Mosses from an old manse
with occasional glances round the cabin, I presumed that we were all to
figure in a future volume of travels, and amused my ill-humor by
falling into the probable vein of his remarks. He would hold up an
imaginary mirror, wherein our reflected faces would appear ugly and
ridiculous, yet still retain all undeniable likeness to the originals.
Then, with more sweeping malice, he would make these caricatures the
representatives of great classes of my countrymen.
He glanced at the Virginia schoolmaster, a Yankee by birth, who, to
recreate himself, was examining a freshman from Schenectady College in
the conjugation of a Greek verb. Him the Englishman would portray as
the scholar of America, and compare his erudition to a school-boy’s
Latin theme made up of scraps ill-selected and worse put together. Next
the tourist looked at the Massachusetts farmer, who was delivering a
dogmatic harangue on the iniquity of Sunday mails. Here was the
far-famed yeoman of New England; his religion, writes the Englishman,
is gloom on the Sabbath, long prayers every morning and eventide, and
illiberality at all times; his boasted information is merely an
abstract and compound of newspaper paragraphs, Congress debates, caucus
harangues, and the argument and judge’s charge in his own lawsuits. The
book-monger cast his eye at a Detroit merchant, and began scribbling
faster than ever. In this sharp-eyed man, this lean man, of wrinkled
brow, we see daring enterprise and close-fisted avarice combined. Here
is the worshipper of Mammon at noonday; here is the three times
bankrupt, richer after every ruin; here, in one word, (O wicked
Englishman to say it!) here is the American. He lifted his eyeglass to
inspect a Western lady, who at once became aware of the glance,
reddened, and retired deeper into the female part of the cabin. Here
was the pure, modest, sensitive, and shrinking woman of
America,—shrinking when no evil is intended, and sensitive like
diseased flesh, that thrills if you but point at it; and strangely
modest, without confidence in the modesty of other people; and
admirably pure, with such a quick apprehension of all impurity.
In this manner I went all through the cabin, hitting everybody as hard
a lash as I could, and laying the whole blame on the infernal
Englishman. At length I caught the eyes of my own image in the
looking-glass, where a number of the party were likewise reflected, and
among them the Englishman, who at that moment was intently observing
myself.
The crimson curtain being let down between the ladies and gentlemen,
the cabin became a bedchamber for twenty persons, who were laid on
shelves one above another. For a long time our various incommodities
kept us all awake except five or six, who were accustomed to sleep
nightly amid the uproar of their own snoring, and had little to dread
from any other species of disturbance. It is a curious fact that these
snorers had been the most quiet people in the boat while awake, and
became peace-breakers only when others cease to be so, breathing tumult
out of their repose. Would it were possible to affix a wind-instrument
to the nose, and thus make melody of a snore, so that a sleeping lover
might serenade his mistress or a congregation snore a psalm-tune!
Other, though fainter, sounds than these contributed to my
restlessness. My head was close to the crimson curtain,—the sexual
division of the boat,—behind which I continually heard whispers and
stealthy footsteps; the noise of a comb laid on the table or a slipper
dropped on the floor; the twang, like a broken harp-string, caused by
loosening a tight belt; the rustling of a gown in its descent; and the
unlacing of a pair of stays. My ear seemed to have the properties of an
eye; a visible image pestered my fancy in the darkness; the curtain was
withdrawn between me and the Western lady, who yet disrobed herself
without a blush.
Finally all was hushed in that quarter. Still I was more broad awake
than through the whole preceding day, and felt a feverish impulse to
toss my limbs miles apart and appease the unquietness of mind by that
of matter. Forgetting that my berth was hardly so wide as a coffin, I
turned suddenly over and fell like an avalanche on the floor, to the
disturbance of the whole community of sleepers. As there were no bones
broken, I blessed the accident and went on deck. A lantern was burning
at each end of the boat, and one of the crew was stationed at the bows,
keeping watch, as mariners do on the ocean. Though the rain had ceased,
the sky was all one cloud, and the darkness so intense that there
seemed to be no world except the little space on which our lanterns
glimmered. Yet it was an impressive scene.
We were traversing the “long level,” a dead flat between Utica and
Syracuse, where the canal has not rise or fall enough to require a lock
for nearly seventy miles. There can hardly be a more dismal tract of
country. The forest which covers it, consisting chiefly of white-cedar,
black-ash, and other trees that live in excessive moisture, is now
decayed and death-struck by the partial draining of the swamp into the
great ditch of the canal. Sometimes, indeed, our lights were reflected
from pools of stagnant water which stretched far in among the trunks of
the trees, beneath dense masses of dark foliage. But generally the tall
stems and intermingled branches were naked, and brought into strong
relief amid the surrounding gloom by the whiteness of their decay.
Often we beheld the prostrate form of some old sylvan giant which had
fallen and crushed down smaller trees under its immense ruin. In spots
where destruction had been riotous, the lanterns showed perhaps a
hundred trunks, erect, half overthrown, extended along the ground,
resting on their shattered limbs or tossing them desperately into the
darkness, but all of one ashy white, all naked together, in desolate
confusion. Thus growing out of the night as we drew nigh, and vanishing
as we glided on, based on obscurity, and overhung and bounded by it,
the scene was ghostlike,—the very land of unsubstantial things, whither
dreams might betake themselves when they quit the slumberer’s brain.
My fancy found another emblem. The wild nature of America had been
driven to this desert-place by the encroachments of civilized man. And
even here, where the savage queen was throned on the ruins of her
empire, did we penetrate, a vulgar and worldly throng, intruding on her
latest solitude. In other lands decay sits among fallen palaces; but
here her home is in the forests.
Looking ahead, I discerned a distant light, announcing the approach of
another boat, which soon passed us, and proved to be a rusty old
scow,—just such a craft as the “Flying Dutchman” would navigate on the
canal. Perhaps it was that celebrated personage himself whom I
imperfectly distinguished at the helm in a glazed cap and rough
great-coat, with a pipe in his mouth, leaving the fumes of tobacco a
hundred yards behind. Shortly after our boatman blew a horn, sending a
long and melancholy note through the forest avenue, as a signal for
some watcher in the wilderness to be ready with a change of horses. We
had proceeded a mile or two with our fresh team when the tow-rope got
entangled in a fallen branch on the edge of the canal, and caused a
momentary delay, during which I went to examine the phosphoric light of
an old tree a little within the forest. It was not the first delusive
radiance that I had followed.
The tree lay along the ground, and was wholly converted into a mass of
diseased splendor, which threw a ghastliness around. Being full of
conceits that night, I called it a frigid fire, a funeral light,
illumining decay and death, an emblem of fame that gleams around the
dead man without warming him, or of genius when it owes its brilliancy
to moral rottenness, and was thinking that such ghostlike torches were
just fit to light up this dead forest or to blaze coldly in tombs,
when, starting from my abstraction, I looked up the canal. I
recollected myself, and discovered the lanterns glimmering far away.
“Boat ahoy!” shouted I, making a trumpet of my closed fists.
Though the cry must have rung for miles along that hollow passage of
the woods, it produced no effect. These packet-boats make up for their
snail-like pace by never loitering day nor night, especially for those
who have paid their fare. Indeed, the captain had an interest in
getting rid of me; for I was his creditor for a breakfast.
“They are gone, Heaven be praised!” ejaculated I; “for I cannot
possibly overtake them. Here am I, on the ‘long level,’ at midnight,
with the comfortable prospect of a walk to Syracuse, where my baggage
will be left. And now to find a house or shed wherein to pass the
night.” So thinking aloud, I took a flambeau from the old tree,
burning, but consuming not, to light my steps withal, and, like a
jack-o’-the-lantern, set out on my midnight tour.
THE OLD APPLE DEALER
The lover of the moral picturesque may sometimes find what he, seeks in
a character which is nevertheless of too negative a description to be
seized upon and represented to the imaginative vision by word-painting.
As an instance, I remember an old man who carries on a little trade of
gingerbread and apples at the depot of one of our railroads. While
awaiting the departure of the cars, my observation, flitting to and fro
among the livelier characteristics of the scene, has often settled
insensibly upon this almost hueless object. Thus, unconsciously to
myself and unsuspected by him, I have studied the old apple-dealer
until he has become a naturalized citizen of my inner world. How little
would he imagine—poor, neglected, friendless, unappreciated, and with
little that demands appreciation—that the mental eye of an utter
stranger has so often reverted to his figure! Many a noble form, many a
beautiful face, has flitted before me and vanished like a shadow. It is
a strange witchcraft whereby this faded and featureless old
apple-dealer has gained a settlement in my memory.
He is a small man, with gray hair and gray stubble beard, and is
invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff-color, closely buttoned,
and half concealing a pair of gray pantaloons; the whole dress, though
clean and entire, being evidently flimsy with much wear. His face,
thin, withered, furrowed, and with features which even age has failed
to render impressive, has a frost-bitten aspect. It is a moral frost
which no physical warmth or comfortableness could counteract. The
summer sunshine may fling its white heat upon him or the good fire of
the depot room may slake him the focus of its blaze on a winter’s day;
but all in vain; for still the old roan looks as if he were in a frosty
atmosphere, with scarcely warmth enough to keep life in the region
about his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, hopeless,
shivering aspect. He is not desperate,—that, though its etymology
implies no more, would be too positive an expression,—but merely devoid
of hope. As all his past life, probably, offers no spots of brightness
to his memory, so he takes his present poverty and discomfort as
entirely a matter of course! he thinks it the definition of existence,
so far as himself is concerned, to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It
may be added, that time has not thrown dignity as a mantle over the old
man’s figure: there is nothing venerable about him: you pity him
without a scruple.
He sits on a bench in the depot room; and before him, on the floor, are
deposited two baskets of a capacity to contain his whole stock in
trade. Across from one basket to the other extends a board, on which is
displayed a plate of cakes and gingerbread, some russet and red-cheeked
apples, and a box containing variegated sticks of candy, together with