Mosses from an old manse
with mysteries that seem but just beyond their utmost reach. To concoct
new minerals, to produce new forms of vegetable life, to create an
insect, if nothing higher in the living scale, is a sort of wish that
has often revelled in the breast of a man of science. An astronomer,
who lived far more among the distant worlds of space than in this lower
sphere, recorded a wish to behold the opposite side of the moon, which,
unless the system of the firmament be reversed, she can never turn
towards the earth. On the same page of the volume was written the wish
of a little child to have the stars for playthings.
The most ordinary wish, that was written down with wearisome
recurrence, was, of course, for wealth, wealth, wealth, in sums from a
few shillings up to unreckonable thousands. But in reality this
often-repeated expression covered as many different desires. Wealth is
the golden essence of the outward world, embodying almost everything
that exists beyond the limits of the soul; and therefore it is the
natural yearning for the life in the midst of which we find ourselves,
and of which gold is the condition of enjoyment, that men abridge into
this general wish. Here and there, it is true, the volume testified to
some heart so perverted as to desire gold for its own sake. Many wished
for power; a strange desire indeed, since it is but another form of
slavery. Old people wished for the delights of youth; a fop for a
fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier, for a
rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titian’s secret of
coloring; a prince, for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom and a
palace; a libertine, for his neighbor’s wife; a man of palate, for
green peas; and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The ambitious desires
of public men, elsewhere so craftily concealed, were here expressed
openly and boldly, side by side with the unselfish wishes of the
philanthropist for the welfare of the race, so beautiful, so
comforting, in contrast with the egotism that continually weighed self
against the world. Into the darker secrets of the Book of Wishes we
will not penetrate.
It would be an instructive employment for a student of mankind,
perusing this volume carefully and comparing its records with men’s
perfected designs, as expressed in their deeds and daily life, to
ascertain how far the one accorded with the other. Undoubtedly, in most
cases, the correspondence would be found remote. The holy and generous
wish, that rises like incense from a pure heart towards heaven, often
lavishes its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times. The foul,
selfish, murderous wish, that steams forth from a corrupted heart,
often passes into the spiritual atmosphere without being concreted into
an earthly deed. Yet this volume is probably truer, as a representation
of the human heart, than is the living drama of action as it evolves
around us. There is more of good and more of evil in it; more redeeming
points of the bad and more errors of the virtuous; higher upsoarings,
and baser degradation of the soul; in short, a more perplexing
amalgamation of vice and virtue than we witness in the outward world.
Decency and external conscience often produce a far fairer outside than
is warranted by the stains within. And be it owned, oil the other hand,
that a man seldom repeats to his nearest friend, any more than he
realizes in act, the purest wishes, which, at some blessed time or
other, have arisen from the depths of his nature and witnessed for him
in this volume. Yet there is enough on every leaf to make the good man
shudder for his own wild and idle wishes, as well as for the sinner,
whose whole life is the incarnation of a wicked desire.
But again the door is opened, and we hear the tumultuous stir of the
world,—a deep and awful sound, expressing in another form some portion
of what is written in the volume that lies before the Man of
Intelligence. A grandfatherly personage tottered hastily into the
office, with such an earnestness in his infirm alacrity that his white
hair floated backward as he hurried up to the desk, while his dim eyes
caught a momentary lustre from his vehemence of purpose. This venerable
figure explained that he was in search of To-morrow.
“I have spent all my life in pursuit of it,” added the sage old
gentleman, “being assured that To-morrow has some vast benefit or other
in store for me. But I am now getting a little in years, and must make
haste; for, unless I overtake To-morrow soon, I begin to be afraid it
will finally escape me.”
“This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable friend,” said the Man of
Intelligence, “is a stray child of Time, and is flying from his father
into the region of the infinite. Continue your pursuit, and you will
doubtless come up with him; but as to the earthly gifts which you
expect, he has scattered them all among a throng of Yesterdays.”
Obliged to content himself with this enigmatical response, the
grandsire hastened forth with a quick clatter of his staff upon the
floor; and, as he disappeared, a little boy scampered through the door
in chase of a butterfly which had got astray amid the barren sunshine
of the city. Had the old gentleman been shrewder, he might have
detected To-morrow under the semblance of that gaudy insect. The golden
butterfly glistened through the shadowy apartment, and brushed its
wings against the Book of Wishes, and fluttered forth again with the
child still in pursuit.
A man now entered, in neglected attire, with the aspect of a thinker,
but somewhat too rough-hewn and brawny for a scholar. His face was full
of sturdy vigor, with some finer and keener attribute beneath. Though
harsh at first, it was tempered with the glow of a large, warm heart,
which had force enough to heat his powerful intellect through and
through. He advanced to the Intelligencer and looked at him with a
glance of such stern sincerity that perhaps few secrets were beyond its
scope.
“I seek for Truth,” said he.
“It is precisely the most rare pursuit that has ever come under my
cognizance,” replied the Intelligencer, as he made the new inscription
in his volume. “Most men seek to impose some cunning falsehood upon
themselves for truth. But I can lend no help to your researches. You
must achieve the miracle for yourself. At some fortunate moment you may
find Truth at your side, or perhaps she may be mistily discerned far in
advance, or possibly behind you.”
“Not behind me,” said the seeker; “for I have left nothing on my track
without a thorough investigation. She flits before me, passing now
through a naked solitude, and now mingling with the throng of a popular
assembly, and now writing with the pen of a French philosopher, and now
standing at the altar of an old cathedral, in the guise of a Catholic
priest, performing the high mass. O weary search! But I must not
falter; and surely my heart-deep quest of Truth shall avail at last.”
He paused and fixed his eyes upon the Intelligencer with a depth of
investigation that seemed to hold commerce with the inner nature of
this being, wholly regardless of his external development.
“And what are you?” said he. “It will not satisfy me to point to this
fantastic show of an Intelligence Office and this mockery of business.
Tell me what is beneath it, and what your real agency in life and your
influence upon mankind.”
“Yours is a mind,” answered the Man of Intelligence, “before which the
forms and fantasies that conceal the inner idea from the multitude
vanish at once and leave the naked reality beneath. Know, then, the
secret. My agency in worldly action, my connection with the press, and
tumult, and intermingling, and development of human affairs, is merely
delusive. The desire of man’s heart does for him whatever I seem to do.
I am no minister of action, but the Recording Spirit.”
What further secrets were then spoken remains a mystery, inasmuch as
the roar of the city, the bustle of human business, the outcry of the
jostling masses, the rush and tumult of man’s life, in its noisy and
brief career, arose so high that it drowned the words of these two
talkers; and whether they stood talking in the moon, or in Vanity Fair,
or in a city of this actual world, is more than I can say.
ROGER MALVIN’S BURIAL
One of the few incidents of Indian warfare naturally susceptible of the
moonlight of romance was that expedition undertaken for the defence of
the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in the well-remembered
“Lovell’s Fight.” Imagination, by casting certain circumstances
judicially into the shade, may see much to admire in the heroism of a
little band who gave battle to twice their number in the heart of the
enemy’s country. The open bravery displayed by both parties was in
accordance with civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might not
blush to record the deeds of one or two individuals. The battle, though
so fatal to those who fought, was not unfortunate in its consequences
to the country; for it broke the strength of a tribe and conduced to
the peace which subsisted during several ensuing years. History and
tradition are unusually minute in their memorials of their affair; and
the captain of a scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual
a military renown as many a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the
incidents contained in the following pages will be recognized,
notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by such as have
heard, from old men’s lips, the fate of the few combatants who were in
a condition to retreat after “Lovell’s Fight.”
The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree-tops, beneath which
two weary and wounded men had stretched their limbs the night before.
Their bed of withered oak leaves was strewn upon the small level space,
at the foot of a rock, situated near the summit of one of the gentle
swells by which the face of the country is there diversified. The mass
of granite, rearing its smooth, flat surface fifteen or twenty feet
above their heads, was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, upon which the
veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters. On a tract
of several acres around this rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees had
supplied the place of the pines, which were the usual growth of the
land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close beside the
travellers.
The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of sleep;
for, so soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the
highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his recumbent posture
and sat erect. The deep lines of his countenance and the scattered gray
of his hair marked him as past the middle age; but his muscular frame
would, but for the effect of his wound, have been as capable of
sustaining fatigue as in the early vigor of life. Languor and
exhaustion now sat upon his haggard features; and the despairing glance
which he sent forward through the depths of the forest proved his own
conviction that his pilgrimage was at an end. He next turned his eyes
to the companion who reclined by his side. The youth—for he had
scarcely attained the years of manhood—lay, with his head upon his arm,
in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill of pain from his
wounds seemed each moment on the point of breaking. His right hand
grasped a musket; and, to judge from the violent action of his
features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision of the conflict of
which he was one of the few survivors. A shout deep and loud in his
dreaming fancy—found its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips; and,
starting even at the slight sound of his own voice, he suddenly awoke.
The first act of reviving recollection was to make anxious inquiries
respecting the condition of his wounded fellow-traveller. The latter
shook his head.