Truth Whips Fiction.
Love and Sin.—Fatality of the Metropolis.—Domestic Vices.—Virgins Beware.—Parsons Profess too much, and Practice too little.—“We must be Cruel to be Kind.”—A Terrible Example.—Let Sacred Teachers Warn their precarious Daughters to Avoid the Snares of Music and Fiction.
In the shades of twilight, amid the perfume of the sunny zones, sat a pale and attenuated student from the northern climes, musing of his native vales and hills, and the sweet idol of his heart, whose latest thoughts he had just perused. He had consumed too much midnight oil at college, and his health was gone, and he sought the towering bluffs of Natchez for restoration, where he was a sophomoric pastor. The figs, and flowers, and balmy breezes restored his health, and he returned to his native latitudes, and married one of Eve’s most fascinating posterity. He preached
In dale and vill,
And shore and hill,
and came to the metropolis, and cast a gauntlet to Dr. Wainwright on bishops and crinoline, which made owls screech, and worms squirm, and frogs sing, and alligators grimly grin, and snakes and toads hiss and belch sepulchrals. Wainwright boldly seized the gauntlet shaft, and the sacred pugilists closed like panthers, and the people hissed, and laughed, and applauded, as the battle raged, and Bennett filled the air with his most comic darts, which made the Herald sell like Slievegammon news. We had worms and boils, and salt rheum, and ate Graham-bread and mush, and slept with Horace Greeley in Barclay street, till our bones did rattle, and we could not laugh beyond a whisper, and
Our shanks were so thin,
That negroes did grin,
And, as we passed by,
Dogs and cats did cry.
“Long time in even scale the battle hung,” until Potts and Wainwright retired from the field as conquerors, in the estimation of themselves and enthusiastic friends. The sun and moon and romantic stars performed their wonted evolutions, and Potts and Wainwright had their salaries increased, and rose to Bishoprics and the giddy alpines of the godly avenues, and we went to the setting sun, and almost beyond the world. On our return from the bleak, and shady, and snowy slopes of the Rocky Mountains, in 1849, we dwelt with Mrs. Mitchell, at the corner of Houston and McDougal streets, whose family consisted of her daughter, two nieces, a sister, and Otto Dressel, a teacher of piano music, whose style was soft, pensive, sacred, and bewitching. We had boarded with Mrs. Mitchell, in Broadway, eight years previous, and in 1841, while going up the dark alley that led to Jackson’s pawnbroker’s shop in Reade street, we met Mrs. Mitchell coming down the lane, who sneezed while we coughed, when we both passed on with crimson cheeks and sly glances of each other. Otto Dressel’s sleeping apartment at Mrs. Mitchell’s in Houston street, in 1849, was next to ours; and many a summer eve, while reclining on our couch, has Otto borne us into the unconscious realms of Morpheus, with his soothing and entrancing music. The pale and rosy and dark-eyed offspring of the mother and departed sister, were ever at his door, and perhaps too often within, or on the music side of his portal. We often heard the thrilling echo of kisses, and the sudden tap of his piano, to drown the reverberation emblems of a lover or libertine. And we often warned the mother and sister of the fatal intimacy between the music serpent, and the pretty virgins of their blood. But they smiled, and said: “O, fy;” and we let the music-teacher have his way, and he kissed and hugged the lovely maidens to his heart’s content. The eldest girl was Julia Mitchell, who drew near one evening while we were seated on the sofa, (with no light save the milky rays of an autumnal moon,) when she said: “Stephen, can you keep a secret?” “Yes.” “Then listen: Otto Dressel, you perceive, is morose and reserved, and dignified at our table, but he is a thorough scamp, and so loquacious when alone in the presence of pretty girls, that his tongue rattles like a rattlesnake; and his music, in the society of spotless virgins, is so alluring, as to enrapture, and bewitch, and deprive them of self-control and consciousness. Almost every evening, the beautiful, and musical, and intellectual daughter of the Rev. Doctor George Potts archly and slyly drops gilded notes on our steps, when Otto, who is watching her arrival from his bedroom window, runs down stairs with the velocity of a deer, and clutches the pale and lovely missives, and bounds up stairs like a bloodhound. Otto is her music-teacher, and he tells me that he reads with her, at her father’s and elsewhere, all the latest English, French and German works of fiction, which fill her impulsive genius with the profoundest romance and fatality. It is about the period of her appearance, and I desire you to take a position at the window, and behold how prettily, and gracefully, and archly, she leaves her mysterious note for her adored Otto.” We sat near the window, screened by the lattice and gauzy curtains, and presently we behold her in the distance; and, after gazing at Otto’s window, she discovers him on the watch, and rapidly crosses the street, and, after leering cautiously around, she softly places the letter on the steps, and hastily departs, when down comes Otto, like a vulture for its prey, or like Putnam down the rocky precipice, or like the Falls of the eternal Niagara, and seizes the pretty note, and flies like an eagle to his celestial cloister. Julia gently smiles, and intently gazes at us, and we at her, in the profoundest silence, when we arise, and pace across the moonlight rays that gild the rainbow carpet, in disconcerted meditation. Julia becomes alarmed, and exclaims: “Stephen, you seem agitated and bewildered, and I fear you will disclose in Bennett’s Herald what you have seen to-night.” We assured her that we would not, and then she besought us, in plaintive tones, never to divulge our painful observations to the Reverend Doctor Potts, and we assented, and soon retired, but could not repose, and arose and paced the room, and in fancy rambled through our early days, and parted the lattice, and gazed upon the autumnal firmament, and counted its brilliant constellations. We saw the meteors fall, and heard the watchman’s solemn cry, and closed the lattice and retired, (with the imprudent Parson’s daughter, like an affrighted ghost, flitting before our midnight vision,) and there was no repose for us. We tossed hither and thither, like a vessel in a storm, and heard the doleful clock measure the passing hours, and heard the shrill music of the King of hens, and gladly hailed the first pale ray of the morning twilight that lit upon our nose, and we arise, and enter the exhilerating atmosphere, and stroll with the earliest rays of Aurora, as she gilds the hills and sacred skies. We pace the streets in excited contemplation, and waggons, and rustics, and butchers, and debauchees, and homeless wanderers pass us in rapid succession, for whose hard and mysterious destiny, our poor heart beats high in tearful sympathy. We pass on, and intoxicated girls, of incomparable beauty, reeled by our side, who had just emerged from dens of infamy, where they had been decoyed, and their virginity forever blighted by incarnate demons. We rove through the commodious Park, bearing the enchanting name of Washington, and recline beneath its mellifluous foliage, and soliloquize in the mental disquietude of Aristotle, when he apostrophised on his expiring pillow, with his arms across his breast, and his deluged vision turned to Heaven: “O God! I entered the world in sin,—I have lived in anxiety, and I depart in perturbation. Cause of causes, pity me, poor Aristotle.” We ruminate with our bewildered eyes riveted on vacancy, and suddenly resolve to divulge all to the Reverend Doctor Potts, and at a bound are in his dazzling habitation, close by his side, whom thus rudely do we accost: “We are a stranger, on a mission of love and duty. What we disclose will appal, and you may lose your sacred temper, and drive us from your presence. But, as we came to save your daughter from the embraces of a villain, if you violate our person, we shall yearn for a terrible revenge, and may, in our awful wrath, slay you in your own domestic castle.” He paled and trembled,—his eyes glistened and lips quivered, and his hair actually arose. We told him to be as serene as the morning sky without, as we had come, like the Saviour, to rescue his beauteous child from ruin, and himself, and wife, and other children from eternal degradation; and that what we should disclose, must be concealed in his heart’s most secret recesses, until the curfew tolled the departure of his final sun, to which he most solemnly assented. And then we divulged all we have here narrated, when he arose, and, with his hands clasped, he cried in tones of melting tenderness: “What! my daughter! my darling child, who is the hope and solace of my being, to drop notes for Otto Dressel in Houston street! Impossible, sir—impossible—utterly impossible. Mr. Dressel is a great pianist, and came to this country with letters to me from the leading men of Germany, and I have the highest confidence in his integrity, and I permit him to visit my family, and he often passes his leisure in my house, and teaches music to my daughter, and they often sit for hours at the piano, and play duets and sing together like brother and sister; and I think they admire, but do not love each other, as she is betrothed to a southern gentleman of great affluence. Otto I love, and so does my wife, and other children, and we treat him like one of us; but my eldest daughter simply admires, but cannot love him without infidelity to her betrothed. All her purest and most sacred affections are concentrated on another. But Otto will ever be welcome to my house, for I like his delightful music and his modest demeanor, and I cannot and will not believe that he could be guilty of dishonorable stratagem, to rob me of my favorite child. It is impossible, and I will not believe it.” We arose, and smiled, and departed with the usual courtesy of departure. And soon we received the following, which we punctuate and italicise precisely as we received it:—
“To Mr. Branch: Dear Sir—It has just occurred to me, that I owe you a line, to express again my thanks for the manly straightforward way in which you brought to me the derogatory scandal you had heard. Far better such a method of dealing, than that of talking about people of whom we have heard disparaging statements—and far better than anonymous letter-writing, which shoots arrows in the dark. Although the affair you brought to my ears—plausible as seemed the statements you rec’d—had no farther foundation, than the passing of notes about indifferent matters—still I am none the less obliged to you for the manner in which you made it known to me. My promise of holding you harmless, is the only reason, why I do not call upon the parties named, and take them to task. This, however, I cannot do, without your permission—nor perhaps is it of any importance I should. I may, however, suggest to yourself a good office toward the young person, with whom this story, (which owes its plausibility to a little fact, and a good deal of suspicious fancy,) originated: namely to warn her of the danger of letting her imagination and her tongue run away with her. Respectfully yours,
George Potts.
Nov. 9, 1849.