The Ravens and the Angels Part 24

"As if we had not sheltered generation after generation of them,"

creaked the bed.

"As if we had not seen face after face change and grow wrinkled," smiled the Cupids, "while we keep our bloom and smoothness undiminished."

"As if only last week," said the steel tongs, "a young woman had not been dismissed for leaving a spot of rust on _me_."

So they went on, until really I could stand it no longer. It seemed to me so very unbecoming and treasonable in these possessions to speak in so sarcastic and disrespectful a way of their possessors, that at length, with a great effort, I sat up in bed and remonstrated.

"I cannot let you talk so," I said, in a voice trembling at once with indignation and awe. "You are forgetting yourselves altogether. You are nothing but Things, any of you. And we are Persons. It says so in the Grammar. We are Persons, the least of us, even a little child like me!

What would become of any of you, I should like to know, if some of us did not take care of you?"

"Things and Persons indeed!" they all said, in a very unpleasant and satirical tone. "We know nothing of such philosophical distinctions. But who ever said you or your kind were _Things_? We paid you no such honour. Who ever said we could get on unless you took care of us? You are not Things indeed! You are _servants_ of Things. We possess you, use you, and outlast you. Who stays in the house--the owner, or the servants? If you were the owners, you would stay. But it is we who stay.

We outstay you, generation after generation. Doubtless, therefore, this is our world, and you are merely our slaves--sojourning here for our service, and at our pleasure."

It was useless arguing any further with such obstinate, impenetrable Things. But when, on my return home, I told my mother what they had said, to my surprise she said they were not altogether wrong.

"For," said she, "if we do not use and distribute our possessions, we do not merely sink to their level, but below it. If we are not truly the masters of our Things, we become their slaves."

This set me thinking of my own tiny h.o.a.rd of treasures, and it occurred to me how disagreeable it would be if at that moment they were talking in any such sarcastic and disrespectful way of me!

How was I to show myself truly the possessor and mistress of those cherished Things of my own?

At last I propounded the question to my mother.

"I know no way," she said, "but to get Love to be lord and possessor of you and of them. For while Selfishness sinks us below the very Things we are supposed to possess, making us fade, and rust, and perish like them, Love lifts these very perishing things themselves into our higher world, transfiguring them into ladders on which angels go up and down, and into keys of the kingdom of heaven."

_Sunshine, Daylight, and the Rock._

Sunshine and Daylight had one day a serious difference of opinion about a rocky waste, over which their course led them.

"I am not severe," said Daylight, fixing her clear, generalizing gray eyes on the Rock. "If I cannot, like some people, see nothing but what I _wish_ to see, no one ever accused me of blackening any one's character.

I have known that old Rock more years than I care to mention; not a jagged edge nor a whimsical cranny but I am intimately acquainted with; and I do not hesitate to say, that a more barren, unmitigated rock I seldom meet with. I do not slander it. I only say, it is nothing more or less than a rock."

Sunshine said nothing, but peeped round the shoulder of her cousin's gray cloak, until the smile of her soft eye met the eye of a little blue violet, which, by dint of hard living, had contrived to obtain a secure footing in a crevice of the old rock; and a flutter of joy pa.s.sed through the blossoms and leaves of the violet, and communicated itself to a tuft of dry short gra.s.s, which had ensconced itself behind. The red and gray cups of some tiny moss and lichens, which had crept into corners here and there, next drank in her kind glances, and fancied themselves wine-cups at a feast. Here and there specks of colour and points of life revealed themselves, and, as they looked, expanded.

By this time Sunshine had folded Daylight to sleep on her warm breast.

Many weeks had pa.s.sed, when, one quiet afternoon, Daylight again came that way, and glancing critically around, she murmured to Sunshine, "Where is the old gray Rock you were so sanguine about?"

Sunshine was silent; her motto being, "Not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth;" and at length Daylight's quiet eyes awoke to the fact, that the gra.s.sy knoll where flowers--tiny rock-plants indeed, but still flowers--and mosses lay dozing, unawakened by her sober tread, was none other than the Rock she had known of old. And she said meekly, "Truly I find that one way to create beauty is to perceive it."

Then an angel, who was hovering near, on his way back from some message of mercy (for the angels never linger till their messages are given), sang softly, "Love veileth a mult.i.tude of sins." And the old Rock answered in a chorus, through its moss-threads, and lichen-cups, and leaves, and blossoms, "And under the warm veil spring a mult.i.tude of flowers."

_Wanderers and Pilgrims._

A large tract of country lay spread before me; upland and lowland, hill and plain. The whole land seemed stirring with perpetual movement, all in one direction;--from the bright hills at its commencement, to the dark mountains at the end. Earth and sky seemed moving, as when an enormous flight of migratory birds is pa.s.sing by; but earth and sky were really stationary. This movement was one constant tide of human life, ceaselessly streaming across the land.

It began on a range of wooded hills, with their sunny southern slopes, forests and flowery banks, and gra.s.sy and golden fields. Down these slopes joyous bands ran fast. As I looked closer, I saw the movement was not incessant in the case of each individual; only the ceaseless pa.s.sing of the great tide of life made it seem so. Merry groups paused on the hill-sides, and made fairy gardens, and twined leafy tents where they would sit a little while and sing and dance. But only a little while! No hand seemed driving them on; it appeared only an inward irresistible instinct. Yet soon the bright groups were scattered, and moved down again over the hills, often never joining more.

"Why do you hasten away from these sunny slopes?" I said. "There seems nothing so pleasant in all the land besides."

"Perhaps not," the travellers replied, with a slight sigh; but it ended in a s.n.a.t.c.h of song as they danced gaily on. "Perhaps not, but we are a race of Wanderers! We cannot stay; and perhaps better things await us in the plain."

"Whither are you going?" I asked.

"We know not," was the answer; "only onwards, onwards!"

In the plain were buildings of more solid construction, houses and cities. And here I observed many of the travellers would have gladly lingered, but it could not be. Homesteads, and corn-fields, and vineyards, all had to be left; and still the tide of life streamed on and on.

"Why?" I asked.

"It is the doom of our race," they said, sorrowfully; "we are a people of Wanderers."

"Whither?" I inquired.

"We do not know," was the reply; "only onwards and onwards, to the dark mountains!"

Slower and slower grew the footsteps of the Wanderers, more and more regretful the glances they cast behind. Slower, yet with fewer pauses.

The strange restless impulse drove them steadily on, until, wearied and tottering, they began the ascent of the dark mountains.

"What is on the other side?" I asked.

"The sea," they said, "the Great Sea."

"How will you cross it? And what is beyond?"

"We know not," they said, with bitter tears. "But we are a doomed race of Wanderers--onwards, onwards; we may not stay!"

Then first I perceived that, among these mult.i.tudes of aimless Wanderers, there was one band who kept close together, and moved with a freedom and a purpose, as if they journeyed on not from a blind, irresistible impulse, but from choice. Their looks were seldom turned regretfully behind them, or only on the dark mountains. They looked to something higher.

I asked them--"Why are you thus hastening on?"

"We are Pilgrims," they replied; "we would not linger here."

"Whither are you going?" I inquired.

"Home!" they answered joyfully--"to a Holy City which is our Home."

"But how do you know the way?" I asked; for no barriers seemed to limit their path, so that any of the Wanderers might join it at any point.

"We know it by two marks," they answered;--"by the footsteps of One who trod it once, and left indelible footprints wherever He stepped; and we know it also by the goal to which it tends!"