Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860




IV.

In his story a moment the pilot paused, while we listened
To the salute of a boat, that, rounding the point of an island,
Flamed toward us with fires that seemed to burn from the waters,--
Stately and vast and swift, and borne on the heart of the current.
Then, with the mighty voice of a giant challenged to battle,
Rose the responsive whistle, and all the echoes of island,
Swamp-land, glade, and brake replied with a myriad clamor,
Like wild birds that are suddenly startled from slumber at midnight;
Then were at peace once more, and we heard the harsh cries of the
peacocks
Perched on a tree by a cabin-door, where the white-headed settler's
White-headed children stood to look at the boat as it passed them,
Passed them so near that we heard their happy talk and their laughter.
Softly the sunset had faded, and now on the eastern horizon
Hung, like a tear in the sky, the beautiful star of the evening.

V.

Still with his back to us standing, the pilot went on with his story:--
"Instantly, all the people, with looks of reproach and compassion,
Flocked round the prostrate woman. The children cried, and their mothers
Hugged them tight to their breasts; but the gambler said to the
captain,--
'Put me off there at the town that lies round the bend of the river.
Here, you! rise at once, and be ready now to go with me.'
Roughly he seized the woman's arm and strove to uplift her.
She--she seemed not to heed him, but rose like one that is dreaming,
Slid from his grasp, and fleetly mounted the steps of the gangway,
Up to the hurricane-deck, in silence, without lamentation.
Straight to the stern of the boat, where the wheel was, she ran, and
the people
Followed her fast till she turned and stood at bay for a moment,
Looking them in the face, and in the face of the gambler.
Not one to save her,--not one of all the compassionate people!
Not one to save her, of all the pitying angels in heaven!
Not one bolt of God to strike him dead there before her!
Wildly she waved him back, we waiting in silence and horror.
Over the swarthy face of the gambler a pallor of passion
Passed, like a gleam of lightning over the west in the night-time.
White, she stood, and mute, till he put forth his hand to secure her;
Then she turned and leaped,--in mid air fluttered a moment,--
Down, there, whirling, fell, like a broken-winged bird from a tree-top,
Down on the cruel wheel, that caught her, and hurled her, and
crushed her,
And in the foaming water plunged her, and hid her forever."

VI.

Still with his back to us all the pilot stood, but we heard him
Swallowing hard, as he pulled the bell-rope to stop her. Then, turning,--
"This is the place where it happened," brokenly whispered the pilot.
"Somehow, I never like to go by here alone in the night-time."
Darkly the Mississippi flowed by the town that lay in the starlight,
Cheerful with lamps. Below we could hear them reversing the engines,
And the great boat glided up to the shore like a giant exhausted.
Heavily sighed her pipes. Broad over the swamps to the eastward
Shone the full moon, and turned our far-trembling wake into silver.
All was serene and calm, but the odorous breath of the willows
Smote like the subtile breath of an infinite sorrow upon us.




A DAY WITH THE DEAD.


"Good morning!" said the old custodian, as he stood in the door of the
lodge, brushing out with his knuckles the cobwebs of sleep entangled in
his eyelashes, and ventilating the apartments of his fleshly tabernacle
with prolonged oscitations. "You are on hand early _this_ time, a'n't
you? You're the first live man I've seen since I got up."

So saying, he vanished, and reappearing in a moment with a huge brass
key, entered the arch, unlocked the gate which closed the aperture
fronting the east like the cover of a porthole, and sent it with a heavy
push wide open.

Wading through the flood of sunlight which poured into the
passage-way----But stop! I was about,--who knows?--in imitation of
divers admired models, to tell the reader in choicest poetic diction how
the City of the Dead, with its magnificent streets, shining palaces, and
lofty monuments, burst upon my dazzled vision,--how I walked for half a
mile along a spacious avenue, beneath an arcade of giant elms hung with
wreaths of mist and vocal with singing, feathery fruit,--past marble
tombs whose yards were filled with bright and fragrant flowers,--
among waving grassy knolls spread with the silver nets of spiders and
sparkling dew,--through vales of cool twilight and ravines of sombre
dusk,--and so on for more than a page, until finally, step by step,
through laboriously elegant sentences, I worked my way up to the top
of a lofty hill, the view from which to be graphically described as a
picture and a poem dissolved together into mingled glory and mirage, and
inundating with a billowy sea of beauty the landscape below;--and then
further depicting to the delighted fancy of the reader, how on one
side was a most remarkable river,--such as was never heard of before,
probably,--in fact, a web of water framed between the hills, its rushing
warp-currents, as it rolled along, woven by smoking steam-shuttles with
a woof of foam,--how, at the entrance of a bay, flocks of snowy sails,
with black, shining beaks, and sleek, unruffled plumage, were swimming
out to sea,--how another river, not quite so unique as the last, was
also in sight, coiling among emerald steeps and crags and precipices
and forest,--while beyond, green woodlands, checkered fields, groves,
orchards, villages, hills, farms, and villas, all glowed in an
exceedingly charming manner in the morning sun;--and then, still
further, to say something as brilliant as possible about a certain
city, designated as the Great Metropolis,--how it resembled, perhaps,
a Cyclopean type-form, with blocks of buildings for letters, domes,
turrets, and towers for punctuation-points, church-spires for
interrogation and exclamation marks, and squares and avenues for
division-spaces between the paragraphs, set up and leaded with
streets into a vast editorial page of original matter on Commerce and
Manufactures, rolled every morning with the ink of toil, and printing
before night an edition of results circulated to the remotest quarters
of the globe. And the tall chimneys yonder were to be called--let me
see--oh, the smoking cathedral-towers of the Holy Catholic Church of
Labor, islanding the air with clouds of incense more grateful to the
Deity than the fume of priest-swung censers. All this, and much more of
a similar nature, including an eloquent address to the ocean hard by,
it is possible I was about to say. But, unwilling to smother the reader
beneath a mountain of rhetorical flowers,--which accident might happen,
should I resolve to be "equal to the occasion,"--I shall contain myself,
and state, in the way of a curt preface, in plain prose, and directly to
the point, that I entered a remarkably large and populous cemetery,
no matter where, very early one morning,--in fact, you have the
gate-keeper's word for it that I was the first person there,--that I
climbed to the summit of a high hill and enjoyed the view of a beautiful
landscape, just after sunrise; and with this finally said and done, let
us proceed.

As I stood listening to the music of the sea-breeze in the pine-forests
below, and watching the ships sinking into the ocean from view or
dropping through the sky into sight at the rim of the horizon, and the
clouds changing their picturesque sunrise-dress for a uniform of sober
white, forming into rank and file, marching and countermarching, sending
off scouts into the far distance and foraging-parties to scour the
yellow fields of air, pitching their tents and placing sentinels on
guard around the camp,--amusing myself with fashioning quaint, arabesque
fancies,--a sort of intellectual whittling-habit I have when idle,--I
was roused from my reverie by the creaking of an iron gate.

Descending a few steps into a cluster of trees, I saw through their
leafy lattice-work, in an inclosure ornamented with rose-bushes and
other flowering shrubs, a young woman, richly dressed in black, kneeling
by the side of a new-made grave. The mound, evidently covering a
full-grown person, was nicely laid at the top with carefully cut sods,
the dark edges of which projected a little over the lighter-colored
gravel that sloped gradually down to the greensward. I was not long in
becoming satisfied that the person I saw was a young widow at the grave
of her husband, now three or four weeks dead, hither on her accustomed
morning visit to display her love and affection for his memory.

Bowing her head, for a few moments she gave way to sobs and weeping, and
then, removing the cover from a little willow basket, which stood by her
side, she took from it handfuls of bright flowers, and began to adorn
the table of sods upon the top of the mound.

As I regard her thus employed, weaving the tokens of her affection into
garlands, chaplets, and fanciful devices, arranging their symbolic
characters into interpretable monograms and hieroglyphs, matching their
colors and blending their hues and shades with the skill of an artist,
she becomes more and more absorbed in her work, the tears disappear from
her eyes, and the morning light flushes her pale and beautiful face. Is
she thinking now, I wonder, of the dead husband, or of something else?
What has she found among the flowers so consoling? Do they suggest
pleasant fancies, or recall the memories of happy days? Have they,
perhaps, a double meaning,--souvenirs of felicity as well as symbols
of sorrow? Are they opiates obliterating actual suffering, or prophets
uttering hopeful predictions? Or is it none of these things, and does
she find her work pleasant only because duty makes its performance
cheerful labor? I cannot say _what_ it is, but _something_ has assuaged
her grief; for I see her smiling now, as she holds a rosebud in her
fingers, and gazes at it abstractedly; and her thoughts and feelings,
whatever they may be, are indubitably not of a mournful character;--in
fact, I am sure that she never was happier in her life than she is at
this moment.

"Happy, do you say?"

Yes, I say happy.

The nature of woman, it is conceded by all men, is a curious,
interesting, and perplexing, if not, in respect of positive practical
results, a most unsatisfactory study. But nothing puzzles us so much
to comprehend as the fact just alluded to. The tenderest female
constitution will sustain a burden of grief which would crush a robust
and iron-nerved man, and drive him to despair and suicide. A woman
rarely succumbs to a calamity; however sudden and overwhelming the
initial shock may be, she revives and grows cheerful and happy under it
in a way and to a degree marvellous to behold. What singular secret is
there among the psychological mysteries of her nature which is able to
account for this phenomenon?--A gentle, timid girl of sixteen, whom the
sight of a spider or a live snake would have frightened into hysterics,
I had once an opportunity, on a tour through Italy, to observe, while
she took little or no notice of other works of art, would gaze, as if
fascinated, at the writhings of Laocooen and his sons in the folds and
fangs of the serpents, at the sculptured death of the Gladiator, and
even at the ghastly, repulsive pictures of martyrdoms and barbaric
mutilations and tortures,--the hideous monstrosities of a diseased and
degraded imagination found in the churches and convents of Rome, which
made others turn their backs with a shivering of the bones and a
creeping of the flesh. On expressing surprise at such a singular
exhibition of taste, I received this innocent, unpremeditated
reply:--"Why, I don't like them; the sight of them almost freezes my
blood; but--somehow I do like to look at them, _for I always feel better
after it_!" Now is there not involved in this artless answer a possible
explanation of the above-mentioned fact? Has not woman, hidden somewhere
among her other (of course angelic)--affections, a positive _love_ of
sickness, death, sorrow, and suffering, which man does not possess? Is
not the pain they cause, in her case, qualified by actual pleasure?
Do they not act as a stimulus upon her sensitive nervous system, and
produce, somehow, a _delightfully intoxicated state of the feelings_?
Would not this explain her otherwise unaccountable fondness for
witnessing the execution of murderers, for the horrible in novels
and the deaths and catastrophes in the newspapers, that she has a
constitutional relish for such horrid things, and that she enjoys them,
not because they are _in se_ productive of pleasure, but just, as is the
case with her "crying," _because she feels better after it_? And I think
it would be found, if an investigation of the subject were instituted,
that a foreknowledge of this inevitable result, derived from intuition
or experience, is the agent which breaks up the clouds of her sorrow:
so that, while the grief of a man stricken down by misfortune is an
equinoctial storm, dark and dismal, which lasts for weeks and months,
the grief of woman is a succession of refreshing April showers, each of
brief duration, and the spaces between them filled with sunshine and
rainbows.

But the sweets of that widow's present sorrow will be soon extracted.
How many weeks will she find it a pleasure to make morning visits here
and plait pretty flowers on the grave of her husband?--The grave in the
next inclosure furnishes an answer to the question. A few months ago,
it, too, was tended at sunrise by just such a tearful woman; but now the
wreaths of evergreen are yellow, and the weeds are springing up among
the withered garlands. The living partner has visited already the
"mitigated grief" department of the mourning store, and the severed
cords of her affections have been spliced and made almost as good as
new. Not that I would not have it so; not that I believe the grief of
woman to be less real and sincere than man's, though it _be_ enjoyed;
not that I would have her thrum a long mournful threnody on the
harpstrings of her heart, and waste on the dead, who need them not,
affections which, Heaven knows, the living need too much.

Retracing my steps, and descending the opposite slope of the hill, I
entered a beautiful vale covered with stately tombs and containing a
little lake, in the middle of which a fountain was springing high into
the air. In a spot so much frequented at a later hour of the day only a
single human being was in sight,--a young man, perhaps five-and-twenty
years of age, jauntily dressed, and his upper lip adorned with a long
moustache, who was leaning lazily upon a marble balustrade, and staring,
with a stupid, vacant look, at the massive monument it surrounded. As
nothing appeared at the moment more attractive to my eyes, I fixed them
upon him. No great skill in deciphering human character is required to
tell his past or foretell his future history, or even to read the few
poor spent thoughts that flicker in his brain. His father--some city
merchant--died last year, and left him a man of leisure, with a fortune
on his hands to spend in idleness and dissipation. This is the first
anniversary of the old gentleman's decease and departure to another and
better world, and the hopeful heir of his bank-stock and buildings has,
as a matter of etiquette, come out here from the city this morning to
pass an hour of solemn meditation--as he calls the sixty minutes in
which he does not smoke or swear--by the old man's grave. I observe him
every moment forming a firm resolution to fix his feeble thoughts upon
sober things and his latter end, and breaking it the second afterwards:
the effort is too much for the exhausted condition of his mind, and
results in a total failure. He is evidently well pleased that any
attention is directed towards him, and fancies that I regard him as a
very dutiful son, and his appearance here, so early in the morning
and long before breakfast, a remarkable example of posthumous filial
affection. To intensify, if possible, this sentiment in my breast, he
has just now pulled out a white cambric handkerchief and pretends to be
wiping tears from his eyes. Poor fellow! you have no natural talent for
the solemn parts in acting, or you would know that the expression
which your face now wears is not that of sorrow, solemnity, meekness,
gentleness, humility, or any other sober Christian grace or virtue. But
I leave you, for I see something more attractive now. Stand thy hour
out, young man! we shall meet again.

"In the other world?"

No: to-morrow evening, as I am taking my accustomed walk into the
country, I shall be wellnigh run over by a swiftly driven team; I shall
spring suddenly aside, when thou wilt pass, O bogus son of Jehu, with
thy dog-cart and two-forty span of bays, dashing down the road, thy
thoughts fixed on horse-flesh instead of eternity, and thy soul bounded,
north by thy cigar, east and west by the wheels thy vehicle, and south
by the dumb beasts that drag thee along.

But, not to introduce the reader to more solemn scenes of affliction and
sorrow which are witnessed here during the first vigil of the day, we
pass to a later hour. The mourners who come hither in the early morning
to decorate the graves of the recent dead, and to weep over them
undisturbed by visitors, have now departed. The sun is already high, the
dew has disappeared from the trees and the shrubs, and the paths and
walks and avenues begin to be thronged with loungers and sight-seers
from the city.

I had stopped at the forks of a lane and was hesitating which branch
to take and what to do with myself, when a tall and beautiful Willow,
standing upon a knoll a few rods distant, with thick drooping boughs
sweeping the ground on every side, beckoned to me. On approaching him,
he extended a branch, shook me cordially by the hand, and invited me
to accept the shelter and hospitality of his roof. The proposal so
generously made was at once accepted with profuse thanks, and, parting
the boughs, I entered the tent and threw myself upon the soft grass.

Do you ever talk with trees? It is a custom of mine, and I usually find
their conversation much more entertaining and profitable than that of
most men I know. "Good morning!" I say to an acquaintance. "Fine day,"
he replies; "how's business?" And so on for an hour, over themes of
every nature, the current of conversation rippled with trite truisms,
and whirling in the surface-eddies of Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy."
But the tree takes the whole of the Tupperian philosophy for granted at
the start, and the truisms which most men utter, and takes _you_ for
granted likewise,--supposing neither half of your eyeballs blind,
and that you have a soul as well as a body,--and enters at once into
conversation upon the high table-land of science, reason, and poetry.
The entire talk of a fashionable tea-party, strained from its lees of
scandal, filtered through a sober reflection of the following morning,
is not equal in value to the quivering of a single leaf. A tree will
discourse with you upon botany, physiology, music, painting, philosophy,
and a dozen arts and sciences besides, none of which it simply chats
about, but all of which it _is_: and if you do not understand its
language and comprehend what it tells you about them, so much the worse
for you; it is not the fault of the tree.

I say, I talk with trees for this reason,--because their wisdom is so
much greater than that of my ordinary acquaintances,--and further,
(to put the major after the minor premise,) because they are virtually
living beings, endowed with instinct, feeling, reason, and display every
essential attribute of sentient creatures,--in fact, because they have
souls as well as men, only they are clothed in vegetable flesh.

"That is transcendental moonshine, and you don't believe a word of it!"

Well, my friend, allow me, then, to tell you, in all charity and with
bowels of compassion, that you hold dangerous and fatal views respecting
one of the cardinal doctrines of mythology,--yes, to be plain, you are a
Joveless infidel, and in fearful danger of being locked out of Elysium;
and I shall offer up a smoking sacrifice, the next time I get a sirloin,
and pour out a solemn libation, in the presence of my whole family
seated around the domestic altar early in the morning, for your speedy
conversion.

Know, then, O obtuse, faithless, and perverse skeptic, that these
things are so: that ocular and auricular evidence, indubitable and
overwhelming, exists, that the arboreal and human natures are in
substance one. Know that once on a time, as Daphne, the lovely daughter
of Peneus, was amusing herself with a bow and arrows in a forest of
Thessaly, she was surprised by a rude musician named Phoebus. Timid and
bashful, as most young ladies are, she turned and fled as fast as her
[Greek: skelae] could carry her. After running, closely pursued by the
eager Delphian, for several miles, and becoming very much fatigued, she
felt inclined to yield: but wishing to faint in a reputable manner, she
lifted up her hands and asked the gods to help her. Her call was heard
in a jiffy, and quicker than you could say, "Presto: change!" she was a
Laurel-tree, which Phoebus married on the spot. This was the Eve of the
Laurel family, so that all these trees you meet in the world at present
must be rational beings, since they are the descendants of the beautiful
Greek maiden Daphne. And to satisfy you that this is no foolish legend,
but, on the contrary, a well-authenticated fact, clinched and riveted
in the boiler-head of historical truth, permit me to assure you,--for I
have seen it myself,--that in the Villa Borghese, near Rome in Italy,
is an exact representation of the wonderful incident, cut in Carrara
marble,--the bark of the Laurel growing over the vanishing girl, and her
hands and fingers sprouting into branches and leaves,--supposed to
have been copied from a photograph taken on the spot,--for there is a
photograph in existence exactly like the marble statue.

We know positively--for we have an equally minute account of the
transaction--that the Cypress originated in a similar way. And is it
not reasonable to infer, therefore, though we may not find the facts
stated in _every_ case, that all trees were created out of men and
women, their bodies being miraculously clothed in woody tissue? In the
time of Virgil this was certainly the established orthodox belief; for
he relates an anecdote, expressing no doubt whatever of its truth, of a
party of travellers who commenced one day in a forest the indiscriminate
destruction of some young trees, when their roots forthwith began
to bleed, and voices proceeded from them, begging to be spared from
laceration. And, in fact, hundreds of instances, similarly weighty as
evidence, from equally veracious and trustworthy classic authors, might
be cited to the point, did time and space permit. But we hasten to the
other proof of their essential humanity, which I set out with assuming
as an undoubted fact, and which is already foreshadowed in the adventure
of the Trojan wanderers just related,--namely, that they possess the
faculty of speech.

Tasso, the author of a well-known metrical history, states distinctly,
as you shall see in half a moment, that a tree upon one occasion
discoursed with Major General Tancred,--

"Pur tragge alfin la spada e con gran forza
Percuote l' alta pianta. Oh, maraviglia!
----quasi di tomba, uscir ne sente
Un indistinto gemito dolente,
Che poi _distinto in voci_."

And then it goes on to tell the General how it once rejoiced in
extensive hoops, wore a coal-scuttle on its head, and rubbed its face
with prepared chalk,--(w-w-w-hy! what _was_ I saying? such a mistake! I
should say)--was a woman by the name of Clorinda, and is still animated
and sentient both in trunk and limbs, and that he will presently be
guilty of murder, if he continues to hack her with his sword.

The celebrated explorer, Sir John Mandeville, relates in the history
of his discoveries that he heard whole groves of trees talking _to one
another_. And when we come down to the present day, R.W. Emerson, of
Concord, asseverates that trees have conversed with him,--that they
speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, and several other
languages perfectly,--

"Mountain speech to Highlanders,
Ocean tongues to islanders,"--

and that he himself was on one occasion transformed into a Pine (_Pinus
rigida_) and talked quite a large volume of philosophy while in that
condition. Walter Whitman, Esq., author of "Leaves of Grass," relates
similar personal experience. Tennyson, (Alfred,) now the Laureate of
England, and upon whom the University of Oxford, a few years ago,
conferred the title of Doctor of Laws, gives us a long conversation he
once held with an Oak, reporting the exact words it said to him: they
are excellent English, and corroborate what I said above respecting the
wisdom of trees.

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