They have each their lord, and, provided that they accomplish the work which their lord imposes upon them, they are, for the rest, free to employ their time as they please. Care is taken of them, of their families, of their material interests, and especially they are unceasingly reminded that they are free, and that their lord has nothing more at heart than their liberty. They are indeed free to do many things; but one liberty is wanting to them—their body may go whither they desire it, but their soul is chained to the glebe. Study being granted to them, and the knowledge of that which is passing in the world being no longer refused to them, they discover on the earth a church which calls herself divine, and charged to conduct all souls to heaven. They study her; they are not alarmed at objections; they know how to make allowance for human weakness in her children, and even in her ministers. They find in this weakness itself one argument more in favor of the divinity of this church. They admire the courage, full of gentleness, of these bishops. It is truth, it is God, who speaks by her. These souls desire God, and they are therefore drawn towards her, because they lift themselves up to God. At this moment a heavy weight holds them back; wishing to soar towards heaven, they find themselves chained to the glebe.
Yes, for the souls who desire God the false interests of the state are but a glebe—a glebe the laws to which the conscience refuses to submit—a glebe the will of the sovereign, and a glebe also the traditions of his dynasty.
These people, let others call them free, and, on the faith of their lords, let them also call themselves free; they are none the less people in serfdom—souls chained to the glebe.
What glory for Alexander II., if, after having delivered bodies from the servitude of the glebe, he would also deliver souls! What glory, if, after having delivered his own subjects from it, he would labor also to set others free!
STRAY LEAVES FROM A PASSING LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
MR. CULPEPPER MAKES A PROPOSAL—A RENCOUNTER IN A CHURCHYARD.
It was one of those golden November mornings that throw a mystic glamour over New York. A warm haze draped the great city, softening its deformities, blending its beauties. In its magic light the very street-cars took on a romantic air, as they sped along loaded with their living freight. The bales of goods on the sidewalk, huddled together in careless profusion, were no longer the danger which they are generally supposed to be by elderly gentlemen who have due regard for life and limb, but gracious droppings rather from Pandora’s box, raining down fresh and bright from the hands of the genial goddess. What in the garish sun were vulgar business houses filled with sober goods and peopled with staring and sleek-combed clerks, assumed under this gorgeous drapery the aspect of mystic temples of commerce, where silent and solemn-eyed priests stood patiently all the day long to call in the passers-by to worship. The lofty policeman, looming like a statue at the corner, was not the ferocious, peanut-chewing being that he is commonly supposed to be, but a beneficent guardian of the great temple of peace. The busy crowds of brisk business men that hurried along, untouched as yet by the toil and the soil of the day, were fresh-faced and clear-eyed, chatty and cheerful. Thompson stepped out as cheerily as though he were just beginning that strange task, on which so many ambitious mortals have gone down, of performing his thousand miles in a thousand hours; for Thompson, happy man! knew not as yet what was so calmly awaiting him on his desk—that heavy bill that he was bound to meet, but which, strange to say, had quite slipped his memory. And there is Johnson walking arm-in-arm with Jones, Johnson’s face wreathed in sunny smiles the while. Johnson’s heart is gay and his step light, and he feels the happy influence of the morning. Jones is sadly in want of a confidential clerk, and his friend is dilating on the treasure that he himself possesses—that very clerk who, he learns on reaching his office, absconded last night with a fearful amount of Johnson’s property. Nor, on the other hand, does that eager-faced youngster, the shining seams of whose garments tell of more years than his seamless face and brow, know that at last the gracious answer that he has so longed for awaits his arrival, and that the bright opening at length lies before him that is to lead him on to fortune, if not to fame, more than the five hundred and forty-six rival applicants know that their addresses have been rejected. As yet the day is marked with neither white bean nor black, and so let us hope, with this mighty stream pouring on and on and on down the great thoroughfares of the city, that the white beans may outnumber the black when the day is done, and that what is lost here may be gained there; for we are of them, brethren of theirs, and joyous hopes of this kind cost little, while, at least, they harden not the heart. And so the whole city, with its hopes and fears, its life and its death, moved out under the November haze that morning, and with it, as the central figure in the vast panorama, he whose stray leaves, it is hoped, may prove at least of passing interest to the many of whom he is one.
My special point of attraction that day was the office of The Packet, “a monthly journal of polite literature,” to quote the prospectus, which was supported by “the ablest pens of both hemispheres,” as the same prospectus modestly admitted. As at this time I was a pretty constant contributor to The Packet, I suppose that, according to the prospectus, I was fully entitled to take my stand among “the ablest pens of both hemispheres,” whether I chose to insist on my literary rank or not. And as I contributed occasionally to other journals which were respectively, according to their several prospectuses, “the leading weekly,” “the greatest daily,” “the giant monthly,” “the only quarterly,” “the great art journal,” etc., there could not possibly be any doubt as to my literary position. For all that, I confess I was still among the callow brood, and fear that, if any person had referred to me in public as “a literary man,” the literary man would have blushed very violently, and felt as small as a titmouse. Still, I had that delicious feeling of the dawning of hope and the glorious uncertainty of a great ambition that always attend and encourage the first steps of a new career, whatever be its character. It was natural enough, then, that I should step out lustily among my fellows, my head high in air, and my heart higher still, drinking in the inspiration of the morning, piercing the golden mist with the eye of hope, feeling a young life throbbing eagerly within me, feeling a mysterious brotherhood with all men, gliding as through a fairy city in a gilded dream.