Are you aware that life is very like a railway? One gets into deep cuttings and long dark tunnels, where one sees nothing and hears twice as much noise as usual, and one can’t read, and one shuts up the window, and waits, and then it all comes clear again. Only in life it sometimes feels as if one had to dig the tunnel as one goes along, all new for oneself. Go straight on, however, and one’s sure to come out into a new country, on the other side the hills, sunny and bright. There’s an apologue for you!
Here is a little story about Napoleon told to me by S. C., and told to him by some old soldier in Switzerland or France, probably a courier. This man was one of the cuirassiers, and was in the Russian campaign, and at his first battle was riding on to the charge, when suddenly he found his kettle (they all carry their kettles behind them) had dropped. So he jumped off, and was picking it up, when somebody called out, ‘Hé; cuirassier, que fais-tu là?’ He looked up and saw the Emperor. Touching his hat (which he did also in repeating it), ‘Ah, votre Majesté, j’avais perdu ma chaudière.’ ‘En avant,’ replied the Emperor, ‘les Russes en ont.’
March 9.
Just returned from a little party, to which I went in a very bad humour, but have returned in much better. A pleasant tiny old house, the oldest in Cambridge, perhaps, that is really a pleasure to one’s eyes; beams across the ceilings, and solid wood-work, and so forth. I went at nine, and back at half-past ten; that also is the right thing. Tea, coffee, and chocolate; that also is sensible.
I am almost persuaded to be an Abolitionist, which, how ever, is not true; but I am a decided Free Soiler for the present, and entirely give up the cause of the Fugitive Slave Law.
Emerson is the only profound man in this country. There are some other nice people at Concord; but for society generally the advantage is greatly on the side of Cambridge. Concord would be but dull, but the walks are far prettier than here. It is nearly an hour’s journey from Boston. People don’t the least despise one for being poor in Cambridge, and indeed I recommend them not! There are two Miss —— and their mother living here; their father, now dead, was American minister for many years at —— and ——; and now one Miss —— teaches French, and the other music. My opinion is that the true position in this country is that of comparative poverty. No sort of real superiority of breeding or anything attaches as it does in England to the rich. The poor man can get his children educated at the public schools, to which the rich children go also, for nothing, prepared for College even. And very few people indeed are so rich by patrimony as not to be in business.
What I mean by mysticism, is letting feelings run on without thinking of the reality of their object, letting them out merely like water. The plain rule in all matters is, not to think what you are thinking about the question, but to look straight out at the things and let them affect you; otherwise how can you judge at all? look at them at any rate, and judge while looking. I was just now looking into a book of verse which I brought with me, at what is called there ὔμνος ἀύμνος; it wants a good deal of mending as it stands, but it is on the whole in sense very satisfactory to me still. However, we shall learn more together, I do not doubt. The only way to become really religious is to enter into those relations and those actualities of life which demand and create religion.
In the years 1844 and 1845 I was in very great force, and used to be taken for an undergraduate just come up to College. I am wiser perhaps now, but I have lost a good deal to become so.
March 16.
Here comes a letter from Carlyle, about my coming home and about the Council Office. I tell him I shall be very glad to come home, and very grateful to be brought; but I don’t dwell on what must be an uncertainty. I should like you, even if it were but for a little while, to see this worthy Yankee-land. From the specimens I occasionally meet with, I infer it to be a good deal the best part of the American Republic. But I should like to see the West.