It is now five years ago, "of a sunny morning," since they left us, and the post brought me the other day a short letter from Margharetta enclosing a "poem" by her husband, on the death of the little girl. She "wanted me to know." I feel quite sure that the letter was divided between sorrow for her loss and pride in her husband's performance.
The circumstance touched me more than I would have supposed possible. I thought of course of a mother's "bleeding heart." Poor Margharetta, for all her queenliness and all her disregard of fact, brought at last with the humblest of us to face the one supreme reality; and weaving as best she could some fancy about that, too, and turning away her face from it toward some consolation of reunion which (the verses promised this) was to be given her in another life, and, I doubt not, also toward the pride in this life of being wedded to a man (let us waive the matter of the jail) who could write poetry, and was, some thought, "as great as Shakespeare."
VIII
THE POWERS OF THE POOR
That the poor have strange, one might almost say occult, powers, seems to me proved. The downtrodden with whom I dealt were, so far as I could judge, the very pies and daws of existence, who, one might reasonably suppose, would be grateful for whatever hips and haws and other chance berries the bleak winter of their calamities left them. Nothing could be further from the truth. They lived, rather, it would seem, on canary seed and millet, maize and sesame, not obtainable in the open markets of the world. I fell under the strange delusion that they were to labor for me, and that, for a wage agreed upon, they were to relieve me of care. Again, how wide of the mark was this! They expected to be looked after like queen bees, and they were! I myself laboring from flower to flower for them, and filling their cells with honey.
You may think them as stupid as you like, and as inconsiderable. Deal with them but long enough, and you shall have strange suspicions. You shall begin to note a growing and undeniable likeness in these to "Cinderella" and "The Youngest Brother." Nor are these fairy tales, mind you, safe and unbelievable, shut up there in your Grimm and Andersen on the shelf, to be taken down only at pleasure; no, but fairy tales potent and indisputable, hoeing your potatoes, walking about in the flesh in your kitchen, and hanging out your clothes of a Monday.
There is, indeed, some royalty about this class that bodes as ill for us to ignore, as it is alarming for us to contemplate. If the Lord be for them,—and there is every reason, historical and romantical, to suppose that He is,—who then can be against them? Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, but these can never be lowered! These, I take it, are in their own manner imperial spirits, let kings and royal successions be what they may. Here, without cabinets or ministers, or executive or administrative cares to weigh upon them, yet with what authority they go clothed!
It is astounding, if one only becomes poor enough,—I say it in all soberness and sincerity,—how rich and powerful one may become. And perhaps just here it is my duty to submit a testimony I have up to this time withheld. I have said that I myself have been poor, but I have as yet said nothing of the strange unlooked-for loftiness that this circumstance lent me. While I was of the wealthy, I strongly maintained that these, and what we are wont to call the "upper classes," have the very considerable advantage, and believed it with all my heart. But no sooner was I downright poor, uncertain even where the next meals were to come from, than the potion, the charm, the necromancy, the delusion, or the truth,—have it which you will!—began to work, and I myself to have a subtle suspicion, and at last a positive sense, of superiority.
Who never ate his bread with tears,
He knows ye not, ye heavenly powers!
The wealthy, the advantageous began to dwindle in my eyes. How poor they were in real experience, in sympathy, in understanding; how wanting in fine feeling; how destitute, for the most part, of that only wealth worth acquiring,—wealth of the heart!—whereas, the poorer I was, the greater the wealth of understanding that was mine; as my moneys dwindled, I was made rich of the universe; a new sense of love and bounty was given me as by an unlooked-for legacy. The vast tired multitude going home at night, all these suddenly were my own—my brothers and my sisters; further, it may be noted, I acquired the wealthy also. These too became my brothers, more chill and starved sometimes (I knew this now) in their luxuries than the "poor" in their destitution. Could one, indeed, knowing any of the real values, feel a bitterness toward such? or could one fail to experience, having known any of the true humilities of life, a love for these also?
Let it sound as paradoxical as it may,—I do not say it unadvisedly,—poverty is an enrichment, and often enough a grandeur. Here, indeed, in this fact—I think it by no means unlikely—may lie the explanation of many a humorously high behavior and lordliness in those of whom I have more particularly told. If this be truth, as I take it to be, then it lends consistency, even if a little quaint, to what threatened to seem but unwarrantable chaos.