“But, oh, when the Spirit reaches that heart, what a change! How quickly does his righteousness disappear, or become as filthy rags. When the commandment comes, then he says with Paul, ‘Sin revived and I died.’”
CHAPTER VIII.
JOURNAL.
At the beginning of the year 1841, Walter Aimwell commenced keeping regularly a journal, “hoping,” he said in the preface, “that it may be profitable to me now, and useful and interesting to me at some future time.”
His entries were much condensed, but they seem to give a very accurate account of the comparatively few incidents in his monotonous outward life; and we even get some hint of the sweet, ineffable pleasures that his soul, ingenious in happiness, could shape out of what some might think very poor and very scanty materials. Young persons, practically pure and truly Christian, are all great geniuses in the art of living happily.
So we read of young Walter Aimwell that one evening, “there being a bright moon,” he went to Charlestown, and “stopped some time on the bridge, listening to the sweet strains of the band on board the receiving ship at the Navy Yard.” Another evening he reads “the Life of Nathaniel Bowditch nearly through, and gathers from it several important hints.” Another, he commences writing the Pleasant Way. Another, he mentions that he has observed the day as a day of fasting and prayer, (it is not a public fast-day), and records it in cipher; his native modesty probably reminding him of the shut closet-door and the ignorance of the left hand.
Again, “I was measured, and found myself five feet seven and a half inches tall, without boots; consequently, ‘in the ordinary walks of life,’ when I have boots and cap on, I am about six feet high.” He was a little more than eighteen years of age at the time.
One night he “had a somewhat remarkable dream,—remarkable not for any strange combination of ideas or flight of imagination, but for its very close resemblance to an allegory.” As it may interest some persons, curious in the mysteries of psycho-physical science, his whole account of the dream is here copied:—
“I thought I saw a large and beautiful building at some distance from where I was, and separated from me by marshes and shallow water. Whoever travelled through this water was admitted to the house, where he was secure from every trouble, disease, and death. I soon began my way toward this house, and found that it was very difficult and dangerous travelling. The little cockles, usually found in such places, crawled up my naked feet and fastened themselves upon me. But I constantly removed them. At times, I was wellnigh discouraged; for my head was continually bowed down to watch against the dangerous holes with which my path was beset. But I would then cast my eye toward the happy home whither I was going, and sing, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ Here I awoke, and could not fail to see immediately the moral of the allegory. I only regretted that I had not slept on a few moments longer, and found myself at my journey’s end.”
Once he attended what he calls “a loco-foco, anti-slavery, temperance, methodist, moral-reform, woman’s-rights, and every-thing else convention,” and seems not to have been very well pleased with the sense, or the manners, of the speakers.