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 had for example been shewn to be equal to 8. Our joy was beyond expression in words; we embraced each other and I well remember saying, ‘My dear Hal, this is Truth; positive Truth; moral, but as certain and as irrefragible, as any mathematical Truth is or ever can be shewn to be.’

We turned again toward the Board, and another course altogether of demonstrations passed over the surface of it, and was made scrutable to our perceptions. By one process the illimitable power of God was borne in upon my apprehension with a vividness of conception that I had never felt before.

By another I well remember Truth and Wisdom were shewn to be one and the same, and all Truth to proceed from and to be an attribute of God. By another, Infinite Justice, deduced from Infinite Power and Infinite Truth, was arrived at, as His essential and necessary quality. Again, the revealed Word of God as declared in the Bible was established in my mind as the irresistible result of another process; and, although several had intermediately passed over the Board, this was I think the last. The Board faded, the figure at our side disappeared, we were out of church, and presently I awoke, and lo! it was a Dream! But the recollection of that dream has never faded from my memory, and I trust that the influences of it may never be lost.

My mind for some time previous had been much afflicted with considerations and doubts respecting the free agency of man, and the truth of the Scriptures so far as they relate to everlasting punishment, and to the prescience of God. These doubts had been infused in conversation by the reasoning of an eminent lawyer. If you believe in the doctrine of everlasting punishment said he, and believe also in the prescience of God, and in His Omnipotence, must you not admit that God might prevent the sinner from entering at all into this world of probation? into this world of trial which is to prove too severe for his powers of resistance? If I know that a candle that I purpose lighting will, from any accident, or by any other hand after I shall have lighted it, be made to burn my neighbor’s house; am I not in some degree participant or accessary to the consequence if I persist in the intention? Why is man to be made subject to consequences more direful to him than if he had never been born at all into this world of evil? He has had no voice in determining his mission into it, nor has his will been consulted in the creation of his spirit, nor in the qualities with which that spirit is endued; his existence also in a state of indulgence of wicked impulse, how short and limited it has been; and how frequently mingled with the disposition if not with repeated Effort toward goodness; shall he for twenty years of vice, be subjected to everlasting punishment? how can this consist with Divine Justice and Mercy? You say that he has had the free option of good and evil; possibly so; but he has not chosen the good, he has not adopted the course that leads to everlasting happiness, and his everlasting misery might have been prevented; why then should he have been called into being? Is not this misery ordained to him, since it is not prevented, and since it has always been apparent as the result of life to the creative power which must know, and which could prevent, and has yet determined to create?

Now these doubts were weighing on my heart when I first stood before that board; and when I had left the church, they were all removed. They had made themselves—air, into which they vanished. My hands were clasped together in pleasure at the relief; and when I awoke, a sensation, the purest perhaps that life affords, had entire possession of my heart, my mind, my soul. It was that gentle, yet etherial sensation—that yellow-green of the ransomed spirit—when gratitude that has never drawn a chain behind it, gratitude free as joy, gratitude beautiful as hope, melts into love toward Him, ‘who first hath loved us!’

‘Parent of Heaven! great Master of mankind!Where’er Thy providence directs, beholdMy steps with cheerful resignation turn!Fate leads the willing, drags the backward on.Why should I mourn, when grieving I must bear;Or take with guilt what, guiltless, I might share!’John Waters.

LINES TO BLUMINE

When day gives place to sweeter night,And twinkling stars come out on high,Like sentinels in armor bright,To watch amid the ebon sky;High in the north thine eye will seeThat lonely star, whose steady beamShall look into thy heart, and beThe phantom of thy troubled dream.I love thee not: though once thy heartBeat in warm answer to my own;Like strangers we shall meet and part,And I shall tread my way alone. Brooklyn, L. I. Hans Von Spiegel.

EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR

Dear Knick: Were’t not for reverence dueFrom such as I to such as you,I really could not choose but swearTo think that e’en a millionaire,With piles enough of brick and stoneTo make a city of his own,And broad domains in simple fee,Or held in pledge as mortgagee,And scrip whose outspread folds would coverHis native Hesse-Darmstadt over;Should have withal the hard assuranceTo hold a Son of Song in durance.Why, as I lately sauntered outTo see what Gotham was about,Just below Niblo’s, west southwest,In a prosaic street at best,I chanced upon a lodge so small,So Lilliputian-like in all,That Argus, hundred-eyed albeit,Might pass a hundred times, nor see it.Agog to see what manikinHad shrined his household gods therein,With step as light as tip-toe fairy’sI stole right in among the Lares.There in the cosiest of nooks,Up to his very eyes in books,Sat a lone wight, nor stout nor lean,Nor old nor young, but just between,Poring along the figured columnsOf those most unmelodious volumes,Intently as if there and thenHe conned the fate of gods and men.Methought that brow so full and fairWas formed the poet’s wreath to wear;And as those eyes of azure hue,One moment lifted, met my view,Gay worlds of starry thoughts appearedIn their blue depths serenely sphered.Just then the voice of one unseen,All redolent of Hippocrene,Stole forth so sweetly on the air,I felt the Muse indeed was there,And feel how much her words divineMust lose, interpreted by mine.For shame, it said, Fitz-Greene, for shame!To yield thee to inglorious thrall,And leave the trophy of thy fameWithout its crowning capital!The sculptor, bard, as well may trustTo shape a form for glory’s shrine,If, ceasing with the breathing bust.He leave unwrought the brow divine.How oft the lavish Muse has grieved.O’er hopes thy early years inspired,And sighed that he who much received,Forgot that much would be required.But not too late, if heeded yet,The voice that chides thy mute repose,And bids thee pay at last the debtThy genius to Parnassus owes.’Tis not enough that pride may urgeThy claims to memory’s grateful lore,And boast, as rapt from Lethe’s surge,The Suliote and the Tuscarore.Nay, bard, thy own land’s mighty deadDeserve a nobler hymn from thee,Than bravest of the brave that bledAt Laspi or Thermopylæ.Remember, then, thy young renown,Thy country’s dead, thy muse’s sigh;And bid thy vigorous manhood crownWhat youthful genius reared so high!Still to his task the bard applied,Unrecked, unheeded all beside;And as he closed his balance-sheet,I heard his murmuring lips repeat:‘Three hundred thousand, city rents,Item a hundred, seven per cents,Add cash, another hundred, sayFrom bonds and notes paid off this day,And eke from drafts at sight for duesJust credited to land accrues,Whose rental stretches on and onFrom Aroostook to Oregon;Total, a semi-million clearIncome received for one short year!’Aladdin’s wealth scarce mounted fasterAt its spring-tide than thine, Herr Astor.W. P. P.

EARLY SPRING AT THE HOMESTEAD

BY HANS VON SPIEGEL

Lo! here is Spring again, the dainty goddess come back to see what Winter has been doing for so many months in forest and meadow, on the broad hill-side and in the valley. The old ice-king has had a merry time of it, playing with the long branches of the graceful maiden-like elm, and wrestling with the gnarled and haughty oak. You might have heard him roaring in the depths of the woods, had you been here, venerable Deidrich, day and night for a sevennight, apparently just for the sake of making a noise, and compelling the obeisance of the forest. Like any other demagogue, he gains attention by his blusterings. How lowly that young poplar bent before him, while the old hemlocks scarcely deigned a show of reverence! When you were in your youth, and the world seemed larger than now, did you not feel more of respect and awe for the great man than you now do? Ah! well-a-day! how little is the world’s esteem worthy of care! Ambition climbs the dizzy steeps of fame; the young and inexperienced, whose admiration is not worth a straw, applaud; but the wise, for whose good-will Ambition toils, look on with indifference; for they know the emptiness of human greatness. But while we stop to moralize, the reader grows a-weary; and even thou, Deidrich, who art so constitutionally polite, compressest thy labial muscles, and thumpest nervously the floor with thy gold-headed walking stick. What a pity that we cannot talk nonsense gracefully!

There, now, all this time has the damsel Spring been awaiting our commands, shivering mayhap in her scanty drapery, while we have been prating. So it is the world over. The best intentioned forget the claims of others, listening to the sweet music of their own sweet voices. Deidrich, you ought to be here in the country to see what Hans and Peter are doing ‘at this present.’

Just back of the house, (we are at the old Homestead,) the snow has melted away, and an impatient crocus is just peeping up to get a look at the warm sun. The spruce, at whose foot it grows all the winter long, has kindly extended one of its lower branches over it, to shield it from the frost, and now straitens it up again to give the poor little plant a glimpse or two of the warm blue sky and the golden sun. And here, on the southern side of the house, the windows are thrown up, and the door of the wing swung open for the first time in four long months. There, Peter, in the side of the wing where you see the ends of two or three bricks protruding from a circular hole in the clapboards, is the nest of a pair of wrens that year after year come back to rear a new family, and chirp and chatter away the summer, when their labors have ceased. If it were a few weeks later, you might get acquainted with the comical little occupants, who are as brisk and busy as if they were not in reality great grand-parents to a whole republic of wrens. See! on the top of the wood-shed, how proudly the old rooster struts along the weather-board, enjoying the discomfiture of his wives, who have been trying for this half-hour from the corn-house steps to reach the same desirable elevation. And ever and anon he crows to answer the tumultuous cackle of the plebeian fowl in the barn-yard, with whom he never mingles, save when a hawk threatens them with common danger; and then, forgetting all his aristocracy, he seeks the same sheltering apple-tree or clump of briars in the fence-corner, where the enemy cannot penetrate. Friend Peter, just buckle on your over-shoes and come with me through the back gates which have stood open all winter to allow ingress to huge sled-loads of fire-wood. Tread carefully over the soft snow which ‘slumps’ at every step, and let us take a look at the barn-yard down yonder, across the way from the farm-house.

Now is there not some poetry here? That yoke of brindle-oxen standing under the dripping eaves chewing their cud; can you not see gladness in their broad faces? There is old Line-back, the cow that fifteen years ago used to have the same corner. I wonder if she recognizes me? She is graver than the other cows; red and black, around her butt; the tuft of wool on her horns shows that she retains her old spirit, and does not allow the dainty sheep that crowd around us, to pick out the most savory portions of her hay, without asserting her rights of priority. There, flocking in the hay-loft door, over the cow-house, are the cackling multitude which we heard awhile ago. They were probably instigated to their clamor by the ‘cut-cut-ca-da-cut’ of some young hen who had laid the first egg of the season. The rest replying, no doubt, that they severally had done the same at some spring-time anterior, but now for the first time thought of mentioning so trifling a circumstance. Peter sagely opines that they are holding a tea party! Let us drop into the ‘grain-barn’ and see what Hans’ little brothers are raising such a children’s noise about. There goes Jim from the highest scaffold into the straw at the bottom of the ‘deep bay.’ Billy is just preparing to jump too; and Sid, a little more lazy, is but half up the upper ladder. Sid sees us, and without saying a word, begins to climb down again. This draws Billy’s attention, and crying ‘Hans has come home! Hans has come!’ springs off, half smothering poor Jim in his descent. There, now, Peter, after seeing me kiss my brothers, don’t accuse me of possessing a cold heart, merely because I don’t happen to love the women. What is a woman, but flesh and blood after all? Do you think those black, flashing eyes and rosy cheeks and swelling bosom, and those warm lips which breathe soft deceit the while you press them, are any thing more than ‘common clay?’ I have seen many lovely ones, yet as Byron hath it:

‘Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.’

I wish, friend Peter, that we could stay a fortnight to enjoy the opening of spring, but as we must wend our way eastward day after tomorrow, we will resign ourselves to fate, and make the best of it. Look down into the valley where Green Brook comes singing and bubbling out from the deep shade of the hemlocks into the open meadows! The snow has melted away from its margin, and the brown sward is smiling in the cheerful afternoon sun. There, on that tall stump, on the other side, sits a sentinel crow, while his companions are strolling about catching up dainties which the frost and snow have hid from their vision the winter long. Hurra! hurra! see over the edge of Pine Hill come the first pigeons of the season from the warm south! Look how they rise and fall again in their easy flight, as they pass up the valley and go whirring in among the dense evergreens. I told you we should see pigeons soon, but you thought it too early. We will have sport to-morrow, if it is warm. For the present, let us see whether Hans’ old fowling-piece is still safe from rust. Here it stands behind his bed-room door, dressed up like an old maid for a sailing party, all in flannels. There, Peter, is a true ‘stubb-and-twist,’ and the locks, although rather out of fashion, are still as elastic as ever. This Hans himself will use to-morrow; for it is an old friend and might feel hurt to be entrusted to the care of a stranger. Here, Jim, run down to Colonel Hyde’s and borrow his long double-barrel; but don’t tell him that pigeons have been seen, or he will want to use it himself. Get a cannister of Dupont, and half a dozen pounds of No. 4 shot. None of the fine mustard-seed or robin, but the heavy duck-shot, that will enter at twenty rods. That is the kind for pigeons, their feathers are so compact; for if you fire at them flying, you might as well toss turnip-seed at them as to shoot fine shot that will glance from their sleek feathers like drops of rain.

Here comes Jim, with the colonel’s gun. Is it not a grand one? Now for cleaning the pieces, and filling the flasks and shot-belts. Look out, or you will scald your fingers with the hot water. A little more soap, and the barrels are as clean as a silver thimble. Snap! These are fine caps: put this box into your pocket, or we shall forget it. Let us look out at the sunset before tea, and then go to bed early, that we may be up in season for to-morrow’s sport.

How broadly and slowly the sun sinks behind the forest! The glowing points of his diadem reach to the zenith, and the purple clouds that float around the west, dazzle the eye as they lie in contrast with the soft blue sky. How bland the air is, like that of summer! We can almost drink it.

Well, mother, I am glad to be at home again at the tea-table. Here, Peter, don’t look sad now because you are not at your own home. We will go up in the summer and view Lake Erie in its beauty and vastness, and stroll along the beach, beneath the overhanging cedars and larches, and the broad-leafed chestnuts. Whose voice is that in the entry? Why, Kate, how do you do! Never mind, if you are married, you needn’t start so. I’m an old friend, you know, and your lips are as tempting as ever! Ah! I forgot there were strangers by. Madam Von Rosenbacker: Herr von Geist, a man after my own heart. Well, Kate, you haven’t altered much from what you were when we used to pick blackberries together. Indeed, I have lost the bottle of wine; you only escaped though by three days over the six months that I limited your marriage to. You shall have the champaigne, and I will come up in the summer to bring it, and will buy an indulgence from the tee-total society long enough to drink it with you. Now that she is gone, Peter, let me ask if you don’t think her a glorious woman? Her large blue eyes, her soft flaxen hair and rosy cheeks, and tall graceful figure, make her ‘splendid.’ Peter, she was the first girl that I ever ‘set my face against,’ as poor Power used to say; and now, old bachelor as I am, I envy her husband.

To bed we go, and Somnus touches our eyes with his wand of poppies. Ye gods! how sweet and soft a bed at home is, after travelling till one’s bones ache with jolting stages and jarring rail-cars!

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Up! up! friend Peter; here we are abed, while daylight is glimmering through the blinds. Just put your head out here at this window and snuff the fresh spring air. Hear the roaring of Fish Creek as it comes up over the wooded hills. By no means! Don’t suppose for the sixtieth part of a minute that I intend to hurry you away without breakfast; but you must step down into the kitchen, where the girl has prepared us a strong cup of coffee; as good, no doubt, as Mother Bee used to provide for our matin meal on College Hill. Here, Dancer, you must have some breakfast too.