No. I.
In addressing you for the first time, you will perhaps expect me to give some account of myself and my ancestry, as did the illustrious Spectator.
My remote ancestors are Irish. From them I inherited enthusiasm, a gun-powder temper, a propensity to blunder, and a name—Molly O'Molly. The origin of this name I have in vain endeavored to trace in history, perhaps because it belonged to a very old family, one of the prehistorics. As such it might have been that of a demigod, or, according to the development theory, of a demi-man. Or it might have been that of an old Irish gentleman, gentle in truth;—in the formative stage of society it is the monster that leaves traces of himself, as in an old geologic period the huge reptile left his tracks in the plastic earth, which afterward hardened into rock.
Then, too, I have searched in vain for anything like it in ancient Irish poetry, thinking that my progenitor's name might have been therein embalmed. 'The stony science'—mind you—reveals to us the former existence of the huge reptile, the fragmentary, mighty mastodon, and, imperfect, the mail-clad fish. But, wonder of wonders, we find the whole insect preserved in that fossil gum amber. And even so in verse, characters are preserved for all time, that could not make their mark in history, and that had none of the elements of an earthly immortality. Did I wish immortality I would choose a poet for my friend;—an In Memoriam is worth all the records of the dry chronicler.
But, it is not with the root of the family tree that you have to do, but with the twig Myself.
As for my physique,—I am not like the scripture personage who beheld his face in a glass, and straightway forgot what manner of man he was. I have, on the contrary, a very distinct recollection of my face; suffice it to say, that, had I Rafaelle's pencil, I would not, like him, employ it on my own portrait.
And my life—the circumstances which have influenced, or rather created its currents, have been trifling; not that it has had no powerful currents; it is said that the equilibrium of the whole ocean could be destroyed by a single mollusk or coralline,—but my life has been an uneventful one. I never met with an adventure, never even had a hair-breadth escape,—yes, I did, too, have one hair-breadth escape. I once just grazed matrimony. The truth is, I fell in love, and was sinking with Falstaff's 'alacrity,' when I was fished out; but somehow I slipt off the hook—fortunately, however, was left on shore. By the way, the best way to get out of love is to be drawn out by the matrimonial hook. One of Holmes' characters wished to change a vowel of the verb to love, and conjugate it—I have forgotten how far. Where two set out to conjugate together the verb to love in the first person plural, it is well if they do not, before the honey-moon is over, get to the present-perfect, indicative. Alas! I have thus far, in the first person singular, conjugated too many verbs, among them to enjoy. As for to be, I have come to the balancing in my mind of the question that so perplexed Hamlet—'To be, or not to be.' For, with all the natural cheerfulness of my disposition, I can not help sometimes looking on the dark side of life. But there is no use in setting down my gloomy reflections,—all have them. We are all surrounded by an atmosphere of misery, pressing on us fifteen pounds to the square inch, so evenly and constantly that we know not its fearful weight. To change the figure. Have you ever thought how much misery one life can hold in solution? Each year, as it flows into it, adds to it a heaviness, a weight of woe, as the rivers add salts to the ocean. I do not refer to the most unhappy, but to all. Some one says,—
'If singing breath, if echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven.'
If breath to every hidden prayer were given, could it be singing breath? Would it not be a wail monotonous as the dirge of the November wind over the dead summer, a wail for lost hopes, lost joys, lost loves? Or the monotony would be varied—as is the wind by fitful gusts—by shrieks of despair, cries of agony. No, no, there is no use in trying to modulate our woes,—'we're all wrong,—the time in us is lost.'
'Henceforth I'll bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself,
"Enough, enough," and die.'
But why talk thus? why mourn over dead hopes, dead joys, dead loves? 'Tis best to bury the dead out of our sight, and from them will spring many humbler hopes, quieter joys, more lowly affections, which 'smell sweet' though they 'blossom in the dust,' and they are the only resurrection these dead ones can ever have. I have been reading, in Maury's Geography of the Sea, how the sea's dead are preserved; how they stand like enchanted warders of the treasures of the deep, unchanged, except that the expression of life is exchanged for the ghastliness of death. So, down beneath the surface currents do some deep souls preserve their dead hopes, joys, loves. Oh, this is unwise; this is not as God intended; for, unlike the sea's dead, there will be for these no resurrection.
Thus far I wrote, when the current of my thoughts was changed by a lively tune struck up by a hand-organ across the street. I am not 'good' at distinguishing tunes, but this one I had so often heard in childhood, and had so wondered at its strange title, that I could but remember it. It was 'The Devil's Dream.' Were I a poet, I would write the words to it;—but then, too, I would need be a musician to compose a suitable new tune to the words! The rattling, reckless notes should be varied by those sad enough to make an unlost angel weep—an unlost angel, for, to the hot eyes of the lost, no tears can come. 'The Devil's Dream'—perhaps it is of Heaven. Doubtless, frescoed in heavenly colors on the walls of his memory, are scenes from which fancy has but to brush the smoke and grime of perdition to restore them to almost their original beauty. I could even pity the 'Father of lies,' the 'Essence of evil,' the 'Enemy of mankind,' when I think of the terrible awaking. But does he ever sleep? Has there since the fall been a pause in his labors? Perhaps the reason this tune-time is so fast is because he is dreaming in a hurry,—must soon be up and doing. But it is my opinion that he has so wound up the world to wickedness, that he might sleep a hundred years, and it would have scarcely begun to run down on his awaking; when, from the familiar appearance of all things, he would swear 'it was but an after-dinner nap.' Indeed he might die, might to-day go out in utter nothingness like a falling star, and it would be away in the year two thousand before he would be missed,—we have learned to do our own devil-work so rarely. Meanwhile the well-wound world—as a music-box plays over the same tunes—would go on sinning over the same old sins. Satan is a great economist, but a paltry deviser,—he has not invented a new sin since the flood. My thoughts thus danced along to the music, when they were brought to a dead stop by its cessation; and it was time, you will think....
But, permit me to remind you that my name is not acquired, but inherited.
At your service,
MOLLY O'MOLLY.