REPRESSION.
I am going now to write on another cause of family unhappiness, more subtile than either of those before enumerated.
In the General Confession of the Church, we poor mortals all unite in saying two things: "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done." These two heads exhaust the subject of human frailty.
It is the things left undone which we ought to have done, the things left unsaid which we ought to have said, that constitute the subject I am now to treat of.
I remember my school-day speculations over an old "Chemistry" I used to study as a text-book, which informed me that a substance called Caloric exists in all bodies. In some it exists in a latent state: it is there, but it affects neither the senses nor the thermometer. Certain causes develop it, when it raises the mercury and warms the hands. I remember the awe and wonder with which, even then, I reflected on the vast amount of blind, deaf, and dumb comforts which Nature had thus stowed away. How mysterious it seemed to me that poor families every winter should be shivering, freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had all this latent caloric locked up in her store-closet,—when it was all around them, in everything they touched and handled!
In the spiritual world there is an exact analogy to this. There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression.
Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just before a snow-storm, sit at work in a room that was judiciously warmed by an exact thermometer? You do not freeze, but you shiver; your fingers do not become numb with cold, but you have all the while an uneasy craving for more positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk mechanically towards it, and, suddenly awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing there. You long for a shawl or cloak; you draw yourself within yourself; you consult the thermometer, and are vexed to find that there is nothing there to be complained of,—it is standing most provokingly at the exact temperature that all the good books and good doctors pronounce to be the proper thing,—the golden mean of health; and yet perversely you shiver, and feel as if the face of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an angel.
Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver, is the lot of many natures, which are not warm, when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to be warm,—whose life is cold and barren and meagre,—which never see the blaze of an open fire.
I will illustrate my meaning by a page out of my own experience.
I was twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favorite sister Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar,—a pale, sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer between smiles and tears, looking out of vapory clouds of gauze and curls and all the vanishing mysteries of a bridal morning.
Everybody thought the marriage such a fortunate one!—for her husband was handsome and manly, a man of worth, of principle good as gold and solid as adamant,—and Emmy had always been such a flossy little kitten of a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensitive and nervous, we thought her kind, strong, composed, stately husband made just on purpose for her. "It was quite a Providence," sighed all the elderly ladies, who sniffed tenderly, and wiped their eyes, according to approved custom, during the marriage ceremony.
I remember now the bustle of the day,—the confused whirl of white gloves, kisses, bridemaids, and bridecakes, the losing of trunk-keys and breaking of lacings, the tears of mamma—God bless her!—and the jokes of irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life of him, see nothing so very dismal in the whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were as well off himself.
And so Emmy was wheeled away from us on the bridal tour, when her letters came back to us almost every day, just like herself, merry, frisky little bits of scratches,—as full of little nonsense-beads as a glass of Champagne, and all ending with telling us how perfect he was, and how good, and how well he took care of her, and how happy, etc., etc.
Then came letters from her new home. His house was not yet built; but while it was building, they were to live with his mother, who was "such a good woman," and his sisters, who were also "such nice women."
But somehow, after this, a change came over Emmy's letters. They grew shorter; they seemed measured in their words; and in place of sparkling nonsense and bubbling outbursts of glee, came anxiously worded praises of her situation and surroundings, evidently written for the sake of arguing herself into the belief that she was extremely happy.
John, of course, was not as much with her now: he had his business to attend to, which took him away all day, and at night he was very tired. Still he was very good and thoughtful of her, and how thankful she ought to be! And his mother was very good indeed, and did all for her that she could reasonably expect,—of course she could not be like her own mamma; and Mary and Jane were very kind,—"in their way," she wrote, but scratched it out, and wrote over it, "very kind indeed." They were the best people in the world,—a great deal better than she was; and she should try to learn a great deal from them.
"Poor little Em!" I said to myself, "I am afraid these very nice people are slowly freezing and starving her." And so, as I was going up into the mountains for a summer tour, I thought I would accept some of John's many invitations and stop a day or two with them on my way, and see how matters stood. John had been known among us in college as a taciturn fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his friendship by a regular siege, carrying parallel after parallel, till, when I came into the fort at last, I found the treasures worth taking.
I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evan's house. It was the house of the village,—a true, model, New England house,—a square, roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a hillside under a group of great, breezy old elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over it like a leafy firmament. Under this bower the substantial white house, with all its window-blinds closed, with its neat white fences all tight and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy yard, a perfect Pharisee among houses. It looked like a house all finished, done, completed, labelled, and set on a shelf for preservation; but, as is usual with this kind of edifice in our dear New England, it had not the slightest appearance of being lived in, not a door or window open, not a wink or blink of life: the only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, pale-blue smoke from the kitchen-chimney.
And now for the people in the house.
In making a New England visit in winter, was it ever your fortune to be put to sleep in the glacial spare-chamber, that had been kept from time immemorial as a refrigerator for guests,—that room which no ray of daily sunshine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds are closed the whole year round, whose fireplace knows only the complimentary blaze which is kindled a few moments before bed-time in an atmosphere where you can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in a bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases, slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm at last, but you warmed your bed by giving out all the heat of your own body.
Such are some families where you visit. They are of the very best quality, like your sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality you have to get them warmed up to the talking-point. You think, the first hour after your arrival, that they must have heard some report to your disadvantage, or that you misunderstood your letter of invitation, or that you came on the wrong day; but no, you find in due course that you were invited, you were expected, and they were doing for you the best they know how, and treating you as they suppose a guest ought to be treated.
If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and go on feeling your way discreetly, you gradually thaw quite a little place round yourself in the domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready to leave, you really begin to think it is agreeable to stay, and resolve that you will come again. They are nice people; they like you; at last you have got to feeling at home with them.
Three months after, you go to see them again, when, lo! there you are, back again just where you were at first. The little spot which you had thawed out is frozen over again, and again you spend all your visit in thawing it and getting your hosts limbered and in a state for comfortable converse.
The first evening that I spent in the wide, roomy front-parlor, with Judge Evans, his wife, and daughters, fully accounted for the change in Emmy's letters. Rooms, I verily believe, get saturated with the aroma of their spiritual atmosphere; and there are some so stately, so correct, that they would paralyze even the friskiest kitten or the most impudent Scotch terrier. At a glance, you perceive, on entering, that nothing but correct deportment, an erect posture, and strictly didactic conversation is possible there.
The family, in fact, were all eminently didactic, bent on improvement, laboriously useful. Not a good work or charitable enterprise could put forth its head in the neighborhood, of which they were not the support and life. Judge Evans was the stay and staff of the village and township of ——; he bore up the pillars thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the gates for all the properties and deeds of the virtuous woman, as set forth by Solomon; the heart of her husband did safely trust in her. But when I saw them, that evening, sitting, in erect propriety, in their respective corners each side of the great, stately fireplace, with its tall, glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned at either end with plated candlesticks, with the snuffer-tray in the middle,—she so collectedly measuring her words, talking in all those well-worn grooves of correct conversation which are designed, as the phrase goes, to "entertain strangers," and the Misses Evans, in the best of grammar and rhetoric, and in most proper time and way possible, showing themselves for what they were, most high-principled, well-informed, intelligent women,—I set myself to speculate on the cause of the extraordinary sensation of stiffness and restraint which pervaded me, as if I had been dipped in some petrifying spring and was beginning to feel myself slightly crusting over on the exterior.
This kind of conversation is such as admits quite easily of one's carrying on another course of thought within; and so, as I found myself like a machine, striking in now and then in good time and tune, I looked at Judge Evans, sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, and began to wonder if he had ever been a boy, a young man,—if Mrs. Evans ever was a girl,—if he was ever in love with her, and what he did when he was.
I thought of the lock of Emmy's hair which I had observed in John's writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her,—of sundry little movements in which at awkward moments I had detected my grave and serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in moonlight strolls or retired corners,—and wondered whether the models of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how came they ever to be married?
I looked at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed,—she, the wild little pet, all of whose pretty individualities were dear to us,—that little unpunctuated scrap of life's poetry, full of little exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her little mobile face,—an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness, as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to them, and then again for them to me. For myself, I felt that perverse inclination to shock people which sometimes comes over one in such situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back, and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get the parlor into a general whirl, before the very face and eyes of propriety in the corner: but "the spirits" were too strong for me; I couldn't do it.
I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom with which Emmy used to treat her John in the days of their engagement,—the little ways, half loving, half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over him. Now she called him "Mr. Evans," with an anxious affectation of matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all such little deviations from the one accepted pattern of propriety would fall off, like many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to feel myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then, as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell, and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper or wicked thing which should start them all out of their chairs. Though never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered to let out a certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would create a tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted mill pond,—in fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad demonstration, that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up with apparent relief, and offered to get my candle and marshal me to my room.
When she had ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down the candle, ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat, laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on to my knee.
"It does look so like home to see you, Chris!—dear, dear home!—and the dear old folks! There never, never was such a home!—everybody there did just what they wanted to, didn't they, Chris?—and we love each other, don't we?"
"Emmy," said I, suddenly, and very improperly, "you aren't happy here."
"Not happy?" she said, with a half-frightened look,—"what makes you say so? Oh, you are mistaken. I have everything to make me happy. I should be very unreasonable and wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, I assure you. Of course, you know, everybody can't be like our folks at home. That I should not expect, you know,—people's ways are different,—but then, when you know people are so good, and all that, why, of course you must be thankful, be happy. It's better for me to learn to control my feelings, you know, and not give way to impulses. They are all so good here, they never give way to their feelings,—they always do right. Oh, they are quite wonderful!"
"And agreeable?" said I.
"Oh, Chris, we mustn't think so much of that. They certainly aren't pleasant and easy, as people at home are; but they are never cross, they never scold, they always are good. And we oughtn't to think so much of living to be happy; we ought to think more of doing right, doing our duty, don't you think so?"
"All undeniable truth, Emmy; but, for all that, John seems stiff as a ramrod, and their front-parlor is like a tomb. You mustn't let them petrify him."
Her face clouded over a little.
"John is different here from what he was at our house. He has been brought up differently,—oh, entirely differently from what we were; and when he comes back into the old house, the old business, and the old place between his father and mother and sisters, he goes back into the old ways. He loves me all the same, but he does not show it in the same ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it on trust. He is very busy,—works hard all day, and all for me; and mother says women are unreasonable that ask any other proof of love from their husbands than what they give by working for them all the time. She never lectures me, but I know she thought I was a silly little petted child, and she told me one day how she brought up John. She never petted him; she put him away alone to sleep, from the time he was six months old; she never fed him out of his regular hours when he was a baby, no matter how much he cried; she never let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk talked to him, but was very careful to make him speak all his words plain from the very first; she never encouraged him to express his love by kisses or caresses, but taught him that the only proof of love was exact obedience. I remember John's telling me of his running to her once and hugging her round the neck, when he had come in without wiping his shoes, and she took off his arms and said, 'My son, this isn't the best way to show love. I should be much better pleased to have you come in quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and kiss me when you forget to do what I say.'"
"Dreadful old jade!" said I, irreverently, being then only twenty-three.
"Now, Chris, I won't have anything to say to you, if this is the way you are going to talk," said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous gleam darted into her eyes. "Really, however, I think she carried things too far, though she is so good. I only said it to excuse John, and show how he was brought up."
"Poor fellow!" said I. "I know now why he is so hopelessly shut up, and walled up. Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed away there inside of the fortress, with the drawbridge down and moat all round."
"They are all warm-hearted inside," said Emily. "Would you think she didn't love him? Once when he was sick, she watched with him seventeen nights without taking off her clothes; she scarcely would eat all the time: Jane told me so. She loves him better than she loves herself. It's perfectly dreadful sometimes to see how intense she is when anything concerns him; it's her principle that makes her so cold and quiet."
"And a devilish one it is!" said I.
"Chris, you are really growing wicked!"
"I use the word seriously, and in good faith," said I. "Who but the Father of Evil ever devised such plans for making goodness hateful, and keeping the most heavenly part of our nature so under lock and key that for the greater part of our lives we get no use of it? Of what benefit is a mine of love burning where it warms nobody, does nothing but blister the soul within with its imprisoned heat? Love repressed grows morbid, acts in a thousand perverse ways. These three women, I'll venture to say, are living in the family here like three frozen islands, knowing as little of each other's inner life as if parted by eternal barriers of ice,—and all because a cursed principle in the heart of the mother has made her bring them up in violence to Nature."
"Well," said Emmy, "sometimes I do pity Jane; she is nearest my age, and, naturally, I think she was something like me, or might have been. The other day I remember her coming in looking so flushed and ill that I couldn't help asking if she were unwell. The tears came into her eyes; but her mother looked up, in her cool, business-like way, and said, in her dry voice,—
"'Jane, what's the matter?'
"'Oh, my head aches dreadfully, and I have pains in all my limbs!'
"I wanted to jump and run to do something for her,—you know at our house we feel that a sick person must be waited on,—but her mother only said, in the same dry way,—
"'Well, Jane, you've probably got a cold; go into the kitchen and make yourself some good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water, and go to bed at once'; and Jane meekly departed.
"I wanted to spring and do these things for her; but it's curious, in this house I never dare offer to do anything; and mother looked at me, as she went out, with a significant nod,—
"'That's always my way; if any of the children are sick, I never coddle them; it's best to teach them to make as light of it as possible.'"
"Dreadful!" said I.
"Yes, it is dreadful," said Emmy, drawing her breath, as if relieved that she might speak her mind; "it's dreadful to see these people, who I know love each other, living side by side and never saying a loving, tender word, never doing a little loving thing,—sick ones crawling off alone like sick animals, persisting in being alone, bearing everything alone. But I won't let them; I will insist on forcing my way into their rooms. I would go and sit with Jane, and pet her and hold her hand and bathe her head, though I knew it made her horridly uncomfortable at first; but I thought she ought to learn to be petted in a Christian way, when she was sick. I will kiss her, too, sometimes, though she takes it just like a cat that isn't used to being stroked, and calls me a silly girl; but I know she is getting to like it. What is the use of people's loving each other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way? If one of them were dangerously ill now, or met with any serious accident, I know there would be no end to what the others would do for her; if one of them were to die, the others would be perfectly crushed: but it would all go inward,—drop silently down into that dark, cold, frozen well; they couldn't speak to each other; they couldn't comfort each other; they have lost the power of expression; they absolutely can't."
"Yes," said I, "they are like the fakirs who have held up an arm till it has become stiffened,—they cannot now change its position; like the poor mutes, who, being deaf, have become dumb through disuse of the organs of speech. Their education has been like those iron suits of armor into which little boys were put in the Middle Ages, solid, inflexible, put on in childhood, enlarged with every year's growth, till the warm human frame fitted the mould as if it had been melted and poured into it. A person educated in this way is hopelessly crippled, never will be what he might have been."
"Oh, don't say that, Chris; think of John; think how good he is."
"I do think how good he is,"—with indignation,—"and how few know it, too. I think, that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, the utmost appreciation of human friendship, he has passed in the world for a cold, proud, selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive nature had not unlocked gates and opened doors, he would never have known the love of woman: and now he is but half disenchanted; he every day tends to go back to stone."
"But I sha'n't let him; oh, indeed, I know the danger! I shall bring him out. I shall work on them all. I know they are beginning to love me a good deal: in the first place, because I belong to John, and everything belonging to him is perfect; and in the second place,"——
"In the second place, because they expect to weave, day after day, the fine cobweb lines of their cold system of repression around you, which will harden and harden, and tighten and tighten, till you are as stiff and shrouded as any of them. You remind me of our poor little duck: don't you remember him?"
"Yes, poor fellow! how he would stay out, and swim round and round, while the pond kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming-place grew smaller and smaller every day; but he was such a plucky little fellow that"——
"That at last we found him one morning frozen tight in, and he has limped ever since on his poor feet."
"Oh, but I won't freeze in," she said, laughing.
"Take care, Emmy! You are sensitive, approbative, delicately organized; your whole nature inclines you to give way and yield to the nature of those around you. One little lone duck such as you, however warm-blooded, light-hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freezing. While you have any influence, you must use it all to get John away from these surroundings, where you can have him to yourself."
"Oh, you know we are building our house; we shall go to housekeeping soon."
"Where? Close by, under the very guns of this fortress, where all your housekeeping, all your little management, will be subject to daily inspection."
"But mamma, never interferes, never advises,—unless I ask advice."
"No, but she influences; she lives, she looks, she is there; and while she is there, and while your home is within a stone's throw, the old spell will be on your husband, on your children, if you have any; you will feel it in the air; it will constrain, it will sway you, it will rule your house, it will bring up your children."
"Oh, no! never! never! I never could! I never will! If God should give me a dear little child, I will not let it grow up in these hateful ways!"
"Then, Emmy, there will be a constant, still, undefined, but real friction of your life-power, from the silent grating of your wishes and feelings on the cold, positive millstone of their opinion; it will be a life-battle with a quiet, invisible, pervading spirit, who will never show himself in fair fight, but who will be around you in the very air you breathe, at your pillow when you lie down and when you rise. There is so much in these friends of yours noble, wise, severely good,—their aims are so high, their efficiency so great, their virtues so many,—that they will act upon you with the force of a conscience, subduing, drawing, insensibly constraining you into their moulds. They have stronger wills, stronger natures than yours; and between the two forces of your own nature and theirs you will be always oscillating, so that you will never show what you can do, working either in your own way or yet in theirs: your life will be a failure."
"Oh, Chris, why do you discourage me?"
"I am trying tonic treatment, Emily; I am showing you a real danger; I am rousing you to flee from it. John is making money fast; there is no reason why he should always remain buried in this town. Use your influence as they do,—daily, hourly, constantly,—to predispose him to take you to another sphere. Do not always shrink and yield; do not conceal and assimilate and endeavor to persuade him and yourself that you are happy; do not put the very best face to him on it all; do not tolerate his relapses daily and hourly into his habitual, cold, inexpressive manner; and don't lay aside your own little impulsive, outspoken ways. Respect your own nature, and assert it; woo him, argue with him; use all a woman's weapons to keep him from falling back into the old Castle Doubting where he lived till you let him out. Dispute your mother's hateful dogma, that love is to be taken for granted without daily proof between lovers; cry down latent caloric in the market; insist that the mere fact of being a wife is not enough,—that the words spoken once, years ago, are not enough,—that love needs new leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm-trees, and new branches to grow broader and wider, and new flowers at the root to cover the ground.
"Oh, but I have heard that here is no surer way to lose love than to be exacting, and that it never comes for a woman's reproaches."
"All true as Gospel, Emmy. I am not speaking of reproaches, or of unreasonable self-assertion, or of ill-temper,—you could not use any of these forces, if you would, you poor little chick! I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred,—that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. Thoughtless, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sacrifice, such as many women long to bestow on husband and children, soil and lower the very objects of their love. You may grow saintly by self-sacrifice; but do your husband and children grow saintly by accepting it without return? I have seen a verse which says,—
'They who kneel at woman's shrine
Breathe on it as they bow.'
Is not this true of all unreasoning love and self-devotion? If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend. Any good man soon learns to discriminate between the remonstrance that comes from a woman's love to his soul, her concern for his honor, her anxiety for his moral development, and the pettish cry which comes from her own personal wants. It will be your own fault, if, for lack of anything you can do, your husband relapses into these cold, undemonstrative habits which have robbed his life of so much beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren ways of living are as unchristian as they are disagreeable; and you, as a good Christian sworn to fight heroically under Christ's banner, must make headway against this sort of family Antichrist, though it comes with a show of superior sanctity and self-sacrifice. Remember, dear, that the Master's family had its outward tokens of love as well as its inward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom; and the traitor could not have had a sign for his treachery, had there not been a daily kiss at meeting and parting with His children."
"I am glad you have said all this," said Emily, "because now I feel stronger for it. It does not now seem so selfish for me to want what it is better for John to give. Yes, I must seek what will be best for him."
And so the little one, put on the track of self-sacrifice, began to see her way clearer, as many little women of her sort do. Make them look on self-assertion as one form of martyrdom, and they will come into it.
But, for all my eloquence on this evening, the house was built in the self-same spot as projected; and the family life went on, under the shadow of Judge Evan's elms, much as if I had not spoken. Emmy became mother of two fine, lovely boys, and waxed dimmer and fainter; while with her physical decay came increasing need of the rule in the household of mamma and sisters, who took her up energetically on eagles' wings, and kept her house, and managed her children: for what can be done when a woman hovers half her time between life and death?
At last I spoke out to John, that the climate and atmosphere were too severe for her who had become so dear to him,—to them all; and then they consented that the change much talked of and urged, but always opposed by the parents, should be made.
John bought a pretty cottage in our neighborhood, and brought his wife and boys; and the effect of change of moral atmosphere verified all my predictions. In a year we had our own blooming, joyous, impulsive little Emily once more,—full of life, full of cheer, full of energy,—looking to the ways of her household,—the merry companion of her growing boys,—the blithe empress over her husband, who took to her genial sway as in the old happy days of courtship. The nightmare was past, and John was as joyous as any of us in his freedom. As Emmy said, he was turned right side out for life; and we all admired the pattern. And that is the end of my story.
And now for the moral,—and that is, that life consists of two parts,—Expression and Repression,—each of which has its solemn duties. To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs the duty of expression: to anger, envy, malice, revenge, and all uncharitableness belongs the duty of repression.
Some very religious and moral people err by applying repression to both classes alike. They repress equally the expression of love and of hatred, of pity and of anger. Such forget one great law, as true in the moral world as in the physical,—that repression lessens and deadens. Twice or thrice mowing will kill off the sturdiest crop of weeds; the roots die for want of expression. A compress on a limb will stop its growing; the surgeon knows this, and puts a tight bandage around a tumor; but what if we put a tight bandage about the heart and lungs, as some young ladies of my acquaintance do,—or bandage the feet, as they do in China? And what if we bandage a nobler inner faculty, and wrap love in grave-clothes?
But again there are others, and their number is legion,—perhaps you and I, reader, may know something of it in ourselves,—who have an instinctive habit of repression in regard to all that is noblest and highest, within them, which they do not feel in their lower and more unworthy nature.
It comes far easier to scold our friend in an angry moment than to say how much we love, honor, and esteem him in a kindly mood. Wrath and bitterness speak themselves and go with their own force; love is shamefaced, looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the door-latch.
How much freer utterance among many good Christians have anger, contempt, and censoriousness, than tenderness and love! I hate is said loud and with all our force. I love is said with a hesitating voice and blushing cheek.
In an angry mood we do an injury to a loving heart with good, strong, free emphasis; but we stammer and hang back when our diviner nature tells us to confess and ask pardon. Even when our heart is broken with repentance, we haggle and linger long before we can
"Throw away the worser part of it."
How many live a stingy and niggardly life in regard to their richest inward treasures! They live with those they love dearly, whom a few more words and deeds expressive of this love would make so much happier, richer, and better; and they cannot, will not, turn the key and give it out. People who in their very souls really do love, esteem, reverence, almost worship each other, live a barren, chilly life side by side, busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting their love go by as a matter of course, a last year's growth, with no present buds and blossoms.
Are there not sons and daughters who have parents living with them as angels unawares,—husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, in whom the material for a beautiful life lies locked away in unfruitful silence,—who give time to everything but the cultivation and expression of mutual love?
The time is coming, they think in some far future when they shall find leisure to enjoy each other, to stop and rest side by side, to discover to each other these hidden treasures which lie idle and unused.
Alas! time flies and death steals on, and we reiterate the complaint of one in Scripture,—"It came to pass, while thy servant was busy hither and thither, the man was gone."
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. "She never knew how I loved her." "He never knew what he was to me." "I always meant to make more of our friendship." "I did not know what he was to me till he was gone." Such words are the poisoned arrows which cruel Death shoots backward at us from the door of the sepulchre.
How much more we might make of our family life, of our friendships, if every secret thought of love blossomed into a deed! We are not now speaking merely of personal caresses. These may or may not be the best language of affection. Many are endowed with a delicacy, a fastidiousness of physical organization, which shrinks away from too much of these, repelled and overpowered. But there are words and looks and little observances, thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions, which speak of love, which make it manifest, and there is scarce a family that might not be richer in heart-wealth for more of them.
It is a mistake to suppose that relations must of course love each other because they are relations. Love must be cultivated, and can be increased by judicious culture, as wild fruits may double their bearing under the hand of a gardener; and love can dwindle and die out by neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted in poor soil dwindle and grow single.
Two causes in our Anglo-Saxon nature prevent this easy faculty and flow of expression which strike one so pleasantly in the Italian or the French life: the dread of flattery, and a constitutional shyness.
"I perfectly longed to tell So-and-so how I admired her, the other day," says Miss X.
"And why in the world didn't you tell her?"
"Oh, it would seem like flattery, you know."
Now what is flattery?
Flattery is insincere praise given from interested motives, not the sincere utterance to a friend of what we deem good and lovely in him.
And so, for fear of flattering, these dreadfully sincere people go on side by side with those they love and admire, giving them all the time the impression of utter indifference. Parents are so afraid of exciting pride and vanity in their children by the expression of their love and approbation, that a child sometimes goes sad and discouraged by their side, and learns with surprise, in some chance way, that they are proud and fond of him. There are times when the open expression of a father's love would be worth more than church or sermon to a boy; and his father cannot utter it, will not show it.
The other thing that represses the utterances of love is the characteristic shyness of the Anglo-Saxon blood. Oddly enough, a race born of two demonstrative, outspoken nations—the German and the French—has an habitual reserve that is like neither. There is a powerlessness of utterance in our blood that we should fight against, and struggle outward towards expression. We can educate ourselves to it, if we know and feel the necessity; we can make it a Christian duty, not only to love, but to be loving,—not only to be true friends, but to show ourselves friendly. We can make ourselves say the kind things that rise in our hearts and tremble back on our lips,—do the gentle and helpful deeds which we long to do and shrink back from; and, little by little, it will grow easier,—the love spoken, will bring back the answer of love,—the kind deed will bring back a kind deed in return,—till the hearts in the family-circle, instead of being so many frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm airs and echoing bird-voices answering back and forth with a constant melody of love.:
MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
Dear Sir,—Your letter come to han',
Requestin' me to please be funny;
But I a'n't made upon a plan
Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey:
Ther' 's times the world doos look so queer,
Odd fancies come afore I call 'em;
An' then agin, for half a year,
No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn.
You 're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute,
Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingleish,
An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit,
I 'd take an' citify my English.
I ken write long-tailed, ef I please,—
But when I 'm jokin', no, I thankee;
Then, 'fore I know it, my idees
Run helter-skelter into Yankee.
Sence I begun to scribble rhyme,
I tell ye wut, I ha'n't ben foolin';
The parson's books, life, death, an' time
Hev took some trouble with my schoolin';
Nor th' airth don't git put out with me,
Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman;
Why, th' a'n't a bird upon the tree
But half forgives my bein' human.
An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way
Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger;
Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay,
While book-froth seems to whet, your hunger,
For puttin' in a downright lick
'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can match it,
An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick
Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hatchet.
But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all,
For Natur' won't put up with gullin';
Idees you hev to shove an' haul
Like a druv pig a'n't wuth a mullein;
Live thoughts a'n't sent for; thru all rifts
O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards,
Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts
Feel thet the airth is wheelin' sunwards.
Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick
Ez office-seekers arter 'lection,
An' into ary place 'ould stick
Without no bother nor objection;
But sence the war my thoughts hang back
Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em,
An' substitutes,—wal, they don't lack,
But then they 'll slope afore you 've mist 'em.
Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz;
I can't see wut there is to hinder,
An' yit my brains 'jes' go buzz, buzz,
Like bumblebees agin a winder;
'Fore these times come, in all airth's row,
Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in,
Where I could hide an' think,—but now
It 's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'.
Where 's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night,
When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number,
An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crust white,
Walk the col' starlight into summer;
Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell
Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer
Than the last smile thet strives to tell
O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer.
I hev ben gladder o' sech things
Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover,
They filled my heart with livin' springs,
But now they seem to freeze 'em over;
Sights innercent ez babes on knee,
Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle,
Jes' coz they be so, seem to me
To rile me more with thoughts o' battle.
In-doors an' out by spells I try;
Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin',
But leaves my natur' stiff an' dry
Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin';
An' her jes' keepin' on the same,
Calmer than clock-work, an' not carin',
An' findin' nary thing to blame,
Is wus than ef she took to swearin'.
Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane
The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant,
But I can't hark to wut they 're say'n',
With Grant or Sherman oilers present;
The chimbleys shudder in the gale,
Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin'
Like a shot hawk, but all's ez stale
To me ez so much sperit-rappin'.
Under the yaller-pines I house,
When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented,
An' hear among their furry boughs
The baskin' west-wind purr contented,—
While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low
Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin',
The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow,
Further an' further South retreatin'.
Or up the slippery knob I strain
An' see a hunderd hills like islan's
Lift their blue woods in broken chain
Out o' the sea o' snowy silence;
The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth,
Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin',
Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth
Of empty places set me thinkin'.
Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows,
An' rattles di'mon's from his granite;
Time wuz, he snatched away my prose,
An' into psalms or satires ran it;
But he, nor all the rest thet once
Started my blood to country-dances,
Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce
Thet ha'n't no use for dreams an' fancies.
Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street
I hear the drummers makin' riot,
An' I set thinkin' o' the feet
Thet follered once an' now are quiet,—
White feet ez snowdrops innercent,
Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan,
Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't,
No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'.
Why, ha'n't I held 'em on my knee?
Did n't I love to see 'em growin',
Three likely lads ez wal could be,
Handsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'?
I set an' look into the blaze
Whose natur', jes' like their'n, keeps climbin',
Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways,
An' half despise myself for rhymin'.
Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth
On War's red techstone rang true metal,
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
To him who, deadly hurt, agen
Flashed on afore the charge's thunder,
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men
Thet rived the Rebel line asunder?
'T a'n't right to hev the young go fust,
All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces,
Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust
To try an' make b'lieve fill their places:
Nothin' but tells us wut we miss,
Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in,
An' thet world seems so fur from this
Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in!
My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth
Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners;
I pity mothers, tu, down South,
For all they sot among the scorners:
I 'd sooner take my chance to stan'
At Jedgment where your meanest slave is,
Than at God's bar hol' up a han'
Ez drippin' red ez your'n, Jeff Davis!
Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed
For honor lost an' dear ones wasted,
But proud, to meet a people proud,
With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted!
Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt,
An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter!
Longin' for you, our sperits wilt
Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water!
Come, while our country feels the lift
Of a gret instinct shoutin' forwards,
An' knows thet freedom a'n't a gift
Thet tarries long in hans' o' cowards!
Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when
They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered,
An' bring fair wages for brave men,
A nation saved, a race delivered!
"IF MASSA PUT GUNS INTO OUR HAN'S."
The record of any one American who has grown up in the nurture of Abolitionism has but little value by itself considered; but as a representative experience, capable of explaining all enthusiasms for liberty which have created "fanatics" and martyrs in our time, let me recall how I myself came to hate Slavery.
The training began while I was a babe unborn. A few months before I saw the light, my father, mother, and sister were driven from their house in New York by a furious mob. When they came cautiously back, their home was quiet as a fortress the day after it has been blown up. The front-parlor was full of paving-stones; the carpets were cut to pieces; the pictures, the furniture, and the chandelier lay in one common wreck; and the walls were covered with inscriptions of mingled insult and glory. Over the mantel-piece had been charcoaled "Rascal"; over the pier-table, "Abolitionist." We did not fare as badly as several others who rejoiced in the spoiling of their goods. Mr. Tappan, in Rose Street, saw a bonfire made of all he had in the world that could make a home or ornament it.
Among the earliest stories which were told me in the nursery, I recollect the martyrdom of Nat Turner,—how Lovejoy, by night, but in light, was sent quite beyond the reach of human pelting,—and all the things which Toussaint did, with no white man, but with the whitest spirit of all, to help him. As to minor sufferers for the cause of Freedom, I should know that we must have entertained Abolitionists at our house largely, since even at this day I find it hard to rid myself of an instinctive impression that the common way of testifying disapprobation of a lecturer in a small country-town is to bombard him with obsolete eggs, carried by the audience for that purpose. I saw many at my father's table who had enjoyed the honors of that ovation.
I was four years old when I learned that my father combined the two functions of preaching in a New England college town and ticket-agency on the Underground Railroad. Four years old has a sort of literal mindedness about it. Most little boys that I knew had an idea that professors of religion and professors in college were the same, and that a real Christian always had to wear black and speak Greek. So I could be pardoned for going down cellar and watching behind old hogsheads by the hour to see where the cars came in.
A year after that I casually saw my first passenger, but regretted not also to have seen whether he came up by the coal-bin or the meat-safe. His name was Isidore Smith; so, to protect him from Smith, my father, being a conscientious man, baptized him into a liberty to say that his name was John Peterson. I held the blue bowl which served for font. To this day I feel a sort of semi-accountability for John Peterson. I have asked after him every time I have crossed the Suspension Bridge since I grew up. In holding that baptismal bowl I suppose I am, in a sense, his godfather. Half a godfather is better than none, and in spite of my size I was a very earnest one.
There are few godchildren for whom I should have had to renounce fewer sins than for thee, brave John Peterson!
John Peterson had been baptized before. No sprinkling that, but an immersion in hell! He had to strip to show it to us. All down his back were welts in which my father might lay his finger; and one gash healed with a scar into which I could put my small, boyish fist. The former were made by the whip and branding-irons of a Virginia planter,—the latter by the teeth of his bloodhounds. When I saw that black back, I cried; and my father might have chosen the place to baptize in, even as John Baptist did Ænon, "because there was much water there."
John stayed with us three or four weeks and then got moody. Nobody in the town twitted him as a runaway. He was inexhaustibly strong in health, and never tired of doing us service as gardener, porter, errand-boy, and, on occasion, cook. In few places could his hard-won freedom be less imperilled than with us. At last the secret of his melancholy came out. He burst into tears, one morning, as he stood with the fresh-polished boots at the door of my father's study, and sobbed,—
"Massa, I's got to go an' fetch dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey, 'r I's be done dead afore de yeah's out!"
As always, a woman in the case!
Had it been his own case, I think I know my father well enough to believe that he would have started directly South for "dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey," though he had to face a frowning world. But being John's counsellor, his rôle was to counsel moderation, and his duty to put before him the immense improbability of his ever making a second passage of the Red Sea, if he now returned. If he were caught and whipped to death, of what benefit could he be to his wife and child? Why not stay North and buy them?
But the marital and the parental are also the automatic and the immediate. Reason with love! As well with orange-boughs for bearing orange-buds, or water upon its boiling-point! When John's earnestness made my father realize that this is the truth, he gave John all the available funds in the underground till, and started him off at six in the morning. I was not awake when he went, and felt that my luck was down on me. I never should see that hole where the black came up.
For six months the Care-Taker of Ravens had under His sole keeping a brave head as black as theirs, and a heart like that of the pious negro, who, in a Southern revival-hymn is thus referred to:—
"O! O!
Him hab face jus' like de crow,
But de Lor' gib him heart like snow."
(The most Southern slaves, who had never travelled and seen snow, found greater reality in the image of "cotton wool," and used to sing the hymn with that variation.) At the end of that time, contrary to our most sanguine expectations, John Peterson appeared. Nor John Peterson alone, for when he rang our door-bell he put into the arms of a nice-looking mulatto woman of thirty a little youngster about two years old.
A new servant, with some trepidation, showed them up to "Massa's" study. We had weeded John's dialect of that word before he went away, but he had been six months since then in a servile atmosphere. He stood at the open study-door. My father stopped shaving, and let the lather dry on his face, as he shielded with his hand the eyes he in vain tried to believe. Yes, veritably, John Peterson!
But John Peterson could not speak. He choked visibly; and then, pointing to the two beside him, blurted out,—
"I's done did it, Massa!" and broke entirely down.
Again it was Ænon generally, and there was more baptizing done.
John had made a march somewhat like Sherman's. He had crossed the entire States of Virginia and Maryland, carrying two non-combatants, and no weapon of his own but a knife,—subsisting his army on the enemy all the way,—using negro guides freely, but never sending them back to their masters,—and terminating his brilliant campaign with an act of bold, unconstitutional confiscation. He couldn't have found a Chief-Justice in the world to uphold him in it at that time.
Hiding by day and walking by night, with his boy strapped to his back and his wife by his side, he had come within thirty miles of the Maryland line, when one night the full moon flashed its Judas lantern full upon him, and, being in the high-road, he naturally enough "tuk a scar'." Freedom only thirty miles off,—that vast territory behind him, three times traversed for her dear sake and Love's,—a slave-owner's stable close by,—a wife and a baby crouching in the thicket,—God above saying, "The laborer is worthy of his hire." No Chief-Justice in the world could have convinced that man.
With an inspired touch,—the tactus eruditus of a bitter memory and a glorious hope,—John felt for and found the best horse in the stable, saddled him, led him out without awakening a soul, and, mounting, took his wife before him with the baby in her arms. A pack of deerhounds came snuffing about him as he rode off; but, for a wonder, they never howled.
"Oh, Massa!" said John, "when I see dat, I knowed we was safe anyhow. Dat Lor' dat stop de moufs of dem dogs was jus' de same as Him dat shut de moufs of de lions in Dannelindelinesden." (I write it as he pronounced it. I think he thought it was a place in the Holy Land.) "When I knowed dat was de same Lor', an' He come down dar to help me, I rode along jus' as quiet as little Pompey dar, an' neber feared no moon."
When he reached the Pennsylvania border he turned back the horse, and proceeded on his way through a land where as yet there was no Fugitive-Slave Law, and those who sought to obstruct the progress of the negro-hunter were, as they ever have been, many.
After that I got by accident into a Northern school with Southern principals.
Æsthetically it was a good school. We wore kid gloves when we went to meeting, and sat in a gallery like a sort of steamer over the boiler, in which deacons and other large good people were stewing, through long, hot Sunday afternoons. If we went to sleep, or ate cloves not to go to sleep, we were punched in the back with a real gold-headed cane. The cane we felt proud of, because it had been presented by the boys, and it was a perpetual compliment to us to see that cane go down the street with our principal after it; but nothing could have exceeded our mortification at being punched with it in full sight of the girls'-school gallery opposite, we having our kid gloves on at the time, and in some instances coats with tails, like men.
When I say "Southern" principals, I do not mean to indicate their nativity; for I suppose no Southerner ever taught a Northerner anything until Bull Run, when the lesson was, not to despise one's enemy, but to beat him. Nor do I intend to call them pro-slavery men in the obnoxious sense. Like many good men of the day, they depended largely on Southern patronage, and opposed all discussion of what they called "political differences." At that day, in most famous schools, "Liberty" used to be cut out of a boy's composition, if it meant anything more than an exhibition-day splurge with reference to the eagle and the banner in the immediate context.
Among the large crowd of young Southerners sent to this school, I began preaching emancipation in my pinafore. Mounted upon a window-seat in an alcove of the great play-hall, I passed recess after recess in haranguing a multitude upon the subject of Freedom, with as little success as most apostles, and with only less than their crown of martyrdom, because, though small boys are more malicious than men, they cannot hit so hard.
On one occasion, brought to bay by a sophism, I answered unwisely, but made a good friend. A little Southerner (as often since a large one) turned on me fiercely and said,—
"Would you marry a nigger?"
Resolved to die by my premises, I gave a great gulp and said,—
"Yes!"
Of course one general shout of derision ascended from the throng. Nothing but the ringing of the bell prevented me from accepting on the spot the challenge to a fist-fight of a boy whom Lee has since cashiered from his colonelcy for selling the commissions in his regiment. After school I was taken in hand by a gentleman, then one of our belles-lettres teachers, but now a well-known and eloquent divine in New York city, who for the first time showed me how to beat an antagonist by avoiding his deductions.
"Tell G. the next time," said the present Rev. Dr. W., "that, if you saw a poor beggar-woman dying of cold and hunger, you would do all in your power to help her, though you might be far enough from wanting to marry her."
How many a non-sequitur of people who didn't sit in the boys' gallery has this simple little formula of Dr. W.'s helped me to shed aside since then!
Just after the John Brown raid, I went to Florida. I remained in the State from the first of January till the first week of the May following. I found there the climate of Utopia, the scenery of Paradise, and the social system of Hell.
I am inclined to think that the author of the pamphlet which last spring advocated amalgamation was a Floridian. The most open relations of concubinage existed between white chevaliers and black servants in the town of Jacksonville. I was not surprised at the fact, but was surprised at its openness. The particular friend of one family belonging to the cream of Florida society was a gentleman in thriving business who had for his mistress the waiting-maid of the daughters. He used to sit composedly with the young ladies of an evening,—one of them playing on the piano to him, the other smiling upon him over a bouquet,—while the woman he had afflicted with the burdens, without giving her the blessings, of marriage, came in curtsying humbly with a tea-tray. Everybody understood the relation perfectly; but not even the pious shrugged their shoulders or seemed to care. One day, a lank Virginian, wintering South in the same hotel with myself, began pitching into me on the subject of "Northern amalgamators." I called to me a pretty little boy with the faintest tinge of umber in his skin, and pointed him to the lank Virginian without a word. The lank Virginian understood the answer, and sat down to read Bledsoe on the Soul. Bledsoe, as a slave-labor growth in metaphysics, (indeed, the only Southern metaphysician, if we except Governor Wise,) is much coddled at the South. I believe, besides, that he proves the divine right of Slavery a priori. If he begins with the "Everlasting Me," he must be just the kind of reading for a slave aristocrat.
It is very amusing to hear the Southerners talk of arming their slaves. I often heard them do it in Florida. I have read such Richmond Congress debates as have transpired upon the subject. I do not believe that any important steps will be taken in the matter. I have known a master mad with fear, when he saw an old gun-stock protruding from beneath one of those dog-heaps of straw and sacking called beds, in the negro-quarters. The fact that it had been thrown away by himself, had no barrel attached to it, and was picked up by a colored boy who had a passion for carving, hardly prevented the man from giving the innocent author of his fright a round "nine-and-thirty." When I was in Florida, a peculiar set of marks, like the technical "blaze," were found on certain trees in that and the adjoining State westward. The people were alive in an instant. There were editorials and meetings. The Southern heart was fired, and fired off. There was every indication of a negro uprising, and those marks pointed the way to the various rendezvous. When they were discovered to be the work of some insignificant rodent, who had put himself on bark-tonic to a degree which had never chanced to be observed before, nobody seemed ashamed, for everybody said,—"Well, it was best to be on the safe side; the thing might have happened just as well as not." I do not believe that one thinking Southern man (if any such there be in the closing hours of a desperate conspiracy) has any more idea of arming his negroes than of translating San Domingo to the threshold of his home. I should like to see the negroes whom I knew most thoroughly intrusted with blockade-run rifles, just by way of experiment. Let me recall a couple of these acquaintances.
The St. John's River is one of the most picturesque and beautiful streams in the world. Its bluffs never rise higher than fifty or sixty feet; it has no abrupt precipices; the whole formation about it is tertiary and drift or modern terrace; but its first eighty miles from its mouth are broad as a bay of the sea, and its narrow upper course above Pilatka, where current supersedes tide, is all one dream of Eden,—an infinitely tortuous avenue, peopled with myriads of beautiful wild-birds, roofed by overhanging branches of oak, magnolia, and cypress, draped with the moss that tones down those solitudes into a sort of day-moonlight, and, in the greatest contrast with this, festooned by the lavish clusters of odorous yellow jasmine and many-hued morning-glory,—the latter making a pillar heavy with triumphal wreaths of every old stump along the plashy brink,—the former swinging from tree-top to tree-top to knit the whole tropic wilderness into a tangle of emerald chains, drooping lamps of golden fire, and censers of bewildering fragrance.
To the hunting, fishing, and exploration of such a river I was never sorry that I had brought my own boat. It was one of the chefs-d'[oe]uvres of my old schoolmate Ingersoll,—a copper-fastened, clinker-built pleasure-boat, pulling two pairs of sculls, fifteen feet long, comfortably accommodating six persons, and adorned by the builder with a complimentary blue and gilt backboard of mahogany and a pair of presentation tiller-ropes twisted from white and crimson silk.
In this boat I and the companion of my exile took much comfort. When we intended only a short row,—some trifle of ten or twelve miles,—we always pulled for ourselves; but on long tours, where the faculties of observation would have been impaired by the fatigue of action, we employed as our oarsman a black man whom I shall call Sol Cutter,—not knowing on which side of the lines he may be at present.
Sol, when we first discovered him, was hovering around the Jacksonville wharves, looking for a job. It is so novel to see that kind of thing in the South, that I asked him if he was a free negro. He replied, that he was the slave of a gentleman who allowed him to buy his time. He said "allowed"; but I suspect that the truer, though less delicate, way of putting it would have been to say "obliged" him to, for the sake of a living. Sol's "Mossa Cutter" had remaining to him none of the paternal acres; and it never having occurred to him, that, when lands and houses all are spent, then learning is most excellent, he possessed none of that nous which would have enabled a Northern man to outflank embarrassments by directing his forces into new channels. Having worked a plantation, when he had no longer any plantation to work he was compelled to send his negroes into the street to earn an eleëmosynary living for him. This was no obloquy. How many such men has every Southern traveller seen,—"sons of the first South Carolina families,"—parodying the Caryatides against the sunny wall of some low grog-shop during a whole winter afternoon,—their eyes listless, their hands in their pockets, their legs outstretched, their backs bent, their conversation a languid mixture of Cracker dialect and overseer slang, their negroes' earnings running down their throats at intervals, as they change their outside for a temporary inside position,—and all the well-dressed citizens addressing them cheerfully as "Colonel" and "Major," without a blush of shame, as they go by! Goldwin Smith was right in pointing at such men as one of the former palliations for the social invectives of the foreign tourist,—though any such tourist with brains need not have mistaken them for sample Americans, having already been in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The trouble is, that foreign tourists, as a rule, do not have brains. At any rate, they may say to us, as Artemus Ward of his gifts of eloquence,—"I have them, but—I haven't got them with me."
Sol Cutter paid his master eight dollars a week. As he had to keep himself out of his remainder earnings, he was naturally more enterprising than most slaves, and I took a fancy to him immediately. From the day I found him, he always went out with me on my long rows.
The middle of a river six miles wide is the safest place that can be found at the South for insurrectionary conversation. Even there I used to wonder whether the Southerners had not given secret-service money to the alligators who occasionally stuck their knobby noses above the flood to scent our colloquies.
Sol was pulling away steadily, having "got his second wind" at the end of the first mile. I was sitting with tiller-ropes in hand, and studying his strong-featured, but utterly expressionless face, with deep curiosity. His face was one over which the hot roller of a great agony has passed, smoothing out all its meaning.
"So your master sells you your time?"
"Yes, Mossa." (Always "Mossa" never "Massa," so far South as this.)
"Do you support your wife and children as well as yourself?"
A convulsive gulp on the part of Sol, but no reply.
"Have you never been married?"
"Yes, Mossa."
"Is your wife dead?"
"I hope so,—to de good God, I hope so, Mossa!"
Sol leaned forward on his oars and stopped rowing. He panted, he gnashed his teeth, he frothed at the mouth, and when I thought he must be an epileptic, he lifted himself up with one strong shudder, and turning on me a face stern as Cato's,—
"Nebber, nebber, nebber, shall I see wife or chil' agin!"
I then said openly that I was an Abolitionist,—that I believed in every man's right to freedom,—and that, as to the safest friend in the world, he might tell me his story,—which he thereupon did, and which was afterward abundantly corroborated by pro-slavery testimony on shore.
"Mossa Cutter" had fallen heir in South Carolina to a good plantation and thirty likely "niggers." At the age of twenty-five he sold out the former and emigrated to Florida with the latter. The price of the plantation rapidly disappeared at horse-races, poker-parties, cock-fights, and rum-shops. If Mossa Cutter speculated, he was always unsuccessful, because he was always hotheaded and always drunk.
In process of time "debts of honor" and the sheriff's hammer had dissipated his entire clientage of blacks, with the exception of Sol, a pretty yellow woman with a nice baby, who were respectively Sol's wife and child, and a handsome quadroon boy of seventeen, who was Mossa Cutter's body-servant.
Sol came to the quarters one night and found his wife and child gone. They were on their way to Tallahassee in a coffle which had been made up as a sudden speculation on the cheerful Bourse of Jacksonville. Four doors away Mossa Cutter could be seen between the flaunting red curtains of a bar-room window, drinking Sol's heart's blood at sixpence the tumblerful.
Sol, I hear they are going to put an English musket in your hands!
Sol fell paralyzed to the ground. A moment after, he was up on his feet again, and, without thought of nine o'clock, pass, patrol, or whipping-house, rushing on the road likely to be taken by chain-gangs to Tallahassee. He reached the "Piny Woods" timber on the outskirts of the town. No one had noticed him, and he struck madly through the sand that floors those forests, knowing no weariness, for his heart-strings pulled that way. He travelled all night without overtaking them; but just as the first gray dawn glimmered between the piny plumes behind him, he heard the coarse shout of drivers close ahead, and found himself by the fence of a log-hut where the gang had huddled down for its short sleep. It was now light enough to travel, and the drivers were "geeing" up their human cattle.
Sol rushed to his wife and baby. As the man and woman clasped each other in frantic caress, the driver came up, and, kicking them, bade them with an oath to have done.
"Whose nigger are you?" (to Sol.)
"I belong to Mossa Cutter. I's come to be taken along."
"Did he send you?"
"He did so, Sah. He tol' me partic'lar. I done run hard to catch up wid you gemplemen, Mossa. Mossa Cutter he sell me to-day to be sol' in de same lot wid Nancy."
The drivers went aside and talked for a while, then took him on with them, and, for a wonder, did sell Sol and Nancy in the same lot. Nancy's and the baby's price had one good use to Sol, for it kept Mossa Cutter for a week too drunk to know of his loss or care for his recovery.
Sol was the coachman, Nancy the laundress, of a gentleman residing at the capital. Their master had the happy eccentricity of getting more amiable with every rum-toddy; and as he never for any length of time discontinued rum-toddies, the days of Sol and Nancy at Judge Q.'s were halcyon.
They had not counted on one of the drivers going back to Jacksonville, meeting Mossa Cutter over his libations, and confidentially confessing to him,—
"I tuk a likely boy o'yourn over to Tallahassee in that gang month afore last."
Sol, if they had put a British gun in your hands then!
Mossa Cutter swooped down on them in the midst of their happiness,—refused to let Judge Q. ransom Sol at twice his value,—and tore him from his wife and child. Returning with him to Jacksonville, he beat him almost to death,—after which, he sent him out on the wharves to earn their common living.
A few nights after the return of Sol, Mossa Cutter came home with mania a potu. His handsome quadroon body-servant was sitting up for him. Mossa Cutter said to him,—
"You have the sideboard-keys,—bring me that decanter of brandy."
The boy replied,—
"Oh, don't, dear Mossa! you surely kill you'self!"
Upon this, his master, damning him for a "saucy, disobedient nigger," drew his bowie-knife and inflicted on him a frightful wound across the abdomen, from which he died next day. A Jacksonville jury brought in a verdict of accidental death.
That might have been another good occasion to hand Sol a musket!
Not having any, he remained in the proud and notorious position of "Mossa Cutter's Larst Niggah."
In a certain part of Florida (obvious reasons will show themselves for leaving it indefinite) I enjoyed the acquaintance of two Southern gentlemen,—gentlemen, however, of widely different kinds. One was a general, a lawyer, a rake, a drunkard, and white; the other was a body-servant, a menial, an educated man, a fine man-of-business, a Sir Roger in his manners, and black. The two had been brought up together, the black having been given to the white gentleman during the latter's second year. "They had played marbles in the same hole," the General said. I know that Jim was unceasing in his attentions to his master, and that his master could not have lived without them. A sort of attachment of fidelity certainly did exist on Jim's side; and the most selfish man must feel an attachment of need for the servant who could manage his bank-account and superintend his entire interests much more successfully than himself,—who could tend him without complaint through a week's sleeplessness, when he had the horrors,—who was in fact, to all intents and purposes, his own only responsible manifestation to the world.
Jim's wife was dead, but had left him two sons and a daughter. When I first saw him, none of them had been sold from him. The boys were respectively eighteen and twenty years old. Their sister had just turned sixteen, and was a nice-looking, modest, mulatto girl, whom her father idolized because she was looking more and more every day "like de oder Sally dat's gone, Mossa."
A week after he said that to me, Sally on earth might well have prayed to Sally in heaven to take her, for she was sold away into the horrors of concubinage to one of the wickedest men on the river.
To describe the result of this act upon Jim is beyond my power, if indeed my heart would allow me to repeat such sorrow. It was not violent,—but, O South, South, lying on a volcano, if all your negroes had been violent, how much better for you!
Jim, I hear they intend to give you a rifle!
Well, as to that, I remember Jim had heard of such things.
Boarding at the same hotel with the General, I sat also at the same table. When he was well enough to come down to his meals, he occupied the third chair below me on the opposite side.
One night, when all the boarders but ourselves had left the tea-room, the General, being confidentially sober, (I say sober, for when he reached the confidential he was on the rising scale,) began talking politics with me.
"I see in the 'Mercury,'" said the General, "that some of your Northern scum are making preparations for another John Brown raid into Virginia."
"Oh no, I fancy not. That's sensation."
"Well, now, you just look h'y'ere! If they do come, d'ye know what I'm gwine to do! If I'm too feeble to walk or ride a hoss, I'll crawl on my knees to the banks of the Potomac, and"——
"What, with those new Northern-made pantaloons on?"
"D'interrupt me, Sir. I'll crawl on my knees to the bank of the Potomac and defend Old Virginny to the last gasp. She's my sister, Sir! So'll all the negroes fight for her. Talk about our not trusting 'em! Here's Jim. He's got all the money I have in the world; takes care of me when I'm sick; comes after me, to the Gem when I'm—a little not myself, you know; sees me home; puts me to bed, and never leaves me. Faithful as a hound, by Heavens! Why, I'd trust him with my life in a minute, Sir! Yes, Sir, and——Oh, yes! we'll just arm our niggers, and put 'em in the front ranks to make 'em shoot their brothers, Sir!"
I said, "Ah?" and the General went out to take a drink, leaving Jim and myself alone together at the table. The remaining five minutes, before I finished my tea, Jim seemed very restless. Just as I rose to go, he said to me,—
"Mossa, could you hab de great kin'ness to come out to de quarters to see Peter?" (his eldest boy,)—"he done catch bery bad col', Sah."
I was physician in ordinary to the servants in that hotel. In every distress they called on me. I told Jim that I would gladly accompany him. When we got to a considerable distance from the main houses, Jim stopped under an immense magnolia, and, drawing me into its shade, said, after a sweeping glance in all directions,—
"Oh, Mossa! is dat true, dat dem dere Abolitionists is a-comin' down here to save us,—to redeem us, Mossa? Is dey a-comin' to take pity on us, Mossa, an' take dis people out of hell? Oh, is dey, is dey, Mossa?"
I told Jim that they were very weak and few in number just now; but that in a few years there would be nobody but them at the North, and then they'd come down a hundred thousand strong. (I said one hundred thousand, the modern army not yet having been dreamed of.) I told him to bide the Lord's time.
He cast a fainting glance over to that window in the negro quarters, dark now, where his little Sally used to ply her skilful needle. Then he tossed his hands wildly into the air, and cried out,—
"Lord's time! Oh, is der any Lord?"
I clasped him by the hand and said,—
"Yes, my poor, broken-hearted—brother!"
That word fell on his ear for the first time from a white man's lips, and the stupefaction of it was a countercheck to his grief.
He became perfectly calm, and clasped me by the hands gently, like a child.
"Mossa, you mean dat? To me, Mossa? Dear Mossa, den I will try for to bide de Lord's time! But," (here his face grew black in the growing moonlight, with a deeper blackness than complexion,)—"but, if de Mossas only do put de guns into our han's, oh, dey'll find out which side we'll turn 'em on!"
Jim, I hope you have arms in your hands long ere this, and have done good work with them! I hope Sol has also. Either of you has enough of the vis ab intra to make a good soldier. As you won't know what that means, Jim and Sol, I'll tell you,—it's a broken heart.
But whether Sol and Jim have arms in their hands or not, by all means arm the rest.
Wanted, two hundred thousand British muskets to arm as many likely niggers,—all warranted equal to samples, Sol and Jim,—same make, same temper. Blockade-runners had better apply immediately.