Thursday, April 5th.
ESTERDAY the train brought dear old Mr. R—— to see us. In addition to our former chess and conversations on literature and art, he reads French, gives me lessons in Spanish, and occupies all the time that would otherwise have made this a bigger if not a wiser or a better letter.
I have often suggested to you the resemblance between the game of chess and the game of life. It occurs to me at this moment, that, if this be true, fatalism must also be true. These inhabitants of chessdom are forced about by an inevitable will; their success and ruin are equally beyond their own let or hindrance. They are created as we are, with certain powers and spheres for action and being; with certain possibilities which, whether they will or not, may become impossibilities, but with, alas! impossibilities which must remain such.
From an inevitable force of circumstances, the great and powerful in chess may become weak; the insignificant may have a greatness thrust upon them. The humble pawn can at times act with the dignity of a queen; the queen is often less powerful than the little plebeian beside her. The bishops, in their attempts to serve royalty, often sacrifice themselves; the knights sometimes ruin the queen they are sworn to protect. The queen has the position many other women would like,—she is the only female in her empire. But, alas! this dizzying distinction sometimes spoils her wits: in trying to rule her allies and conquer her enemies, she is too apt to destroy herself and her kingdom. Her king and lord lives mostly in statu quo-ism. He would be her admiring imbecile except that he has found out the secret of endless life: “The king never dies.” He may at times, it is true, be a wandering Jew, but he is an immortal one; he can well afford to be besotted with inertia, for he is too wise to die. But this wisdom is also his fatality. All that he and his queen or subjects do or refrain from doing is foreordained; their entire existence seems to me an admirable illustration of the doctrine of predestination.
If, however, you wish to find an example of life as it is, of man as he is in these strugglings between the inevitable providence (which in this other game we call chance) and his own free will, between circumstances and character, ability and materials, we must go to the game of whist. Here you are always balancing the must be with the may be; you are recalling the past, and from it foreseeing the future. You are calculating the chances, you are making desperate and uncertain ventures, which may result in disappointing success or brilliant failure. And here is life, this unfathomable life of ours; this wrestling with hidden and unprecedented elements, this combating an unguessed destiny; more than all, this yielding with an equal grace to its fondness or its hate. Here, as in life, honor is for the successful; but true greatness is for him who uses most wisely and most valiantly the much or the little that is given him.
Friday, 6th, has brought back Mr. S——, with intelligence that the steamer leaves for Nassau on the 14th inst. So we must be off at once to Matanzas, if at all; and Trinidad, and all other places must, alas! be given up, from the lateness of the season and the excess of heat.
This evening was celebrated by a grand religious procession, one of the ceremonies of Good Friday. At five o’clock, low, muffled sounds of music were heard approaching. Presently the band appeared, draped in mourning; following it, drawn by black horses, came a great hearse, with heavy pall and waving plumes, and on the top of this, under a white shroud, was plainly visible the sharp outline of a human figure; blood spots were on the edge of the shroud, and above them, drooping on one side, with matted and stained hair, lay the agonized, ghastly face, in wax, of the crucified Saviour. It was horrible!
I felt myself grow sick and faint, but looked around in vain for a corresponding horror in the faces of the other spectators. They stared on with only a little less than their usual gayety and indifference, and turned with curiosity, as I did for relief, to the remainder of the procession. Next came a line of priests in sable robes, and officers of government with crape on their arms, all with uncovered heads, and carrying in their hands immense wax candles that flickered and paled before the light of the receding sun. The procession paused a few minutes before each of the principal houses, while the dead march kept beating on. But now they have passed, and here comes an august, standing figure, mounted upon a high carriage: we soon discover it to be the Virgin following her son to the grave.
Her dress is of long, trailing black velvet; upon her head is a faded crown; the face is horribly wan and white, with an expression in it of excruciating torture and despair, and, alas! what is this carried, high in the pale, uplifted hand! We shudder, we are faint, we look again; it is—a deeply flounced, elegantly embroidered white pocket-handkerchief!