The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844

Did you never in the day or night dream yourself to be upon some lofty overhanging precipice? did you never in imagination look down over its extreme verge upon the dark coast that skirts the foot of it, so far below you that you only distinguish the Rocks themselves by the white foam of the blue wave that breaks over them? Did you never hold by a bush while you were bending over this awful verge, listening to the low roar of the deep and distant waters, and perceive the Eagle itself soaring mid-way only up the cliff—and while you grew chill with the thoughts of depth, and danger, and distance from relief, did you never feel the bush give way and the gravel slide from beneath you, and the whole mass come thundering down from earth to ocean?

One throb is given to madness and in the next you wake and find the body in security although perhaps in pain. Have you been in actual danger? do you believe that you have been? If not, why do you immediately pray to God and bless Him at such moments for his protection and care of you? Is it not that while the body has been quiescent, the excursive Soul has been in spiritual presence on the edge of that beetling and stupendous height?

Suppose, as the mother sits beside the small bed, drinking with her eyes that draught of ecstatick pleasure which only Woman’s heart can taste, she could perceive the spirit of her boy, rising from the body that it leaves behind in roseate sleep, a thousand times more beautiful than it and yet the same; and still her own; and taking upon himself, as of his proper right, the grace and charm of ‘a young and rose-lipped cherub,’ should chase, (and all within her sight,) the rainbow-butterflies of Paradise across its swards of velvet, and laugh in music to express his joy!

Suppose that to the husband it should be given to behold his Wife—the pure in heart!—walking like a seraph in the Spiritual Life, as the earliest light of morning moves along the hill-tops; her countenance ‘beautified with salvation’ and joy unfolding itself at her approach: he sees and follows her as she enters into grottoes of shells, compared with which all flowers of Earth are mere attempts at colour! She listens to choirs of angels, joining worthily with them in the celestial chaunt! and when the hearts of both are elevated by the anthem strain, she kneels in solitude and prays for him in words that rise to Heaven, a grateful and accepted incense!

Regard in silence those features of the young and beautiful upon the bed of slow consuming death; with what a grace do they not awake from the momentary trance of sleep! thoughts, not given to be revealed, have been garnered by that precious spirit as it hath soared upward toward the Heaven that is now bending with a summons unto everlasting Life! How gently yet how touchingly do not its glances and its last regrets pass through the diaphanous covering that remains to it of mortality, upon the friend who gazes in equal love and wonder at its side! how like the light within the vase! how sublimated the expression! how intent, how occupied that long look! how effulgent that passage of hope! how intimate, how exalted must have been the communion, when gleams of Faith and Joy, too beautiful for utterance, indicate the redeemed soul just fluttering to ascend in ‘robes made white in the blood of the Lamb!’

Are not these and such as these, imaginations, communions, capacities, employments of the soul in Dreams? Ah! if what is called the Sleep of Death be mysterious, be awful, be sublime, be beautiful at times; how much more so,—when the form lies waiting to be revivified by the quick return of the excursive spirit,—how much more so is the Sleep of Life!

I was lying in my bed, in a deep delicious repose, in my own bed, without either care, or cold, or gout, to molest me even in my dreams; I had been occupied during the evening with some elementary algebraical processes in the company of my dear son who was to prepare them for examination at school on the following day and who had succeeded in arriving at correct results, had copied off his work, and packed it in his satchel for the morning.

Methought, while I slept, my son and I stood together hand in hand in the Church where we were accustomed to worship. We were very near the altar, but with our faces directed toward the organ and front gallery. There is in my mind some recollection of another person, I believe our Rector, near us but a little behind us.

Presently the surface of the gallery extended itself in breadth and height, so greatly as to cover the entire organ-loft with it’s increased plane, and it became an immense practising-board, such as, upon a small scale, teachers of mathematics use to resolve problems upon for the instruction of a class, and it immediately assumed the deep slate-coloured hue that such boards are frequently painted.

And now there arranged themselves upon this board, in white characters, problem after problem in Equation; the Rule in which we had been exercising. I cannot describe the celerity with which these problems were stated upon the board, and worked out to the intense gratification of my son and myself; the most difficult and apparently unequal quantities being with the rapidity of thought interchanged neutralized reduced and determined, so that what seemed at the outset extremely involved, became lucid as day, and the unknown quantities made specific to our perfect satisfaction in an instant of time.

We were delighted with the lesson. I felt the hand of my son gently pressing mine, as he was accustomed to do when he would evince his satisfaction at any thing we examined successfully together; and we agreed with each other to cherish the recollection of these elucidations for future practice.

Turning again toward the board, we found it entirely freed from any trace of what had been wrought upon it. And now, in a manner which I have no possible means of imparting to the Reader, the good and evil of Life formed the specific and the unknown quantities that were wrought out upon the board. Problem succeeded problem, formed out of various conditions of life, with the same rapidity as those in Arabicks had been, and though vastly more complicated, with the same satisfactory result. Every variety and combination of circumstances in life seemed exhibited; positive negative neutral in a moment; until certain trials and occurrences led to certain virtues, with the same precision as in the preceding series of demonstrations x

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