Mosses from an old manse
So will it be with my associate. Our fates appear inseparably blended.
It is my belief, as I find him mingling with my earliest recollections,
that we came into existence together, as my shadow follows me into the
sunshine, and that hereafter, as heretofore, the brightness or gloom of
my fortunes will shine upon, or darken, the face of Monsieur du Miroir.
As we have been young together, and as it is now near the summer noon
with both of us, so, if long life be granted, shall each count his own
wrinkles on the other’s brow and his white hairs on the other’s head.
And when the coffin-lid shall have closed over me and that face and
form, which, more truly than the lover swears it to his beloved, are
the sole light of his existence,—when they shall be laid in that dark
chamber, whither his swift and secret footsteps cannot bring him,—then
what is to become of poor Monsieur du Miroir? Will he have the
fortitude, with my other friends, to take a last look at my pale
countenance? Will he walk foremost in the funeral train? Will he come
often and haunt around my grave, and weed away the nettles, and plant
flowers amid the verdure, and scrape the moss out of the letters of my
burial-stone? Will he linger where I have lived, to remind the
neglectful world of one who staked much to win a name, but will not
then care whether he lost or won?
Not thus will he prove his deep fidelity. O, what terror, if this
friend of mine, after our last farewell, should step into the crowded
street, or roam along our old frequented path by the still waters, or
sit down in the domestic circle where our faces are most familiar and
beloved! No; but when the rays of heaven shall bless me no more, nor
the thoughtful lamplight gleam upon my studies, nor the cheerful
fireside gladden the meditative man, then, his task fulfilled, shall
this mysterious being vanish from the earth forever. He will pass to
the dark realm of nothingness, but will not find me there.
There is something fearful in bearing such a relation to a creature so
imperfectly known, and in the idea that, to a certain extent, all which
concerns myself will be reflected in its consequences upon him. When we
feel that another is to share the self-same fortune with ourselves we
judge more severely of our prospects, and withhold our confidence from
that delusive magic which appears to shed an infallibility of happiness
over our own pathway. Of late years, indeed, there has been much to
sadden my intercourse with Monsieur de Miroir. Had not our union been a
necessary condition of our life, we must have been estranged ere now.
In early youth, when my affections were warm and free, I loved him
well, and could always spend a pleasant hour in his society, chiefly
because it gave me an excellent opinion of myself. Speechless as he
was, Monsieur du Miroir had then a most agreeable way of calling me a
handsome fellow; and I, of course, returned the compliment; so that,
the more we kept each other’s company, the greater coxcombs we mutually
grew. But neither of us need apprehend any such misfortune now. When we
chance to meet,—for it is chance oftener than design,—each glances
sadly at the other’s forehead, dreading wrinkles there; and at our
temples, whence the hair is thinning away too early; and at the sunken
eyes, which no longer shed a gladsome light over the whole face. I
involuntarily peruse him as a record of my heavy youth, which has been
wasted in sluggishness for lack of hope and impulse, or equally thrown
away in toil that had no wise motive and has accomplished no good end.
I perceive that the tranquil gloom of a disappointed soul has darkened
through his countenance, where the blackness of the future seems to
mingle with the shadows of the past, giving him the aspect of a fated
man. Is it too wild a thought that my fate may have assumed this image
of myself, and therefore haunts me with such inevitable pertinacity,
originating every act which it appears to imitate, while it deludes me
by pretending to share the events of which it is merely the emblem and
the prophecy? I must banish this idea, or it will throw too deep an awe
round my companion. At our next meeting, especially if it be at
midnight or in solitude, I fear that I shall glance aside and shudder;
in which case, as Monsieur du Miroir is extremely sensitive to
ill-treatment, he also will avert his eyes and express horror or
disgust.
But no; this is unworthy of me. As of old I sought his society for the
bewitching dreams of woman’s love which he inspired, and because I
fancied a bright fortune in his aspect, so now will I hold daily and
long communion with hint for the sake of the stern lessons that he will
teach my manhood. With folded arms we will sit face to face, and
lengthen out our silent converse till a wiser cheerfulness shall have
been wrought from the very texture of despondency. He will say, perhaps
indignantly, that it befits only him to mourn for the decay of outward
grace, which, while he possessed it, was his all. But have not you, he
will ask, a treasure in reserve, to which every year may add far more
value than age or death itself can snatch from that miserable clay? He
will tell me that though the bloom of life has been nipped with a
frost, yet the soul must not sit shivering in its cell, but bestir
itself manfully, and kindle a genial warmth from its own exercise
against; the autumnal and the wintry atmosphere. And I, in return, will
bid him be of good cheer, nor take it amiss that I must blanch his
locks and wrinkle him up like a wilted apple, since it shall be my
endeavor so to beautify his face with intellect and mild benevolence
that he shall profit immensely by the change. But here a smile will
glimmer somewhat sadly over Monsieur du Miroir’s visage.
When this subject shall have been sufficiently discussed we may take up
others as important. Reflecting upon his power of following me to the
remotest regions and into the deepest privacy, I will compare the
attempt to escape him to the hopeless race that men sometimes run with
memory, or their own hearts, or their moral selves, which, though
burdened with cares enough to crush an elephant, will never be one step
behind. I will be self-contemplative, as nature bids me, and make him
the picture or visible type of what I muse upon, that my mind may not
wander so vaguely as heretofore, chasing its own shadow through a chaos
and catching only the monsters that abide there. Then will we turn our
thoughts to the spiritual world, of the reality of which my companions
shall furnish me an illustration, if not an argument; for, as we have
only the testimony of the eye to Monsieur du Miroir’s existence, while
all the other senses would fail to inform us that such a figure stands
within arm’s-length, wherefore should there not be beings innumerable
close beside us, and filling heaven and earth with their multitude, yet
of whom no corporeal perception can take cognizance? A blind man might
as reasonably deny that Monsieur du Miroir exists, as we, because the
Creator has hitherto withheld the spiritual perception, can therefore
contend that there are no spirits. O, there are! And, at this moment,
when the subject of which I write has grown strong within me and
surrounded itself with those solemn and awful associations which might
have seemed most alien to it, I could fancy that Monsieur du Miroir
himself is a wanderer from the spiritual world, with nothing human
except his delusive garment of visibility. Methinks I should tremble
now were his wizard power of gliding through all impediments in search
of me to place him suddenly before my eyes.
Ha! What is yonder? Shape of mystery, did the tremor of my heartstrings
vibrate to thine own, and call thee from thy home among the dancers of
the northern lights, and shadows flung from departed sunshine, and
giant spectres that appear on clouds at daybreak and affright the
climber of the Alps? In truth it startled me, as I threw a wary glance
eastward across the chamber, to discern an unbidden guest with his eyes
bent on mine. The identical MONSIEUR DU MIROIR! Still there he sits and
returns my gaze with as much of awe and curiosity as if he, too, had
spent a solitary evening in fantastic musings and made me his theme. So
inimitably does he counterfeit that I could almost doubt which of us is
the visionary form, or whether each be not the other’s mystery, and
both twin brethren of one fate, in mutually reflected spheres. O
friend, canst thou not hear and answer me? Break down the barrier
between us! Grasp my hand! Speak! Listen! A few words, perhaps, might
satisfy the feverish yearning of my soul for some master-thought that
should guide me through this labyrinth of life, teaching wherefore I
was born, and how to do my task on earth, and what is death. Alas! Even
that unreal image should forget to ape me and smile at these vain
questions. Thus do mortals deify, as it were, a mere shadow of
themselves, a spectre of human reason, and ask of that to unveil the
mysteries which Divine Intelligence has revealed so far as needful to
our guidance, and hid the rest.
Farewell, Monsieur du Miroir. Of you, perhaps, as of many men, it may
be doubted whether you are the wiser, though your whole business is
REFLECTION.
THE HALL OF FANTASY
It has happened to me, on various occasions, to find myself in a
certain edifice which would appear to have some of the characteristics
of a public exchange. Its interior is a spacious hall, with a pavement
of white marble. Overhead is a lofty dome, supported by long rows of
pillars of fantastic architecture, the idea of which was probably taken
from the Moorish ruins of the Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted
edifice in the Arabian tales. The windows of this hall have a breadth
and grandeur of design and an elaborateness of workmanship that have
nowhere been equalled, except in the Gothic cathedrals of the Old
World. Like their prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven only
through stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall with
many-colored radiance and painting its marble floor with beautiful or
grotesque designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary
atmosphere, and tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These
peculiarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even an
American architect usually recognizes as allowable,—Grecian, Gothic,
Oriental, and nondescript,—cause the whole edifice to give the
impression of a dream, which might be dissipated and shattered to
fragments by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement. Yet, with such
modifications and repairs as successive ages demand, the Hall of
Fantasy is likely to endure longer than the most substantial structure
that ever cumbered the earth.
It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into this edifice,
although most persons enter it at some period or other of their lives;
if not in their waking moments, then by the universal passport of a
dream. At my last visit I wandered thither unawares while my mind was
busy with an idle tale, and was startled by the throng of people who
seemed suddenly to rise up around me.
“Bless me! Where am I?” cried I, with but a dim recognition of the
place.
“You are in a spot,” said a friend who chanced to be near at hand,
“which occupies in the world of fancy the same position which the
Bourse, the Rialto, and the Exchange do in the commercial world. All
who have affairs in that mystic region, which lies above, below, or
beyond the actual, may here meet and talk over the business of their
dreams.”
“It is a noble hall,” observed I.
“Yes,” he replied. “Yet we see but a small portion of the edifice. In
its upper stories are said to be apartments where the inhabitants of