Mosses from an old manse
perform a requiem for the whole kindred of humanity. Not so. These are
the tones of an Eolian harp, through which Nature pours the harmony
that lies concealed in her every breath, whether of summer breeze or
tempest. Adam and Eve are lost in rapture, unmingled with surprise. The
passing wind, that stirred the harp-strings, has been hushed, before
they can think of examining the splendid furniture, the gorgeous
carpets, and the architecture of the rooms. These things amuse their
unpractised eyes, but appeal to nothing within their hearts. Even the
pictures upon the walls scarcely excite a deeper interest; for there is
something radically artificial and deceptive in painting with which
minds in the primal simplicity cannot sympathize. The unbidden guests
examine a row of family portraits, but are too dull to recognize them
as men and women, beneath the disguise of a preposterous garb, and with
features and expression debased, because inherited through ages of
moral and physical decay.
Chance, however, presents them with pictures of human beauty, fresh
from the hand of Nature. As they enter a magnificent apartment they are
astonished, but not affrighted, to perceive two figures advancing to
meet them. Is it not awful to imagine that any life, save their own,
should remain in the wide world?
“How is this?” exclaims Adam. “My beautiful Eve, are you in two places
at once?”
“And you, Adam!” answers Eve, doubtful, yet delighted. “Surely that
noble and lovely form is yours. Yet here you are by my side. I am
content with one,—methinks there should not be two.”
This miracle is wrought by a tall looking-glass, the mystery of which
they soon fathom, because Nature creates a mirror for the human face in
every pool of water, and for her own great features in waveless lakes.
Pleased and satisfied with gazing at themselves, they now discover the
marble statue of a child in a corner of the room so exquisitely
idealized that it is almost worthy to be the prophetic likeness of
their first-born. Sculpture, in its highest excellence, is more genuine
than painting, and might seem to be evolved from a natural germ, by the
same law as a leaf or flower. The statue of the child impresses the
solitary pair as if it were a companion; it likewise hints at secrets
both of the past and future.
“My husband!” whispers Eve.
“What would you say, dearest Eve?” inquires Adam.
“I wonder if we are alone in the world,” she continues, “with a sense
of something like fear at the thought of other inhabitants. This lovely
little form! Did it ever breathe? Or is it only the shadow of something
real, like our pictures in the mirror?”
“It is strange!” replies Adam, pressing his hand to his brow. “There
are mysteries all around us. An idea flits continually before me,—would
that I could seize it! Eve, Eve, are we treading in the footsteps of
beings that bore a likeness to ourselves? If so, whither are they
gone?—and why is their world so unfit for our dwelling-place?”
“Our great Father only knows,” answers Eve. “But something tells me
that we shall not always be alone. And how sweet if other beings were
to visit us in the shape of this fair image!”
Then they wander through the house, and everywhere find tokens of human
life, which now, with the idea recently suggested, excite a deeper
curiosity in their bosoms. Woman has here left traces of her delicacy
and refinement, and of her gentle labors. Eve ransacks a work-basket
and instinctively thrusts the rosy tip of her finger into a thimble.
She takes up a piece of embroidery, glowing with mimic flowers, in one
of which a fair damsel of the departed race has left her needle. Pity
that the Day of Doom should have anticipated the completion of such a
useful task! Eve feels almost conscious of the skill to finish it. A
pianoforte has been left open. She flings her hand carelessly over the
keys, and strikes out a sudden melody, no less natural than the strains
of the AEolian harp, but joyous with the dance of her yet unburdened
life. Passing through a dark entry they find a broom behind the door;
and Eve, who comprises the whole nature of womanhood, has a dim idea
that it is an instrument proper for her hand. In another apartment they
behold a canopied bed, and all the appliances of luxurious repose. A
heap of forest-leaves would be more to the purpose. They enter the
nursery, and are perplexed with the sight of little gowns and caps,
tiny slices, and a cradle, amid the drapery of which is still to be
seen the impress of a baby’s form. Adam slightly notices these trifles;
but Eve becomes involved in a fit of mute reflection from which it is
hardly possible to rouse her.
By a most unlucky arrangement there was to have been a grand
dinner-party in this mansion on the very day when the whole human
family, including the invited guests, were summoned to the unknown
regions of illimitable space. At the moment of fate, the table was
actually spread, and the company on the point of sitting down. Adam and
Eve come unbidden to the banquet; it has now been some time cold, but
otherwise furnishes them with highly favorable specimens of the
gastronomy of their predecessors. But it is difficult to imagine the
perplexity of the unperverted couple, in endeavoring to find proper
food for their first meal, at a table where the cultivated appetites of
a fashionable party were to have been gratified. Will Nature teach them
the mystery of a plate of turtle-soup? Will she embolden them to attack
a haunch of venison? Will she initiate them into the merits of a
Parisian pasty, imported by the last steamer that ever crossed the
Atlantic? Will she not, rather, bid them turn with disgust from fish,
fowl, and flesh, which, to their pure nostrils, steam with a loathsome
odor of death and corruption?—Food? The bill of fare contains nothing
which they recognize as such.
Fortunately, however, the dessert is ready upon a neighboring table.
Adam, whose appetite and animal instincts are quicker than those of
Eve, discovers this fitting banquet.
“Here, dearest Eve,” he exclaims,—“here is food.”
“Well,” answered she, with the germ of a housewife stirring within her,
“we have been so busy to-day, that a picked-up dinner must serve.”
So Eve comes to the table and receives a red-cheeked apple from her
husband’s hand in requital of her predecessor’s fatal gift to our
common grandfather. She eats it without sin, and, let us hope, with no
disastrous consequences to her future progeny. They make a plentiful,
yet temperate, meal of fruit, which, though not gathered in paradise,
is legitimately derived from the seeds that were planted there. Their
primal appetite is satisfied.
“What shall we drink, Eve?” inquires Adam.
Eve peeps among some bottles and decanters, which, as they contain
fluids, she naturally conceives must be proper to quench thirst. But
never before did claret, hock, and madeira, of rich and rare perfume,
excite such disgust as now.
“Pah!” she exclaims, after smelling at various wines. “What stuff is
here? The beings who have gone before us could not have possessed the
same nature that we do; for neither their hunger nor thirst were like
our own.”
“Pray hand me yonder bottle,” says Adam. “If it be drinkable by any
manner of mortal, I must moisten my throat with it.”
After some remonstrances, she takes up a champagne bottle, but is
frightened by the sudden explosion of the cork, and drops it upon the
floor. There the untasted liquor effervesces. Had they quaffed it they
would have experienced that brief delirium whereby, whether excited by
moral or physical causes, man sought to recompense himself for the
calm, life-long joys which he had lost by his revolt from nature. At
length, in a refrigerator, Eve finds a glass pitcher of water, pure,
cold, and bright as ever gushed from a fountain among the hills. Both
drink; and such refreshment does it bestow, that they question one
another if this precious liquid be not identical with the stream of
life within them.
“And now,” observes Adam, “we must again try to discover what sort of a
world this is, and why we have been sent hither.”
“Why? to love one another,” cries Eve. “Is not that employment enough?”
“Truly is it,” answers Adam, kissing her; “but still—I know
not—something tells us there is labor to be done. Perhaps our allotted
task is no other than to climb into the sky, which is so much more
beautiful than earth.”
“Then would we were there now,” murmurs Eve, “that no task or duty
might come between us!”
They leave the hospitable mansion, and we next see them passing down
State Street. The clock on the old State House points to high noon,
when the Exchange should be in its glory and present the liveliest
emblem of what was the sole business of life, as regarded a multitude
of the foregone worldlings. It is over now. The Sabbath of eternity has
shed its stillness along the street. Not even a newsboy assails the two
solitary passers-by with an extra penny-paper from the office of the
Times or Mail, containing a full account of yesterday’s terrible
catastrophe. Of all the dull times that merchants and speculators have
known, this is the very worst; for, so far as they were concerned,
creation itself has taken the benefit of the Bankrupt Act. After all,
it is a pity. Those mighty capitalists who had just attained the
wished-for wealth! Those shrewd men of traffic who had devoted so many
years to the most intricate and artificial of sciences, and had barely
mastered it when the universal bankruptcy was announced by peal of
trumpet! Can they have been so incautious as to provide no currency of
the country whither they have gone, nor any bills of exchange, or
letters of credit from the needy on earth to the cash-keepers of
heaven?
Adam and Eve enter a Bank. Start not, ye whose funds are treasured
there! You will never need them now. Call not for the police. The
stones of the street and the coin of the vaults are of equal value to
this simple pair. Strange sight! They take up the bright gold in
handfuls and throw it sportively into the air for the sake of seeing
the glittering worthlessness descend again in a shower. They know not
that each of those small yellow circles was once a magic spell, potent
to sway men’s hearts and mystify their moral sense. Here let them pause
in the investigation of the past. They have discovered the mainspring,
the life, the very essence of the system that had wrought itself into
the vitals of mankind, and choked their original nature in its deadly
gripe. Yet how powerless over these young inheritors of earth’s hoarded
wealth! And here, too, are huge, packages of back-notes, those
talismanic slips of paper which once had the efficacy to build up
enchanted palaces like exhalations, and work all kinds of perilous
wonders, yet were themselves but the ghosts of money, the shadows of a
shade. How like is this vault to a magician’s cave when the
all-powerful wand is broken, and the visionary splendor vanished, and
the floor strewn with fragments of shattered spells, and lifeless
shapes, once animated by demons!
“Everywhere, my dear Eve,” observes Adam, “we find heaps of rubbish of
one kind or another. Somebody, I am convinced, has taken pains to
collect them, but for what purpose? Perhaps, hereafter, we shall be
moved to do the like. Can that be our business in the world?”
“O no, no, Adam!” answers Eve. “It would be better to sit down quietly
and look upward to tine sky.”
They leave the Bank, and in good time; for had they tarried later they
would probably have encountered some gouty old goblin of a capitalist,
whose soul could not long be anywhere save in the vault with his
treasure.
Next they drop into a jeweller’s shop. They are pleased with the glow