PART VII.
BETSEY CLARK IN DREAM-LAND.
Could I with ink the ocean fill,
Were all the earth of parchment made;
Were every blade of grass a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade—
To tell the love of God above
Would drain the briny oceans dry:
Nor would a scroll contain the whole,
Though covering all the arching sky.
"I believe just as did the writer of these lines," said the Rosicrucian, as he began his recital in the cabin of the "Uncle Sam," after partaking of what the purveyors of that steamship line, in the rich exuberance of their facetious imaginations were pleased to call a supper.
"Betsey Clark was dreaming: It was morning, and the glorious face of the sun shone in unclouded splendor over the world—this world, which, to the good man and woman, is ever a world of Good and Beauty, viewed from the God-side, whatever it may be from the human. All things were praising Him—at least all dumb things were, for men so intently adore their Lares and Penates—Dollars and Dimes—that they have scarcely time to devote a worshipful thought to Him who is King of kings, and regnant God of gods.
"Nature was arrayed in gala robes; she had put aside her frowns, and now smiled sweetly on the world, decked gaily in pearls and light; she was on her way to attend the weddings of the flowers and the birds. Betsey Clark was a blythe young girl again. In her dream she was gaily tripping o'er the lea, her happy heart swelling and palpitating with strange emotions—she was a budding virgin now, and her heart overflowed with innocence and love, accompanied with that pure, but strange, wild discontent, and longing for, she knew not what, but something, which all young women feel, and are conscious of, as they pass the golden barrier that divides their youth from womanhood. It is, and was, the holy and chaste desire to love, and be loved in return—from the heart, sir, right straight from the heart! Ah, how I sometimes wish I had been created a girl instead of a boy. Bah! What's the use of wishing? especially when all the girls desire an opposite transmigration.
"Betsey's bloom outrivalled the blushes of the newly-wedded roses—roses just married to sunlight, in the morning dew, with all the trees for witnesses, and all the birds to swell the sounding chorus! And she was happy; ah, how full of happiness! and yet it was slightly dashed with bitterness—just a taste of gall in her cup of honey—for she imagined a more perfect state, had vague dreamings of something still higher. So have we all. We have it! and that is a certain sign that that higher something is attainable, if we only try. Some one said he wanted to eat his friend. Good! but I want to lose myself in another self—to make of them twain a unit, which is better! or to thus blend, and then lose ourself in the great God-life, which is Best!
"And she gaily tripped over the lea. She was going with a pitcher of cream, and a basket of fresh eggs, toward a hole in the rock, not a great way off, to present them to the strange 'Hermit of the Silver Girdle,' who dwelt within a little grotto just upon the edge of a forest wild, hard by her girlhood's home.