“There are some things that must be done first of all. We must hold the spear firm and upright. We must carry our principles stiddy and firm. But we have a perfect right and privilege to wreath that spear and them principles with all the blossoms of brightness and innocent happiness we can possibly lay holt of. Them is my opinions. Howsomever, everybody to their own mind.”
“Beauty the divinest thing God ever made!” says Kellup in a hauty, ironical tone. “How dare you be so wicked, Josiah Allen’s wife? I call it awful wicked to talk so.”
Says I, “I don’t believe anything is wicked that lifts us right up nearer to Heaven. I don’t mean to be wicked.”
“Wall, you be,” says he, speakin’ up sharp. “Worshipin’ beauty, worshipin’ the creature instead of the creator.”
Says I, “Can you tell me, Kellup, what that spirit of beauty is, that you are so sot aginst?” Says I, feelin’ more and more eloquent as I dove further and further into the depths of the subject than I had doven—and the more I went on about it the more carried away I wuz and lost, till before I had gone on 2 minutes I was entirely by the side of myself, and carried completely out of Kellup Cobb’s presence, out of Josiah Allen’s kitchen, out into the mighty waste of mystery that floats all round Jonesville and the world:
“What is this spirit of beauty—there is something, some hidden spirit, some soul of inspiration, in all beautiful things, pictures, poetry, melody—a spirit that forever eludes us, flies before us, and yet smiles down into our souls forever with haunting, glorious eyes. What is this wonderful spirit, this insperation that thrills us so in all sweetest and saddest melodies, in lovely landscapes, in the soft song of the summer wind, and the mournful refrain of ocean waves, in sunset, and the weird stillness of a starry midnight? That thrills us so in all glorified legends of heroism—and in that divinest poem of a noble life.—That haunts us, and so fills our souls with longing that sometimes we imagine we can catch a glimpse of it in the clear look of some inspired eye; but almost e’er we behold it, it is gone. Some fleetin’ echo of whose voice we fancy we have caught in the lofty refrain of some heavenly melody—but, e’er our soul could hardly listen, the sweet strain was drowned in the discord of human voices. Ah! sometimes the veil has seemed but thin between us, as we stood for brief, blissful moments on the mountain tops of our best and noblest emotions, so transparent, and glowing with inner brightness, that we could almost behold the face of an angel behind the shining barriers. But the mists swept coldly up, and the sweet face was lost in the cloudy, earthly vapors.
“If we could reach it, if we could once reach out our longing arms, and touch that wonderful, illusive soul of beauty, if we could hold it with our weak, mortal grasp, and look upon it face to face—can you tell me, Kellup, what it would be? Can you tell me how pure, and holy, and divine a shape it would be? The Ideal of Beauty that forever rises before us—this longing for perfection implanted in our souls? We cannot believe by bad spirits, but by the Ever Good. This ideal that every poet and artist soul has longed for, prayed for, but never reached—this ideal of purity which we strive to mould in clay; poor, crumblin’, imperfect clay, that will not, however earnestly we toil, take the clear shape of our dreams. Can you tell me, Kellup, that it is not the longing of the mortal for the immortal, the deathless cry of the human for the divine?
“To me, it is the surest proof of immortality. For we know that our God is not cruel, and we cannot think He would hold out to us a lovely gift only to mock us with glimpses of its glory, and then withdraw it from us forever.
“And this ideal of perfection that we have so striven and prayed to realize—perhaps these longings and strivings are perfecting that image in our lives, unbeknown to us; and when the clay that wraps it round drops off, shall we behold it in glad wonder in the land of the King? Shall we see that the dull stroke of care and the keen blow of suffering helped most to mould it into beauty? Surely, surely, He will one day give the desire of our souls. Surely there is a land of immortal purity, immortal beauty, where to the souls of all who truly aspire the dim shadow light of our hope will be lost in the bright glory of fulfillment.”
Says Kellup, castin’ the witherin’est look onto my head-dress that he had cast onto it, and clingin’ close to his old idee, as close as a idee ever was clung to, says he, comin’ out plain: