No tremulous tale of sorrow, of wrong endured and avenged; no report of that Orthodox anguish which, renouncing the present, hopes only by the hereafter; no story of desperate heroic achievement, or of long-suffering patience, or even of martyrdom's glory. The sea is calm, and the halcyon broods, and only love is eternal.
Let us not stint thee, as selfishness must; nor shame thee with praise inadequate; nor walk with shod feet, as the base-bred, into thy palaces; nor as the weak, nor as the wise, who so often profane thee, but as the loving who love thee, holy Love, may we take thy name on our lips, and lay our gift on thine altar! It is a Christmas offering, fashioned, however rudely, from an absolute truth. If thou deem the ointment precious, when I break the unjewelled box, I pour it on thy feet. Let others crown, I would only refresh thee.
Children play on this white, shining, sandy beach, under the leafless sycamore; they look for no shade, they would find no shade; there is neither rock, nor shrub, nor evergreen-tree,—nothing but the white sand, and the dead sycamore, and in the topmost branches the halcyon's great nest.
Is it not a place for children? A little flourish of imagination, and we see them,—Silas, who beats the drum, and Columbia, who carries the flag, manifest leaders of the wild little company, mermen and mermaids all; and the music is fit for the Siren, and the beauty would shame not Venus.
Suppose we stroll home to their fathers, like respectable earth-keeping creatures: the depths of human hearts have sometimes proved full of mystery as the sea; and human faces sometimes glisten with a majesty of feeling or of thought that reduces ocean-splendor to the subordinate part of a similitude.
There is Andrew, father of Silas,—Andrew Swift, says the sign. He dwells in Salt Lane, you perceive, and he deals in ship-stores,—a husband and father by no means living on sea-weed. A yellow-haired little man, shrewd, and a ready reckoner. Of a serious turn of mind. Deficient in self-esteem; his anticipations of the most humble character. A sinner, because fearful and unbelieving: for what right has a man to be such a man as to inspire himself with misgiving? But his offences offset each other: for, if he doubted, Andrew was also obstinate. And obstinacy alone led him into ventures whose failure he expected: as when he laid out the savings of years in the purchase of goods, wherewith he opened those ship-stores in Salt Lane. Ship-stores! that sounds well. One might suppose I referred to blocks of marble-faced buildings, instead of three shelves, three barrels, and their contents! The obstinacy of Andrew Swift was the foundation of his fortune. Men have built on worse.
His opposite neighbor was one Silas Dexter, a flag- and banner-maker, who went into business in Salt Lane sometime during that memorable year of Andrew's venture. Apparently this young man was no better off than Swift, between whom and himself a friendly intercourse was at once established; but he had the advantage of a quick imagination and a sanguine temperament; also the manly courage to look at Fortune with respectful recognition, as we all look at royalty,—even as though he had sometime been presented,—not with a snobbish conceit which would seem to defy her Highness.
Indeed, he was such a man as would find exhilaration of spirit even in the uncertainties of his position. The sight of his banners waving from the sign-post, showing all sorts of devices, the flags flowing round the walls of his shop, enlivening the little dark place with their many gorgeous colors, sufficed for his encouragement. Utter ruin could not have ruined the man. He could not have failed with failure. Some sense of this fact he had, and he lived like one who has had his life insured.
Not a creature looked upon him but was free to the good he might derive. The sparkling eyes, quick smile, and manly voice, the active limbs and generous heart, seemed at the service of every soul that breathed. Trashy thought and base utterance could not cheat his soul of her integrity; the vileness of Salt Lane had nothing to do with him.
And I cannot account for this by bringing his wife forward. For how came he by this wife, except by the excellence and soundness of the virtue which preferred her to the world, and made him preferred of her? Still, you see the ripe cherry, one half full, beautiful, luscious, the other a patch of skin stretched over the pit, worthless and sad to view. This, but for his choice and hers, might have served as an emblem of Dexter.