It is a rather long room. The greater part has its walls filled with books, and I am sitting at one end quite surrounded by them. But when I lift my eyes, I look to the other end, and into the heart of a stage for acting upon, filling all the width and a third part of the length of the room. It is surrounded with curtains, but those in front of it are withdrawn, and there the space of it lies before me, a bare, empty hollow of green and blue and red, which to-morrow evening will be filled with group after group of moving, talking, shining, acting men and women, boys and girls. It looked to me like a human heart, waiting to be filled with the scenes of its own story,—with this difference, that the heart itself will determine of what sort those groups shall be. Then there grew up in my mind the following little parable, which, to those who do not care to understand it, will be dark,—but to those who desire to know its meaning, may give light:
There was once a wise man to whom was granted the power to send forth his thoughts in shapes that other people could see. And, as he walked abroad in the world, he came upon some whom his wisdom might serve. One day, having, in a street of the city where he dwelt, rescued from danger a boy about ten years of age, he went with him to his mother, and begged that he might take him to his house for a week. When they heard his name, the parents willingly let their son go with him. And he taught him many things, and the boy loved and trusted him.
When the boy was asleep in bed, the wise man would go to his room at midnight, and lay his ear to his ear, and hearken to his dreams. Then he would stand and spread out his arms over him and look up. And the boy would smile, and his sleep was the deeper.
Once, just an hour after the sage had thus visited him, the boy woke, and found himself alone in the middle of the night. He could not get to sleep again, and grew so restless that he rose and went down the stair. The moon shone in at every western window, and his way was "now in glimmer and now in gloom." On the first landing he saw a door wide open, which he had never seen open till now. It was the door of the wizard's room. Within, all was bright with moonlight, and the boy first peeped, then stepped in, and peered timidly about him.
The farther end of the room was hidden by a curtain stretched quite across it, and, curious to see what was behind, he approached it. But ere he reached it, the curtain slowly divided in the midst and, drawn back to each side, revealed a place with just light enough in it from the moonshine to show that it was a dungeon. In the middle of it, upon the floor, sat a prisoner, with fetters to his feet, and manacles to his hands; an iron collar was round his neck, and a chain from the collar had its last link in an iron staple deep fixed in the stone floor. His head was sunk on his bosom, and he sat abject and despairing.
"What a wicked man he must be!" thought the boy, and was turning to run away in terror, when the man lifted his head, and his look caught and held him. For he saw a pale, worn, fierce countenance, which, somehow, through all the added years, and all the dirt that defiled it, he recognized as his own. For a moment the prisoner gazed at him mournfully; then a wild passion of rage and despair seized him; he dragged and tore at his chains, raved and shrieked, and dashed himself on the ground like one mad with imprisonment. For a time he lay exhausted, then half rose and sat as before, gazing helplessly upon the ground.
By and by a spider came creeping along the bar of his fetters. He put out his hand, and, with the manacle on his wrist, crushed it, and smiled. Instantly through the gloom came a strong, clear, yet strangely sweet voice—and the very sweetness had in it something that made the boy think of fire. And the voice said:
"So! in the midst of misery, thou takest delight in destruction! Is it not well thou art chained? If thou wast free, thou wouldst in time destroy the world. Tame thy wild beast, or sit there till I tame him."
The prisoner peered and stared through the dusk, but could see no one; he fell into another fit of furious raving, but not a hair-breadth would one link of chain yield to his wildest endeavor.
"Oh, my mother!" he cried, as he sank again into the grave of exhaustion.