Mosses from an old manse
summer evening compared with one which the guest had experienced about
fourscore years ago. The old gentleman, in fact, was a good deal
overcome by his journey among the clouds, which, to a frame so
earth-incrusted by long continuance in a lower region, was unavoidably
more fatiguing than to younger spirits. He was therefore conducted to
an easy-chair, well cushioned and stuffed with vaporous softness, and
left to take a little repose.
The Man of Fancy now discerned another guest, who stood so quietly in
the shadow of one of the pillars that he might easily have been
overlooked.
“My dear sir,” exclaimed the host, grasping him warmly by the hand,
“allow me to greet you as the hero of the evening. Pray do not take it
as an empty compliment; for, if there were not another guest in my
castle, it would be entirely pervaded with your presence.”
“I thank you,” answered the unpretending stranger; “but, though you
happened to overlook me, I have not just arrived. I came very early;
and, with your permission, shall remain after the rest of the company
have retired.”
And who does the reader imagine was this unobtrusive guest? It was the
famous performer of acknowledged impossibilities,—a character of
superhuman capacity and virtue, and, if his enemies are to be credited,
of no less remarkable weaknesses and defects. With a generosity with
which he alone sets us an example, we will glance merely at his nobler
attributes. He it is, then, who prefers the interests of others to his
own and a humble station to an exalted one. Careless of fashion,
custom, the opinions of men, and the influence of the press, he
assimilates his life to the standard of ideal rectitude, and thus
proves himself the one independent citizen of our free country. In
point of ability, many people declare him to be the only mathematician
capable of squaring the circle; the only mechanic acquainted with the
principle of perpetual motion; the only scientific philosopher who can
compel water to run up hill; the only writer of the age whose genius is
equal to the production of an epic poem; and, finally, so various are
his accomplishments, the only professor of gymnastics who has succeeded
in jumping down his own throat. With all these talents, however, he is
so far from being considered a member of good society, that it is the
severest censure of any fashionable assemblage to affirm that this
remarkable individual was present. Public orators, lecturers, and
theatrical performers particularly eschew his company. For especial
reasons, we are not at liberty to disclose his name, and shall mention
only one other trait,—a most singular phenomenon in natural
philosophy,—that, when he happens to cast his eyes upon a
looking-glass, he beholds Nobody reflected there!
Several other guests now made their appearance; and among them,
chattering with immense volubility, a brisk little gentleman of
universal vogue in private society, and not unknown in the public
journals under the title of Monsieur On-Dit. The name would seem to
indicate a Frenchman; but, whatever be his country, he is thoroughly
versed in all the languages of the day, and can express himself quite
as much to the purpose in English as in any other tongue. No sooner
were the ceremonies of salutation over than this talkative little
person put his mouth to the host’s ear and whispered three secrets of
state, an important piece of commercial intelligence, and a rich item
of fashionable scandal. He then assured the Man of Fancy that he would
not fail to circulate in the society of the lower world a minute
description of this magnificent castle in the air and of the
festivities at which he had the honor to be a guest. So saying,
Monsieur On-Dit made his bow and hurried from one to another of the
company, with all of whom he seemed to be acquainted and to possess
some topic of interest or amusement for every individual. Coming at
last to the Oldest Inhabitant, who was slumbering comfortably in the
easy-chair, he applied his mouth to that venerable ear.
“What do you say?” cried the old gentleman, starting from his nap and
putting up his hand to serve the purpose of an ear-trumpet.
Monsieur On-Dit bent forward again and repeated his communication.
“Never within my memory,” exclaimed the Oldest Inhabitant, lifting his
hands in astonishment, “has so remarkable an incident been heard of.”
Now came in the Clerk of the Weather, who had been invited out of
deference to his official station, although the host was well aware
that his conversation was likely to contribute but little to the
general enjoyment. He soon, indeed, got into a corner with his
acquaintance of long ago, the Oldest Inhabitant, and began to compare
notes with him in reference to the great storms, gales of wind, and
other atmospherical facts that had occurred during a century past. It
rejoiced the Man of Fancy that his venerable and much-respected guest
had met with so congenial an associate. Entreating them both to make
themselves perfectly at home, he now turned to receive the Wandering
Jew. This personage, however, had latterly grown so common, by mingling
in all sorts of society and appearing at the beck of every entertainer,
that he could hardly be deemed a proper guest in a very exclusive
circle. Besides, being covered with dust from his continual wanderings
along the highways of the world, he really looked out of place in a
dress party; so that the host felt relieved of an incommodity when the
restless individual in question, after a brief stay, took his departure
on a ramble towards Oregon.
The portal was now thronged by a crowd of shadowy people with whom the
Man of Fancy had been acquainted in his visionary youth. He had invited
them hither for the sake of observing how they would compare, whether
advantageously or otherwise, with the real characters to whom his
maturer life had introduced him. They were beings of crude imagination,
such as glide before a young man’s eye and pretend to be actual
inhabitants of the earth; the wise and witty with whom he would
hereafter hold intercourse; the generous and heroic friends whose
devotion would be requited with his own; the beautiful dream-woman who
would become the helpmate of his human toils and sorrows and at once
the source and partaker of his happiness. Alas! it is not good for the
full-grown man to look too closely at these old acquaintances, but
rather to reverence them at a distance through the medium of years that
have gathered duskily between. There was something laughably untrue in
their pompous stride and exaggerated sentiment; they were neither human
nor tolerable likenesses of humanity, but fantastic maskers, rendering
heroism and nature alike ridiculous by the grave absurdity of their
pretensions to such attributes; and as for the peerless dream-lady,
behold! there advanced up the saloon, with a movement like a jointed
doll, a sort of wax-figure of an angel, a creature as cold as
moonshine, an artifice in petticoats, with an intellect of pretty
phrases and only the semblance of a heart, yet in all these particulars
the true type of a young man’s imaginary mistress. Hardly could the
host’s punctilious courtesy restrain a smile as he paid his respects to
this unreality and met the sentimental glance with which the Dream
sought to remind him of their former love passages.
“No, no, fair lady,” murmured he betwixt sighing and smiling; “my taste
is changed; I have learned to love what Nature makes better than my own
creations in the guise of womanhood.”
“Ah, false one,” shrieked the dream-lady, pretending to faint, but
dissolving into thin air, out of which came the deplorable murmur of
her voice, “your inconstancy has annihilated me.”
“So be it,” said the cruel Man of Fancy to himself; “and a good
riddance too.”
Together with these shadows, and from the same region, there came an
uninvited multitude of shapes which at any time during his life had
tormented the Man of Fancy in his moods of morbid melancholy or had
haunted him in the delirium of fever. The walls of his castle in the
air were not dense enough to keep them out, nor would the strongest of
earthly architecture have availed to their exclusion. Here were those
forms of dim terror which had beset him at the entrance of life, waging
warfare with his hopes; here were strange uglinesses of earlier date,
such as haunt children in the night-time. He was particularly startled
by the vision of a deformed old black woman whom he imagined as lurking
in the garret of his native home, and who, when he was an infant, had
once come to his bedside and grinned at him in the crisis of a scarlet
fever. This same black shadow, with others almost as hideous, now
glided among the pillars of the magnificent saloon, grinning
recognition, until the man shuddered anew at the forgotten terrors of
his childhood. It amused him, however, to observe the black woman, with
the mischievous caprice peculiar to such beings, steal up to the chair
of the Oldest Inhabitant and peep into his half-dreamy mind.
“Never within my memory,” muttered that venerable personage, aghast,
“did I see such a face.”
Almost immediately after the unrealities just described, arrived a
number of guests whom incredulous readers may be inclined to rank
equally among creatures of imagination. The most noteworthy were an
incorruptible Patriot; a Scholar without pedantry; a Priest without
worldly ambition; and a Beautiful Woman without pride or coquetry; a
Married Pair whose life had never been disturbed by incongruity of
feeling; a Reformer untrammelled by his theory; and a Poet who felt no
jealousy towards other votaries of the lyre. In truth, however, the
host was not one of the cynics who consider these patterns of
excellence, without the fatal flaw, such rarities in the world; and he
had invited them to his select party chiefly out of humble deference to
the judgment of society, which pronounces them almost impossible to be
met with.
“In my younger days,” observed the Oldest Inhabitant, “such characters
might be seen at the corner of every street.”
Be that as it might, these specimens of perfection proved to be not
half so entertaining companions as people with the ordinary allowance
of faults.
But now appeared a stranger, whom the host had no sooner recognized
than, with an abundance of courtesy unlavished on any other, he
hastened down the whole length of the saloon in order to pay him
emphatic honor. Yet he was a young man in poor attire, with no insignia
of rank or acknowledged eminence, nor anything to distinguish him among
the crowd except a high, white forehead, beneath which a pair of
deep-set eyes were glowing with warm light. It was such a light as
never illuminates the earth save when a great heart burns as the
household fire of a grand intellect. And who was he?—who but the Master
Genius for whom our country is looking anxiously into the mist of Time,
as destined to fulfil the great mission of creating an American
literature, hewing it, as it were, out of the unwrought granite of our
intellectual quarries? From him, whether moulded in the form of an epic
poem or assuming a guise altogether new as the spirit itself may
determine, we are to receive our first great original work, which shall
do all that remains to be achieved for our glory among the nations. How
this child of a mighty destiny had been discovered by the Man of Fancy
it is of little consequence to mention. Suffice it that he dwells as
yet unhonored among men, unrecognized by those who have known him from
his cradle; the noble countenance which should be distinguished by a
halo diffused around it passes daily amid the throng of people toiling
and troubling themselves about the trifles of a moment, and none pay