And my life—the circumstances which have influenced, or rather created its currents, have been trifling; not that it has had no powerful currents; it is said that the equilibrium of the whole ocean could be destroyed by a single mollusk or coralline,—but my life has been an uneventful one. I never met with an adventure, never even had a hair-breadth escape,—yes, I did, too, have one hair-breadth escape. I once just grazed matrimony. The truth is, I fell in love, and was sinking with Falstaff's 'alacrity,' when I was fished out; but somehow I slipt off the hook—fortunately, however, was left on shore. By the way, the best way to get out of love is to be drawn out by the matrimonial hook. One of Holmes' characters wished to change a vowel of the verb to love, and conjugate it—I have forgotten how far. Where two set out to conjugate together the verb to love in the first person plural, it is well if they do not, before the honey-moon is over, get to the present-perfect, indicative. Alas! I have thus far, in the first person singular, conjugated too many verbs, among them to enjoy. As for to be, I have come to the balancing in my mind of the question that so perplexed Hamlet—'To be, or not to be.' For, with all the natural cheerfulness of my disposition, I can not help sometimes looking on the dark side of life. But there is no use in setting down my gloomy reflections,—all have them. We are all surrounded by an atmosphere of misery, pressing on us fifteen pounds to the square inch, so evenly and constantly that we know not its fearful weight. To change the figure. Have you ever thought how much misery one life can hold in solution? Each year, as it flows into it, adds to it a heaviness, a weight of woe, as the rivers add salts to the ocean. I do not refer to the most unhappy, but to all. Some one says,—
'If singing breath, if echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven.'
If breath to every hidden prayer were given, could it be singing breath? Would it not be a wail monotonous as the dirge of the November wind over the dead summer, a wail for lost hopes, lost joys, lost loves? Or the monotony would be varied—as is the wind by fitful gusts—by shrieks of despair, cries of agony. No, no, there is no use in trying to modulate our woes,—'we're all wrong,—the time in us is lost.'
'Henceforth I'll bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself,
"Enough, enough," and die.'
But why talk thus? why mourn over dead hopes, dead joys, dead loves? 'Tis best to bury the dead out of our sight, and from them will spring many humbler hopes, quieter joys, more lowly affections, which 'smell sweet' though they 'blossom in the dust,' and they are the only resurrection these dead ones can ever have. I have been reading, in Maury's Geography of the Sea, how the sea's dead are preserved; how they stand like enchanted warders of the treasures of the deep, unchanged, except that the expression of life is exchanged for the ghastliness of death. So, down beneath the surface currents do some deep souls preserve their dead hopes, joys, loves. Oh, this is unwise; this is not as God intended; for, unlike the sea's dead, there will be for these no resurrection.