that poets and artists are often so ill judges of their own success. Their happiest performance is too nearly of the same color with their permanent consciousness to be seen in relief: work less sincere—that is, more related and bound to some partial state or particular mood—would stand out more to the eye of the doer. To this error he will be less exposed who learns—as most assuredly every artist should—to estimate his work, not as it seems to him striking, but as it echoes to his ear the earliest murmurs of his childhood, and reclaims for the heart its wandered memories. Perhaps it is common for one's happiest thoughts, in the moment of their apparition in words, to affect him with a gentle surprise and sense of newness; but soon afterwards they may probably come to touch him, on the contrary, with a vague sense of reminiscence, as if his mother had sung them by his cradle, or somewhere under the rosy east of life he had heard them from others. A statement of our own which seems to us very new and striking is probably partial, is in some degree foreign to our hearts; that which one, being the soul he is, could not do otherwise than say is probably what he was created for the purpose of saying, and will be found his most significant and living word. Yet just in proportion as one's speech is a pure and simple efflux of his spirit, just in proportion as its utterance lies in the order and inevitable procedure of his life, he will be liable to undervalue it. Who feels that the universe is greatly enriched by his heart-beats?—that it is much that he breathes, sleeps, walks? But the breaths of supreme genius are thoughts, and the imaginations that people its day-world are more familiar to it than the common dreams of sleepers to them, and the travel of its meditations is daily and customary; insomuch that the very thought of all others which one was born to utter he may forget to mention, as presuming it to be no news. Indeed, if a man of fertile soul be misled into the luckless search after peculiar and surprising thoughts, there are many chances that be will be betrayed into this oversight of his proper errand. As Sir Martin Frobisher, according to Fuller, brought home from America a cargo of precious stones which after examination were thrown out to mend roads with, so he leaves untouched his divine knowledges, and comes sailing into port full-freighted with conceits.

May not the above considerations go far to explain that indifference, otherwise so astonishing, with which Shakspeare cast his work from him? It was his heart that wrote; but does the heart look with wonder and admiration on the crimson of its own currents?

* * * * *

AT PORT ROYAL. 1861

  The tent-lights glimmer on the land,    The ship-lights on the sea;  The night-wind smooths with drifting sand    Our track on lone Tybee.  At last our grating keels outslide,    Our good boats forward swing;  And while we ride the land-locked tide,    Our negroes row and sing.  For dear the bondman holds his gifts    Of music and of song:  The gold that kindly Nature sifts    Among his sands of wrong;  The power to make his toiling days    And poor home-comforts please;  The quaint relief of mirth that plays    With sorrow's minor keys.  Another glow than sunset's fire    Has filled the West with light,  Where field and garner, barn and byre    Are blazing through the night.  The land is wild with fear and hate,    The rout runs mad and fast;  From hand to hand, from gate to gate,    The flaming brand is passed.  The lurid glow falls strong across    Dark faces broad with smiles:  Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss    That fire yon blazing piles.  With oar-strokes timing to their song,    They weave in simple lays  The pathos of remembered wrong,    The hope of better days,—  The triumph-note that Miriam sung,    The joy of uncaged birds:  Softening with Afric's mellow tongue    Their broken Saxon words.

SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN

  Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come    To set de people free;  An' massa tink it day ob doom,    An' we ob jubilee.  De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves    He jus' as 'trong as den;  He say de word: we las' night slaves;    To-day, de Lord's freemen.      De yam will grow, de cotton blow,        We'll hab de rice an' corn:      Oh, nebber you fear, if nebber you hear        De driver blow his horn!  Ole massa on he trabbels gone;    He leab de land behind:  De Lord's breff blow him furder on,    Like corn-shuck in de wind.  We own de hoe, we own de plough,    We own de hands dat hold;  We sell de pig, we sell de cow,    But nebber chile be sold.      De yam will grow, de cotton blow,        We'll hab de rice an' corn:      Oh, nebber you fear, if nebber you hear        De driver blow his horn!  We pray de Lord: he gib us signs    Dat some day we be free;  De Norf-wind tell it to de pines,    De wild-duck to de sea;  We tink it when de church-bell ring,    We dream it in de dream;  De rice-bird mean it when he sing,    De eagle when he scream.      De yam will grow, de cotton blow,        We'll hab de rice an' corn:      Oh, nebber you fear, if nebber you hear        De driver blow his horn!  We know de promise nebber fail,    An' nebber lie de word;  So, like de 'postles in de jail,    We waited for de Lord:  An' now he open ebery door,    An' trow away de key;  He tink we lub him so before,    We lub him better free.      De yam will grow, de cotton blow,        He'll gib de rice an' corn:      So nebber you fear, if nebber you hear        De driver blow his horn!  So sing our dusky gondoliers;    And with a secret pain,  And smiles that seem akin to tears,    We hear the wild refrain.  We dare not share the negro's trust,    Nor yet his hope deny;  We only know that God is just,    And every wrong shall die.  Rude seems the song; each swarthy face,    Flame-lighted, ruder still;  We start to think that hapless race    Must shape our good or ill;  That laws of changeless justice bind    Oppressor with oppressed;  And, close as sin and suffering joined,    We march to Fate abreast.  Sing on, poor hearts! your chant shall be    Our sign of blight or bloom,—  The Vala-song of Liberty,    Or death-rune of our doom!

FREMONT'S HUNDRED DAYS IN MISSOURI

II

Camp Haskell, October 24th. We have marched twelve miles to-day, and are encamped near the house of a friendly German farmer. Our cortege has been greatly diminished in number. Some of the staff have returned to St. Louis; to others have been assigned duties which remove them from head-quarters; and General Asboth's division being now in the rear, that soldierly-looking officer no longer rides beside the General, and the gentlemen of his staff no longer swell our ranks.

As we approach the enemy there is a marked change in the General's demeanor. Usually reserved, and even retiring,—now that his plans begin to work out results, that the Osage is behind us, that the difficulties of deficient transportation have been conquered, there is an unwonted eagerness in his face, his voice is louder, and there is more self-assertion in his attitude. He has hitherto proceeded on a walk, but now he presses on at a trot. His horsemanship is perfect. Asboth is a daring rider, loving to drive his animal at the top of his speed. Zagonyi rides with surpassing grace, and selects fiery chargers which no one else cares to mount. Colonel E. has an easy, business-like gait. But in lightness and security in the saddle the General excels them all. He never worries his beast, is sure to get from him all the work of which he is capable, is himself quite incapable of being fatigued in this way.

Just after sundown the camp was startled by heavy infantry firing. Going around the spur of the forest which screens head-quarters from the prairie, we found the Guard dismounted, drawn up in line, firing their carbines and revolvers. The circumstance excites curiosity, and we learn that Zagonyi has been ordered to make a descent upon Springfield, and capture or disperse the Rebel garrison, three or four hundred strong, which is said to be there. Major White has already gone forward with his squadron of "Prairie Scouts" to make a reconnoissance in the direction of Springfield. Zagonyi will overtake White, assume command of the whole force, which will number about three hundred men, and turn the reconnoissance into an attack. The Guard set out at eight o'clock this evening. A few are left behind to do duty around head-quarters. Lieutenant Kennedy, of the Kentucky company, was ordered to remain in command of our Home-Guard. He was greatly grieved, and went to the Major and with tears in his eyes besought him to permit him to go. Zagonyi could not refuse the gallant fellow, and all the officers of the Guard have gone. There is a feeling of sadness in camp to-night. We wonder which of our gay and generous comrades will come back to us again.