Reveries of a Bachelor; or, A Book of the Heart

by Donald Grant Mitchell

I
LIGHTED WITH A COAL

I take up a coal with the tongs, and setting the end of my cigar against it, puff—and puff again; but there is no smoke. There is very little hope of lighting from a dead coal—no more hope, thought I, than of kindling one’s heart into flame by contact with a dead heart.

To kindle, there must be warmth and life; and I sat for a moment, thinking—even before I lit my cigar—on the vanity and folly of those poor, purblind fellows, who go on puffing for half a lifetime, against dead coals. It is to be hoped that Heaven, in its mercy, has made their senses so obtuse that they know not when their souls are in a flame, or when they are dead. I can imagine none but the most moderate satisfaction, in continuing to love what has got no ember of love within it. The Italians have a very sensible sort of proverb—amare, e non essere amato, é tempo perduto—to love, and not be loved, is time lost.

I take a kind of rude pleasure in flinging down a coal that has no life in it. And it seemed to me—and may Heaven pardon the ill-nature that belongs to the thought—that there would be much of the same kind of satisfaction in dashing from you a lukewarm creature covered over with the yellow ashes of old combustion that, with ever so much attention, and the nearest approach of the lips, never shows signs of fire. May Heaven forgive me again, but I should long to break away, though the marriage bonds held me, and see what liveliness was to be found elsewhere.

I have seen before now a creeping vine try to grow up against a marble wall; it shoots out its tendrils in all directions, seeking for some crevice by which to fasten and to climb—looking now above and now below—twining upon itself—reaching farther up, but, after all, finding no good foothold, and falling away as if in despair. But nature is not unkind; twining things were made to twine. The longing tendrils take new strength in the sunshine, and in the showers, and shoot out toward some hospitable trunk. They fasten easily to the kindly roughness of the bark, and stretch up, dragging after them the vine, which, by and by, from the topmost bough, will nod its blossoms over at the marble wall, that refused it succor, as if it said—stand there in your pride, cold, white wall! we, the tree and I, are kindred, it the helper, and I the helped! and bound fast together, we riot in the sunshine and in gladness.

The thought of this image made me search for a new coal that should have some brightness in it. There may be a white ash over it indeed; as you will find tender feelings covered with the mask of courtesy, or with the veil of fear; but with a breath it all flies off, and exposes the heat and the glow that you are seeking.

At the first touch the delicate edges of the cigar crimple, a thin line of smoke rises—doubtfully for a while, and with a coy delay; but after a hearty respiration or two it grows strong, and my cigar is fairly lighted.

That first taste of the new smoke, and of the fragrant leaf is very grateful; it has a bloom about it that you wish might last. It is like your first love—fresh, genial and rapturous. Like that, it fills up all the craving of your soul; and the light, blue wreaths of smoke, like the roseate clouds that hang around the morning of your heart-life, cut you off from the chill atmosphere of mere worldly companionship, and make a gorgeous firmament for your fancy to riot in.

I do not speak now of those later and manlier passions, into which judgment must be thrusting its cold tones, and when all the sweet tumult of your heart has mellowed into the sober ripeness of affection. But I mean that boyish burning, which belongs to every poor mortal’s lifetime, and which bewilders him with the thought that he has reached the highest point of human joy before he has tasted any of that bitterness from which alone our highest human joys have sprung. I mean the time when you cut initials with your jack-knife on the smooth bark of beech trees; and went moping under the long shadows at sunset; and thought Louise the prettiest name in the wide world; and picked flowers to leave at her door; and stole out at night to watch the light in her window; and read such novels as those about Helen Mar, or Charlotte, to give some adequate expression to your agonized feelings.