What Is Man? and Other Essays
She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her
malady—epilepsy. There are no words to express how grateful I am that
she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving
shelter of her own home.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
It is true. Jean is dead.
A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
yet to appear, and now I am writing—this.
CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.—Last night I went to Jean’s room at intervals, and
turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the
cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long
ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs
so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like
this one—Jean’s mother’s face—and kissed a brow that was just like this
one. And last night I saw again what I had seen then—that strange and
lovely miracle—the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by
the gracious hand of death! When Jean’s mother lay dead, all trace of
care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished
out of the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and
worshiped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.
About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense
that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must
be sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came
upon Jean’s dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not
spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow
and sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean’s
apartment since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so.
Always when Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when
she was in the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the
day. Her parlor was his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the
ground floor he always followed me about, and when I went upstairs he
went too—in a tumultuous gallop. But now it was different: after
patting him a little I went to the library—he remained behind; when I
went upstairs he did not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. He has
wonderful eyes—big, and kind, and eloquent. He can talk with them. He
is a beautiful creature, and is of the breed of the New York
police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no
occasion for it; but I have liked this one from the beginning, because
he belonged to Jean, and because he never barks except when there is
occasion—which is not oftener than twice a week.
In my wanderings I visited Jean’s parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of
my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home
from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I
only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will
keep them. Her hand has touched them—it is an accolade—they are noble,
now.
And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me—a thing I have often
wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn’t see it for the tears. She
will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the
mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
kind words she loved so well, “Merry Christmas to Jean!” If she could
only have lived one day longer!
At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to
one of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could
spare—and more, most likely.
CHRISTMAS NIGHT.—This afternoon they took her away from her room. As
soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at
the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara’s
chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it
was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God
upon it.
They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited,
and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the
trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him,
then went his way as silently as he had come. _He knows._
At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it—that Jean could not
see it! She so loved the snow.
The snow continued to fall. At six o’clock the hearse drew up to the
door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine
began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert’s “Impromptu,” which was
Jean’s favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then
he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my
request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
their last hours in this life.
From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and
presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come
back any more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were
babies together—he and her beloved old Katy—were conducting her to her
distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother’s side once
more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.
DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o’clock this morning. He
was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
hereafter.
The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow
drives across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime—and Jean
not here to see.
2:30 P.M.—It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred
miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene is
the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean’s coffin stands where her
mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy’s
coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother’s stood five years
and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.
FIVE O’CLOCK.—It is all over.
When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but
I could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said _we_ would be a family. We
said we would be close comrades and happy—just we two. That fair dream
was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in
my mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true—oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.
And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
In the grave—if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
I
If I understand the idea, the _Bazar _invites several of us to write
upon the above text. It means the change in my life’s course which
introduced what must be regarded by me as the most _important
_condition of my career. But it also implies—without intention,
perhaps—that that turning-point _itself _was the creator of the new
condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too
much credit. It is only the _last _link in a very long chain of
turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not
any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors.
Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed
date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have
left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought
about _some other_ result. I know we have a fashion of saying “such and
such an event was the turning-point in my life,” but we shouldn’t say
it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain
makes it the most _conspicuous _link; in real importance it has no
advantage over any one of its predecessors.
Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on
the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, “We may
still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for
us but to fight it out in arms.”
This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big
and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage
by stage, link by link. This was the _last _link—merely the last one,
and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the
inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of
Neptune.
You, the reader, have a _personal _interest in that link, and so have
I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.
While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river
with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to
the other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: “Let us go whither the
omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. _The Die Is
Cast_.”
So he crossed—and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar’s life-chain, too; and a
necessary one. We don’t know his name, we never hear of him again; he
was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he
was there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying
blast that was to make up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping
down the aisles of history forever.
If the stranger hadn’t been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed. With
such results! Such vast events—each a link in the _human race_’s
life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next
one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the
empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon
its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands—and so on; link by
link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of
America being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of
English and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my
ancestors among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in
Missouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidable
results of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with his
trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he _couldn’t_, for he was an
appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What would have
happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only know that the
things that did happen would not have happened. They might have been
replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and
results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that interests me
personally is that I would not be _here _now, but somewhere else; and
probably black—there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he crossed.
And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared anything
about it before.
II
To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I
have been professionally literary something more than forty years.
There have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was
the last link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary
guild is the most _conspicuous _link in that chain. _because _it was