Tales and Sketches Part 11

The authors of Gayeties and Gravities give it as their opinion that no object of sight is regarded by us as a simple disconnected form, but that--an instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or a.s.sociations converts it into a concrete one,--a process, they shrewdly remark, which no thinking being can prevent, and which can only be avoided by the unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the common or a cow on the green." The senses and the faculties of the understanding are so blended with and dependent upon each other that not one of them can exercise its office alone and without the modification of some extrinsic interference or suggestion. Grateful or unpleasant a.s.sociations cl.u.s.ter around all which sense takes cognizance of; the beauty which we discern in an external object is often but the reflection of our own minds.

What is beauty, after all? Ask the lover who kneels in homage to one who has no attractions for others. The cold onlooker wonders that he can call that uncla.s.sic combination of features and that awkward form beautiful. Yet so it is. He sees, like Desdemona, her "visage in her mind," or her affections. A light from within shines through the external uncomeliness,--softens, irradiates, and glorifies it. That which to others seems commonplace and unworthy of note is to him, in the words of Spenser,--

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace; A full a.s.surance given by looks; Continual comfort in a face; The lineaments of Gospel books."

"Handsome is that handsome does,--hold up your heads, girls!" was the language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters. The worthy matron was right. Would that all my female readers who are sorrowing foolishly because they are not in all respects like Dubufe's Eve, or that statue of the Venus "which enchants the world," could be persuaded to listen to her. What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,--generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. Loving and pleasant a.s.sociations will gather about you. Never mind the ugly reflection which your gla.s.s may give you. That mirror has no heart.

But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy.

There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which pa.s.seth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just as the full calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into harmonious loveliness. "Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after Primrose. Why should you not? Every mother's daughter of you can be beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of compa.s.sion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him corn." Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.

This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness, of young maternity,--Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. And their pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven,--how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the pa.s.sions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony,--

"Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-ordered law,"

The Haunted Palace, by Edgar A. Poe.

do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance?

"I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace sat brooding." In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the Journal of John Woolman, there is a pa.s.sage of which I have been more than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: "Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance."

Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle pa.s.sions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the mult.i.tude at the first glance p.r.o.nounce homely, unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories; they are beautiful through their a.s.sociations; nor are they any the less welcome that with my admiration of them "the stranger intermeddleth not."

THE WORLD'S END.

"Our Father Time is weak and gray, Awaiting for the better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling his old palsied hands!"

Sh.e.l.lEY's Masque of Anarchy.

"STAGE ready, gentlemen! Stage for campground, Derry! Second Advent camp-meeting!"

Accustomed as I begin to feel to the ordinary sights and sounds of this busy city, I was, I confess, somewhat startled by this business-like annunciation from the driver of a stage, who stood beside his horses swinging his whip with some degree of impatience: "Seventy-five cents to the Second Advent camp-ground!"

The stage was soon filled; the driver cracked his whip and went rattling down the street.

The Second Advent,--the coming of our Lord in person upon this earth, with signs, and wonders, and terrible judgments,--the heavens robing together as a scroll, the elements melting with fervent heat! The mighty consummation of all things at hand, with its destruction and its triumphs, sad wailings of the lost and rejoicing songs of the glorified!

From this overswarming hive of industry,--from these crowded treadmills of gain,--here were men and women going out in solemn earnestness to prepare for the dread moment which they verily suppose is only a few months distant,--to lift up their warning voices in the midst of scoffers and doubters, and to cry aloud to blind priests and careless churches, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!"

It was one of the most lovely mornings of this loveliest season of the year; a warm, soft atmosphere; clear sunshine falling on the city spires and roofs; the hills of Dracut quiet and green in the distance, with their white farm-houses and scattered trees; around me the continual tread of footsteps hurrying to the toils of the day; merchants spreading out their wares for the eyes of purchasers; sounds of hammers, the sharp clink of trowels, the murmur of the great manufactories subdued by distance. How was it possible, in the midst of so much life, in that sunrise light, and in view of all abounding beauty, that the idea of the death of Nature--the baptism of the world in fire--could take such a practical shape as this? Yet here were sober, intelligent men, gentle and pious women, who, verily believing the end to be close at hand, had left their counting-rooms, and workshops, and household cares to publish the great tidings, and to startle, if possible, a careless and unbelieving generation into preparation for the day of the Lord and for that blessed millennium,--the restored paradise,--when, renovated and renewed by its fire-purgation, the earth shall become as of old the garden of the Lord, and the saints alone shall inherit it.

Very serious and impressive is the fact that this idea of a radical change in our planet is not only predicted in the Scriptures, but that the Earth herself, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, on which are lithographed the history of successive convulsions, darkly prophesies of others to come. The old poet prophets, all the world over, have sung of a renovated world. A vision of it haunted the contemplations of Plato. It is seen in the half-inspired speculations of the old Indian mystics. The c.u.maean sibyl saw it in her trances.

The apostles and martyrs of our faith looked for it anxiously and hopefully. Gray anchorites in the deserts, worn pilgrims to the holy places of Jewish and Christian tradition, prayed for its coming. It inspired the gorgeous visions of the early fathers. In every age since the Christian era, from the caves, and forests, and secluded "upper chambers" of the times of the first missionaries of the cross, from the Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, from the bleak mountain gorges of the Alps, where the hunted heretics put up their expostulation, "How long, O Lord, how long?" down to the present time, and from this Derry campground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its fulfilment.

How this great idea manifests itself in the, lives of the enthusiasts of the days of Cromwell! Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the foreshadowings of the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the blast of the last trumpet! Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords and loaded matchlocks into the streets of London to establish at once the rule of King Jesus! Think of the wild enthusiasts at Munster, verily imagining that the millennial reign had commenced in their mad city! Still later, think of Granville Sharpe, diligently laboring in his vocation of philanthropy, laying plans for the slow but beneficent amelioration of the condition of his country and the world, and at the same time maintaining, with the zeal of Father Miller himself, that the earth was just on the point of combustion, and that the millennium would render all his benevolent schemes of no sort of consequence!

And, after all, is the idea itself a vain one? Shall to-morrow be as to-day? Shall the antagonism of good and evil continue as heretofore forever? Is there no hope that this world-wide prophecy of the human soul, uttered in all climes, in all times, shall yet be fulfilled? Who shall say it may not be true? Nay, is not its truth proved by its universality? The hope of all earnest souls must be realized. That which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,--soft gleams of heaven's light rising over the h.e.l.l of man's pa.s.sions and crimes,--the glorious ideal of Sh.e.l.ley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with the light of a better day,--that hope and that faith which const.i.tute, as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and dead, cannot be in vain.

I do not, I confess, sympathize with my Second Advent friends in their lamentable depreciation of Mother Earth even in her present state. I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how it is that this goodly, green, sunlit home of ours is resting under a curse. It really does not seem to me to be altogether like the roll which the angel bore in the prophet's vision, "written within and without with mourning, lamentation, and woe." September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise and cloud, sun and rain,--I for one am contented with them. They fill my heart with a sense of beauty. I see in them the perfect work of infinite love as well as wisdom. It may be that our Advent friends, however, coincide with the opinions of an old writer on the prophecies, who considered the hills and valleys of the earth's surface and its changes of seasons as so many visible manifestations of G.o.d's curse, and that in the millennium, as in the days of Adam's innocence, all these picturesque inequalities would be levelled nicely away, and the flat surface laid handsomely down to gra.s.s.

As might be expected, the effect of this belief in the speedy destruction of the world and the personal coming of the Messiah, acting upon a cla.s.s of uncultivated, and, in some cases, gross minds, is not always in keeping with the enlightened Christian's ideal of the better day. One is shocked in reading some of the "hymns" of these believers.

Sensual images,--semi-Mahometan descriptions of the condition of the "saints,"--exultations over the destruction of the "sinners,"--mingle with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets. There are indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope set before him:

"to me is given Such hope I may not fear; I long to breathe the airs of heaven, Which sometimes meet me here.

"I muse on joys that cannot cease, Pure s.p.a.ces filled with living beams, White lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams."

One of the most ludicrous examples of the sensual phase of Millerism, the incongruous blending of the sublime with the ridiculous, was mentioned to me not long since. A fashionable young woman in the western part of this State became an enthusiastic believer in the doctrine. On the day which had been designated as the closing one of time she packed all her fine dresses and toilet valuables in a large trunk, with long straps attached to it, and, seating herself upon it, buckled the straps over her shoulders, patiently awaiting the crisis,-- shrewdly calculating that, as she must herself go upwards, her goods and chattels would of necessity follow.

Three or four years ago, on my way eastward, I spent an hour or two at a camp-ground of the Second Advent in East Kingston. The spot was well chosen. A tall growth of pine and hemlock threw its melancholy shadow over the mult.i.tude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and logs. Several hundred--perhaps a thousand people--were present, and more were rapidly coming. Drawn about in a circle, forming a background of snowy whiteness to the dark ma.s.ses of men and foliage, were the white tents, and back of them the provision-stalls and cook-shops. When I reached the ground, a hymn, the words of which I could not distinguish, was pealing through the dim aisles of the forest. I could readily perceive that it had its effect upon the mult.i.tude before me, kindling to higher intensity their already excited enthusiasm. The preachers were placed in a rude pulpit of rough boards, carpeted only by the dead forest-leaves and flowers, and ta.s.selled, not with silk and velvet, but with the green boughs of the sombre hemlocks around it. One of them followed the music in an earnest exhortation on the duty of preparing for the great event. Occasionally he was really eloquent, and his description of the last day had the ghastly distinctness of Anelli's painting of the End of the World.

Suspended from the front of the rude pulpit were two broad sheets of canvas, upon one of which was the figure of a man, the head of gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly of bra.s.s, the legs of iron, and feet of clay,--the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. On the other were depicted the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision,--the beasts, the dragons, the scarlet woman seen by the seer of Patmos, Oriental types, figures, and mystic symbols, translated into staring Yankee realities, and exhibited like the beasts of a travelling menagerie. One horrible image, with its hideous heads and scaly caudal extremity, reminded me of the tremendous line of Milton, who, in speaking of the same evil dragon, describes him as

"Swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail."

To an imaginative mind the scene was full of novel interest. The white circle of tents; the dim wood arches; the upturned, earnest faces; the loud voices of the speakers, burdened with the awful symbolic language of the Bible; the smoke from the fires, rising like incense,--carried me back to those days of primitive worship which tradition faintly whispers of, when on hill-tops and in the shade of old woods Religion had her first altars, with every man for her priest and the whole universe for her temple.

Wisely and truthfully has Dr. Channing spoken of this doctrine of the Second Advent in his memorable discourse in Berkshire a little before his death:--

"There are some among us at the present moment who are waiting for the speedy coming of Christ. They expect, before another year closes, to see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment- seat. These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture language. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs. He came in the Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction of Jerusalem, which, by subverting the old ritual law and breaking the power of the worst enemies of His religion, insured to it new victories.

He came in the reformation of the Church. He came on this day four years ago, when, through His religion, eight hundred thousand men were raised from the lowest degradation to the rights, and dignity, and fellowship of men. Christ's outward appearance is of little moment compared with the brighter manifestation of His spirit. The Christian, whose inward eyes and ears are touched by G.o.d, discerns the coming of Christ, hears the sound of His chariot-wheels and the voice of His trumpet, when no other perceives them. He discerns the Saviour's advent in the dawning of higher truth on the world, in new aspirations of the Church after perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error, in brighter expressions of Christian love, in more enlightened and intense consecration of the Christian to the cause of humanity, freedom, and religion. Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration, the emanc.i.p.ation, of the world."

THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT.

[1869.]

LOOKING at the Government Chart of Lake Erie, one sees the outlines of a long, narrow island, stretching along the sh.o.r.e of Canada West, opposite the point where Loudon District pushes its low, wooded wedge into the lake. This is Long Point Island, known and dreaded by the navigators of the inland sea which batters its yielding sh.o.r.es, and tosses into fantastic shapes its sandheaps. The eastern end is some twenty miles from the Canada sh.o.r.e, while on the west it is only separated from the mainland by a narrow strait known as "The Cut." It is a sandy, desolate region, broken by small ponds, with dreary tracts of fenland, its ridges covered with a low growth of pine, oak, beech, and birch, in the midst of which, in its season, the dogwood puts out its white blossoms. Wild grapes trail over the sand-dunes and festoon the dwarf trees. Here and there are almost impenetrable swamps, thick-set with white cedars, intertwisted and contorted by the lake winds, and broken by the weight of snow and ice in winter. Swans and wild geese paddle in the shallow, reedy bayous; racc.o.o.ns and even deer traverse the spa.r.s.ely wooded ridges. The sh.o.r.es of its creeks and fens are tenanted by minks and muskrats. The tall tower of a light-house rises at the eastern extremity of the island, the keeper of which is now its solitary inhabitant.

Fourteen years ago, another individual shared the proprietorship of Long Point. This was John Becker, who dwelt on the south side of the island, near its westerly termination, in a miserable board shanty nestled between naked sand-hills. He managed to make a poor living by trapping and spearing muskrats, the skins of which he sold to such boatmen and small-craft skippers as chanced to land on his forlorn territory. His wife, a large, mild-eyed, patient young woman of some twenty-six years, kept her hut and children as tidy as circ.u.mstances admitted, a.s.sisted her husband in preparing the skins, and sometimes accompanied him on his trapping excursions.

On that lonely coast, seldom visited in summer, and wholly cut off from human communication in winter, they might have lived and died with as little recognition from the world as the minks and wildfowl with whom they were tenants in common, but for a circ.u.mstance which called into exercise unsuspected qualities of generous courage and heroic self- sacrifice.

The dark, stormy close of November, 1854, found many vessels on Lake Erie, but the fortunes of one alone have special interest for us. About that time the schooner Conductor, owned by John McLeod, of the Provincial Parliament, a resident of Amherstburg, at the mouth of the Detroit River, entered the lake from that river, bound for Port Dalhousie, at the mouth of the Welland Ca.n.a.l.

She was heavily loaded with grain. Her crew consisted of Captain Hackett, a Highlander by birth, and a skilful and experienced navigator, and six sailors. At nightfall, shortly after leaving the head of the lake, one of those terrific storms, with which the late autumnal navigators of that "Sea of the Woods" are all too familiar, overtook them. The weather was intensely cold for the season; the air was filled with snow and sleet; the chilled water made ice rapidly, enc.u.mbering the schooner, and loading down her decks and rigging. As the gale increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts, clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors call "spoondrift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods distant. Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of her place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness. At last, near midnight, running closer than her crew supposed to the Canadian sh.o.r.e, she struck on the outer bar off Long Point Island, beat heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner bar. The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily, and dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves. Lashed there, numb with cold, drenched by the pitiless waves, and scourged by the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning.

The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and doubtful gray of a morning of tempest succeeded to the utter darkness of night.

Abigail Becker chanced at that time to be in her hut with none but her young children. Her husband was absent on the Canada sh.o.r.e, and she was left the sole adult occupant of the island, save the light-keeper, at its lower end, some fifteen miles off. Looking out at daylight on the beach in front of her door, she saw the shattered boat of the Conductor, east up by the waves. Her experience of storm and disaster on that dangerous coast needed nothing more to convince her that somewhere in her neighborhood human life had been, or still was, in peril. She followed the southwesterly trend of the island for a little distance, and, peering through the gloom of the stormy morning, discerned the spars of the sunken schooner, with what seemed to be human forms clinging to the rigging. The heart of the strong woman sunk within her, as she gazed upon those helpless fellow-creatures, so near, yet so unapproachable. She had no boat, and none could have lived on that wild water. After a moment's reflection she went back to her dwelling, put the smaller children in charge of the eldest, took with her an iron kettle, tin teapot, and matches, and returned to the beach, at the nearest point to the vessel; and, gathering up the logs and drift-wood always abundant, on the coast, kindled a great fire, and, constantly walking back and forth between it and the water, strove to intimate to the sufferers that they were at least not beyond human sympathy. As the wrecked sailors looked sh.o.r.eward, and saw, through the thick haze of snow and sleet, the red light of the fire and the tall figure of the woman pa.s.sing to and fro before it, a faint hope took the place of the utter despair which had prompted them to let go their hold and drop into the seething waters, that opened and closed about them like the jaws of death. But the day wore on, bringing no abatement of the storm that tore through the frail spars, and clutched at and tossed them as it pa.s.sed, and drenched them with ice-cold spray,--a pitiless, unrelenting horror of sight, sound, and touch! At last the deepening gloom told them that night was approaching, and night under such circ.u.mstances was death.

All day long Abigail Becker had fed her fire, and sought to induce the sailors by signals--for even her strong voice could not reach them--to throw themselves into the surf, and trust to Providence and her for succor. In antic.i.p.ation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the half-frozen survivors. But either they did not understand her, or the chance of rescue seemed too small to induce them to abandon the temporary safety of the wreck. They clung to it with the desperate instinct of life brought face to face with death. Just at nightfall there was a slight break in the west; a red light glared across the thick air, as if for one instant the eye of the storm looked out upon the ruin it had wrought, and closed again under lids of cloud. Taking advantage of this, the solitary watcher ash.o.r.e made one more effort.

She waded out into the water, every drop of which, as it struck the beach, became a particle of ice, and stretching out and drawing in her arms, invited, by her gestures, the sailors to throw themselves into the waves, and strive to reach her. Captain Hackett understood her. He called to his mate in the rigging of the other mast: "It is our last chance. I will try! If I live, follow me; if I drown, stay where you are!" With a great effort he got off his stiffly frozen overcoat, paused for one moment in silent commendation of his soul to G.o.d, and, throwing himself into the waves, struck out for the sh.o.r.e. Abigail Becker, breast-deep in the surf, awaited him. He was almost within her reach, when the undertow swept him back. By a mighty exertion she caught hold of him, bore him in her strong arms out of the water, and, laying him down by her fire, warmed his chilled blood with copious draughts of hot tea. The mate, who had watched the rescue, now followed, and the captain, partially restored, insisted upon aiding him.

As the former neared the sh.o.r.e, the recoiling water baffled him.