Gala-Days Part 12

By some such process did the Individual, a pa.s.sage of whose biography I am now giving you, endeavor to repair the ravages of time and toil. In so far as she succeeded in making the crooked places straight and the rough places plain, her efforts may be said to have been crowned with success. It is but fair to add, however, that the result did not inspire her with so much confidence but that she determined to lay by the boots for a while, reserving them for such times as they should be most needed, with a vague hope also that rest might exercise some wonderful recuperative power.

About five days after this, they were again brought out, to do duty on a long walk. The event was most mournful. The flannel-silk gave at the first fire. The soles rolled themselves again in a most uncomfortable manner. At every step, the foot had to be put forward, placed on the ground, and then drawn back. The walk was an agony. It so happened that on our return, without any intention, we came out of woods in the immediate vicinity of the shoemaker's aforesaid, and the Individual was quite sure she heard the sound of his hammer. She remembered that, when she was young and at school, she was familiar with a certain "wardrobe" which was generally so bulging-full of clothes that the doors could not, by any fair, straightforward means, be shut; but if you sprang upon them suddenly, taking them unawares, as it were, and when they were off their guard, you could sometimes effect a closure. She determined to try this plan on the shoemaker. So she bade the rest of the party go on, while she turned off in the direction of the hammering. She went straight into the shop, without knocking, the door being ajar. There he was at it, sure enough.

"Your tools have come!" she exclaimed, with ill-concealed exultation.

"Now, will you mend my shoes?"

"Well, I don't know as I can, hardly. I'm pretty much in a hurry.

What with moving and haying, I've got a little behindhand."

"Oh! but you must mend them, because I am going up on the mountain tomorrow, and I have no others to wear, and I am afraid of the snakes; so you see, you must."

"Got 'em here?"

Individual furtively works off the best one, and picks it up,--while his eyes are bent on his work,--as if she had only dropped it, and hands it to him. He takes it, turns it over, pulls it, knocks it, with an evident intention of understanding the subject thoroughly.

"Rather a haggard-looking boot," he remarks, after his close survey.

"Yes, but--"

"Other a'n't so bad, I suppose?"

"Well--I--don't know--that is--"

"Both bad enough."

"Yes, indeed," with an uneasy laugh.

"Let's see the other one." The other one is produced, and examined in silence.

"Are YOU going to wear them boots up the mountain?" with a tone that said very plainly, "Of course you're not."

"Why, yes, I WAS going to wear them. Don't you think they will do?"

"I wouldn't trust MY feet in 'em."

"O--h! ARE there snakes? Do you think snakes could bite through them?"

A shake of the head, and a little, low, plaintive whistle, is the only reply, but they speak in thunder of boa-constrictors, anacondas, and cobra de capellos.

"They were very good and stout when I had them. I called them very stout shoes."

"O yes, they're made of good material, but you see they 're worn out.

I don't believe I could mend them worth while. The st.i.tches would tear out."

"But couldn't you, somehow, glue on a pair of soles? any way to make them stick. I'll pay you anything, if you'll only make them last till I go home, or even till I get down the mountain. Now, I am sure you can do it, if you will only think so. Don't you know Kossuth says, 'Nothing is difficult to him who wills'?"

He was evidently moved by the earnestness of the appeal. "I suppose they'd be worth more to you now than half a dozen pair when you get home."

"Worth! why, they would be of inestimable value. Think of the snakes!

I don't care how you do them, nor how you make them look. If you will only glue on, or sew on, or nail on, or rivet on, something that is thick and will stick, I will pay you, and be grateful to you through the remainder of my natural life."

"Well,--you leave 'em, and come over again this afternoon, and if I can do anything, I'll do it by that time."

"Oh! I am so much obliged to you"; and I went away in high spirits, just putting my head back through the door to say, "Now you persevere, and I am sure you will succeed."

I was as happy as a queen. To be sure, I had to walk home without any shoes; but the gra.s.s was as soft as velvet, and the dust as clean as sand, and it did not hurt me in the least. To be sure, he had not promised to mend them; but I had faith in him, and how did it turn out?

Verily, I should not have known the boots, if I seen only the soles.

They were clipped, and shaved, and underpinned, and smoothed, and looked as if they had taken out "a new lease of life."

"I don't suppose they will last you as long as I have been doing them,"

he remarked, with unprofessional frankness. I did not believe him, and indeed his prophecy was not true, for they are in existence yet, and I never disposed of "a quarter" in my life with more satisfaction than I dropped it that day into his benevolent hand.

A thousand years hence, when New Hampshire shall have become as populous as Babylon, this sketch may become the foundation of some "Tale of Beowulf" or other. At any rate here it is ready.

Of all the White Mountains, the one of which you hear least said is Agamenticus, and perhaps justly, for it is not one of the White Mountains, but an isolated peak by itself. My information concerning it is founded partly on observation, partly on testimony, and partly on memory, supported where she is weak by conjecture. These sources, however, mingle their waters together somewhat too intricately for accurate a.n.a.lysis, and I shall, therefore, waive distinctions, and plant myself on the broad basis of a.s.sertion, warning the future historian and antiquary not take this paper as conclusive without extraneous props.

Agamenticus is a huge rock rising abruptly from a level country along New Hampshire's half-yard of sea-sh.o.r.e. As it is the only large rock on the eastern coast of the United States, it is in invaluable beacon to mariners. The first city ever built on American continent was laid out at its base, the remains are now visible from its summit; but, as funds failed, and the founders were killed by the Indians, it was never completed, in fact was never begun, only laid out. To the east I was certain I saw Boar's Head and a steamer steaming towards it, till I was a.s.sured that in such case the steamer must have been steaming over the corn-fields, because, unlike Aenon near to Salim, there was no water there. So I suppose it must have been

"A painted ship upon a painted ocean."

The ascent to Agamenticus is sidling and uncertain so long as you hug your carriage; but, leaving that, and confiding yourself to Mother Earth, you gather both strength and equipoise from the touch, and, with a little boy to guide you through the woods and over the rocks, you will find the ascent quite pleasant and safe, if you are careful not to slip down, which you will be sure to do on your descent, whether you are careful or not. At the summit of the mountain is a fine and flourishing growth of muskmelon, sugar, and currant-wine. At least we found them there in profusion.

Agamenticus has its legend. Many years ago, the Indians, to avert the plague, drove twenty thousand cattle to the top of the mountain, and there sacrificed them to the Great Spirit. We could still discern traces of the sacrifice,--burnt stones, bits of green-black gla.s.s, and charred pine branches. Then we came home.

Perthes says, "That part of a journey which remains after the travelling is the journey." What remains of my journey, for me, for you? Will any live over again a pleasant past and look more cheerily into a lowering future for these wayward words of mine? Are there clouded lives that will find a little sunshine; pent-up souls that will catch a breath of blooms in my rambling record? Are there lips that will relax their tightness; eyes that will lose for a moment the shadow of remembered pain? Then, indeed, the best part of my journey is yet to come.

A CALL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN.

In the newspapers and magazines you shall see many poems and papers--written by women who meekly term themselves weak, and modestly profess to represent only the weak among their s.e.x--discussing the duties which the weak owe to their country in days like these. The invariable conclusion is, that, though they cannot fight, because they are not men,--or go down to nurse the sick and wounded, because they have children to take care of,--or write effectively, because they do not know how,--or do any great and heroic thing, because they have not the ability,--they can pray; and they generally do close with a melodious and beautiful prayer. Now praying is a good thing. It is, in fact, the very best thing in the world to do, and there is no danger of our having too much of it; but if women, weak or strong, consider that praying is all they can or ought to do for their country, and so settle down contented with that, they make as great a mistake as if they did not pray at all. True, women cannot fight, and there is no call for any great number of female nurses; notwithstanding this, the issue of this war depends quite as much upon American women as upon American men,--and depends, too, not upon the few who write, but upon the many who do not. The women of the Revolution were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs.

Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future of this nation.

Shall I say that the women of today have not come up to the level of today,--that they do not stand abreast with its issues,--they do not rise to the height of its great argument? I do not forget what you have done. I have beheld, O Dorcases, with admiration and grat.i.tude, the coats and garments, the lint and bandages, which you have made. If you could have finished the war with your needle, it would have been finished long ago; but st.i.tching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate treason, or hew traitors in pieces before the Lord.

Excellent as far as it goes, it stops fearfully of the goal. This ought ye to do, but there other things which you ought not to leave me.

The war cannot be finished by sheets and pillow-cases. Sometimes I am tempted to believe that it cannot be finished till we have flung them all away. When I read of the rebels fighting bare-headed, bare-footed, haggard, and shorn, in rags and filth,--fighting bravely, heroically, successfully,--I am ready to make a burnt-offering of our stacks of clothing. I feel and fear that we must come down, as they have to a recklessness of all incidentals, down to the rough and rugged fastnesses of life, down to very gates of death itself, before we shall be ready and worthy to win victories. Yet it is not for the hardest fights the earth has ever known have been made by the delicate-handed and purple-robed. So, in the ultimate a.n.a.lysis, it is neither gold-lace nor rags that overpower obstacles, but the fiery soul that consumes both in the intensity of its furnace-heat, bending impossibilities to the ends of its pa.s.sionate purpose.

This soul of fire is what I wish to see kindled in our women, burning white and strong and steady, through all weakness, timidity, vacillation, treachery in church or state or press or parlor, scorching, blasting, annihilating whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,--extinguished by no tempest of defeat, no drizzle of delay, but glowing on its steadfast path till it shall have cleared through the abomination of our desolation a highway for the Prince of Peace.

O my countrywomen, I long to see you stand under the time and bear it up in your strong hearts, and not need to be borne up through it. I wish you to stimulate, and not crave stimulants from others. I wish you to be the consolers, the encouragers, the sustainers, and not tremble in perpetual need of consolation and encouragement. When men's brains are knotted and their brows corrugated with fearful looking for and hearing of financial crises, military disasters, and any and every form of national calamity consequent upon the war, come you out to meet them, serene and smiling and unafraid. And let your smile be no formal distortion of your lips, but a bright ray from the sunshine in your heart. Take not acquiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your goods. Not only look poverty in the face with high disdain, but embrace it with gladness and welcome. The loss is but for a moment; the gain is for all time. Go further than this. Consecrate to a holy cause not only the incidentals of life, but life itself. Father, husband, child,--I do not say, Give them up to toil, exposure, suffering, death, without a murmur;--that implies reluctance. I rather say, Urge them to the offering; fill them with sacred fury; fire them with irresistible desire; strengthen them to heroic will. Look not on details, the present, the trivial, the aspects of our conflict, but fix your ardent gaze on its eternal side. Be not resigned, but rejoicing.

Be spontaneous and exultant. Be large and lofty. Count it all joy that you are reckoned worthy to suffer in a grand and righteous cause.

Give thanks evermore that you were born in this time; and BECAUSE it is dark, be you the light of world.

And follow the soldier to the battle-field with spirit. The great army of letters that marches southward with every morning sun is a powerful engine of war. Fill them with tears and sighs, lament separation and suffering, dwell on your loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, doubt if the South will ever be conquered, and foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the powder and dull the swords that ought to deal death upon the foe. Write as tenderly as you will. In camp, the roughest man idealizes his far-off home, and every word of love uplifts him to a lover. But let your tenderness unfold its sunny side, and keep the shadows for His pity who knows the end from the beginning, and whom no foreboding can dishearten. Glory in your tribulation. Show your soldier that his unflinching courage, his undying fort.i.tude, are your crown of rejoicing. Incite him to enthusiasm by your inspiration. Make a mock of your discomforts. Be unwearying in details of the little interests of home. Fill your letters with kittens and canaries, with baby's shoes, and Johnny's sled, and the old cloak which you have turned into a handsome gown. Keep him posted in all the village-gossip, the lectures, the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing schools. Bring out the good points of the world in strong relief. Tell every piquant and pleasant and funny story you call think of. Show him that you clearly apprehend that all this warfare means peace, and that a dastardly peace would pave the way for speedy, incessant, and more appalling warfare. Help him to bear his burdens by showing him how elastic you are under yours. Hearten him, enliven him, tone him up to the true hero-pitch. Hush your plaintive Miserere, accept the nation's pain for penance, and commission every Northern breeze to bear a Te Deum laudamus.