Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861




Neither am I ungrateful. But I dream
Deliciously, how twilight falls to-night
Over the glimmering water, how the light
Dies blissfully away, until I seem

To feel the wind sea-scented on my cheek,
To catch the sound of dusky flapping sail,
And dip of oars, and voices on the gale,
Afar off, calling softly, low and sweet.

O Earth, thy summer-song of joy may soar
Ringing to heaven in triumph! I but crave
The sad, caressing murmur of the wave
That breaks in tender music on the shore.




TWO OR THREE TROUBLES.


If there are only two or three, I am pretty sure of a sympathetic
hearing. If there were two-and-twenty, I should be much more doubtful:
for only last night, on being introduced to a tall lady in deep
mourning, and assured that she had been "a terrible sufferer," that her
life, indeed, had been "one long tragedy," I may as well confess, that,
so far from being interested in this tall long tragedy, merely as such,
I stepped a little aside on the instant, on some frivolous pretence, and
took an early opportunity to get out of the way. Why this was I leave to
persons who understand the wrong side of human nature. I am ashamed
of it; but there it is,--neither worse nor better. And I can't expect
others to be more compassionate than I am myself.

One of my troubles grew out of a pleasure, but was not less a trouble
for the time. The other was not an excrescence, but ingrained with the
material: not necessarily, indeed,--far from it; but, from the nature of
the case, hopelessly so.

The penny-postman had brought me a letter from my Aunt Allen, from
Albany. This letter contained, in three lines, a desire that her
dear niece would buy something with the inclosed, and accept it as a
wedding-gift, with the tenderest wishes for her life-long happiness,
from the undersigned.

"The inclosed" fell on the floor, and Laura picked it up.

"Fifty dollars!--hum!--Metropolitan Bank."

"Oh, now, that is charming! Good old soul she is!"

"Yes. Very well. I'm glad she sent it in money."

"So am I. 'T isn't a butter-knife, anyhow."

"How do you mean?" inquired Laura.

"Why, Mr. Lang was telling last night about his clerk. He said he bought
a pair of butter-knives for his clerk Hillman, hearing that he was to be
married, and got them marked. A good substantial present he thought it
was,--cost only seven dollars for a good article, and couldn't fail to
be useful to Hillman. He took them himself, so as to be doubly gracious,
and met his clerk at the store-door.

"'Good morning!--good morning! Wish you joy, Hillman! I've got a pair of
butter-knives for your wife.--Hey? got any?'

"'Eleven, Sir.'

"Eleven butter-knives! and all marked _Marcia Ann Hillman, from A.B.,
from C.D._, and so on!"

Laura laughed, and said she hoped my friends would all be as considerate
as Aunt Allen, or else consult her. Suppose eleven tea-pots, for
instance, or eleven silver salvers, all in a row! Ridiculous!

"Now, Del, I will tell you what it is," said Laura, gravely.

Laura was the sensible one, like Laura in Miss Edgeworth's "Moral
Tales," and never made any mistake. I was like the naughty horse that
is always rearing and jumping, but kept on the track by the good steady
one. Of course, I was far more interesting, and was to be married in
three weeks.

"Now, Del, I'll tell you what it is. Are you going to have all your
presents paraded on the study-table, for everybody to pull over and
compare values,--and have one mortified, and another elated, and all
uncomfortable?"

"Why, what can I do?"

"I know what I wouldn't do."

"You wouldn't do it, Laura?" said I, looking steadily at the
fifty-dollar note.

"Never, Del! I told Mrs. Harris so, when we were coming home from Ellis
Hall's wedding. It looked absolutely vulgar."

We all swore by Mrs. Harris in that part of Boynton, and it was
something to know that Mrs. Harris had received the shock of such a
heterodox opinion.

"And what did Mrs. Harris say, Laura?"

"She said she agreed with me entirely."

"Did she really?" said I, drawing a good long breath.

"Yes,--and she said she would as soon, and sooner, go to a silversmith's
and pull over all the things on the counter. There were knives and
forks, tea-spoons and table-spoons, fish-knives and pie-knives,
strawberry-shovels and ice-shovels, large silver salvers and small
silver salvers and medium silver salvers. Everything useful, and nothing
you want to look at. There wasn't a thing that was in good taste to
show, but just a good photograph of the minister that married them,--and
a beautiful little wreath of sea-weed, that one of her Sunday-school
scholars made for her. As to everything else, I would, as far as good
taste goes, have just as soon had a collection of all Waterman's
kitchen-furniture."

Laura stopped at last, indignant, and out of breath.

"There was a tremendous display of silver, I allow," said I; "the piano
and sideboard were covered with it."

"Yes, and thoroughly vulgar, for that reason. A wedding-gift should be
something appropriate,--not merely useful. As soon as it is only that,
it sinks at once. It should speak of the bride, or to the bride, or
of and from the friend,--intimately associating the gift with past
impressions, with personal tastes, and future hopes felt by both.
The gift should always be a dear reminder of the giver; a
picture,--Evangeline or Beatrice; something you have both of you loved
to look at, or would love to. But think of the delight of cutting your
meat with Edward's present! forking ditto with Mary's! a crumb-scraper
reminding you of this one, table-bell of that one; large salver,
Uncle,--rich; small salver, Uncle,--mean; gold thimble, Cousin,--meanest
of all. Table cleared, ditto mind and memory, of the whole of them--till
next meal, _perhaps!_"

Laura ceased talking, but rocked herself swiftly to and fro in her
chair. It is not necessary to say we were in our chambers,--as, since
our British cousins have ridiculed our rocking-chairs, they are all
banished from the parlor. Consequently we remain in our chambers to rock
and be useful, and come into the parlor to be useless and uncomfortable
in _fauteuils_, made, as the chair-makers tell us, "after the line of
beauty." Laura and I both detest them, and Polly says, "Nothing can be
worse for the spine of a person's back." To be

"Stretched on the rack of a too-easy chair,"

let anybody try a modern drawing-room. So Laura and I have cane
sewing-chairs, which, it is needless to add, rock,--rock eloquently,
too. They wave, as the boat waves with the impetus of the sea, gently,
calmly, slowly,--or, as conversation grows animated, as disputes arise,
as good stories are told, one after another, so do the sympathizing and
eloquent rocking-chairs keep pace with our conversation, stimulating or
soothing, as it chances.

And now I come to my first trouble,--first, and, as it happened, of long
standing now; insomuch that, when Laura asked me once, gravely, why I
had not made it a vital objection, in the first place, I had not a word
to reply, but just--rocked.

She, Laura, was stitching on some shirts for "him." They were intended
as a wedding-gift from herself, and were beautifully made. Laura
despised a Wheeler-and-Wilson, and all its kindred,--and the shirts
looked like shirts, consequently.

I linger a little, shivering on the brink. Somehow I always say
"_him_,"--nowadays, of course, Mr. Sampson,--but then I always said "he"
and "him." I know why country-folk say so, now. Though sentimentalists
say, it is because there is only one "he" for "her," I don't believe it.
It is because their names are Jotham, or Adoniram, or Jehiel, or Asher,
or some of those names, and so they say "he," for short. But there
was no short for me. So I may as well come to it. "His" name was
America,--America Sampson. It is four years and a half since I knew this
for a fact, yet my surprise is not lessened. Epithets are weak trash for
such an occasion, or I should vituperate even now the odious practice
of saddling children with one's own folly or prejudice in the shape of
names.

There was no help for it. There was no hope. My lover had not received
his name from any rich uncle, with the condition of a handsome fortune;
so he had no chance of indignantly asserting his choice to be Herbert
barefoot rather than Hog's-flesh with gold shoes. His father and mother
had given his name,--not at the baptismal font, for they were Baptists,
and didn't baptize so,--but they had given it to him. They were both
alive and well, and so were seventeen uncles and aunts who would all
know,--in good health, and bad taste, all of them.

"He" had four brothers to keep him in countenance, all with worse names
than his: Washington, Philip Massasoit, Scipio, and Hiram Yaw Byron!
There was the excuse, in this last name, of its being a family one,
as far as Yaw went; but----However, as I said, language is wholly
inadequate and weak for some purposes. There was a lower deep than
America,--that was some comfort.

Hiram Yaw wasn't sent to college, but to Ashtabula, wherever that is,
and I never wish to see him. But to college was America sent,--to be
"hazed," and taunted, and called "E Plury," and his beak and claws
inquired after, through the freshman year. I never knew how he went
through,--I mean, with what feelings. Of course, he was the first
scholar. But that, even, must have been but a small consolation.

The worst of all was, he was sensitive about his name,--whether because
it had been used to torment him, and so, like poor worn-out Nessus,
he wrapped more closely his poisoned scarf, (I like scarf better than
shirt,)--or whether he had, in the course of his law-studies and
men-studies, come to think it really mattered very little what a man's
name was in the beginning; at all events, he had no notion of dismissing
his own.

My own secret hope had been, that, by an Act of the Legislature, which
that very season had changed Pontifex Parker to Charles Alfred Parker,
Mr. Sampson might be accommodated with a name less unspeakably national.
Dear me! Alfred, Arthur, Albert,--if he must begin with A.

"A was an Archer, and shot at a frog."

I should even prefer Archer. It needn't be Insatiate Archer. So I kept
turning over and over the painful subject, one evening,--I mean, of
course, in my mind, for I had not really broached this matter of
legislative action. Luckily, "he" had brought in the new edition of
George Herbert's Works. We were reading aloud, and "he" read the chapter
of "The Parson in Sacraments." At the foot was an extract from "The
Parish Register" of Crabbe, which he read, unconscious of the way in
which I mentally applied it. Indeed, I think he scarcely thought of his
own name at that time. But I did, twenty-four times in every day. This
was the note:--

"Pride lives with all; strange names our rustics give
To helpless infants, that their own may live;
Pleased to be known, they'll some attention claim,
And find some by-way to the house of fame.
'Why Lonicera wilt thou name thy child?'
I asked the gardener's wife, in accents mild.
'We have a right,' replied the sturdy dame;
And Lonicera was the infant's name."

He stopped reading just here, to look at the evening paper, which had
been brought in. I read something in it, and then we all went to sit on
the piazza, with the street-lamp shining through the bitter-sweet vine,
as good as the moon, and the conversation naturally and easily turned
on odd names. I told what I had read in the paper: that our country
rivalled Dickens's in queer names, and that it wasn't for a land that
had Boggs and Bigger and Bragg for governors, and Stubbs, Snoggles,
Scroggs, and Pugh among its respectable citizens, to accuse Dickens
of caricature. I turned, a little tremulously, I confess, to "him,"
saying,--

"If you had been so unfortunate as to have for a name Darius Snoggles,
now, for instance, wouldn't you have it changed by the Legislature?"

I shivered with anxiety.

"Certainly not," he replied, with perfect unconsciousness. "Whatever my
name might be, I would endeavor to make it a respectable one while I
bore it."

Laura sat the other side of me, and softly touched me. So I only
asked, if that great star up there was Lyra; but all the time Anodyne,
Ambergris, Abner, Albion, Alpheus, and all the names that begin with A,
rolled through my memory monotonously and continually.

After we went up-stairs that night, and while I was trying in vain to do
up my hair so as to make a natural wave in front, (sometimes everything
goes wrong,) Laura said,--

"Delphine!"

My mother mixed romance with good practical sense, and very properly
said that girls with good names and tolerable faces might get on in the
world, but it took fortune to make your Sallies and Mollies go down. She
had good taste, too, and didn't name either of us Louisa Prudence, like
an unfortunate I once saw; and we were left, with our nice cottage
covered with its vine of bitter-sweet and climbing rose, fifteen hundred
dollars each, and our names, Delphine and Laura. Not a bad heritage,
with economy, good looks, and hearts to take life cheerily. Still it
is plain enough that a fifty-dollar note for the bride was not to be
despised nor overlooked. In fact, with the exception of Polly's present
of a brown earthen bowl and a pudding-stick, it was the first approach
to a wedding-gift that I had yet received. And this note was trouble the
second. But of that, by-and-by.

"Delphine!" said Laura, softly.

Some people's voices excoriate you, Laura's was soft and soothing.

"Well!"

"Don't say any more to--to Mr. Sampson about names."

"Oh, dear! hateful!"

"Delphine, be thankful it's no worse!"

"How could it be worse,--unless it were Hog-and-Hominy? I never knew
anything so utterly ridiculous! America! Columbia! Yankee-Doodle! I'd
rather it had been Abraham!"

All this I almost shouted in a passion of vexation, and Laura hastily
closed the window.

"Let me loosen your braids for you, Del," said she, quietly, taking up
my hair in her gentle way, which always had a good effect on my prancing
nerves; "let me bathe your forehead with this, dear;--now, let me tell
you something you will like."

"Oh, my heart! Laura, I wish you could! for I declare to you, that, if
it wasn't for--if it didn't----Oh, dear, dear! how I do hate that name!"

"It is not so very good a name,--that must be owned, Del. All is, you
will have to call him 'Mr. Sampson,' or 'My dear,' or 'You'; or, stay,
you might abbreviate it into Ame, Ami. Ami and Delphine!--it sounds like
a French story for youth. If I were you, I wouldn't meddle with it or
think any more about it."

"Such a name! so ridiculous!" I muttered.

"You have considered it so much and so closely, Del, that it is most
disproportionately prominent in your mind. You can put out Bunker-Hill
Monument with your little finger, if you hold it close enough to your
eye. Don't you remember what Mr. Sampson said to-night about somebody
whose mind had no perspective in it? that his shoe-ribbon was as
prominent and important as his soul? Don't go and be a goosey, Del, and
have no perspective, will you?" And Laura leaned over and kissed my
forehead, all corrugated with my pet grief.

"Well, Laura, what can be worse? I declare--almost I think, Laura, I
would rather he should have some great defect."

"Moral or physical? Gambling? one leg? one eye? lying? six fingers? How
do you mean, Del?"

"Oh, patience! no, indeed!--six fingers! I only meant"----

And here, of course, I stopped.

"Which virtue could you spare in Mr. Sampson?" said Laura, coolly,
fastening my hair neatly in its net, and sitting down in _her_
rocking-chair.

When it came to that, of course there were none to be spared. We
undressed, silently,--Laura rolling all her ribbons carefully, and
I throwing mine about; Laura, consistent, conservative, allopathic,
High-Church,--I, homoeopathic, hydropathic, careless, and given to
Parkerism. It did not matter, as to harmony. Two bracelets, but no
need to be alike. We clasped arms and hearts all the same. By-and-by I
remembered,--

"Oh! what's your good news, Laura?"

"Ariana Cooper and Geraldine Parker are both married,--both on the same
day, at Grace Church, New York."

"Is it possible? Who told you? How do you know?"

"I read it in the 'Evening Post,' just before I came up-stairs. Now
guess,--guess a month, Del, and you won't guess whom they have married."

"No use to guess. They've found somebody in New York at their aunt's,
I suppose. Both so pretty and rich, they were likely to find good
_partis_."

"Merchants both, I think. Now do guess!"

"How can I? Herbert Clark, maybe,--or Captain Ellington? No, of course
not. A merchant? Julius Winthrop. I know Ariana was a great admirer of
a military man. She used to say she would have loved Sidney for his
chivalry, and Raleigh for his graceful foppery; and Pembroke Dunkin she
admired for both. It isn't Pembroke?"

And here I sighed over and over, like a foolish virgin.

"Now, then, listen. Here it is in the paper," said Laura.

"'Married, at Grace Church, by the Rev. So-and-So, assisted, etc., etc.,
Ossian Smutt, Esq., of the firm of S. Hamilton & Company, to Ariana,
eldest daughter of the late George S. Cooper. At the same place, and
day, Hon. Unity Smith, M.C., to Geraldine Miranda, daughter of the late
Russell Parker of Pine Lodge. The happy quartette have left in the
Persia for a tour in Europe. We wish them joy.'"

"Ugh! Laura! goodness! well, that outdoes me," I screamed, with a sudden
sense of relief, that set me laughing as passionately as I had been
crying. For, though I have not before owned it, I had been crying
heartily.

The Balm of a Thousand Flowers descended on my lacerated heart. To say
the truth, I had dreaded more Ariana's little shrug, and Geraldine
Parker's upraised eyebrows, on reading my marriage, than a whole life of
_that_ name, on my own account merely. But now, thank Heaven, so much
trouble was out of my way. Mrs. Unity Smith, and Mrs. Orlando--no,
Ossian Smutt, could by no possibility laugh at me. Mrs. A. Sampson
wasn't bad on a card. It would not smut one, anyhow. I laughed grimly,
and composed myself to sleep.

The next morning had come the pleasant letter from my Albany aunt, with
the fifty-dollar note. Laura continued rocking, fifty strokes a minute,
and stitching at the rate of sixty. I held the note idly, rubbing up
my imagination for things new and old. Laura, being industrious, was
virtuously employing her thoughts. As idleness brings mischief, and
riches anxiety, I did not rock long without evil consequences. Eve
herself was not contented in Eden. She had to do all the cooking, for
one thing,--and angels always happening in to dinner! For my part, the
name of Adam would have been enough to spoil my pleasure. Here Laura
interrupted my thoughts, which were running headlong into everything
wicked.

"What do you say?"

"What do you?" I answered; for, like other bad people, I had the
greatest respect for good people's opinions.

"I think--a small--silver salver!"

"Do you think so, really?"

"Yes, Del. That will be good; silver, you know, is always good to have;
and it will be handsome and useful always."

"What! for us?"

"Yes,--pretty to hand a cup of tea on, or a glass of wine,--pretty to
set in the middle of a long table with a vase of flowers on it, when you
have the Court and High-Sheriff to dine,--as you will, of course, every
year,--or with your spoon-goblet. Oh, there are plenty of ways to make a
small silver salver useful. Mrs. Harris says she doesn't see how any one
can keep house without a silver salver."

The last sentence she said with a laugh, for she knew I thought so much
of what Mrs. Harris said.

"We've kept house all our lives without one, Laura."

"Yes,--but I often wish we had one, for all that. As Mrs. Harris says,
'It gives such an air!'"

What a dreadful utilitarian Laura was, I thought. Now, the whole world
and Boston were full of beautiful things,--full of things that had no
special usefulness, but were absolutely and of themselves beautiful. And
such a thing I wanted,--such a presence before me,--"a thing of beauty
and of joy forever,"--something that would not speak directly or
indirectly of labor, of something to be wrought out with toil, or
associated with common, every-day objects. When that life should come to
which I secretly looked forward,--when my soul should bound into a more
radiant atmosphere, where the clouds, if any were, should be all
gold- and silver-tinted, and where my sorrows, love-colored, were to be
sweeter than other people's joys,--in that life, there would be moments
of sweet abandonment to the simple sense of happiness. Then I should
want something on which my mind might linger, my eye rest,--as the bird
rests for an instant, to turn her plumage in the sun, and take another
and loftier flight. Not a word of all this, which common minds called
farrago, but which had its truth to me, did I utter to Laura. Of course,
none of these things bear transplanting or expressing.

"Laura, do you like that statue of Mercury in Mrs. Gore's library?"

"Very much. But I am sure I should be tired of seeing it every day,
standing on one toe. I should be tired, if he wasn't."

"Mrs. Gore says she never tires of it. I asked her. She says it is a
delight to her to lie on the sofa and trace the beautiful undulations
of his figure. How airy! It looks as if it would fly again without the
least effort,--as if it had just 'new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill'!
Don't you think it perfect, Laura?"

"Well--yes,--I suppose so. I am not so enthusiastic as you are about
it."

"Why don't you like it?"

I would not let Laura see how disappointed I was.

"One thing,--I don't like statuary in any attitude which, if continued,
would seem to be painful. I know artists admire what gives an impression
of motion; and I like to look at Mercury once; as you say, it gives an
idea of flight, of motion,--and it is beautiful for two minutes. But
then comes a sense of its being painful. So that statue of Hebe, or
Aurora,--which is it?--looks as if swiftly coming towards you; but only
for a minute. It does not satisfy you longer, because the unfitness
comes then, and the fatigue, and your imagination is harassed and
fretted. I think statuary should be in repose,--that is, if we want it
in the house as a constant object of sight. Eve at the fountain, or Echo
listening, or Sabrina fair sitting

"'Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
With twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of her amber-dropping hair.'

"No matter, if she is represented employed. The motion may go so far."

I suppose I looked blank.

"Oh, don't think I am not glad to admire it. I thought you were thinking
of it for Aunt Allen's gift," continued Laura.

"And so I was. It costs just fifty dollars. But I think you are right
about it. And, besides, do you like bronze, Laura?"

"I like marble a great, great deal best. There is a bronze statue of
Fortune, and a Venus, at Harris & Stanwood's, that are called 'so
beautiful!'--and I wouldn't have them in my house."

Here was an extinguisher. Laura didn't like bronze. And Laura was to be
in my house, whether bronzes--were or not.

* * * * *

The sun shone brightly through the bitter-sweet that ran half over the
window, and lighted on the corner of an old mahogany chest.

"That reminds me!" said I, suddenly. "Yesterday, I was looking at
crockery, and there was the most delightful cabinet!--real Japan work,
such as we read of; full of little drawers, and with carved silver
handles, and a secret drawer that shoots out when you touch a spring at
the back. Wouldn't that be a beautiful thing to stand in the parlor,
Laura?"

"For what, Del? Could you keep silver in it? How large is it?"

"Why, no,--it wouldn't be large enough to hold silver. And, besides, I
don't know that I want it for any such purpose. It would hold jewelry."

"If you had any, Del."

"There's the secret drawer,--that would be capital for anything I wanted
to keep perfectly secret."

"Such as what'?"

"Oh, I don't know what, now; but I might possibly have."

"I can't think of anything you would want to shut up in that drawer,"
said Laura, laughing at my mysterious face, which she said looked about
as secret as a hen-coop with the chickens all flying out between the
slats. "In the first place, you haven't any secrets, and are not likely
to have; and next, you will show us (Mr. Sampson and me) the drawer and
spring the first thing you do. And I shall look there every week, to see
if there's anything hid there!"

"Oh, bah!" said I to myself; "Sumner told me that cabinet was just fifty
dollars."

Something--I know not what, and probably never shall know--made me rise
from my rocking-chair, and walk to the chamber-window. At that moment, a
man with a green bag in his hand walked swiftly by, touched his hat as
he passed, and smiled as he turned the corner out of sight. A little
spasm, half painful in its pleasure, contracted my chest, and then
set out at a thrilling pace to the end of my fingers. Then a sense of
triumphant fulness, in my heart, on my lip, in my eyes. Not the name,
but the nature passed,--strong to wrestle, determined to win. Not the
body, but the soul of a man, passed across my field of vision, armed for
earth-strife, gallantly breasting life. What mattered the shape or the
name,--whether handsome or with a fine fortune? How these accidents fell
off from the soul, as it beamed in the loving eye and firm lip!

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