Twice-told tales
pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horseman clad in
black, with a meditative brow, as of one who, whithersoever his steed
might bear him, would still journey through a mist of brooding thought.
He is a country preacher going to labor at a protracted meeting. The
next object passing townward is a butcher’s cart canopied with its arch
of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a “sauceman” driving a wagon full of
new potatoes, green ears of corn, beets, carrots, turnips and summer
squashes, and next two wrinkled, withered witch-looking old gossips in
an antediluvian chaise drawn by a horse of former generations and going
to peddle out a lot of huckleberries. See, there, a man trundling a
wheelbarrow-load of lobsters. And now a milk-cart rattles briskly
onward, covered with green canvas and conveying the contributions of a
whole herd of cows, in large tin canisters.
But let all these pay their toll and pass. Here comes a spectacle that
causes the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly, as if the travellers
brought sunshine with them and lavished its gladsome influence all
along the road. It is a barouche of the newest style, the varnished
panels of which reflect the whole moving panorama of the landscape, and
show a picture, likewise, of our friend with his visage broadened, so
that his meditative smile is transformed to grotesque merriment. Within
sits a youth fresh as the summer morn, and beside him a young lady in
white with white gloves upon her slender hands and a white veil flowing
down over her face. But methinks her blushing cheek burns through the
snowy veil. Another white-robed virgin sits in front. And who are these
on whom, and on all that appertains to them, the dust of earth seems
never to have settled? Two lovers whom the priest has blessed this
blessed morn and sent them forth, with one of the bride-maids, on the
matrimonial tour.—Take my blessing too, ye happy ones! May the sky not
frown upon you nor clouds bedew you with their chill and sullen rain!
May the hot sun kindle no fever in your hearts! May your whole life’s
pilgrimage be as blissful as this first day’s journey, and its close be
gladdened with even brighter anticipations than those which hallow your
bridal-night! They pass, and ere the reflection of their joy has faded
from his face another spectacle throws a melancholy shadow over the
spirit of the observing man. In a close carriage sits a fragile figure
muffled carefully and shrinking even from the mild breath of summer.
She leans against a manly form, and his arm enfolds her as if to guard
his treasure from some enemy. Let but a few weeks pass, and when he
shall strive to embrace that loved one, he will press only desolation
to his heart.
And now has Morning gathered up her dewy pearls and fled away. The sun
rolls blazing through the sky, and cannot find a cloud to cool his face
with. The horses toil sluggishly along the bridge, and heave their
glistening sides in short quick pantings when the reins are tightened
at the toll-house. Glisten, too, the faces of the travellers. Their
garments are thickly bestrewn with dust; their whiskers and hair look
hoary; their throats are choked with the dusty atmosphere which they
have left behind them. No air is stirring on the road. Nature dares
draw no breath lest she should inhale a stifling cloud of dust. “A hot
and dusty day!” cry the poor pilgrims as they wipe their begrimed
foreheads and woo the doubtful breeze which the river bears along with
it.—“Awful hot! Dreadful dusty!” answers the sympathetic toll-gatherer.
They start again to pass through the fiery furnace, while he re-enters
his cool hermitage and besprinkles it with a pail of briny water from
the stream beneath. He thinks within himself that the sun is not so
fierce here as elsewhere, and that the gentle air doth not forget him
in these sultry days. Yes, old friend, and a quiet heart will make a
dog-day temperate. He hears a weary footstep, and perceives a traveller
with pack and staff, who sits down upon the hospitable bench and
removes the hat from his wet brow. The toll-gatherer administers a cup
of cold water, and, discovering his guest to be a man of homely sense,
he engages him in profitable talk, uttering the maxims of a philosophy
which he has found in his own soul, but knows not how it came there.
And as the wayfarer makes ready to resume his journey he tells him a
sovereign remedy for blistered feet.
Now comes the noontide hour—of all the hours, nearest akin to midnight,
for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world
begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of
the day, when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The
draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner laden with wood
from the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably right athwart the
bridge. Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm a throng of impatient
travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig with the top
thrown back, both puffing cigars and swearing all sorts of forecastle
oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dashingly-dressed gentleman and
lady, he from a tailor’s shop-board and she from a milliner’s back
room—the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest
of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer’s day? Here is a
tin-pedler whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders like a
travelling meteor or opposition sun, and on the other side a seller of
spruce beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone
bottles. Here conic a party of ladies on horseback, in green ridings
habits, and gentlemen attendant, and there a flock of sheep for the
market, pattering over the bridge with a multitude nous clatter of
their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a hand-organ on his shoulder,
and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On this side, heralded by a
blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train of wagons conveying all
the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that a company of summer soldiers
marching from village to village on a festival campaign, attended by
the “brass band.” Now look at the scene, and it presents an emblem of
the mysterious confusion, the apparently insolvable riddle, in which
individuals, or the great world itself, seem often to be involved. What
miracle shall set all things right again?
But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcase through the chasm;
the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward and leave the bridge
vacant from end to end. “And thus,” muses the toll-gatherer, “have I
found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at a
stand.” The sage old man!
Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor
across the flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly
among the timbers of the bridge. Strollers come from the town to quaff
the freshening breeze. One or two let down long lines and haul up
flapping flounders or cunners or small cod, or perhaps an eel. Others,
and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot day still on their
cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed floating
upward with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp heavily along the
bridge and wistfully bethink them of their stables.—Rest, rest, thou
weary world! for to-morrow’s round of toil and pleasure will be as
wearisome as to-day’s has been, yet both shall bear thee onward a day’s
march of eternity.—Now the old toll-gatherer looks seaward and discerns
the lighthouse kindling on a far island, and the stars, too, kindling
in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of
heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal
travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like
a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon.
THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN
At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than a hundred
miles from home. The morning after my arrival—a September morning, but
warm and bright as any in July—I rambled into a wood of oaks with a few
walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The
ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young
saplings and traversed only by cattle-paths. The track which I chanced
to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border of grass as freshly
green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak.
One solitary sunbeam found its way down and played like a goldfish in
the water.
From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled
a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of
which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated
hue—reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand,
which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate the
spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water
violently agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain or
breaking the glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some living
creature were about to emerge—the naiad of the spring, perhaps, in the
shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy water-moss, a
belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How
would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her sitting
on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples and
throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her hands on
grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with morning
dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a careful housewife, to
clear the fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimy wood, and old
acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left by cattle in
drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were like a treasury
of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, he would find
only the drops of a summer shower glistening about the spot where he
had seen her.
Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should have
been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery
mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo!
another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct
in all the features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect of
a fair young girl with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression
laughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shadowy countenance,
till it seemed just what a fountain would be if, while dancing merrily
into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through the dim
rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimy twigs,
the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was diffused
among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness and
became a glory round that head so beautiful.
My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thus
tenanted and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was
the face; I held my breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away or
faded into nothing? I doubted whether it had ever been.
My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend where
that vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still,
waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest motion,
or even the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus have I
often started from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet in hopes to
wile it back. Deep were my musings as to the race and attributes of
that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she the daughter of my
fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under the lids of
children’s eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that one moment and
then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain, or fairy or