Mosses from an old manse
But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading
the room: Feathertop with his dainty stride and no less dainty grimace,
the girl with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a
slightly affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect artifice
of her companion. The longer the interview continued, the more charmed
was pretty Polly, until, within the first quarter of an hour (as the
old magistrate noted by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be
in love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued her in such a
hurry; the poor child’s heart, it may be, was so very fervent that it
melted her with its own warmth as reflected from the hollow semblance
of a lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words found depth and
reverberation in her ear; no matter what he did, his action was heroic
to her eye. And by this time it is to be supposed there was a blush on
Polly’s cheek, a tender smile about her mouth and a liquid softness in
her glance; while the star kept coruscating on Feathertop’s breast, and
the little demons careered with more frantic merriment than ever about
the circumference of his pipe bowl. O pretty Polly Gookin, why should
these imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden’s heart was about to be
given to a shadow! Is it so unusual a misfortune, so rare a triumph?
By and by Feathertop paused, and throwing himself into an imposing
attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his figure and
resist him longer if she could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles
glowed at that instant with unutterable splendor; the picturesque hues
of his attire took a richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and
polish over his whole presence betokening the perfect witchery of
well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to
linger upon her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if
desirous of judging what value her own simple comeliness might have
side by side with so much brilliancy, she cast a glance towards the
full-length looking-glass in front of which they happened to be
standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world and incapable of
flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly’s eye
than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger’s side, gazed at him for a
moment in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor.
Feathertop likewise had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld,
not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the
sordid patchwork of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.
The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms with
an expression of despair that went further than any of his previous
manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human, for
perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of
mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized
itself.
Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this
eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she
heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the
tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of
dry bones.
“Ha!” thought the old witch, “what step is that? Whose skeleton is out
of its grave now, I wonder?”
A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. It was Feathertop! His
pipe was still alight; the star still flamed upon his breast; the
embroidery still glowed upon his garments; nor had he lost, in any
degree or manner that could be estimated, the aspect that assimilated
him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some indescribable way (as
is the case with all that has deluded us when once found out), the poor
reality was felt beneath the cunning artifice.
“What has gone wrong?” demanded the witch. “Did yonder sniffling
hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I’ll set twenty
fiends to torment him till he offer thee his daughter on his bended
knees!”
“No, mother,” said Feathertop despondingly; “it was not that.”
“Did the girl scorn my precious one?” asked Mother Rigby, her fierce
eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. “I’ll cover her face with
pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy pipe! Her front
teeth shall drop out! In a week hence she shall not be worth thy
having!”
“Let her alone, mother,” answered poor Feathertop; “the girl was half
won; and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me
altogether human. But,” he added, after a brief pause and then a howl
of self-contempt, “I’ve seen myself, mother! I’ve seen myself for the
wretched, ragged, empty thing I am! I’ll exist no longer!”
Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might
against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a
medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from
the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now
lustreless; but the rudely-carved gap, that just before had been a
mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so
far human.
“Poor fellow!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics
of her ill-fated contrivance. “My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There
are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world,
made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and
good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and
never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet
be the only one to know himself and perish for it?”
While thus muttering, the witch had filled a fresh pipe of tobacco, and
held the stem between her fingers, as doubtful whether to thrust it
into her own mouth or Feathertop’s.
“Poor Feathertop!” she continued. “I could easily give him another
chance and send him forth again tomorrow. But no; his feelings are too
tender, his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to
bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world.
Well! well! I’ll make a scarecrow of him after all. ’Tis an innocent
and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and, if each of his
human brethren had as fit a one, ’twould be the better for mankind; and
as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he.”
So saying Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. “Dickon!” cried
she, in her high, sharp tone, “another coal for my pipe!”
THE NEW ADAM AND EVE
We who are born into the world’s artificial system can never adequately
know how little in our present state and circumstances is natural, and
how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of
man. Art has become a second and stronger nature; she is a step-mother,
whose crafty tenderness has taught us to despise the bountiful and
wholesome ministrations of our true parent. It is only through the
medium of the imagination that we can lessen those iron fetters, which
we call truth and reality, and make ourselves even partially sensible
what prisoners we are. For instance, let us conceive good Father
Miller’s interpretation of the prophecies to have proved true. The Day
of Doom has burst upon the globe and swept away the whole race of men.
From cities and fields, sea-shore and midland mountain region, vast
continents, and even the remotest islands of the ocean, each living
thing is gone. No breath of a created being disturbs this earthly
atmosphere. But the abodes of man, and all that he has accomplished,
the footprints of his wanderings and the results of his toil, the
visible symbols of his intellectual cultivation and moral progress,—in
short, everything physical that can give evidence of his present
position,—shall remain untouched by the hand of destiny. Then, to
inherit and repeople this waste and deserted earth, we will suppose a
new Adam and a new Eve to have been created, in the full development of
mind and heart, but with no knowledge of their predecessors nor of the
diseased circumstances that had become incrusted around them. Such a
pair would at once distinguish between art and nature. Their instincts
and intuitions would immediately recognize the wisdom and simplicity of
the latter; while the former, with its elaborate perversities, would
offer them a continual succession of puzzles.
Let us attempt, in a mood half sportive and half thoughtful, to track
these imaginary heirs of our mortality, through their first day’s
experience. No longer ago than yesterday the flame of human life was
extinguished; there has been a breathless night; and now another morn
approaches, expecting to find the earth no less desolate than at
eventide.
It is dawn. The east puts on its immemorial blush, although no human
eye is gazing at it; for all the phenomena of the natural world renew
themselves, in spite of the solitude that now broods around the globe.
There is still beauty of earth, sea, and sky, for beauty’s sake. But
soon there are to be spectators. Just when the earliest sunshine gilds
earth’s mountain-tops, two beings have come into life, not in such an
Eden as bloomed to welcome our first parents, but in the heart of a
modern city. They find themselves in existence, and gazing into one
another’s eyes. Their emotion is not astonishment; nor do they perplex
themselves with efforts to discover what, and whence, and why they are.
Each is satisfied to be, because the other exists likewise; and their
first consciousness is of calm and mutual enjoyment, which seems not to
have been the birth of that very moment, but prolonged from a past
eternity. Thus content with an inner sphere which they inhabit
together, it is not immediately that the outward world can obtrude
itself upon their notice.
Soon, however, they feel the invincible necessity of this earthly life,
and begin to make acquaintance with the objects and circumstances that
surround them. Perhaps no other stride so vast remains to be taken as
when they first turn from the reality of their mutual glance to the
dreams and shadows that perplex them everywhere else.
“Sweetest Eve, where are we?” exclaims the new Adam; for speech, or
some equivalent mode of expression, is born with them, and comes just
as natural as breath. “Methinks I do not recognize this place.”
“Nor I, dear Man,” replies the new Eve. “And what a strange place, too!
Let me come closer to thy side and behold thee only; for all other
sights trouble and perplex my spirit.”
“Nay, Eve,” replies Adam, who appears to have the stronger tendency
towards the material world; “it were well that we gain some insight
into these matters. We are in an odd situation here. Let us look about
us.”
Assuredly there are sights enough to throw the new inheritors of earth
into a state of hopeless perplexity. The long lines of edifices, their
windows glittering in the yellow sunrise, and the narrow street
between, with its barren pavement tracked and battered by wheels that
have now rattled into an irrevocable past! The signs, with their
unintelligible hieroglyphics! The squareness and ugliness, and regular
or irregular deformity of everything that meets the eye! The marks of
wear and tear, and unrenewed decay, which distinguish the works of man
from the growth of nature! What is there in all this, capable of the
slightest significance to minds that know nothing of the artificial
system which is implied in every lamp-post and each brick of the
houses? Moreover, the utter loneliness and silence, in a scene that
originally grew out of noise and bustle, must needs impress a feeling
of desolation even upon Adam and Eve, unsuspicious as they are of the
recent extinction of human existence. In a forest, solitude would be
life; in a city, it is death.
The new Eve looks round with a sensation of doubt and distrust, such as