But what a path! Proceeding out of the darkness of morning, it struggles through a brief day, sometimes in sunshine, and sometimes in shade, and ends in the darkness of night. I glance along it, and the care-worn faces of the companions of my manhood rise up, on either side, and farther back, the speaking countenances of the friends of my youth. It is but a narrow space, the land of Youth, and soon passed; but pleasant, and full of images of beauty. The sun is not so bright and hot upon it as on some other parts of the path; but we do not expect happiness in the garish light of mid-day and reality. The mellowness of a summer evening sunset lays on it, and thereby it becomes a faëry land, a land of bliss and dreams. How throng up, as I gaze, the forms of those early and best-loved friends! How distinct and life-like, even at this distance, are their characters and features! They are all there; not one name has been erased, and not one picture dimmed, on the tablet of memory. The same warm smile of kindling pleasure greets me; the same hands are thrown out, as if to touch my own; and those bright eyes grow brighter as they are turned toward me.
It is with such companions that I spend the last days of my earthly pilgrimage; and thus, as I said before, though alone I am not solitary. Is not such companionship sweet? When they visit me, I throw off old age, as a garment. Smiling thoughts come gently over me, and life and happiness, as of wont, course like the mad blood of fever through my veins. I feel over again those old feelings, repass through those same scenes, and my heart beats faster or grows pale in the same places and in the same manner as it once did. The old fields and houses and roads come up too, clothed at my command, in the snows of winter, or in the beauty of summer. Old scenes, but still fresh and young; and I am sometimes tempted to believe that the intervening years have been the illusion of a dream, and that I am awakening in their midst.
All this, some will say, is the weakness of age. It seems to me to be rather its strength. The future in life is nothing; and what is the bare present to any one? The past, then, alone is left me. And if by living in it I can keep my affections alive, instead of letting their fires, according to the course of nature, or rather of custom, die down into cold ashes, I do not call myself weak if I do as much as possible forget the present.
I had, when I was young, many dreams; such as I dare say all have. They seem such to me now, only not at all shadowy. On the contrary, they become more and more like reality as my distance from them increases, while their hues are as well marked and distinct as ever. Many and bright; but the brightest of all, the dream of my youth, is that which flashes across my recollection, when there comes into my heart the thought of my cousin Jane!
My cousin Jane! Her form comes up before me, light and elastic and joyous, as though summoned for the first time, and as though it had not been my daily visitor for many a long year. Time writes no wrinkle on thy snowy brow, my first love! That glad smile knows no weariness, and I know no weariness in gazing on it. Those deep eyes, full of feeling; those soft words that thrill; I see and hear and feel them now, as I saw and heard and felt them first. Wilt thou never be tired of looking up to me, with that sweet, timid, confiding, tearful glance? Will the rising flush of thy cheek and thy subdued smile, be always fresh as now, and as in that hour when first we met? Thou hast been my companion, my unmurmuring, ever-present, unchanging companion, through many a dark time and stormy scene; and thou and the heart in which thou livest will die together.
We met, my cousin Jane and I, when she was just putting on womanhood; had begun to find out the depths of her own heart, to doubt whether those depths ever could be filled, and to feel that unless they were, life would be but a blank. Not that there were not many willing enough to love her and be loved; the beauty of her form and character drew around her a crowd of admirers. But among them all, her nice perception saw that there was not one, of whom the exterior did not form by far the largest part of the man. Her admirers were good, honorable men; she respected and esteemed them; but still, gentle and timid and humble as she was, without knowing why, she felt that there was an impassable gulf between her and them. Their thoughts were not like her thoughts. Her social disposition led her much into their way, and though she tried to avoid it, she was told more than once, that the happiness or misery of her devoted lover depended on her smiles. It was a painful situation for one of her retiring and benevolent disposition, to be sure; and it is doubtful to which of the two, the lover or the mistress, every such rejection caused the keenest pang.
But this was not the end of it. Malice soon prefixed to her name the epithet scornful; and among her school-girl friends there were some who always passed by on the other side. Poor girl! She wept bitter tears over these sneers and slights, for she had not studied the world enough to learn and despise its despicable things. Even then, dear girl! too, she tried to love all the world, that is, all her native village. And she succeeded, at least far enough to forgive them all, and thus to feel her own mind at peace and resigned. But there was a tinge of sadness left on her Grecian face after all; for to the young, when the out-stretched hand of kindly feeling is coldly put aside, the grief is as great as though the repulse were deserved.
And I—I hardly know what I was, when I first saw my cousin. I was without father or mother; the world seemed wide and rather cheerless; and there was a settled impression on my mind, that it was my business to glide along through life, calmly and noiselessly; attach my affections to no external object; exist without being the cause of joy, and die without being the cause of tears, to any human being. I came and took up my abode in the pleasant village where my uncle resided, and set down to gain some knowledge of that noble science, civil law. I took up the study, not because I had any intention of engaging in the active duties of the profession, but for the name’s sake, and because I loved it for itself. My uncle, he was a kind, good man, showed himself a father to me, took me into his family, tried to encourage and rouse me; and for his kindness, though it failed of its end, he had at the time, and has always had, my sincere though unexpressed thanks.
I had hardly become acquainted with my relatives, uncle, aunt, and their three children, when I entered my office, shut the door, and immersed myself in books and my own thoughts. That those thoughts were not of the most joyous nature, I need hardly say. Still, looking back to that period, from where I stand now, I cannot say they were misanthropic. If I did not love all my species, it was because I saw nothing lovely in any body; but I did not hate them. I felt that I was an insignificant, an unnoticeable drop in the great world; that it was my misfortune to be so constituted as to be incapable of uniting closely and mingling with other drops; and that, without offending my neighbors, it would be my duty and pleasure to keep myself distinct from the rest, and hidden in some obscure corner. In one word, the prevailing feeling was, that nobody cared for me, and I cared for nobody.
And yet, strange as it may appear, I was far from being unhappy. Sometimes, it is true, my in-turned thoughts became weary, and pined for human fellowship; and I grew sick at heart, as I contemplated the future, a vast, dry, waste, desolate desert of parched sand, over which I must toil and thirst, without one single being to speak a word of kindness, or give me a drop of water. But these were fits, fits of wildness, I called them, and seldom lasted long. And when they came over me, one attempt to link my sympathies with others was always sufficient to throw me back into a state of mind harder and colder than before. For it was so fated, that all my overtures, and they were not many, were met with open repulse or wary suspicion. It is true, suspicion is a necessary ingredient in human character; but I did not think of this then, and so it had the same effect as though I had found, indeed I thought I had found, that coldness and insensibility were the prominent characteristics of the race.