Mosses from an old manse
“I have lost a precious jewel!” replied the unfortunate person, “the
like of which is not to be found among any prince’s treasures. While I
possessed it, the contemplation of it was my sole and sufficient
happiness. No price should have purchased it of me; but it has fallen
from my bosom where I wore it in my careless wanderings about the
city.”
After causing the stranger to describe the marks of his lost jewel, the
Intelligencer opened a drawer of the oaken cabinet which has been
mentioned as forming a part of the furniture of the room. Here were
deposited whatever articles had been picked up in the streets, until
the right owners should claim them. It was a strange and heterogeneous
collection. Not the least remarkable part of it was a great number of
wedding-rings, each one of which had been riveted upon the finger with
holy vows, and all the mystic potency that the most solemn rites could
attain, but had, nevertheless, proved too slippery for the wearer’s
vigilance. The gold of some was worn thin, betokening the attrition of
years of wedlock; others, glittering from the jeweller’s shop, must
have been lost within the honeymoon. There were ivory tablets, the
leaves scribbled over with sentiments that had been the deepest truths
of the writer’s earlier years, but which were now quite obliterated
from his memory. So scrupulously were articles preserved in this
depository, that not even withered flowers were rejected; white roses,
and blush-roses, and moss-roses, fit emblems of virgin purity and
shamefacedness, which bad been lost or flung away, and trampled into
the pollution of the streets; locks of hair,—the golden and the glossy
dark,—the long tresses of woman and the crisp curls of man, signified
that lovers were now and then so heedless of the faith intrusted to
them as to drop its symbol from the treasure-place of the bosom. Many
of these things were imbued with perfumes, and perhaps a sweet scent
had departed from the lives of their former possessors ever since they
had so wilfully or negligently lost them. Here were gold pencil-cases,
little ruby hearts with golden arrows through them, bosom-pins, pieces
of coin, and small articles of every description, comprising nearly all
that have been lost since a long time ago. Most of them, doubtless, had
a history and a meaning, if there were time to search it out and room
to tell it. Whoever has missed anything valuable, whether out of his
heart, mind, or pocket, would do well to make inquiry at the Central
Intelligence Office.
And in the corner of one of the drawers of the oaken cabinet, after
considerable research, was found a great pearl, looking like the soul
of celestial purity, congealed and polished.
“There is my jewel! my very pearl!” cried the stranger, almost beside
himself with rapture. “It is mine! Give it me this moment! or I shall
perish!”
“I perceive,” said the Man of Intelligence, examining it more closely,
“that this is the Pearl of Great Price!”
“The very same,” answered the stranger. “Judge, then, of my misery at
losing it out of my bosom! Restore it to me! I must not live without it
an instant to longer.”
“Pardon me,” rejoined the Intelligencer, calmly, “you ask what is
beyond my duty. This pearl, as you well know, is held upon a peculiar
tenure; and having once let it escape from your keeping, you have no
greater claim to it—nay, not so great—as any other person. I cannot
give it back.”
Nor could the entreaties of the miserable man—who saw before his eyes
the jewel of his life without the power to reclaim it—soften the heart
of this stern being, impassive to human sympathy, though exercising
such an apparent influence over human fortunes. Finally the loser of
the inestimable pearl clutched his hands among his hair, and ran madly
forth into the world, which was affrighted at his desperate looks.
There passed him on the doorstep a fashionable young gentleman, whose
business was to inquire for a damask rosebud, the gift of his
lady-love, which he had lost out of his buttonhole within a hour after
receiving it. So various were the errands of those who visited this
Central Office, where all human wishes seemed to be made known, and, so
far as destiny would allow, negotiated to their fulfilment.
The next that entered was a man beyond the middle age, bearing the look
of one who knew the world and his own course in it. He had just
alighted from a handsome private carriage, which had orders to wait in
the street while its owner transacted his business. This person came up
to the desk with a quick, determined step, and looked the Intelligencer
in the face with a resolute eye; though, at the same time, some secret
trouble gleamed from it in red and dusky light.
“I have an estate to dispose of,” said he, with a brevity that seemed
characteristic.
“Describe it,” said the Intelligencer.
The applicant proceeded to give the boundaries of his property, its
nature, comprising tillage, pasture, woodland, and pleasure-grounds, in
ample circuit; together with a mansion-house, in the construction of
which it had been his object to realize a castle in the air, hardening
its shadowy walls into granite, and rendering its visionary splendor
perceptible to the awakened eye. Judging from his description, it was
beautiful enough to vanish like a dream, yet substantial enough to
endure for centuries. He spoke, too, of the gorgeous furniture, the
refinements of upholstery, and all the luxurious artifices that
combined to render this a residence where life might flow onward in a
stream of golden days, undisturbed by the ruggedness which fate loves
to fling into it.
“I am a man of strong will,” said he, in conclusion; “and at my first
setting out in life, as a poor, unfriended youth, I resolved to make
myself the possessor of such a mansion and estate as this, together
with the abundant revenue necessary to uphold it. I have succeeded to
the extent of my utmost wish. And this is the estate which I have now
concluded to dispose of.”
“And your terms?” asked the Intelligencer, after taking down the
particulars with which the stranger had supplied him.
“Easy, abundantly easy!” answered the successful man, smiling, but with
a stern and almost frightful contraction of the brow, as if to quell an
inward pang. “I have been engaged in various sorts of business,—a
distiller, a trader to Africa, an East India merchant, a speculator in
the stocks,—and, in the course of these affairs, have contracted an
encumbrance of a certain nature. The purchaser of the estate shall
merely be required to assume this burden to himself.”
“I understand you,” said the Man of Intelligence, putting his pen
behind his ear. “I fear that no bargain can be negotiated on these
conditions. Very probably the next possessor may acquire the estate
with a similar encumbrance, but it will be of his own contracting, and
will not lighten your burden in the least.”
“And am I to live on,” fiercely exclaimed the stranger, “with the dirt
of these accursed acres and the granite of this infernal mansion
crushing down my soul? How, if I should turn the edifice into an
almshouse or a hospital, or tear it down and build a church?”
“You can at least make the experiment,” said the Intelligencer; “but
the whole matter is one which you must settle for yourself.”
The man of deplorable success withdrew, and got into his coach, which
rattled off lightly over the wooden pavements, though laden with the
weight of much land, a stately house, and ponderous heaps of gold, all
compressed into an evil conscience.
There now appeared many applicants for places; among the most
noteworthy of whom was a small, smoke-dried figure, who gave himself
out to be one of the bad spirits that had waited upon Dr. Faustus in
his laboratory. He pretended to show a certificate of character, which,
he averred, had been given him by that famous necromancer, and
countersigned by several masters whom he had subsequently served.
“I am afraid, my good friend,” observed the Intelligencer, “that your
chance of getting a service is but poor. Nowadays, men act the evil
spirit for themselves and their neighbors, and play the part more
effectually than ninety-nine out of a hundred of your fraternity.”
But, just as the poor fiend was assuming a vaporous consistency, being
about to vanish through the floor in sad disappointment and chagrin,
the editor of a political newspaper chanced to enter the office in
quest of a scribbler of party paragraphs. The former servant of Dr.
Faustus, with some misgivings as to his sufficiency of venom, was
allowed to try his hand in this capacity. Next appeared, likewise
seeking a service, the mysterious man in Red, who had aided Bonaparte
in his ascent to imperial power. He was examined as to his
qualifications by an aspiring politician, but finally rejected, as
lacking familiarity with the cunning tactics of the present day.
People continued to succeed each other with as much briskness as if
everybody turned aside, out of the roar and tumult of the city, to
record here some want, or superfluity, or desire. Some had goods or
possessions, of which they wished to negotiate the sale. A China
merchant had lost his health by a long residence in that wasting
climate. He very liberally offered his disease, and his wealth along
with it, to any physician who would rid him of both together. A soldier
offered his wreath of laurels for as good a leg as that which it had
cost him on the battle-field. One poor weary wretch desired nothing but
to be accommodated with any creditable method of laying down his life;
for misfortune and pecuniary troubles had so subdued his spirits that
he could no longer conceive the possibility of happiness, nor had the
heart to try for it. Nevertheless, happening to, overhear some
conversation in the Intelligence Office respecting wealth to be rapidly
accumulated by a certain mode of speculation, he resolved to live out
this one other experiment of better fortune. Many persons desired to
exchange their youthful vices for others better suited to the gravity
of advancing age; a few, we are glad to say, made earnest, efforts to
exchange vice for virtue, and, hard as the bargain was, succeeded in
effecting it. But it was remarkable that what all were the least
willing to give up, even on the most advantageous terms, were the
habits, the oddities, the characteristic traits, the little ridiculous
indulgences, somewhere between faults and follies, of which nobody but
themselves could understand the fascination.
The great folio, in which the Man of Intelligence recorded all these
freaks of idle hearts, and aspirations of deep hearts, and desperate
longings of miserable hearts, and evil prayers of perverted hearts,
would be curious reading were it possible to obtain it for publication.
Human character in its individual developments-human nature in the
mass—may best be studied in its wishes; and this was the record of them
all. There was an endless diversity of mode and circumstance, yet
withal such a similarity in the real groundwork, that any one page of
the volume-whether written in the days before the Flood, or the
yesterday that is just gone by, or to be written on the morrow that is
close at hand, or a thousand ages hence—might serve as a specimen of
the whole. Not but that there were wild sallies of fantasy that could
scarcely occur to more than one man’s brain, whether reasonable or
lunatic. The strangest wishes—yet most incident to men who had gone
deep into scientific pursuits, and attained a high intellectual stage,
though not the loftiest—were, to contend with Nature, and wrest from
her some secret, or some power, which she had seen fit to withhold from
mortal grasp. She loves to delude her aspiring students, and mock them