Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860




She saw how she had depended on the priest of Domremy, as he had been
the lawgiver and the leader of her life. A spiritual life, to be
sustained only by the invisible spirit, to be lived by faith, not in
man, but in God, without intervention of saint or angel or Blessed
Virgin,--was the world's life liberated by such freedom?

By faith, and not by sight, the just must live. Would He bow his heavens
and come down to dwell with the contrite and the humble?

Wondrous strange it seemed,--incomprehensible,--more than she could
manage or control. There are prisoners whose pardon proves the world too
large for them: they find no rest until their prison-door is opened for
them again.

Of this class was Elsie,--not Jacqueline. Elsie was afraid of
freedom,--not equal to it,--unable to deal with it; satisfied with being
a child, with being a slave, when it came to be a question whether she
should accept and use her highest privilege and dignity. At this hour,
and among all persuasions, you will find that Elsie does not stand
alone. Little children there are, long as the world shall stand,--though
not precisely such as we think of when we remember, "Of such is the
kingdom of heaven."

It was enough for Elsie--it is enough for multitudes through all the
reformations--that she had an earthly defence, even such as she relied
on without trouble. She lived in the hour. She had never toiled to
deliver her darling from the lions,--to redeem a soul from purgatory.
She eased her conscience, when it was troubled, by such shallow
discovery of herself as she deemed confession. She loved dancing,
and all other amusements,--hated solitude, knew not the meaning of
self-abnegation. And let her dance and enjoy herself!--some service
to the body is rendered thereby. She might do greatly worse, and
is incapable of doing greatly better. Will you stint the idiots of
comfort,--or rather build them decent habitations, and even vex yourself
to feed and clothe them, in reverent confidence that the Future shall
surely take them up and bless them, unstop their ears, open their eyes,
give speech to them and absolute deliverance?

There are others beside Elsie who congratulate themselves on
non-committal,--they covet not the advanced and dangerous positions.
Honorable, but dangerous positions! The head might be taken off, do you
not see? And could all eternity compensate for the loss of time? Ah, the
body might be mutilated,--the liberty restrained: as if, indeed, a
man's freedom were not eternally established, when his enemies, howling
around, must at least crucify him! as if a divine voice were not ever
heard through the raging of the people, saying, "Come up higher!"

But a fern-leaf cannot grow into a mighty hemlock-tree. From the ashes
of a sparrow the phoenix shall not rise. You will not to all eternity,
by any artificial means, nor by a miracle, bring forth an eagle from a
mollusk.

There was not a sadder heart in all those fields of Meaux than the heart
of Jacqueline Gabrie. There was not a stronger heart. Not a hand
labored more diligently. Under the broad-brimmed peasant-hat was a sad
countenance,--under the peasant-dress a heavily burdened spirit. Silent,
all day, she labored. She was alone at noon under the river-bordered
trees, eating her coarse fare without zest, but with a conscience,--to
sustain the body that was born to toil. But in the maelstroem of doubt
and anxiety was she tossed and whirled, and she cared not for her life.
To be rid of it, now for the first time, she felt might be a blessing.
What purpose, indeed, had she? She turned her thought from this
question, but it would not let her alone. Again and yet again she turned
to meet it, and thus would surely have at length its satisfying answer.

John Leclerc might pass through this ordeal, as from the first she
had expected of him. But she listened to the speech of many of her
fellow-laborers. Some prophecies which had a sound incredible escaped
them. She did not credit them, but they tormented her. They contended
with one another. John, some foretold, would certainly retract. One day
of public whipping would suffice. When the blood began to flow, he would
see his duty clearer! The men were prophesying from the depths and the
abundance of their self-consciousness. Others speculated on the final
result of the executed sentence. They believed that the "obstinacy" and
courage of the man would provoke his judges, and the executors of his
sentence,--that with rigor they would execute it,--and that, led on
by passion, and provoked by such as would side with the victim, the
sentence would terminate in his destruction. Sooner or later, nothing
but his life would be found ultimately to satisfy his enemies.

It might be so, thought Jacqueline Gabrie. What then? what then?--she
thought. There was inspiration to the girl in that cruel prophecy. Her
lifework was not ended. If Christ was the One Ransom, and it did truly
fall on Him, and not on her, to care for those beloved, departed from
this life, her work was still for love.

John Leclerc disabled or dead, who should care then for his aged mother?
Who should minister to him? Who, indeed, but Jacqueline?

Living or dying, she said to herself, with grand enthusiasm,--living or
dying, let him do the Master's pleasure! She also was here to serve that
Master; and while in spiritual things he fed the hungry, clothed the
naked, gave the cup of living water, visited the imprisoned, and the
sick of sin, she would bind herself to minister to him and his old
mother in temporal things; so should he live above all cares save those
of heavenly love. She could support them all by her diligence, and in
this there would be joy.

She thought this through her toil; and the thought was its own reward.
It strengthened her like an angel,--strengthened heart and faith. She
labored as no other peasant-woman did that day,--like a beast of burden,
unresisting, patient,--like a holy saint, so peaceful and assured, so
conscious of the present very God!

[To be continued.]

* * * * *



MIDSUMMER.


Around this lovely valley rise
The purple hills of Paradise.
Oh, softly on yon banks of haze
Her rosy face the Summer lays!
Becalmed along the azure sky,
The argosies of cloudland lie,
Whose shores, with many a shining rift,
Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.

Through all the long midsummer-day
The meadow-sides are sweet with hay.
I seek the coolest sheltered seat
Just where the field and forest meet,--
Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland,
The ancient oaks austere and grand,
And fringy roots and pebbles fret
The ripples of the rivulet.

I watch, the mowers as they go
Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row;
With even stroke their scythes they swing,
In tune their merry whetstones ring;
Behind the nimble youngsters run
And toss the thick swaths in the sun;
The cattle graze; while, warm and still,
Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill,
And bright, when summer breezes break,
The green wheat crinkles like a lake.

The butterfly and humble-bee
Come to the pleasant woods with me;
Quickly before me runs the quail,
The chickens skulk behind the rail,
High up the lone wood-pigeon sits,
And the woodpecker pecks and flits.
Sweet woodland music sinks and swells,
The brooklet rings its tinkling bells,
The swarming insects drone and hum,
The partridge beats his throbbing drum.
The squirrel leaps among the boughs,
And chatters in his leafy house.
The oriole flashes by; and, look!
Into the mirror of the brook,
Where the vain blue-bird trims his coat,
Two tiny feathers fall and float.

As silently, as tenderly,
The down of peace descends on me.
Oh, this is peace! I have no need
Of friend to talk, of book to read:
A dear Companion here abides;
Close to my thrilling heart He hides;
The holy silence is His Voice:
I lie and listen, and rejoice.




TOBACCO.


"Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all
the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy
to all diseases! a good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well
qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used. But as it is commonly
abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a
mischief, a violent purger of goods, lauds, health: hellish, devilish, and
damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul!"--BURTON. _Anatomy
of Melancholy_.

A delicate subject? Very true; and one which must be handled as tenderly
as _biscuit de Sevres_, or Venetian glass. Whichever side of the
question we may assume, as the most popular, or the most right, the
feelings of so large and respectable a minority are to be consulted,
that it behooves the critic or reviewer to move cautiously, and,
imitating the actions of a certain feline household reformer, to show
only the _patte de velours_.

The omniscient Burton seems to have reached the pith of the matter. The
two hostile sections of his proposition, though written so long since,
would very well fit the smoker and the reformer of to-day. That portion
of the world which is enough advanced to advocate reforms is entirely
divided against itself on the subject of Tobacco. Immense interests,
economical, social, and, as some conceive, moral, are arrayed on either
side. The reformers have hitherto had the better of it in point of
argument, and have pushed the attack with most vigor, yet with but
trifling results. Smokers and chewers, _et id omne genus_, mollified
by their habits, or laboring under guilty consciences, have made but a
feeble defence. Nor in all this is there anything new. It is as old as
the knowledge of the "weed" among thinking men,--in other words, about
three centuries. The English adventurers under Drake and Raleigh and
Hawkins, and the multitude of minor Protestant "filibusters" who
followed in their train, had no sooner imported the habit of smoking
tobacco, among the other outlandish customs which they brought home from
the new Indies and the Spanish Main, than the higher powers rebuked
the practice, which novelty and its own fascinations were rendering so
fashionable, in language more forcible than elegant. The philippic of
King James is so apposite that we may be pardoned for transcribing one
oft-quoted sentence:--"But herein is not only a great vanity, but a
great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath,
being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking
smoke.... A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmfull
to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume
thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the pit that
is bottomless."[a]

[Footnote a: _Counterblast to Tobacco_.]

The Popes Urban VIII. and Innocent XII. fulminated edicts of
excommunication against all who used tobacco in any form; from which we
may conclude that the new habit was spreading rapidly over Christendom.
And not only the successors of St. Peter, but those also of the Prophet,
denounced the practice, the Sultan Amurath IV. making it punishable with
death. The Viziers of Turkey spitted the noses of smokers with their own
pipes; the more considerate Shah of Persia cut them entirely off. The
knout greeted in Russia the first indulgence, and death followed the
second offence. In some of the Swiss cantons smoking was considered a
crime second only to adultery. Modern republics are not quite so severe.

It is not to be supposed that in England the royal pamphlet had its
desired effect. For we find that James laid many rigid sumptuary
restrictions upon the practice which he abominated, based chiefly upon
the extravagance it occasioned,--the expenses of some smokers being
estimated at several hundred pounds a year. The King, however, had the
sagacity to secure a preemption-right as early as 1620.

Yet how could the practice but have increased, when, as Malcolm relates
the tradition, such men as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Hugh Middleton
sat smoking at their doors?--for "the public manner in which it was
exhibited, and the aromatic flavor inhaled by the passengers, exclusive
of the singularity of the circumstance and the eminence of the parties,"
could hardly have failed to favor its dissemination.

The silver-tongued Joshua Sylvester hoped to aid the royal cause by
writing a poem entitled, "Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered,
(about their ears who idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at
least-wise overlove so loathsome a vanity,) by a volley of holy shot
thundered from Mount Helicon." If the smoothness of the verses equalled
the euphony of the title, this must have proved a moving appeal.

Stow contents himself with calling tobacco "a stinking weed, so much
abused to God's dishonor."

Burton exhausts the subject in a single paragraph. Ben Jonson, though
a jolly good fellow, was opposed to the habit of smoking. But Spenser
mentions "divine tobacco." Walton's "Piscator" indulges in a pipe at
breakfast, and "Venator" has his tobacco brought from London to insure
its purity. Sweet Izaak could have selected no more soothing minister
than the pipe to the "contemplative man's recreation."

As the new sedative gains in esteem, we find Francis Quarles, in his
"Emblems," treating it in this serio-comic vein:--

"Flint-hearted Stoics, you whose marble eyes
Contemn a wrinkle, and whose souls despise
To follow Nature's too affected fashion,
Or travel in the regent walk of passion,--
Whose rigid hearts disdain to shrink at
fears,
Or play at fast-and-loose with smiles and
tears,--
Come, burst your spleens with laughter to
behold
A new-found vanity, which days of old
Ne'er knew,--a vanity that has beset
The world, and made more slaves than Mahomet,--
That has condemned us to the servile yoke
Of slavery, and made us slaves to smoke,
But stay! why tax I thus our modern
times
For new-born follies and for new-born
crimes?
Are we sole guilty, and the first age free?
No: they were smoked and slaved as well
as we.
What's sweet-lipped honor's blast, but
smoke? what's treasure,
But very smoke? and what's more smoke
than pleasure?"

Brand gives us the whole matter in a nutshell, in the following quaint
epigram, entitled "A Tobacconist," taken from an old collection:--

"All dainty meats I do defy
Which feed men fat as swine;
He is a frugal man, indeed,
That on a leaf can dine.

"He needs no napkin for his hands
His fingers' ends to wipe,
That keeps his kitchen in a box,
And roast meat in a pipe."

And so on, the singers of succeeding years, _usque ad nauseam_,--a
loathing equalled only by that of the earlier writers for the plant, now
so lauded.

Tobacco-worship seems to us to culminate in the following stanza from a
German song:--

"Tabak ist mein Leben,
Dem hab' ich mich ergeben, ergeben;
Tabak ist meine Lust.
Und eh' ich ihn sollt' lassen,
Viel lieber wollt' ich hassen,
Ja, hassen selbst eines Maedchens Kuss."

As it is with your sex, my dear Madam, that this question of Tobacco is
to be mainly argued,--for, to your honor be it spoken, you have always
been of the reformatory party,--let us hope, that, provided you have
not read or translated the last verse, you have recovered your natural
amiability, ruffled perhaps by this odious subject, and are prepared
to believe us when we tell you that these opposite opinions cannot be
wholly reconciled, and to follow us patiently while we attempt to show
that a certain gentleman, introduced to your maternal ancestor at a very
remote period of the world's history, is not so black as he is sometimes
painted. Let us keep good-natured, at least, in this discussion; for we
propose to settle it without taking off the gloves, as we intimated in
the opening paragraph. Your patience will be much needed for the sad
army of facts and figures which is to follow. Therefore it is but just
that you should speak now, after these long sentences.

Your George will never smoke? Excuse me. _When_ he will smoke depends
upon the precocity of his individual generation; and that increases in
a direct ratio with time itself, in this country. Thus, to state the
matter in an approximate inverse arithmetical progression, and dating
the birth of "young America" about the year 1825,--previously to which
reigned the dark ages of oldfogydom, so called,--we find as follows:
--From 1825 to 1835, young gentlemen learned to smoke when from 25 to 20
years of age; from 1835 to 1845, young _gents_, ditto, ditto, from 20 to
15 years; 1845 to 1855, from 15 to 10; 1855 to 1865, 10 to 5; 1865 to
1875, 5 to 0; and, if we continue, 1875 to 1885, zero to minus: but
really the question is becoming too nebulous. _Corollary_. In about ten
years, the youth of the United States will smoke contemporaneously with
the infant Burmese, who, we are credibly informed, begin the habit
_aet_. 3, or as soon as they have cut enough teeth to hold a cigar.

Therefore, we will say, Madam, at some indefinite period of his
childhood or youth,--for we would not be so impolite as to infer your
age by asking that of your son,--the _susdit_ George will come home
late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea.
He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will
lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which
you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will
recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith
certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious youth. If you
follow him to his chamber, you will probably discover more damning
evidence of his guilt.

We will draw the curtain over the scene of the Spartan mother--we hope
you belong to that nearly extinct class--which is to follow. Let us
suppose all differences settled, the habit ostensibly given up, and your
darling, grown more honest or more artful,--the result is the same to
your blissful ignorance,--studiously pursuing his way until he enters
college. Some fine day you drive over to the neighboring university,
and, entering his room unannounced, you find him coloring his first
(factitious) meerschaum!--also a sad deficiency in his wardrobe of
half-worn clothes. _C'est une pipe qui coute cher a culotter_, the
college meerschaum,--and in more ways than one, according to the
"Autocrat":--"I do not advise you, young man, to consecrate the flower
of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe," _et seq_. More bold,
the Sophomore will smoke openly at home; and by the end of the third
vacation, it is one of those unyielding _faits accomplis_ against which
reformers, household or peripatetic, beat their heads in vain.

Perhaps your husband smokes? If so, at what period of the twenty-four
hours have you invariably found Mr. ---- most lenient to your little
pecuniary peccadilloes? Is he not always most good-natured when his
cigar is about one-third consumed, the ash evenly burnt and adherent,
and not fallen into his shirt-bosom? Depend upon it, tobacco is a great
soother of domestic differences.

Let us, then, look an existing, firmly rooted evil--if you will call it
so--in the face, and see if it is quite so bad as it is represented. It
is too wide-spread to be sneered away,--for we might almost say that
smokers were the rule, and non-smokers the exception, among all
civilized men, Charles Kingsley supports us here:--"'Man a cooking
animal,' my dear Doctor Johnson? Pooh! man is a _smoking_ animal.
There is his _ergon_, his 'differential energy,' as the Aristotelians
say,--his true distinction from the orangoutang. Ponder it well."

_Query_.--What did the old Roman do without a cigar? How idle through
the day? How survive his interminable _post-coenal_ potations?--The
thought is not our own. It occurs somewhere in De Quincey, we believe.
It is one of those self-evident propositions you wonder had not occurred
to you before.--What an accessory of luxury the pipe would have been
to him who passed the livelong day under the mosaic arches of the
_Thermoe_! The _strigiles_ would have vanished before the meerschaum,
had that magic clay then been known. How completely would the _hookah_
and the _narghileh_ have harmonized with the _crater, cyathi_, and
tripods of the _triclinium_ in that portraiture of the "Decadence of
Rome" which hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery! Poor fellows! they managed
to exist without them.

Though pipes are found carved on very old sculptures in China, and the
habit of smoking was long since extensively followed there, according
to Pallas, and although certain species of the tobacco-plant, as the
_Nicotiana rustica_, would appear to be indigenous to the country, yet
we have the best reason to conclude that America, if not the exclusive
home of the herb, was the birthplace of its use by man. The first great
explorer of the West found the sensuous natives of Hispaniola rolling up
and smoking tobacco-leaves with the same persistent indolence that
we recognize in the Cuban of the present day. Rough Cortes saw with
surprise the luxurious Aztec composing himself for the _siesta_ in the
middle of the day as invariably as his fellow Dons in Castile. But he
was amazed that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative
to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the
_hidalgos_ were as yet ignorant, but which they were soon to appropriate
with avidity, and to use with equal zest. Humboldt says that it had been
cultivated by the people of Orinoco from time immemorial, and was smoked
all over America at the time of the Spanish Conquest,--also that it was
first discovered by Europeans in Yucatan, in 1520, and was there called
_Petum_. Tobacco, according to the same authority, was taken from the
word _tabac_, the name of an instrument used in the preparation of the
herb.

Though Columbus and his immediate followers doubtless brought home
specimens of tobacco among the other spoils of the New World, Jean
Nicot, ambassador to Portugal from Francis II., first sent the seeds
to France, where they were cultivated and used about the year 1560. In
honor of its sponsor, Botany has named the plant _Nicotiana tabacum_,
and Chemistry distinguished as _Nicotin_ its active alkaloid. Sir
Francis Drake first brought tobacco to England about 1586. It owed
the greater part of its early popularity, however, to the praise and
practice of Raleigh: his high standing and character would have sufficed
to introduce still more novel customs. The weed once inhaled, the habit
once acquired, its seductions would not allow it to be easily laid
aside; and we accordingly find that royal satire, public odium, and
ruinous cost were alike inadequate to restrain its rapidly increasing
consumption. Somewhere about the year 1600 or 1601 tobacco was carried
to the East, and introduced among the Turks and Persians,--it is not
known by whom: the devotion of modern Mussulmans might reasonably
ascribe it to Allah himself. It seems almost incredible that the
Oriental type of life and character could have existed without tobacco.
The pipe seems as inseparable as the Koran from the follower of Mahomet.

Barely three centuries ago, then, the first seeds of the _Nicotiana
tabacum_ germinated in European soil: now, who shall count the harvests?
Less than three centuries ago, Raleigh attracted a crowd by sitting
smoking at his door: now, the humblest bog-trotter of Ireland must
be poor indeed who cannot own or borrow a pipe. A little more than a
century and a half ago, the import into Great Britain was only one
hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and part of that was reexported:
now, the imports reach thirty million pounds, and furnish to government
a revenue of twenty millions of dollars,--being an annual tax of three
shillings four pence on every soul in the United Kingdom. Nor is the
case of England an exceptional one. The tobacco-zone girdles the globe.
From the equator, through fifty degrees of latitude, it grows and is
consumed on every continent. On every sea it is carried and used by the
mariners of every nation. Its incense rises in every clime, as from one
vast altar dedicated to its worship,--before which ancient holocausts,
the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old Jewish rites, the censers of the
Church, and the joss-sticks of the East, must "pale their ineffectual
fires." All classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries
both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe
to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national
habitations, peculiarities, or habits.

This is not the language of hyperbole. With a partial exception in favor
of the hop, tobacco is the _sole recognized narcotic_ of civilization.
Opium and hemp, if indulged in, are concealed, by the Western nations:
public opinion, public morality, are at war with them. Not so with
tobacco, which the majority of civilized men use, and the minority
rather deprecate than denounce. We shall avail ourselves of some
statistics and computations, which we find ready-calculated, at various
sources, to support these assertions. The following are the amounts of
tobacco consumed _per head_ in various countries:--

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