Reveries of a Bachelor!
'Tis a sugared pill of a title. Its morals are sad will o' wisps. And if the definition "that happiness consists in the search after it" be true, it is so when the definition settles itself on the mind of a bachelor. Hath he reveries half so sweet for morsels under the tongues of memory and fancy as those which come nigh to the brain of the married man? As sure as the lesser is always included in the greater: as certain as the maxim de minimis lex non curat: the reveries of the first are but bound up in the reveries of the last; one is a pleasing romance, the other its enchanting sequel.
What is that yonder? There is a merry-faced form in the distant haze, shaking a dreamy negative with his head. A head whose reality is miles and miles away, airing its brow of single blessedness in foreign travel.
Let us argue the point: he smiles as if willing. Man socially is at least a three volumed work: however much longer the James-like pen of destiny may extend him. Volume first—bachelor. Volume second—husband. Volume third—father. There may be a dozen more—there should be none less.
You have been a bachelor: you are a husband and a father. You always had, perhaps, a bump of self-esteem attractive to the digits of Fowler. You never believed half so well of yourself as when one morning at your business you were first asked concerning the well being of your family. At the moment, you were in a fog, like the young attorney upon the first question of his first examination: next, memory rallied and your face brightened; your stature increased as you replied. You felt you were going up in the social numeration table of life. Two years ago you were a unit: you next counted your importance by tens over the parson's shoulder; when your child was born you felt that the leap to hundreds in the scale was far from enough and should have been higher.
Before the publication of your third volume—the father—you had been measurably blind. Your mental sight was afflicted with amaurosis. Like the philosopher of old you are now tempted to grasp every one by the hand and cry "Eureka." How indignantly you take down "Malthus" from your upper library shelf and bury him on the lowest among the books of possible reference. Your political views upon education are cured of their jaundice. You pray of Sundays in the service for the widow and the orphan with a double unction. You walk the streets with a new mantle of comfort. The little beggar child whose importunities of the last wet day at the street crossings excited your petulance, upon the next wet day invites your sympathies. You stop and talk to her, nor perceive until you have ascertained where her hard-hearted parents live, and that she is uncommonly bright for the child of poverty and wretchedness, and that you have a half dollar unappropriated—nor perceive until these are found out, I say, that your umbrella has been dripping upon the skirts of your favorite coat, and that you have stood with one foot in a puddle. How this would have annoyed you years ago. But now—? How unconcernedly of the curious looks from pedestrians around do you stop the careless nurse in Broadway, who has allowed her infant charge to fall asleep in a painful attitude, and lay "it" tenderly and comfortably in position. You recall to mind with much remorse the execrations of five years ago, when the moanings of a dying babe in the next apartment to your own at the hotel disturbed your rest; and you wonder whether the mother still thinks of the little grave and the white slab which a sympathetic fancy now brings up before you.
You are at your business: the lamps are lighting: in the suggestions of profit by an hour or longer at the desk you recognize an unholy temptation. Now, as often before, through all the turmoils of business memory suggests the lines of Willis:
"I sadden when thou smilest to my smile,
Child of my love! I tremble to believe
That o'er the mirror of thine eye of blue
The shadow of my soul must always pass—
That soul which from its conflicts with the world
Comes ever to thy guarded cradle home,
And careless of the staining dust it brings,
Asks for its idol!"
And you dwell on them. You bless the author first, and truly think how cruelly unjust are they who can call into torturing question the loyalty as husband and father of him whose soul could plan and whose pen could write such holy lines. And then you think deeper of the sentiments. And then the profit-tempter hides himself in the farthest corner of the money-drawer; and you begin to think your clerk a very clever manager: and wonder if his remaining will not do as well—poor fellow, he's only a bachelor. And then you decide that he will, and so yourself, "careless of the staining dust" your coming brings, fly to "the guarded cradle home."
You have been in Italy. Or you have studied the pictures in the Louvre. But the hours which you passed before the canvas whereon was embodied Madonna and child never seemed so agreeable in their realization as they now appear in the glass of memory, as you see the child of your love in the arms of your life companion whose eyes, always bright to yours, and brighter still at your coming after absence, grow brightest when they are lifted from the slumbering innocence beneath them. Men call you rough in your bearing, perhaps. What would they say to see how gently your arms receive the sleeping burthen and transfer it softly to its snowy couch? Your step abroad is heavy and impetuous: how noiselessly it falls upon the floor—now! And how the modulated voice accords with every present thought!