Then the past.... Some one says we are happier our whole life for having spent one pleasant day. Keats says: 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.' I believe this: to me the least enjoyment has been like a grain of musk dropped into my being, sending its odor into all my after-life—it may be that centuries hence it will not have lost its fragrance. Who knows?
But sorrows—they should, like bitter medicines, be washed down with sweet; we should get the taste of them out of our mouth as soon as possible.
We are as apt to borrow trouble from the might-have-beens of our past life as from any thing else. We mourn over the chances we've missed—the happiness that eel-like has slipped through our fingers. This is folly; for generally there are so many ifs in the way, that nearly all the might-have-beens turn into couldn't-have-beens. Even if they do not, it is well for us when we don't know them.... The object of our weary search glides past us like Gabriel past Evangeline, so near, did we only know it: happy is it for us if we do not, like her, too late learn it; for
'Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these—it might have been!'
So sad are they, that they would be a suitable refrain to the song of a lost spirit.
Well, I might have been –, but am –
IX
If one wishes to know how barren one's life is of events, the best way is to try to keep a journal. I tried it in my boarding-school days. With a few exceptions, the record of one day's outer life was sufficient for the week; the rest might have been written ditto, ditto. Even then, the events were so trifling that, like entries in a ledger, they might have been classed as sundries. How I tried to get up thoughts and feelings to make out a decent day's chronicle! How I threw in profound remarks on what I had read, sketches of character, caricatures of the teachers, even condescending to give the bill of fare; here, too, there might have been a great many dittos. Had I kept a record of my dream-life, what a variety there would have been! what extravagances, exceeded by nothing out of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Then, if I could have illuminated each day's page with my own fancy portrait of myself, the Book of Beauty would not have been a circumstance to my journal. Certainly, among these portraits would not have been that plain, snub-nosed daguerreotype, sealed and directed to a dear home friend; but to the dear home friend no picture in the Book of Beauty or my fancy journal would have had such charms; and if the daguerreotype would not have illuminated this journal, it was itself illuminated by the light of a mother's love. Alas! this light never more can rest on and irradiate the plain face of Molly O'Molly.
After all, what a dull, monotonous life ours would be, if within this outer life there were not the inner life, the 'wheel within the wheel,' as in Ezekiel's vision. Though this inner wheel is 'lifted up whithersoever the spirit' wills 'to go,' the outer—unlike that in the vision—is not also lifted up; perhaps hereafter it will be.
The Mohammedans believe that, although unseen by mortals, 'the decreed events of every man's life are impressed in divine characters on his forehead.' If so, I shouldn't wonder if there was generally a large margin of forehead left, unless there is a great deal of repetition.... The record (not the prophecy) of the inner life, though it is hieroglyphed on the whole face too, is a scant one; not because there is but little to record, but because only results are chronicled. Like the Veni, vidi, vici, of Cæsar. Veni; nothing of the weary march. Vidi; nothing of the doubts, fears, and anxieties. Vici; nothing of the fierce struggle.
One thing is certain; though we can not read the divine imprint on the forehead, we know that either there or on the face, either as prophecy or record, is written, grief. Grief, the burden of the sadly-beautiful song of the poet; yet we find, alas! that grief is grief. And the poet's woe is also the woe of common mortals, though his soul is so strung that every breeze that sweeps over it is changed to melody. The wind that wails, and howls, and shrieks around the corners of streets, among the leafless branches of trees, through desolate houses, is the same wind that sweeps the silken strings of the Æolian harp.
Then there is care, most often traced on the face of woman, the care of responsibility or of work, sometimes of both. A man, however hard he may labor, if he loses a day, does not always find an accumulation of work; but with poor, over-worked woman, it is, work or be overwhelmed with work, as in the punishment of prisoners, it is, pump or drown. I can not understand how women do get along who, with the family of John Rogers' wife, assisted only by the eldest daughter, a girl of thirteen, wash, iron, bake, cook, wash dishes, and sew for the family, coats and pantaloons included, and that too without the help of a machine. Oh! that pile of sewing always cut out, to be leveled stitch by stitch; for, unlike water, it never will find its own level, unless its level be Mont Blanc, for to such a hight it would reach if left to itself. I could grow eloquent on the subject, but forbear.
Croakers to the contrary notwithstanding, there is in the record of our past lives, or in the prophecy of our future, another word than grief or care; it is joy. My friend, could your history be truthfully written, and printed in the old style, are there not many passages that would shine beautifully in golden letters? I say truthfully written; for we are so apt to forget our joys, while we remember our griefs. Perhaps this is because joy and its effects are so evanescent. Leland talks beautifully of 'the perfumed depths of the lotus-word, joyousness;' but in this world we only breathe the perfume. Could we eat the lotus!… The fabled lotus-eater wished never to leave the isle whence he had plucked it. Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by which we are to reach that better land, our home, would become irksome to us. It is well for us that we can only breathe the perfume.
Then, too, the deepest woe we may know—not the highest joy—that is bliss beyond even our capacity of dreaming. Some one, in regard to the ladder Jacob saw in his dream, says: 'But alas! he slept at the foot.' That any ladder should be substantial enough for cumbersome mortality to climb to heaven, was too great an impossibility even for a dream.
But read for yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil passions are traced. Were it not for the brute in it, it might be mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the impress of at least one evil passion. Every passion, unbitted and unbridled, hurries the soul bound to it—as Mazeppa was bound to the wild horse—to certain destruction.... But I—as all things hasten to the end—will mention one word more—the finis of the prophecy—the stamp on the seal of the record—Death.... We will not dwell on it. Who more than glances at the finis, who studies the plain word stamped on the seal?
X
I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are times when we must put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;' there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction. You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped, turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side. Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you lose your footing. 'If thy