Revisiting the Earth Part 13

RETRACING THE OLD PATHS

At the sight of the Eternal City, Luther prostrated himself and exclaimed,--Holy Rome, I salute thee. A graduate of Andover, on approaching the Sacred Hill, feels a disposition to manifest a like deference. Before him rises the hallowed ground. Andover is not large but there are those who love her. She was always a good mother to me.

Andover on the map you can cover with your thumb, but you cannot so cover Andover. Its vital expansive influence has gone out through all the world and its words to the end of it. In an outburst of pa.s.sionate eloquence, Mr. Webster once exclaimed, "What has America given to the world? It has given to the world the character of Washington." What has Andover given to the world? There is the East. There is India. There is our Western coast, where rolls the Oregon. There are our colleges and churches at home and over seas. In these she has given the world immortal names that were not born to die. It is said that no man now living can read even the alphabets of all the languages through which her sons have sought to interpret the Word of G.o.d to the world. Think the graduates of Andover out of it at that time, and sacred literature and religious results would drop immeasurably below their actual attainments. Andover, the very name is beautiful, especially when you look at it in the light of the old days. Its memories are delightful.

There I sat at the feet of my own Gamaliel.

_The Land We Love_

It is impossible that any inst.i.tution living or dead, in this country or any other, ever gained a firmer hold on the affections of her alumni. If love is the greatest thing in the world, Andover had it in a sort of double measure. With some knowledge of the whole field I do not know of any other place that so takes hold of its students on their affectional side. To do this, all experience teaches that a place must not be too large. A country home grows tendrils around a man's heart that a house numbered with others, in a uniformly brick-faced block, fails to do. A thoroughly cultivated or built-up country is much less beloved by its people than an open one that is close to nature. A strictly fenced locality where all surfaces are exclusively appropriated, leaving only the dusty highways to the people, does not gain the attachment that we all feel for Andover, beautiful for situation. When the Creator prepared the Seminary grounds on that crowning elevation he left little for the hand of man to do in the way of improvement. In my day, the oak tree was still standing into which Dr. Pearson climbed to locate buildings, trace the walks and indicate the settings for trees. Being located in a county that has more people in it than the entire state of Vermont and four times as much wealth, a county of cities, it has afforded great opportunity for students to get experience in pulpit work and the incidental wherewithal. It gave me no trouble or inconvenience the last year of my studies to earn eight hundred dollars. Most students on reaching Andover begin, I began like the rest, by occupying the little Union Chapel on the slope of the Blue Hill in Readville, on the edge of Hyde Park. The honorarium was five dollars, and the fares from Boston. In that pulpit, that has meant so much to under-graduates, Phillips Brooks preached his last sermon. Rev. Samuel F. Smith, author of America, was on his way to preach there when death overtook him and arrested his journey.

_Lines Cast in Pleasant Places_

When I sing America I think of Andover. She is what S. F. Smith thought of, for in a nature stroke, writing the words in Andover, he sings, "I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills," just as Whittier so simply depicts other delightful features of Ess.e.x County which were indelibly impressed upon the sensitive plate of his brain. We discern the scenery behind the words. This the Swiss heart does when it is pathetically affected in hearing, in music, as if upon bells, "The return of the Cows." There never has been a nation without patriotism.

There never has been a people without a G.o.d. The author of the hymn so much used in our great revival of national feeling was in Andover to study theology and produced our most common expression of patriotism.

Andover was well born. She has beauty in her own right. This is evident since the first time she sat for her picture. My relations have been such, that it falls to me at times, having visitors from a remote part of the land, to entertain them and to show them the East. For typical New England towns I have usually taken them to Plymouth, Concord and Andover. These three. But in the matter of a large fairly well-trained and useful progeny, the greatest of these is Andover. Dr. Henry M.

Storrs used to style the place, the mother of his mind.

_Andover is Different_

It is Acadian. In other residential localities it is their custom not to point out any celebrities except millionaires. Everything in the community is leveled to its cash basis and a habit of doing it is ingrained, and unconsciously money slips into the conversation and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. But in Andover names do not stand just for mere crude wealth. The homes of the professors were never handled as a commercial proposition. Everything was not computed in terms of bankable wealth. Prosperity was only one word, another was welfare. That noun of all nouns, dollar, was not so often heard as the name Andover. The teaching force is as uncommercialised as Aga.s.siz, Lafayette, or John Brown. Their wealth is their learning and their character. "Now how much is he worth?" He is worth a lot to his pupils.

Here is a community which every member belongs to with a conscious pleasure and pride. All the ideals bounded by the dollar are replaced.

She had an entirely different code of values, which were not pecuniary.

_Where Every Prospect Pleases_

I felt that I was exalted to heaven in point of privilege to be there at all. Here I had my first view of acres of girls. At the end of the study hours they would throng through the gates of the Abbott Female Seminary--"The Fem Sem"--and spread out over the town, young, joyous, carefree, fresh-faced, handsomely dressed. It was a delight to see them about.

"The hill of Zion yields A thousand sacred sweets Before we reach the Heavenly fields Or walk the golden streets."

So many of the books in the library with which I was most familiar, my father's, were published at Warren F. Draper's in Andover that on reaching the town, which my imagination had always placed in Cla.s.s A, I sent my baggage to the Mansion House that I might not deny myself two things, to go on foot with much feeling up the long hill, also to get a first preliminary glimpse of Draper's. Could so much that is good come out of that Nazareth? It was a travesty on my expectation. I was looking for a book store like Appletons' or Revell's, or Harpers'. When my father graduated, there were thirty different parts on the Commencement programme and I was looking for things on an immense scale like that.

_A World of Tender Memories_

Andover develops the "We" feeling. The students const.i.tute a brotherhood, while with the years the word grew greatly yet it never outgrew its original manifestation. That little word We is the talisman that awakes the consciousness that there must be sympathy, fellowship and co-operation among students, among those in the same high calling between pastor and people, as there must be for good results between teacher and pupil, between physician and patient. The Seminary gave to us that soul of kindred, which so few understand. It is an essence which perfumes life. Its influence is nothing less to me than sacred, and the benefit received is beyond any estimate I compute. In antic.i.p.ation of a recent particular visit to that shrine of the heart, for no other purpose than to express my admiration amounting even to reverence, also my indebtedness, to that far famed and justly distinguished seat of learning, I arranged with that useful, unselfish, helpful resident, Charles C. Carpenter, that we should canva.s.s together the sacred precincts. Among holy places none is holier than this. My errand there was to see a great deal and to feel a great deal. I bow with deep veneration at the remembrance of each one of the ornaments of the place.

We walked about among the friends whom we had known who were resting in G.o.d's acre. The inscriptions made for us a book of remembrance. Some personality lingered about the most far-away name. We lingered long where sleep the great who made themselves a record among the mighties.

No other spot in the land, of equal s.p.a.ce, contains the dust of so much eminence. By one of the ironies of history those who differed most, where the contention was so sharp between them, like Barnabas and Paul, that they departed asunder, one from the other, come close together in their burial.

_Andover's Crowning Glory_

When Oliver Alden Taylor, late of Manchester, was graduating from Union College his biographer says:[1] "We find him deliberating where he should resort for his theological education. His thoughts were turned toward Andover, but he says, 'I am afraid of the dislike of elegant speaking which is said to characterize the faculty.' He was rea.s.sured however with very faint praise, for he writes, 'Dr. Nott tells me that Andover is not opposed to good speaking, though the graduates are too generally poor speakers.'" We wish that he could have heard Richard Salter Storrs, father and son, Horace Hutchinson, Leonard Swain, George Leon Walker, or either of the brothers, Walter M. or John Henry Barrows, or as he was speaking of the faculty, Professor Park, or his very close second, a very different man but highly distinguished for brilliant uniform work, Austin Phelps.

[Footnote 1: Page 104.]

_A Man of n.o.ble Parts_

While in the Himalaya Mountains they have many exalted peaks, still there is one that towers above the rest, Mt. Everest, the highest ascertained point on the surface of the globe. So at Andover there was a high general range of intellect, yet there existed one master mind that dominated the whole sphere. The pulpit was his throne. I had never seen a man take so high a position on the mount of G.o.d as Professor Edwards A. Park, at the crest of his popularity and power, did as he rose to his own high level in his masterpiece, the Judas sermon. I remember my delight and wonder. He magnetized his audience. I was greatly drawn to him. The heart of the congregation touches his. Deep calleth unto deep. There are those who testify that he became the first vigorous intellectual presence they ever encountered, and they gained much from the relation to so great a man. Of larger than ordinary mould, I suppose no real credit or desert fell to him for rising to his work like a giant refreshed, any more than belonged to Goliath for wielding a spear like a weaver's beam in his mighty hand instead of a weapon of ordinary size. He was one of those rare men who are scarcely ever duplicated. He was not cla.s.sed with any one in his own or in previous or in subsequent times. His appeal was such that one's own moral sense confirmed all his teachings. The mark of talent is to do easily what is difficult for others. His imposing almost majestic presence, his powerful and brilliant intellect, his great learning, his genius, his uncommon gift of eloquence, his fervor, I do not now describe, after my memory of it, which shines to me like a star, but according to my idea cf what now it will seem to a stranger. It is impossible to reproduce his work in cold type. To attempt it is to spoil it. When we have seen him reported verbatim--that was not his sermon, only its ghost, its shade, its tenantless remains. The air about him became electric as he, having located Judas for a time nearly in front of him, a little to the right, dealt with him as one of the foes of the household. He considered his case past praying for. After he had his picture well drawn he put on more color and the moment he had him well blacked, with sudden great dramatic effect he swung a perfectly knock-out gesture, saying, "Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good were it for that man if he had never been born." It needs the Sinai voice to get the effect.

_A Soul Melted Into a Voice_

Pa.s.sion, unabated emotion pervaded the great effort from the beginning to the end of the masterpiece. Every sentence, every word had been pruned of every ineffective syllable, like changing "penetrate" to the word of one syllable, "pierce". Every idea went to its mark like a bullet. There was not a cold or weak pa.s.sage in it. In preparing his direct discourse he did not stick a stake and cart material to it. His great thoughts were not drawn from without but from his subject which he fathomed. He had depth, as someone said, for elephants to swim in and places for lambs to wade. He seemed from the first to be starting a great offensive. I took occasionally great delight in a few moments of his company and I always have congratulated myself that I lived for three years in the same town, and at the same time with so ill.u.s.trious a person.

He is one of the stars, a planet I should say, in the firmament of the pulpit. "Go and feel his power" I used to say; no one can describe it.

Everything seemed to conspire to make my life exceptionally happy and fortunate at Andover, knowing him at the zenith of his glory. Professor Park's work had the element of nicety about it. It was fascinating. We were spell-bound, lost in admiration, even in amazement. His elegance in diction would make one's sense of beauty ache. "Honor is the substance of my story," said the imposing, uplifting man starting on his moving recital, told in his unique, felicitous style, with utterance broken by emotion, of the life and death of Miss McKeen of Abbott Academy, of whose board of trustees he had been president for thirty years. That trinity of qualities, wisdom, eloquence, and pathos, swept everything.

Rhetoric cannot be shut up in a book. Its play of words, even in a sympathetic auditory, and among vibrant hearers, while it sparkles, dies.

CHAPTER XVII

GOING BACK TO MY PADAN-ARAM

Ernest Renan tells us of the vanished city Is, which, years ago, disappeared below the waves. Up from those depths, fishermen say, that on calm summer nights they can hear the bells chiming. In my heart is a cherished Is. As the years rise and fall I love to hear the harmonies that float to me from its past. Distance does not dissipate the gentle sounds and they come to me like echoes from another life. At that enchanted time I met my heart's ideal and have been wondering ever since how it happened, that on seeing a certain face, it seems to you distinctive, set apart from all others. Is it familiar, because you have seen it before, or is it impressed on you, because it is an expression of your intuitive sense of what suits you, and what you like and what you want? The expression, love at first sight, would be intelligible enough if it was only finished with the words, when one's dream comes true. When it materializes it is of course all at once. A person busy with his profession, going along happily and more or less prosperously, meeting people, judging young folks, almost unconsciously forms an ideal of face, figure, graciousness, type, temperament, intelligence. This is the product of half a dozen years. The work of choosing, so far as he is concerned, is all done. His mind is made up. His idea is clearly defined. Jesse made Eliab pa.s.s before Samuel and the Lord said, "Look not on his countenance nor on his stature." Then Jesse called Abinadab, then Shammah, and seven pa.s.sed in review, when David came along, who was ruddy and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to, "That's the one. This is he." First there is an image in the mind, and when the counterpart appears, instantly, of course, one recognizes it.

Samuel did not shirk any real question nor did he make up his mind before he had any mind to make up. There was a choice to be made and he had come to a conclusion so far as he was concerned, and expressed himself at the earliest moment, without being irresolute or vacillating, which is an abomination when a social choice is to be made.

_First View of Intimate Friends_

There is in us a tendency to selection and preference of one human being before all others. This action of the heart is forceful and even almost irresistible to us and yet may not accord with other persons' ideas of appropriateness. This strange preference, in its early stages, and in its strength and duration, is nature's greatest sidelight upon our individuality. It is entertaining to see what people pa.s.s right by and then to see what they choose. It distinguishes itself most at the further end of a long life and seems to have an unfading quality which shows that it is nature itself. This tendency to selection affords people the strongest argument against Dr. Johnson's position that all marriages would be better made if they were arranged by the Lord Chancellor. Also against that mult.i.tude of students, of the subject and writers, who show that marriages seem best, last best, and are best for a fact, when the parties themselves have little to do in bringing them about, when all such matters are left to parents and others as in the royal families who rest everything on the pure merits of the case.

In waking hours, in reveries, and in dreams, pictures had been painted on the fancy, and now the lenses were given, through which they could be viewed. A vague and indistinct idea had now taken a form. It was very unromantic, but it seemed the expression of an intuition. It was like an acquaintance, accidentally met at the way-side. There seemed to be a susceptibility hid away, hitherto kept dormant, that the slightest cause seemed to magnetize.

_Cupid's Marksmanship_

However this may be, there is such instinctive insight in the human heart, that we often form our opinion, almost instantaneously, and such impressions seldom change and they are not often wrong. To notice anything, so casual, sounds like an imprudence and yet it is almost a revelation. It seems as if we were but renewing the relations of a previous existence. Some one, from this, goes on to inquire, What will the doubters of impressions do with a fact like this? Almost everyone has experienced something similar. In this house, we often speak of our instant meeting, our introduction, and the destinies which were made to swing on such a chance acquaintance. It wanted not a word, not a hint, for within was the consciousness of what was to be. The problem was solved. My foreshadowing was realized. If a person is looking for a lesson in Providence, here it is. I could plainly see how I had been led along. "Come live with me." The irrevocable yoke of life was on us. The mysteries of Providence are felt in the coincidence of two paths over surfaces so widely apart. We are astounded at this miracle of meeting. A breath, a lifting of the hand, an inconceivably small intervention would have diverted the attention of either of us. There, too, is the miracle of hinging so much of destiny and of happiness on so small an occasion, that might easily have been no occasion at all. It is like taking letters out of the alphabet. The art is in placing them side by side in such a way as to make words. Use no skill of location and the arrangement into which they have fallen is inappropriate and unfortunate. Standing apart the letters are meaningless. Jumbled or jarred together the chances are very much against their having any significance, but when brought to their final position, by what they spell together, they are read of all men with approbation. The first time that Mr. Paul R. George of Concord, N. H., met the young lady that became his wife he felt a little click in the neighborhood of his heart.

Now about this "click" to which so many persons bear witness. Men are great imitators. They follow a crowd. But a hit duck flutters the water.

It is like the late selective draft: a man is touched; he attempts no evasion; he knows he was selected and comes promptly forward and puts on the uniform. The way the mind receives this impress, is noticeable in the further fact that if Paul R. George had been abroad, and the meeting had been so casual that he received no introduction, it would have been permanent just the same. The heart never loses anything. Touch the right string later and the impression is sure to be reproduced. All that is peculiar about Mr. George's case is his confession. We know that matrimony is either heaven-made or done in purgatory. The issue seems too important to turn once for all on the original early choice of an inexperienced person. An individual is not thus forced to choose once for all in determining what college he will take. He may choose Williams and change to Dartmouth. Nor is it an unchangeable choice on entering business. He may begin with law and change to politics or he may incline to manufacturing and take to banking. If, however, he enters the matrimonial field, having put his hand to the plow, there is no turning around nor looking back.

_Remember Lot's Wife_

There are, however, some good rules for an individual to follow. One, for example, would be, to take a girl that was a favorite with other girls. Another to be uninfluenced in your choice by dowry. The question before the house is matrimony, not money making. Acquire lucre by another process. Too much is at stake to be moved now by thirty pieces of silver. The young man was worthy of all admiration who on his wedding trip asked the bride how much of a dot she had left after paying for her trousseau. She said, "Half a dollar." "Well," he said, "heave it over into the ca.n.a.l and let us make an even start." I can better understand how a girl could be induced to shy a silver coin into the ca.n.a.l than how she could be reconciled to parting with such a name as she sometimes must drop. Here is a girl just reported engaged to a soldier. Her name was Priscilla Weymouth Alden, which tells not only her ill.u.s.trious descent but in just what locality, in the old colony, her branch of the family made its distinguished nest. In this country the wife or maiden invariably walks by the side of her male companion and never follows after him in Indian file, like geese returning from pasture. It is against nature for a man to say "my house" or my this or that. He should be unable to p.r.o.nounce the word. In this house our account at the bank is open for either to check upon. Our exchequer, on the one hand, or our politics on the other, are a joint affair. The family is the unit. When Bunker Hill monument was still incomplete interest flagged. Money was gone. Work came to a full period. An appeal was made to the women of the land to hold a great fair to obtain the wherewithal so that the builder should bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying Grace, grace, unto it. Subscriptions and contributions hurried to its aid from every section and it rose to "meet the sun in his coming," "to be the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native sh.o.r.e and the first to gladden his who revisits it." It is not good for man to work alone. The house in which a man is married seems to him odd.

_The Supply is Not Exhausted_