Twice-told tales
resemblance to humanity. But here is a little pony just big enough for
Annie to ride, and round and round he gallops in a circle, keeping time
with his trampling hoofs to a band of music. And here, with a laced
coat and a cocked hat, and a riding-whip in his hand—here comes a
little gentleman small enough to be king of the fairies and ugly enough
to be king of the gnomes, and takes a flying leap into the saddle.
Merrily, merrily plays the music, and merrily gallops the pony, and
merrily rides the little old gentleman.—Come, Annie, into the street
again; perchance we may see monkeys on horseback there.
Mercy on us! What a noisy world we quiet people live in! Did Annie ever
read the cries of London city? With what lusty lungs doth yonder man
proclaim that his wheelbarrow is full of lobsters! Here comes another,
mounted on a cart and blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast from a tin
horn, as much as to say, “Fresh fish!” And hark! a voice on high, like
that of a muezzin from the summit of a mosque, announcing that some
chimney-sweeper has emerged from smoke and soot and darksome caverns
into the upper air. What cares the world for that? But, well-a-day, we
hear a shrill voice of affliction—the scream of a little child, rising
louder with every repetition of that smart, sharp, slapping sound
produced by an open hand on tender flesh. Annie sympathizes, though
without experience of such direful woe.
Lo! the town-crier again, with some new secret for the public ear. Will
he tell us of an auction, or of a lost pocket-book or a show of
beautiful wax figures, or of some monstrous beast more horrible than
any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in
his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried
motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the
sounds are scattered forth in quick succession far and near.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
Now he raises his clear loud voice above all the din of the town. It
drowns the buzzing talk of many tongues and draws each man’s mind from
his own business; it rolls up and down the echoing street, and ascends
to the hushed chamber of the sick, and penetrates downward to the
cellar kitchen where the hot cook turns from the fire to listen. Who of
all that address the public ear, whether in church or court-house or
hall of state, has such an attentive audience as the town-crier! What
saith the people’s orator?
“Strayed from her home, a LITTLE GIRL of five years old, in a blue silk
frock and white pantalets, with brown curling hair and hazel eyes.
Whoever will bring her back to her afflicted mother—”
Stop, stop, town-crier! The lost is found.—Oh, my pretty Annie, we
forgot to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair and has
sent the town-crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting old
and young, for the loss of a little girl who has not once let go my
hand? Well, let us hasten homeward; and as we go forget not to thank
Heaven, my Annie, that after wandering a little way into the world you
may return at the first summons with an untainted and unwearied heart,
and be a happy child again. But I have gone too far astray for the
town-crier to call me back.
Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit throughout my ramble
with little Annie. Say not that it has been a waste of precious
moments, an idle matter, a babble of childish talk and a reverie of
childish imaginations about topics unworthy of a grown man’s notice.
Has it been merely this? Not so—not so. They are not truly wise who
would affirm it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of
aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple
thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth for little cause or
none, their grief soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us
is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost
forgotten and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as
yesterday, when life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether
to call ourselves young any more,—then it is good to steal away from
the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an
hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of still
fresh existence we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to
struggle onward and do our part in life—perhaps as fervently as ever,
but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly
wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!
WAKEFIELD
In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth,
of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time
from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very
uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be
condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far
from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record
of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be
found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in
London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in
the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or
friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,
dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home
every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so
great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned
certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his
wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the
door one evening quietly as from a day’s absence, and became a loving
spouse till death.
This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the
purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is
one, I think, which appeals to the general sympathies of mankind. We
know, each for himself, that none of us would perpetrate such a folly,
yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least, it
has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that the
story must be true and a conception of its hero’s character. Whenever
any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in
thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or
if he prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield’s
vagary, I bid him welcome, trusting that there will be a pervading
spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them, done up neatly
and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy
and every striking incident its moral.
What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea
and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his
matrimonial affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm,
habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most
constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest
wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so;
his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that tended to no
purpose or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning
of the term, made no part of Wakefield’s gifts. With a cold but not
depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous
thoughts nor perplexed with originality, who could have anticipated
that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place among the
doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked who was the
man in London the surest to perform nothing to-day which should be
remembered on the morrow, they would have thought of Wakefield. Only
the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She, without having
analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness that
had rusted into his inactive mind; of a peculiar sort of vanity, the
most uneasy attribute about him; of a disposition to craft which had
seldom produced more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets
hardly worth revealing; and, lastly, of what she called a little
strangeness sometimes in the good man. This latter quality is
indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk
of an October evening. His equipment is a drab greatcoat, a hat covered
with an oil-cloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one hand and a small
portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to
take the night-coach into the country. She would fain inquire the
length of his journey, its object and the probable time of his return,
but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery, interrogates him only
by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the
return-coach nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days, but,
at all events, to look for him at supper on Friday evening. Wakefield,
himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is before him. He
holds out his hand; she gives her own and meets his parting kiss in the
matter-of-course way of a ten years’ matrimony, and forth goes the
middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to perplex his good lady by
a whole week’s absence. After the door has closed behind him, she
perceives it thrust partly open and a vision of her husband’s face
through the aperture, smiling on her and gone in a moment. For the time
this little incident is dismissed without a thought, but long
afterward, when she has been more years a widow than a wife, that smile
recurs and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield’s visage.
In her many musings she surrounds the original smile with a multitude
of fantasies which make it strange and awful; as, for instance, if she
imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is frozen on his pale
features; or if she dreams of him in heaven, still his blessed spirit
wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its sake, when all others have
given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts whether she is a widow.
But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along the
street ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass of
London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us follow
close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous turns
and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the fireside of a
small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next street to his
own and at his journey’s end. He can scarcely trust his good-fortune in
having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at one time he was
delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted lantern, and again
there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from
the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he heard a voice shouting
afar and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless a dozen busybodies
had been watching him and told his wife the whole affair.
Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this
great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy
bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee
home to good Mrs. Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself
even for a little week from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she for
a single moment to deem thee dead or lost or lastingly divided from
her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true wife
for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections—not
that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly close again.
Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield
lies down betimes, and, starting from his first nap, spreads forth his
arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed, “No,”