LBrides Community » 2007

Archive for April, 2007

Sugababes - Ace reject

See my love is all I can give you
Nothing more ’cause life is how I want it to be
With you and me
Staying together, yeah

Take it all, I’m here boy
I got what you need here, talk to me
And help me breathe
I wanna hold on
To sweet memories

Wait for you to be there
All my life, I need
Someone to make me feel good
And I wish that it was you

We break up and make it up
Back and forth we never stop
Everytime a change of heart
I can’t keep up
When you say yes, then I say no
When it turns hot, we make it cold
But still something between us holds together

Every journey in other side
Images always pass me by
Feel like leaving the walk behind
When I think of you

Every moment I’m frightened is
Had to erase all your messages
Couldn’t handle the things we said
Still I’m feeling you

It’s driving me crazy, baby
Lately you’ve been slipping away from me
I try to keep holding on
I cannot be wrong
There’s something I didn’t see

We break up and make it up
Back and forth we never stop
Everytime a change of heart
I can’t keep up
When you say yes then I say no
When it turns hot, we make it cold
But still something between us holds together

Some time I lied to me
I think our time is over
And ain’t it funny how sweet I dream
But the bed keeps on getting colder
Sometimes when I close my eyes
It feels like I’m living by numbers
Cos I’ve been holding you so damn tight
I gotta stop cos it’s pulling me under

It’s driving me crazy, baby
Lately you’ve been slipping away from me
I try to keep holding on
I cannot be wrong
There’s something I didn’t see

1 comment April 30th, 2007

Outkast - The train

All aboard
Or all y’all bored?
It’s good to have y’all back now
Ladies and gents
Yall already know what it is
God don’t make no mistakes
God don’t make no mistakes

Little do they know when I was brought up into this game
Point ain’t always in a vibe for spitting I made a change
Like the diaper on the bottom of my baby daughter
I wasn’t ready to be no father, maybe, kind of, sorta
‘Cause when I saw her I sweat and made a tear fall
Not tears of sorrow but of joy so listen here y’all
I grabbed the mic and moved the crowd then disappeared dog
Back in ‘94 that was the motherfucking year homeboy
Then that southernplayalistic went platinum
Stacks on deck they ain’t tell us to pay our taxes
Walking around the table in the kitchen we was practicing
Reciting rhymes to sharpern minds now lets deliver to the masses

Now the food time roll
Now it’s time for me to go
I say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Time to spread my wings
And high up in the sky
I can fly, I fly, I fly, so high

Welcome to my life I think its time I take it back
I got to give you all the facts s you can see what type of cat
That you dealing with now on ATLiens we was killing it
And then my auntie pass she was like my mother I was feeling it
The first person close to me to die I needed healing
But I see her as an angel when I look up at the ceiling
Like my daddy and grandaddy on both shoulders steady chilling
So you got to keep on living like each day is the beginning
It’s yo birthday even on your worst day
Live it like the first day I’m Antwan Andre
Or General Patton if you know bout Purple Ribbon or Got Purp
I, I be on that kryptonite that means I can’t be hurt
Gotta leave this place it’s been cool but I got to go

Now the food time roll
Now it’s time for me to go
I say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Time to spread my wings
And high up in the sky
I can fly, I fly, I fly, so high

Even on the train
Should’ve ask two per men
I’ll be back again
(Know we been though alot I ain’t perfect but I swear
to you I’m a changed man)
Even on the train
Should’ve asked two per men
I’ll be back again
(From the caboose)

Now it’s time to say goodbye they should’ve turned me loose
I was all about my team but now I call upon my crew
I’m a family type of person but I’m deadly dolo too
And you can achieve anything that you put your heart into
See the second hand will never stop and neither will the clock
The nigga big still hit the stage by hisself and still rock
When your faith is in the right place see he ain’t gon let you flop
You can say whatever you want (Bet you can’t do it like me) Boy stop!!

Before you can say you can’t at all
There’s no excuse this time don’t be afraid to fly
You never know what day the doors will close
It’s time to say goodbye time to pack up and ride
Got to leave this place it’s been cool but I gotta go

Now the food time roll
Now it’s time for me to go
I say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Time to spread my wings
And high up in the sky
I can fly, I fly, I fly, so high

Add comment April 30th, 2007

Omarion - Ice-box

Fussin’ and fightin’, we back at it again
I know that, it’s my fault, but you don’t understand (no)
I got memories, this is crazy
You ain’t nothing like the girl I used to know
Good with ma, good with pa, cool with all my niggas
I should try, truth is I wanna let u in, but no
Damn these memories, and it’s crazy
You ain’t nothing like the girl I used to know

Girl I really wanna work this out, cause I’m tired of fightin’
And I really hope you still want me the way I want you
I said I really wanna work this out, damn girl I’m tryin’
It’s no excuse, no excuse
But I got this

I got this icebox where my heart used to be (but I got this)
I got this icebox where my heart used to be (said I got this)
I’m so cold, I’m so cold, I’m so cold, I’m so cold
I’m so cold, I’m so cold, I’m so cold

Why can’t I get it right, just can’t let it go
I opened up, she let me down, I won’t feel that no more
I got memories, this is crazy
She ain’t nothing like the girl I used to know
I don’t mean to take it out on you baby but I can’t help it
‘Cause my heart is in the same ol’ condition that baby left it
And I, I apologize, for makin’ you cry
Look me in my eye and promise you won’t do me the same

Girl I really wanna work this out, ’cause I’m tired of fightin’
And I really hope you still want me the way I want you
I said I really wanna work this out, damn girl I’m tryin’
It’s no excuse, no excuse
But I got this

I don’t wanna be stuck up in this cold cold world (’cause I don’t wanna be) [2x]
Don’t wanna mess this up better keep your eye on me girl [6x]

Add comment April 30th, 2007

Sheryl Crow - Try not to remember

Tried to erase
the smell of freedom
And every face that
happened to meet mine

What still remains
Something unrelenting
I’ll say the names
Of those I left behind

In the Still of the night
Do you laugh do you cry
When you try not to remember

If it’s a question of faith
Do you love do you hate
If you try not to remember

I see your eyes
In my own reflection
These broken skies
We can’t begin to mend

We are the same
Fighting for something
What’s there to gain
When there’s no means to an end

In the Still of the night
Do you laugh do you cry
When you try not to remember

If it’s a question of faith
Do you love do you hate
If you try not to remember

In the Still of the night
Do you laugh do you cry
When you try not to remember

If it’s a question of faith
Do you love do you hate
If you try not to remember

Try not to remember

Add comment April 30th, 2007

Ayo - Life is real

Some people say
that i’m too open
they say
it’s not good to let them know everything about me
and they say
one day they will use every little thing against me
but i don’t mind
maybe they’re right
that’s just how it is and i got nothing to hide

i live my life the way i want
i got nothing to hide
nothing at all
life is not a fairy tale
they should know that
life is real

i live my life the way i want
i got nothing to hide
nothing at all
life is not a fairy tale
life is about more
’cause life is real

life is real
yeah
life is real

A friend of mine
gave me an advice
he said be careful and think twice
before you talk about your life
protect yourself
just keep quiet
the more they know the harder they try
to spoil your ways to spread lies
and even though i know he could be right i just said i

i live my life the way i want
i got nothing to hide
nothing at all
life is not a fairy tale
they should know that
life is real

life is real
life is real
life is real

life…

life is real

Me i be ayo ogunmakin fear no foe
i am real from head to toe
like life is real and you should know

Me i be ayo ogunmakin fear no foe
i am real from head to toe
just like my heart and like my soul

Add comment April 30th, 2007

The Wives of The Dead

The following story, the simple and domestic incidents of which may be
deemed scarcely worth relating, after such a lapse of time, awakened some
degree of interest, a hundred years ago, in a principal seaport of the
Bay Province. The rainy twilight of an autumn day,–a parlor on the
second floor of a small house, plainly furnished, as beseemed the
middling circumstances of its inhabitants, yet decorated with little
curiosities from beyond the sea, and a few delicate specimens of Indian
manufacture,–these are the only particulars to be premised in regard to
scene and season. Two young and comely women sat together by the
fireside, nursing their mutual and peculiar sorrows. They were the
recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman, and two
successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances
of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic. The universal sympathy
excited by this bereavement drew numerous condoling guests to the
habitation of the widowed sisters. Several, among whom was the minister,
had remained till the verge of evening; when, one by one, whispering many
comfortable passages of Scripture, that were answered by more abundant
tears, they took their leave, and departed to their own happier homes.
The mourners, though not insensible to the kindness of their friends, had
yearned to be left alone. United, as they had been, by the relationship
of the living, and now more closely so by that of the dead, each felt as
if whatever consolation her grief admitted were to be found in the bosom
of the other. They joined their hearts, and wept together silently. But
after an hour of such indulgence, one of the sisters, all of whose
emotions were influenced by her mild, quiet, yet not feeble character,
began to recollect the precepts of resignation and endurance which piety
had taught her, when she did not think to need them. Her misfortune,
besides, as earliest known, should earliest cease to interfere with her
regular course of duties; accordingly, having placed the table before the
fire, and arranged a frugal meal, she took the hand of her companion.

“Come, dearest sister; you have eaten not a morsel to-day,” she said.
“Arise, I pray you, and let us ask a blessing on that which is provided
for us.”

Her sister-in-law was of a lively and irritable temperament, and the
first pangs of her sorrow had been expressed by shrieks and passionate
lamentation. She now shrunk from Mary’s words, like a wounded sufferer
from a hand that revives the throb.

“There is no blessing left for me, neither will I ask it!” cried
Margaret, with a fresh burst of tears. “Would it were His will that I
might never taste food more!”

Yet she trembled at these rebellious expressions, almost as soon as they
were uttered, and, by degrees, Mary succeeded in bringing her sister’s
mind nearer to the situation of her own. Time went on, and their usual
hour of repose arrived. The brothers and their brides, entering the
married state with no more than the slender means which then sanctioned
such a step, had confederated themselves in one household, with equal
rights to the parlor, and claiming exclusive privileges in two sleeping-
rooms contiguous to it. Thither the widowed ones retired, after heaping
ashes upon the dying embers of their fire, and placing a lighted lamp
upon the hearth. The doors of both chambers were left open, so that a
part of the interior of each, and the beds with their unclosed curtains,
were reciprocally visible. Sleep did not steal upon the sisters at one
and the same time. Mary experienced the effect often consequent upon
grief quietly borne, and soon sunk into temporary forgetfulness, while
Margaret became more disturbed and feverish, in proportion as the night
advanced with its deepest and stillest hours. She lay listening to the
drops of rain, that came down in monotonous succession, unswayed by a
breath of wind; and a nervous impulse continually caused her to lift her
head from the pillow, and gaze into Mary’s chamber and the intermediate
apartment. The cold light of the lamp threw the shadows of the furniture
up against the wall, stamping them immovably there, except when they were
shaken by a sudden flicker of the flame. Two vacant arm-chairs were in
their old positions on opposite sides of the hearth, where the brothers
had been wont to sit in young and laughing dignity, as heads of families;
two humbler seats were near them, the true thrones of that little empire,
where Mary and herself had exercised in love a power that love had won.
The cheerful radiance of the fire had shone upon the happy circle, and
the dead glimmer of the lamp might have befitted their reunion now.
While Margaret groaned in bitterness, she heard a knock at the street
door.

“How would my heart have leapt at that sound but yesterday!” thought she,
remembering the anxiety with which she had long awaited tidings from her
husband.

“I care not for it now; let them begone, for I will not arise.”

But even while a sort of childish fretfulness made her thus resolve, she
was breathing hurriedly, and straining her ears to catch a repetition of
the summons. It is difficult to be convinced of the death of one whom we
have deemed another self. The knocking was now renewed in slow and
regular strokes, apparently given with the soft end of a doubled fist,
and was accompanied by words, faintly heard through several thicknesses
of wall. Margaret looked to her sister’s chamber, and beheld her still
lying in the depths of sleep. She arose, placed her foot upon the floor,
and slightly arrayed herself, trembling between fear and eagerness as she
did so.

“Heaven help me!” sighed she. “I have nothing left to fear, and methinks
I am ten times more a coward than ever.”

Seizing the lamp from the hearth, she hastened to the window that
overlooked the street-door. It was a lattice, turning upon hinges; and
having thrown it back, she stretched her head a little way into the moist
atmosphere. A lantern was reddening the front of the house, and melting
its light in the neighboring puddles, while a deluge of darkness
overwhelmed every other object. As the window grated on its hinges, a
man in a broad-brimmed hat and blanket-coat stepped from under the
shelter of the projecting story, and looked upward to discover whom his
application had aroused. Margaret knew him as a friendly innkeeper of
the town.

“What would you have, Goodman Parker?” cried the widow.

“Lackaday, is it you, Mistress Margaret?” replied the innkeeper. “I was
afraid it might be your sister Mary; for I hate to see a young woman in
trouble, when I have n’t a word of comfort to whisper her.”

“For Heaven’s sake, what news do you bring?” screamed Margaret.

“Why, there has been an express through the town within this half-hour,”
said Goodman Parker, “travelling from the eastern jurisdiction with
letters from the governor and council. He tarried at my house to refresh
himself with a drop and a morsel, and I asked him what tidings on the
frontiers. He tells me we had the better in the skirmish you wot of, and
that thirteen men reported slain are well and sound, and your husband
among them. Besides, he is appointed of the escort to bring the
captivated Frenchers and Indians home to the province jail. I judged you
would n’t mind being broke of your rest, and so I stepped over to tell
you. Good night.”

So saying, the honest man departed; and his lantern gleamed along the
street, bringing to view indistinct shapes of things, and the fragments
of a world, like order glimmering through chaos, or memory roaming over
the past. But Margaret stayed not to watch these picturesque effects.
Joy flashed into her heart, and lighted it up at once; and breathless,
and with winged steps, she flew to the bedside of her sister. She
paused, however, at the door of the chamber, while a thought of pain
broke in upon her.

“Poor Mary!” said she to herself. “Shall I waken her, to feel her sorrow
sharpened by my happiness? No; I will keep it within my own bosom till
the morrow.”

She approached the bed, to discover if Mary’s sleep were peaceful. Her
face was turned partly inward to the pillow, and had been hidden there to
weep; but a look of motionless contentment was now visible upon it, as if
her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because its dead had sunk
down so far within. Happy is it, and strange, that the lighter sorrows
are those from which dreams are chiefly fabricated. Margaret shrunk from
disturbing her sister-in-law, and felt as if her own better fortune had
rendered her involuntarily unfaithful, and as if altered and diminished
affection must be the consequence of the disclosure she had to make.
With a sudden step she turned away. But joy could not long be repressed,
even by circumstances that would have excited heavy grief at another
moment. Her mind was thronged with delightful thoughts, till sleep stole
on, and transformed them to visions, more delightful and more wild, like
the breath of winter (but what a cold comparison!) working fantastic
tracery upon a window.

When the night was far advanced, Mary awoke with a sudden start. A vivid
dream had latterly involved her in its unreal life, of which, however,
she could only remember that it had been broken in upon at the most
interesting point. For a little time, slumber hung about her like a
morning mist, hindering her from perceiving the distinct outline of her
situation. She listened with imperfect consciousness to two or three
volleys of a rapid and eager knocking; and first she deemed the noise a
matter of course, like the breath she drew; next, it appeared a thing in
which she had no concern; and lastly, she became aware that it was a
summons necessary to be obeyed. At the same moment, the pang of
recollection darted into her mind; the pall of sleep was thrown back from
the face of grief; the dim light of the chamber, and the objects therein
revealed, had retained all her suspended ideas, and restored them as soon
as she unclosed her eyes. Again there was a quick peal upon the street-
door. Fearing that her sister would also be disturbed, Mary wrapped
herself in a cloak and hood, took the lamp from the hearth, and hastened
to the window. By some accident, it had been left unhasped, and yielded
easily to her hand.

“Who’s there?” asked Mary, trembling as she looked forth.

The storm was over, and the moon was up; it shone upon broken clouds
above, and below upon houses black with moisture, and upon little lakes
of the fallen rain, curling into silver beneath the quick enchantment of
a breeze. A young man in a sailor’s dress, wet as if he had come out of
the depths of the sea, stood alone under the window. Mary recognized him
as one whose livelihood was gained by short voyages along the coast; nor
did she forget that, previous to her marriage, he had been an
unsuccessful wooer of her own.

“What do you seek here, Stephen?” said she.

“Cheer up, Mary, for I seek to comfort you,” answered the rejected lover.
“You must know I got home not ten minutes ago, and the first thing my
good mother told me was the news about your husband. So, without saying
a word to the old woman, I clapped on my hat, and ran out of the house.
I could n’t have slept a wink before speaking to you, Mary, for the sake
of old times.”

“Stephen, I thought better of you!” exclaimed the widow, with gushing
tears and preparing to close the lattice; for she was no whit inclined to
imitate the first wife of Zadig.

“But stop, and hear my story out,” cried the young sailor. “I tell you
we spoke a brig yesterday afternoon, bound in from Old England. And who
do you think I saw standing on deck, well and hearty, only a bit thinner
than he was five months ago?”

Mary leaned from the window, but could not speak. “Why, it was your
husband himself,” continued the generous seaman. “He and three others
saved themselves on a spar, when the Blessing turned bottom upwards. The
brig will beat into the bay by daylight, with this wind, and you’ll see
him here to-morrow. There’s the comfort I bring you, Mary, and so good
night.”

He hurried away, while Mary watched him with a doubt of waking reality,
that seemed stronger or weaker as he alternately entered the shade of the
houses, or emerged into the broad streaks of moonlight. Gradually,
however, a blessed flood of conviction swelled into her heart, in
strength enough to overwhelm her, had its increase been more abrupt.
Her first impulse was to rouse her sister-in-law, and communicate the new-
born gladness. She opened the chamber-door, which had been closed in the
course of the night, though not latched, advanced to the bedside, and was
about to lay her hand upon the slumberer’s shoulder. But then she
remembered that Margaret would awake to thoughts of death and woe,
rendered not the less bitter by their contrast with her own felicity.
She suffered the rays of the lamp to fall upon the unconscious form of
the bereaved one. Margaret lay in unquiet sleep, and the drapery was
displaced around her; her young cheek was rosy-tinted, and her lips half
opened in a vivid smile; an expression of joy, debarred its passage by
her sealed eyelids, struggled forth like incense from the whole
countenance.

“My poor sister! you will waken too soon from that happy dream,” thought
Mary.

Before retiring, she set down the lamp, and endeavored to arrange the
bedclothes so that the chill air might not do harm to the feverish
slumberer. But her hand trembled against Margaret’s neck, a tear also
fell upon her cheek, and she suddenly awoke.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Add comment April 30th, 2007

The White Old Maid

The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows, and showed a
spacious chamber, richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
lattice, the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor;
the ghostly light, through the other, slept upon a bed, falling
between the heavy silken curtains, and illuminating the face of a
young man. But, how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features!
and how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes; it
was a corpse, in its burial-clothes.

Suddenly, the fixed features seemed to move, with dark emotion.
Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain, waving
betwixt the dead face and the moonlight, as the door of the chamber
opened, and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in
the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of
triumph, as she bent over the pale corpse-pale as itself–and pressed
her living lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from
that long kiss, her features writhed, as if a proud heart were
fighting with its anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the
corpse had moved responsive to her own. Still an illusion! The
silken curtain had waved, a second time, betwixt the dead face and the
moonlight, as another fair young girl unclosed the door, and glided,
ghost-like, to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both
beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead between them. But she, who
had first entered, was proud and stately; and the other, a soft and
fragile thing.

“Away!” cried the lofty one. “Thou hadst him living! The dead is
mine!”

“Thine!” returned the other, shuddering. “Well hast thou spoken!
The dead is thine!”

The proud girl started, and stared into her face, with a ghastly look.
But a wild and mournful expression passed across the features of the
gentle one; and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head
pillowed beside that of the corpse, and her hair mingling with his
dark locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow
had bewildered her.

“Edith!” cried her rival.

Edith groaned, as with a sudden compression of the heart; and removing
her cheek from the dead youth’s pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.

“Wilt thou betray me?” said the latter, calmly.

“Till the dead bid me speak, I will be silent,” answered Edith. “Leave
us alone together! Go, and live many years, and then return, and tell
me of thy life. He, too, will be here! Then, if thou tellest of
sufferings more than death, we will both forgive thee.”

“And what shall be the token?” asked the proud girl, as if her heart
acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.

“This lock of hair,” said Edith, lifting one of the dark, clustering
curls, that lay heavily on the dead man’s brow.

The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse, and
appointed a day and hour, far, far in time to come, for their next
meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at the
motionless countenance, and departed,–yet turned again and trembled,
ere she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned
upon her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form fading into the
moonlight? Scorning her own weakness, she went forth, and perceived
that a negro slave was waiting in the passage, with a wax light, which
he held between her face and his own, and regarded her, as she
thought, with an ugly expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on
high, the slave lighted her down the staircase, and undid the portal
of the mansion. The young clergyman of the town had just ascended the
steps, and bowing to the lady, passed in without a word.

Years, many years rolled on; the world seemed new again, so much older
was it grown, since the night when those pale girls had clasped their
hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval, a lonely woman
had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the town,
as the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.” A taint of insanity had
affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad, and gentle, so utterly
free from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless
fantasies, unmolested by the world, with whose business or pleasures
she had naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the
daylight, except to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne
along the street, in sunshine, rain, or snow, whether a pompous train,
of the rich and proud, thronged after it, or few and humble were the
mourners, behind them came the lonely woman, in a long, white garment,
which the people called her shroud. She took no place among the
kindred or the friends, but stood at the door to hear the funeral
prayer, and walked in the rear of the procession, as one whose earthly
charge it was to haunt the house of mourning, and be the shadow of
affliction, and see that the dead were duly buried. So long had this
been her custom, that the inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of
every funeral, as much as the coffin pall, or the very corpse itself,
and augured ill of the sinner’s destiny, unless the “Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet” came gliding, like a ghost, behind. Once, it is said,
she affrighted a bridal party, with her pale presence, appearing
suddenly in the illuminated hall, just as the priest was uniting a
false maid to a wealthy man, before her lover had been dead a year.
Evil was the omen to that marriage! Sometimes she stole forth by
moonlight, and visited the graves of venerable Integrity, and wedded
Love, and virgin Innocence, and every spot where the ashes of a kind
and faithful heart were mouldering. Over the hillocks of those favored
dead would she stretch out her arms, with a gesture, as if she were
scattering seeds; and many believed that she brought them from the
garden of Paradise; for the graves, which she had visited, were green
beneath the snow, and covered with sweet flowers from April to
November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the
tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful, and fantastic
life, till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations
wondered how the dead had ever been buried, or mourners had endured
their grief, without the “Old Maid in the Winding Sheet.”

Still, years went on, and still she followed funerals, and was not yet
summoned to her own festival of death. One afternoon, the great
street of the town was all alive with business and bustle, though the
sun now gilded only the upper half of the church-spire, having left
the housetops and loftiest trees in shadow. The scene was cheerful
and animated, in spite of the sombre shade between the high brick
buildings. Here were pompous merchants, in white wigs and laced
velvet; the bronzed faces of sea-captains; the foreign garb and air of
Spanish creoles; and the disdainful port of natives of Old England;
all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two hack settlers,
negotiating sales of timber, from forests where axe had never sounded.
Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an embroidered
petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes, and courtesying,
with lofty grace, to the punctilious obeisances of the gentlemen. The
life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far from an old
mansion, that stood somewhat back from the pavement, surrounded by
neglected grass, with a strange air of loneliness, rather deepened
than dispelled by the throng so near it. Its site would have been
suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange, or a brick block,
lettered all over with various signs; or the large house itself might
have made a noble tavern, with the “King’s Arms” swinging before it,
and guests in every chamber, instead of the present solitude. But,
owing to some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion had
been long without a tenant, decaying from year to year, and throwing
the stately gloom of its shadow over the busiest part of the town.
Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure, unlike any that
have been described, was observed at a distance down the street.

“I espy a strange sail, yonder,” remarked a Liverpool captain; “that
woman in the long, white garment!”

The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others,
who, at the same moment, caught a glimpse of the figure that had
attracted his notice. Almost immediately, the various topics of
conversation gave place to speculations, in an undertone, on this
unwonted occurrence.

“Can there be a funeral, so late this afternoon?” inquired some.

They looked for the signs of death at every door,–the sexton, the
hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives,–all that makes up the
woful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt
spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its
bell, which had always tolled till now, when this figure appeared in
the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to
its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a funeral, except
the apparition of the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.”

“What may this portend?” asked each man of his neighbor.

All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in
their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were
prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living, of one
whose presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a
comet is to the earth, was that sad woman to the town. Still she
moved on, while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and
the proud and the humble stood aside, that her white garment might not
wave against them. It was a long, loose robe, of spotless purity.
Its wearer appeared very old, pale, emaciated, and feeble, yet glided
onward, without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her
course, a littly rosy boy burst forth from a door, and ran, with open
arms, towards the ghostly woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her
bloodless lips. She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with
an expression of no earthly sweetness, so that the child shivered and
stood awe-struck, rather than affrighted, while the Old Maid passed
on. Perhaps her garment might have been polluted even by an infant’s
touch; perhaps her kiss would have been death to the sweet boy, within
a year.

“She is but a shadow,” whispered the superstitious. “The child put
forth his arms and could not grasp her robe!”

The wonder was increased, when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch
of the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the
iron knocker, and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture,
that some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had
impelled the poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth; all
gone from their home, long since and forever, unless their ghosts
still haunted it,–fit company for the “Old Maid in the Winding-
Sheet.” An elderly man approached the steps, and reverently
uncovering his gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.

“None, Madam,” said he, “have dwelt in this house these fifteen years
agone,–no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral
you may remember to have followed. His heirs being ill-agreed among
themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin.”

The Old Maid looked slowly round, with a slight gesture of one hand,
and a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like
than ever, in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the
hamnmer, and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a
footstep was now heard, coming down the staircase of the old mansion,
which all conceived to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly,
yet heavily, like the pace of an aged and infirm person, the step
approached, more distinct on every downward stair, till it reached the
portal. The bar fell on the inside; the door was opened. One upward
glance, towards the church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded,
was the last that the people saw of the “Old Maid in the Winding-
Sheet.”

“Who undid the door?” asked many.

This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one
could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting
against an inference, which might be drawn, affirmed that the person
within was a negro, and bore a singular resemblance to old Caesar,
formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years
before.

“Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family,” said one, half
seriously.

“Let us wait here,” replied another. “More guests will knock at the
door, anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open!”

Twilight had overspread the town, before the crowd began to separate,
or the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another
was wending his way homeward, when a coach–no common spectacle in
those days–drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned
equipage, hanging close to the ground, with arms on the panels, a
footman behind, and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front,
–the whole giving an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was
something awful, in the heavy rumbling of the wheels. The coach
rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the deserted
mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.

“Whose grand coach is this?” asked a very inquisitive body.

The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,
gave three raps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach-
door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day
examined the shield of arms on the panel.

“Azure, a lion’s head erased, between three flower-deluces,” said he;
then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged.
The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after a long
residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his birth and
wealth had given him no mean station. “He left no child,” continued
the herald, “and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the
coach appertains to his widow.”

Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made, had not the
speaker suddenly been struck dumb, by the stern eye of an ancient
lady, who thrust forth her head from the coach, preparing to descend.
As she emerged, the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her
figure dignified, in spite of age and infirmity,–a stately ruin, but
with a look, at once, of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid
features had an awe about them, unlike that of the white Old Maid, but
as of something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-
headed cane; the door swung open, as she ascended,–and the light of a
torch glittered on the embroidery of her dress, and gleamed on the
pillars of the porch. After a momentary pause–a glance backwards–
and then a desperate effort–she went in. The decipherer of the coat
of arms had ventured up the lowest step, and shrinking back
immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that the torch was held by
the very image of old Caesar.

“But, such a hideous grin,” added he, “was never seen on the face of
mortal man, black or white! It will haunt me till my dying day.”

Meantime, the coach had wheeled round, with a prodigious clatter on
the pavement, and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight,
while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone, when
the people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the
ancient lady, the spectre of old Caesar, and the Old Maid herself,
were not all a strangely combined delusion, with some dark purport in
its mystery. The whole town was astir, so that, instead of
dispersing, the crowd continually increased, and stood gazing up at
the windows of the mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The
elders, glad to indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the
long-faded splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given,
and the guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and noble
ones from abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These graphic
reminiscences seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom they
referred. So strong was the impression, on some of the more
imaginative hearers, that two or three were seized with trembling
fits, at one and the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly
heard three other raps of the iron knocker.

“Impossible!” exclaimed others. “See! The moon shines beneath the
porch, and shows every part of it, except in the narrow shade of that
pillar. There is no one there!”

“Did not the door open?” whispered one of these fanciful persons.

“Didst thou see it, too?” said his companion, in a startled tone.

But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea, that a third
visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A
few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red
gleam, like that of a torch, had shone through the great front window,
as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This, too,
was pronounced a mere fantasy. But, at once, the whole multitude
started, and each man beheld his own terror painted in the faces of
all the rest.

“What an awful thing is this!” cried they.

A shriek, too fearfully distinct for doubt, had been heard within the
mansion, breaking forth suddenly, and succeeded by a deep stillness,
as if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
whether to fly from the very sight of the house, or to rush trembling
in, and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and
affright, they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their
clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught
them and their fathers the way to heaven, for more than the space of
an ordinary lifetime. He was a reverend figure, with long, white hair
upon his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast, and a back so bent
over his staff, that he seemed to be looking downward, continually, as
if to choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time
before the good old man, being deaf, and of impaired intellect, could
be made to comprehend such portions of the affair as were
comprehensible at all. But, when possessed of the facts, his energies
assumed unexpected vigor.

“Verily,” said the old gentleman, “it will be fitting that I enter the
mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke, lest any harm should
have befallen that true Christian woman, whom ye call the ‘Old Maid in
the Winding-Sheet.’”

Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the
mansion, with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man, who
had spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterwards explained
the shield of arms, and recognized the features of the negro. Like
their predecessors, they gave three raps, with the iron hammer.

“Old Caesar cometh not,” observed the priest. “Well, I wot, he no
longer doth service in this mansion.”

“Assuredly, then, it was something worse, in old Caesar’s likeness!”
said the other adventurer.

“Be it as God wills,” answered the clergyman. “See! my strength,
though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to open this heavy door. Let
us enter, and pass up the staircase.”

Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a very
old man’s mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs, the aged
clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing aside,
and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus
practising all the gestures of one who makes his way through a throng.
Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked around, with sad and
solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary locks, and was
evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.

“Reverend Sir,” said his attendant, who conceived this a very suitable
prelude to their further search, “would it not be well, that the
people join with us in prayer?”

“Well-a-day!” cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.
“Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were
present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as
many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase.

“Of a truth, I saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have
prayed at their burials, one after another, and the ‘Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet’ hath seen them to their graves!”

Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his
staff, and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from
each deserted chamber, but no menial, to answer their summons. They
therefore walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to the
great front window, through which was seen the crowd, in the shadow
and partial moonlight of the street beneath. On their right hand was
the open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left. The
clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.

“Within that chamber,” observed he, “a whole lifetime since, did I sit
by the death-bed of a goodly young man, who, being now at the last
gasp–”

Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas which had
now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his
companion’s hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence,
that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light than the
moonbeams, which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber.
It was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In a high-
hacked oaken arm-chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her
breast, and her head thrown back, sat the “Old Maid in the Winding-
Sheet.” The stately dame had fallen on her knees, with her forehead
on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor, and the
other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of
hair, once sable, now discolored with a greenish mould. As the priest
and layman advanced into the chamber, the Old Maid’s features assumed
such a resemblance of shifting expression, that they trusted to hear
the whole mystery explained, by a single word. But it was only the
shadow of a tattered curtain, waving betwixt the dead face and the
moonlight.

“Both dead!” said the venerable man. “Then who shall divulge the
secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind, like the light
and shadow across the Old Maid’s face. And now’t is gone!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Add comment April 30th, 2007

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
woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of some forsaken
maid, who had drowned herself for love? Or, in good truth, had a lovely
girl, with a warm heart, and lips that would bear pressure, stolen softly
behind me, and thrown her image into the spring?

I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with a
spell upon me, which drew me back, that same afternoon, to the haunted
spring. There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling, and the sunbeam
glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog, the hermit
of that solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckled snout and made
himself invisible, all except a pair of long legs, beneath a stone.
Methought he had a devilish look! I could have slain him!

Thus did the Vision leave me; and many a doleful day succeeded to the
parting moment. By the spring, and in the wood, and on the hill, and
through the village; at dewy sunrise, burning noon, and at that magic
hour of sunset, when she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, but in
vain. Weeks came and went, months rolled away, and she appeared not in
them. I imparted my mystery to none, but wandered to and fro, or sat in
solitude, like one that had caught a glimpse of heaven, and could take no
more joy on earth. I withdrew into an inner world, where my thoughts
lived and breathed, and the Vision in the midst of them. Without
intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a romance,
conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others and my own,
and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy and despair had
their end in bliss. O, had I the burning fancy of my early youth, with
manhood’s colder gift, the power of expression, your hearts, sweet
ladies, should flutter at my tale!

In the middle of January, I was summoned home. The day before my
departure, visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the Vision, I
found that the spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow and a
glare of winter sunshine, on the hill of the rainbow. “Let me hope,”
thought I, “or my heart will be as icy as the fountain, and the whole
world as desolate as this snowy hill.” Most of the day was spent in
preparing for the journey, which was to commence at four o’clock the next
morning. About an hour after supper, when all was in readiness, I
descended from my chamber to the sitting-room, to take leave of the old
clergyman and his family, with whom I had been an inmate. A gust of wind
blew out my lamp as I passed through the entry.

According to their invariable custom, so pleasant a one when the fire
blazes cheerfully, the family were sitting in the parlor, with no other
light than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman’s scanty
stipend compelled him to use all sorts of economy, the foundation of his
fires was always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which would
smoulder away, from morning till night, with a dull warmth and no flame.
This evening the heap of tan was newly put on, and surmounted with three
sticks of red-oak, full of moisture, and a few pieces of dry pine, that
had not yet kindled. There was no light, except the little that came
sullenly from two half-burned brands, without even glimmering on the
andirons. But I knew the position of the old minister’s arm-chair, and
also where his wife sat, with her knitting-work, and how to avoid his two
daughters, one a stout country lass, and the other a consumptive girl.
Groping through the gloom, I found my own place next to that of the son,
a learned collegian, who had come home to keep school in the village
during the winter vacation. I noticed that there was less room than
usual, to-night, between the collegian’s chair and mine.

As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said for some
time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the regular
click of the matron’s knitting-needles. At times, the fire threw out a
brief and dusky gleam, which twinkled on the old man’s glasses, and
hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faint to portray the
individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts? Dreamy as the
scene was, might it not be a type of the mode in which departed people,
who had known and loved each other here, would hold communion in
eternity? We were aware of each other’s presence, not by sight, nor
sound, nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it not be so
among the dead?

The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter, addressing a
remark to some one in the circle, whom she called Rachel. Her tremulous
and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice that
made me start, and bend towards the spot whence it had proceeded. Had I
ever heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up so many old
recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things familiar, yet
unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of her features who had
spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor? Whom had my heart
recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened, to catch her gentle
breathing, and strove, by the intensity of my gaze, to picture forth a
shape where none was visible.

Suddenly, the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow; and
where the darkness had been, there was she,–the Vision of the Fountain!
A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow, and
appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze, and
be gone. Yet, her cheek was rosy and life-like, and her features, in the
bright warmth of the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than my
recollection of them. She knew me! The mirthful expression that had
laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance, when I beheld her
faint beauty in the fountain, was laughing and dimpling there now. One
moment our glance mingled,–the next, down rolled the heap of tan upon
the kindled wood,–and darkness snatched away that Daughter of the Light,
and gave her back to me no more!

Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery be
revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire, and
had left home for a boarding-school, the morning after I arrived, and
returned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to an angel,
it is what every youthful lover does for his mistress. Therein consists
the essence of my story. But slight the change, sweet maids, to make
angels of yourselves!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Add comment April 30th, 2007

A Virtuoso’s Collection

The other day, having a leisure hour at my disposal, I stepped into
a new museum, to which my notice was casually drawn by a small and
unobtrusive sign: “TO BE SEEN HERE, A VIRTUOSO’S COLLECTION.” Such
was the simple yet not altogether unpromising announcement that
turned my steps aside for a little while from the sunny sidewalk of
our principal thoroughfare. Mounting a sombre staircase, I pushed
open a door at its summit, and found myself in the presence of a
person, who mentioned the moderate sum that would entitle me to
admittance.

“Three shillings, Massachusetts tenor,” said he. “No, I mean half a
dollar, as you reckon in these days.”

While searching my pocket for the coin I glanced at the doorkeeper,
the marked character and individuality of whose aspect encouraged me
to expect something not quite in the ordinary way. He wore an
old-fashioned great-coat, much faded, within which his meagre person
was so completely enveloped that the rest of his attire was
undistinguishable. But his visage was remarkably wind-flushed,
sunburnt, and weather-worn, and had a most, unquiet, nervous, and
apprehensive expression. It seemed as if this man had some
all-important object in view, some point of deepest interest to be
decided, some momentous question to ask, might he but hope for a
reply. As it was evident, however, that I could have nothing to do
with his private affairs, I passed through an open doorway, which
admitted me into the extensive hall of the museum.

Directly in front of the portal was the bronze statue of a youth
with winged feet. He was represented in the act of flitting away
from earth, yet wore such a look of earnest invitation that it
impressed me like a summons to enter the hall.

“It is the original statue of Opportunity, by the ancient sculptor
Lysippus,” said a gentleman who now approached me. “I place it at
the entrance of my museum, because it is not at all times that one
can gain admittance to such a collection.”

The speaker was a middle-aged person, of whom it was not easy to
determine whether he had spent his life as a scholar or as a man of
action; in truth, all outward and obvious peculiarities had been
worn away by an extensive and promiscuous intercourse with the
world. There was no mark about him of profession, individual
habits, or scarcely of country; although his dark complexion and
high features made me conjecture that he was a native of some
southern clime of Europe. At all events, he was evidently the
virtuoso in person.

“With your permission,” said he, “as we have no descriptive
catalogue, I will accompany you through the museum and point out
whatever may be most worthy of attention. In the first place, here
is a choice collection of stuffed animals.”

Nearest the door stood the outward semblance of a wolf, exquisitely
prepared, it is true, and showing a very wolfish fierceness in the
large glass eyes which were inserted into its wild and crafty head.
Still it was merely the skin of a wolf, with nothing to distinguish
it from other individuals of that unlovely breed.

“How does this animal deserve a place in your collection?” inquired
I.

“It is the wolf that devoured Little Red Riding Hood,” answered the
virtuoso; “and by his side–with a milder and more matronly look, as
you perceive–stands the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus.”

“Ah, indeed!” exclaimed I. “And what lovely lamb is this with the
snow-white fleece, which seems to be of as delicate a texture as
innocence itself?”

“Methinks you have but carelessly read Spenser,” replied my guide,
“or you would at once recognize the ‘milk-white lamb’ which Una led.
But I set no great value upon the lamb. The next specimen is better
worth our notice.”

“What!” cried I, “this strange animal, with the black head of an ox
upon the body of a white horse? Were it possible to suppose it, I
should say that this was Alexander’s steed Bucephalus.”

“The same,” said the virtuoso. “And can you likewise give a name to
the famous charger that stands beside him?”

Next to the renowned Bucephalus stood the mere skeleton of a horse,
with the white bones peeping through his ill-conditioned hide; but,
if my heart had not warmed towards that pitiful anatomy, I might as
well have quitted the museum at once. Its rarities had not been
collected with pain and toil from the four quarters of the earth,
and from the depths of the sea, and from the palaces and sepulchres
of ages, for those who could mistake this illustrious steed.

“It, is Rosinante!” exclaimed I, with enthusiasm.

And so it proved. My admiration for the noble and gallant horse
caused me to glance with less interest at the other animals,
although many of them might have deserved the notice of Cuvier
himself. There was the donkey which Peter Bell cudgelled so
soundly, and a brother of the same species who had suffered a
similar infliction from the ancient prophet Balaam. Some doubts
were entertained, however, as to the authenticity of the latter
beast. My guide pointed out the venerable Argus, that faithful dog
of Ulysses, and also another dog (for so the skin bespoke it),
which, though imperfectly preserved, seemed once to have had three
heads. It was Cerberus. I was considerably amused at detecting in
an obscure corner the fox that became so famous by the loss of his
tail. There were several stuffed cats, which, as a dear lover of
that comfortable beast, attracted my affectionate regards. One was
Dr. Johnson’s cat Hodge; and in the same row stood the favorite cats
of Mahomet, Gray, and Walter Scott, together with Puss in Boots, and
a cat of very noble aspect–who had once been a deity of ancient
Egypt. Byron’s tame bear came next. I must not forget to mention
the Eryruanthean boar, the skin of St. George’s dragon, and that of
the serpent Python; and another skin with beautifully variegated
hues, supposed to have been the garment of the “spirited sly snake,”
which tempted Eve. Against the walls were suspended the horns of the
stag that Shakespeare shot; and on the floor lay the ponderous shell
of the tortoise which fell upon the head of Aeschylus. In one row,
as natural as life, stood the sacred bull Apis, the “cow with the
crumpled horn,” and a very wild-looking young heifer, which I guessed
to be the cow that jumped over the moon. She was probably killed by
the rapidity of her descent. As I turned away, my eyes fell upon an
indescribable monster, which proved to be a griffin.

“I look in vain,” observed I, “for the skin of an animal which might
well deserve the closest study of a naturalist,–the winged horse,
Pegasus.”

“He is not yet dead,” replied the virtuoso; “but he is so hard
ridden by many young gentlemen of the day that I hope soon to add
his skin and skeleton to my collection.”

We now passed to the next alcove of the hall, in which was a
multitude of stuffed birds. They were very prettily arranged, some
upon the branches of trees, others brooding upon nests, and others
suspended by wires so artificially that they seemed in the very act
of flight. Among them was a white dove, with a withered branch of
olive-leaves in her mouth.

“Can this be the very dove,” inquired I, “that brought the message
of peace and hope to the tempest-beaten passengers of the ark?”

“Even so,” said my companion.

“And this raven, I suppose,” continued I, “is the same that fed
Elijah in the wilderness.”

“The raven? No,” said the virtuoso; “it is a bird of modern date.
He belonged to one Barnaby Rudge, and many people fancied that the
Devil himself was disguised under his sable plumage. But poor Grip
has drawn his last cork, and has been forced to ’say die’ at last.
This other raven, hardly less curious, is that in which the soul of
King George I. revisited his lady-love, the Duchess of Kendall.”

My guide next pointed out Minerva’s owl and the vulture that preyed
upon the liver of Prometheus. There was likewise the sacred ibis of
Egypt, and one of the Stymphalides which Hercules shot in his sixth
labor. Shelley’s skylark, Bryant’s water-fowl, and a pigeon from
the belfry of the Old South Church, preserved by N. P. Willis, were
placed on the same perch. I could not but shudder on beholding
Coleridge’s albatross, transfixed with the Ancient Mariner’s
crossbow shaft. Beside this bird of awful poesy stood a gray goose
of very ordinary aspect.

“Stuffed goose is no such rarity,” observed I. “Why do you preserve
such a specimen in your museum?”

“It is one of the flock whose cackling saved the Roman Capitol,”
answered the virtuoso. “Many geese have cackled and hissed both
before and since; but none, like those, have clamored themselves
into immortality.”

There seemed to be little else that demanded notice in this
department of the museum, unless we except Robinson Crusoe’s parrot,
a live phoenix, a footless bird of paradise, and a splendid peacock,
supposed to be the same that once contained the soul of Pythagoras.
I therefore passed to the next alcove, the shelves of which were
covered with a miscellaneous collection of curiosities such as are
usually found in similar establishments. One of the first things
that took my eye was a strange-looking cap, woven of some substance
that appeared to be neither woollen, cotton, nor linen.

“Is this a magician’s cap?” I asked.

“No,” replied the virtuoso; it is merely Dr. Franklin’s cap of
asbestos. But here is one which, perhaps, may suit you better. It
is the wishing-cap of Fortunatus. Will you try it on?”

“By no means,” answered I, putting it aside with my hand. “The day
of wild wishes is past with me. I desire nothing that may not come
in the ordinary course of Providence.”

“Then probably,” returned the virtuoso, “you will not be tempted to
rub this lamp?”

While speaking, he took from the shelf an antique brass lamp,
curiously wrought with embossed figures, but so covered with
verdigris that the sculpture was almost eaten away.

“It is a thousand years,” said he, “since the genius of this lamp
constructed Aladdin’s palace in a single night. But he still
retains his power; and the man who rubs Aladdin’s lamp has but to
desire either a palace or a cottage.”

“I might desire a cottage,” replied I; “but I would have it founded
on sure and stable truth, not on dreams and fantasies. I have
learned to look for the real and the true.”

My guide next showed me Prospero’s magic wand, broken into three
fragments by the hand of its mighty master. On the same shelf lay
the gold ring of ancient Gyges, which enabled the wearer to walk
invisible. On the other side of the alcove was a tall looking-glass
in a frame of ebony, but veiled with a curtain of purple silk,
through the rents of which the gleam of the mirror was perceptible.

“This is Cornelius Agrippa’s magic glass,” observed the virtuoso.
“Draw aside the curtain, and picture any human form within your
mind, and it will be reflected in the mirror.”

“It is enough if I can picture it within my mind,” answered I. “Why
should I wish it to be repeated in the mirror? But, indeed, these
works of magic have grown wearisome to me. There are so many
greater wonders in the world, to those who keep their eyes open and
their sight undimmed by custom, that all the delusions of the old
sorcerers seem flat and stale. Unless you can show me something
really curious, I care not to look further into your museum.”

“Ah, well, then,” said the virtuoso, composedly, “perhaps you may
deem some of my antiquarian rarities deserving of a glance.”

He pointed out the iron mask, now corroded with rust; and my heart
grew sick at the sight of this dreadful relic, which had shut out a
human being from sympathy with his race. There was nothing half so
terrible in the axe that beheaded King Charles, nor in the dagger
that slew Henry of Navarre, nor in the arrow that pierced the heart
of William Rufus,–all of which were shown to me. Many of the
articles derived their interest, such as it was, from having been
formerly in the possession of royalty. For instance, here was
Charlemagne’s sheepskin cloak, the flowing wig of Louis Quatorze,
the spinning-wheel of Sardanapalus, and King Stephen’s famous
breeches which cost him but a crown. The heart of the Bloody Mary,
with the word “Calais” worn into its diseased substance, was
preserved in a bottle of spirits; and near it lay the golden case in
which the queen of Gustavus Adolphus treasured up that hero’s heart.
Among these relics and heirlooms of kings I must not forget the
long, hairy ears of Midas, and a piece of bread which had been
changed to gold by the touch of that unlucky monarch. And as
Grecian Helen was a queen, it may here be mentioned that I was
permitted to take into my hand a lock of her golden hair and the
bowl which a sculptor modelled from the curve of her perfect breast.
Here, likewise, was the robe that smothered Agamemnon, Nero’s
fiddle, the Czar Peter’s brandy-bottle, the crown of Semiramis, and
Canute’s sceptre which he extended over the sea. That my own land
may not deem itself neglected, let me add that I was favored with a
sight of the skull of King Philip, the famous Indian chief, whose
head the Puritans smote off and exhibited upon a pole.

“Show me something else,” said I to the virtuoso. “Kings are in
such an artificial position that people in the ordinary walks of
life cannot feel an interest in their relics. If you could show me
the straw hat of sweet little Nell, I would far rather see it than a
king’s golden crown.”

“There it is,” said my guide, pointing carelessly with his staff to
the straw hat in question. “But, indeed, you are hard to please.
Here are the seven-league boots. Will you try them on?”

“Our modern railroads have superseded their use,” answered I; “and
as to these cowhide boots, I could show you quite as curious a pair
at the Transcendental community in Roxbury.”

We next examined a collection of swords and other weapons, belonging
to different epochs, but thrown together without much attempt at
arrangement. Here Was Arthur’s sword Excalibar, and that of the Cid
Campeader, and the sword of Brutus rusted with Caesar’s blood and
his own, and the sword of Joan of Arc, and that of Horatius, and
that with which Virginius slew his daughter, and the one which
Dionysius suspended over the head of Damocles. Here also was Arria’s
sword, which she plunged into her own breast, in order to taste of
death before her husband. The crooked blade of Saladin’s cimeter
next attracted my notice. I know not by what chance, but so it
happened, that the sword of one of our own militia generals was
suspended between Don Quixote’s lance and the brown blade of
Hudibras. My heart throbbed high at the sight of the helmet of
Miltiades and the spear that was broken in the breast of
Epaminondas. I recognized the shield of Achilles by its resemblance
to the admirable cast in the possession of Professor Felton.
Nothing in this apartment interested me more than Major Pitcairn’s
pistol, the discharge of which, at Lexington, began the war of the
Revolution, and was reverberated in thunder around the land for
seven long years. The bow of Ulysses, though unstrung for ages, was
placed against the wall, together with a sheaf of Robin Hood’s
arrows and the rifle of Daniel Boone.

“Enough of weapons,” said I, at length; “although I would gladly
have seen the sacred shield which fell from heaven in the time of
Numa. And surely you should obtain the sword which Washington
unsheathed at Cambridge. But the collection does you much credit.
Let us pass on.”

In the next alcove we saw the golden thigh of Pythagoras, which had
so divine a meaning; and, by one of the queer analogies to which the
virtuoso seemed to be addicted, this ancient emblem lay on the same
shelf with Peter Stuyvesant’s wooden leg, that was fabled to be of
silver. Here was a remnant of the Golden Fleece, and a sprig of
yellow leaves that resembled the foliage of a frost-bitten elm, but
was duly authenticated as a portion of the golden branch by which
AEneas gained admittance to the realm of Pluto. Atalanta’s golden
apple and one of the apples of discord were wrapped in the napkin of
gold which Rampsinitus brought from Hades; and the whole were
deposited in the golden vase of Bias, with its inscription: “TO THE
WISEST.”

“And how did you obtain this vase?” said I to the virtuoso.

“It was given me long ago,” replied he, with a scornful expression
in his eye, “because I had learned to despise all things.”

It had not escaped me that, though the virtuoso was evidently a man
of high cultivation, yet he seemed to lack sympathy with the
spiritual, the sublime, and the tender. Apart from the whim that
had led him to devote so much time, pains, and expense to the
collection of this museum, he impressed me as one of the hardest and
coldest men of the world whom I had ever met.

“To despise all things!” repeated I. “This, at best, is the wisdom
of the understanding. It is the creed of a man whose soul, whose
better and diviner part, has never been awakened, or has died out of
him.”

“I did not think that you were still so young,” said the virtuoso.
“Should you live to my years, you will acknowledge that the vase of
Bias was not ill bestowed.”

Without further discussion of the point, he directed my attention to
other curiosities. I examined Cinderella’s little glass slipper,
and compared it with one of Diana’s sandals, and with Fanny
Elssler’s shoe, which bore testimony to the muscular character of
her illustrious foot. On the same shelf were Thomas the Rhymer’s
green velvet shoes, and the brazen shoe of Empedocles which was
thrown out of Mount AEtna. Anacreon’s drinking-cup was placed in
apt juxtaposition with one of Tom Moore’s wineglasses and Circe’s
magic bowl. These were symbols of luxury and riot; but near them
stood the cup whence Socrates drank his hemlock, and that which Sir
Philip Sidney put from his death-parched lips to bestow the draught
upon a dying soldier. Next appeared a cluster of tobacco-pipes,
consisting of Sir Walter Raleigh’s, the earliest on record, Dr.
Parr’s, Charles Lamb’s, and the first calumet of peace which was
ever smoked between a European and an Indian. Among other musical
instruments, I noticed the lyre of Orpheus and those of Homer and
Sappho, Dr. Franklin’s famous whistle, the trumpet of Anthony Van
Corlear, and the flute which Goldsmith played upon in his rambles
through the French provinces. The staff of Peter the Hermit stood
in a corner with that of good old Bishop Jewel, and one of ivory,
which had belonged to Papirius, the Roman senator. The ponderous
club of Hercules was close at hand. The virtuoso showed me the
chisel of Phidias, Claude’s palette, and the brush of Apelles,
observing that he intended to bestow the former either on Greenough,
Crawford, or Powers, and the two latter upon Washington Allston.
There was a small vase of oracular gas from Delphos, which I trust
will be submitted to the scientific analysis of Professor Silliman.
I was deeply moved on beholding a vial of the tears into which Niobe
was dissolved; nor less so on learning that a shapeless fragment of
salt was a relic of that victim of despondency and sinful regrets,–
Lot’s wife. My companion appeared to set great value upon some
Egyptian darkness in a blacking-jug. Several of the shelves were
covered by a collection of coins, among which, however, I remember
none but the Splendid Shilling, celebrated by Phillips, and a
dollar’s worth of the iron money of Lycurgus, weighing about fifty
pounds.

Walking carelessly onward, I had nearly fallen over a huge bundle,
like a peddler’s pack, done up in sackcloth, and very securely
strapped and corded.

“It is Christian’s burden of sin,” said the virtuoso.

“O, pray let us open it!” cried I. “For many a year I have longed
to know its contents.”

“Look into your own consciousness and memory,” replied the virtuoso.
“You will there find a list of whatever it contains.”

As this was all undeniable truth, I threw a melancholy look at the
burden and passed on. A collection of old garments, banging on
pegs, was worthy of some attention, especially the shirt of Nessus,
Caesar’s mantle, Joseph’s coat of many colors, the Vicar of Bray’s
cassock, Goldsmith’s peach-bloom suit, a pair of President
Jefferson’s scarlet breeches, John Randolph’s red baize
hunting-shirt, the drab small-clothes of the Stout Gentleman, and the
rags of the “man all tattered and torn.” George Fox’s hat impressed
me with deep reverence as a relic of perhaps the truest apostle that
has appeared on earth for these eighteen hundred years. My eye was
next attracted by an old pair of shears, which I should have taken
for a memorial of some famous tailor, only that the virtuoso pledged
his veracity that they were the identical scissors of Atropos. He
also showed me a broken hourglass which had been thrown aside by
Father Time, together with the old gentleman’s gray forelock,
tastefully braided into a brooch. In the hour-glass was the handful
of sand, the grains of which had numbered the years of the Cumeean
sibyl. I think it was in this alcove that I saw the inkstand which
Luther threw at the Devil, and the ring which Essex, while under
sentence of death, sent to Queen Elizabeth. And here was the
blood-incrusted pen of steel with which Faust signed away his
salvation.

The virtuoso now opened the door of a closet and showed me a lamp
burning, while three others stood unlighted by its side. One of the
three was the lamp of Diogenes, another that of Guy Fawkes, and the
third that which Hero set forth to the midnight breeze in the high
tower of Ahydos.

“See!” said the virtuoso, blowing with all his force at the lighted
lamp.

The flame quivered and shrank away from his breath, but clung to the
wick, and resumed its brilliancy as soon as the blast was exhausted.

“It is an undying lamp from the tomb of Charlemagne,” observed my
guide. “That flame was kindled a thousand years ago.”

“How ridiculous to kindle an unnatural light in tombs!” exclaimed I.
“We should seek to behold the dead in the light of heaven. But what
is the meaning of this chafing-dish of glowing coals?”

“That,” answered the virtuoso, “is the original fire which
Prometheus stole from heaven. Look steadfastly into it, and you
will discern another curiosity.”

I gazed into that fire,–which, symbolically, was the origin of all
that was bright and glorious in the soul of man,–and in the midst
of it, behold a little reptile, sporting with evident enjoyment of
the fervid heat! It was a salamander.

“What a sacrilege!” cried I, with inexpressible disgust. “Can you
find no better use for this ethereal fire than to cherish a
loathsome reptile in it? Yet there are men who abuse the sacred fire
of their own souls to as foul and guilty a purpose.”

The virtuoso made no answer except by a dry laugh and an assurance
that the salamander was the very same which Benvenuto Cellini had
seen in his father’s household fire. He then proceeded to show me
other rarities; for this closet appeared to be the receptacle of
what he considered most valuable in his collection.

“There,” said he, “is the Great Carbuncle of the White Mountains.”

I gazed with no little interest at this mighty gem, which it had
been one of the wild projects of my youth to discover. Possibly it
might have looked brighter to me in those days than now; at all
events, it had not such brilliancy as to detain me long from the
other articles of the museum. The virtuoso pointed out to me a
crystalline stone which hung by a gold chain against the wall.

“That is the philosopher’s stone,” said he.

“And have you the elixir vita which generally accompanies it?”
inquired I.

“Even so; this urn is filled with it,” he replied. “A draught would
refresh you. Here is Hebe’s cup; will you quaff a health from it?”

My heart thrilled within me at the idea of such a reviving draught;
for methought I had great need of it after travelling so far on the
dusty road of life. But I know not whether it were a peculiar
glance in the virtuoso’s eye, or the circumstance that this most
precious liquid was contained in an antique sepulchral urn, that
made me pause. Then came many a thought with which, in the calmer
and better hours of life, I had strengthened myself to feel that
Death is the very friend whom, in his due season, even the happiest
mortal should be willing to embrace.

“No; I desire not an earthly immortality,” said I.

Were man to live longer on the earth, the spiritual would die out of
him. The spark of ethereal fire would be choked by the material,
the sensual. There is a celestial something within us that
requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere of heaven to preserve
it from decay and ruin. I will have none of this liquid. You do
well to keep it in a sepulchral urn; for it would produce death
while bestowing the shadow of life.”

“All this is unintelligible to me,” responded my guide, with
indifference. “Life–earthly life–is the only good. But you
refuse the draught? Well, it is not likely to be offered twice
within one man’s experience. Probably you have griefs which you
seek to forget in death. I can enable you to forget them in life.
Will you take a draught of Lethe?”

As he spoke, the virtuoso took from the shelf a crystal vase
containing a sable liquor, which caught no reflected image from the
objects around.

“Not for the world!” exclaimed I, shrinking back. “I can spare none
of my recollections, not even those of error or sorrow. They are all
alike the food of my spirit. As well never to have lived as to lose
them now.”

Without further parley we passed to the next alcove, the shelves of
which were burdened with ancient volumes and with those rolls of
papyrus in which was treasured up the eldest wisdom of the earth.
Perhaps the most valuable work in the collection, to a bibliomaniac,
was the Book of Hermes. For my part, however, I would have given a
higher price for those six of the Sibyl’s books which Tarquin
refused to purchase, and which the virtuoso informed me he had
himself found in the cave of Trophonius. Doubtless these old volumes
contain prophecies of the fate of Rome, both as respects the decline
and fall of her temporal empire and the rise of her spiritual one.
Not without value, likewise, was the work of Anaxagoras on Nature,
hitherto supposed to be irrecoverably lost, and the missing
treatises of Longinus, by which modern criticism might profit, and
those books of Livy for which the classic student has so long
sorrowed without hope. Among these precious tomes I observed the
original manuscript of the Koran, and also that of the Mormon Bible
in Joe Smith’s authentic autograph. Alexander’s copy of the Iliad
was also there, enclosed in the jewelled casket of Darius, still
fragrant of the perfumes which the Persian kept in it.

Opening an iron-clasped volume, bound in black leather, I discovered
it to be Cornelius Agrippa’s book of magic; and it was rendered
still more interesting by the fact that many flowers, ancient and
modern, were pressed between its leaves. Here was a rose from Eve’s
bridal bower, and all those red and white roses which were plucked
in the garden of the Temple by the partisans of York and Lancaster.
Here was Halleck’s Wild Rose of Alloway. Cowper had contributed a
Sensitive Plant, and Wordsworth an Eglantine, and Burns a Mountain
Daisy, and Kirke White a Star of Bethlehem, and Longfellow a Sprig
of Fennel, with its yellow flowers. James Russell Lowell had given
a Pressed Flower, but fragrant still, which had been shadowed in the
Rhine. There was also a sprig from Southey’s Holly Tree. One of
the most beautiful specimens was a Fringed Gentian, which had been
plucked and preserved for immortality by Bryant. From Jones Very, a
poet whose voice is scarcely heard among us by reason of its depth,
there was a Wind Flower and a Columbine.

As I closed Cornelius Agrippa’s magic volume, an old, mildewed
letter fell upon the floor. It proved to be an autograph from the
Flying Dutchman to his wife. I could linger no longer among books;
for the afternoon was waning, and there was yet much to see. The
bare mention of a few more curiosities must suffice. The immense
skull of Polyphemus was recognizable by the cavernous hollow in the
centre of the forehead where once had blazed the giant’s single eye.
The tub of Diogenes, Medea’s caldron, and Psyche’s vase of beauty
were placed one within another. Pandora’s box, without the lid,
stood next, containing nothing but the girdle of Venus, which had
been carelessly flung into it. A bundle of birch-rods which had
been used by Shenstone’s schoolmistress were tied up with the
Countess of Salisbury’s garter. I know not which to value most, a
roc’s egg as big as an ordinary hogshead, or the shell of the egg
which Columbus set upon its end. Perhaps the most delicate article
in the whole museum was Queen Mab’s chariot, which, to guard it from
the touch of meddlesome fingers, was placed under a glass tumbler.

Several of the shelves were occupied by specimens of entomology.
Feeling but little interest in the science, I noticed only
Anacreon’s grasshopper, and a bumblebee which had been presented to
the virtuoso by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In the part of the hall which we had now reached I observed a
curtain, that descended from the ceiling to the floor in voluminous
folds, of a depth, richness, and magnificence which I had never seen
equalled. It was not to be doubted that this splendid though dark
and solemn veil concealed a portion of the museum even richer in
wonders than that through which I had already passed; but, on my
attempting to grasp the edge of the curtain and draw it aside, it
proved to be an illusive picture.

“You need not blush,” remarked the virtuoso; “for that same curtain
deceived Zeuxis. It is the celebrated painting of Parrhasius.”

In a range with the curtain there were a number of other choice
pictures by artists of ancient days. Here was the famous cluster of
grapes by Zeuxis, so admirably depicted that it seemed as if the
ripe juice were bursting forth. As to the picture of the old woman
by the same illustrious painter, and which was so ludicrous that he
himself died with laughing at it, I cannot say that it particularly
moved my risibility. Ancient humor seems to have little power over
modern muscles. Here, also, was the horse painted by Apelles which
living horses neighed at; his first portrait of Alexander the Great,
and his last unfinished picture of Venus asleep. Each of these
works of art, together with others by Parrhasius, Timanthes,
Polygnotus, Apollodorus, Pausias, and Pamplulus, required more time
and study than I could bestow for the adequate perception of their
merits. I shall therefore leave them undescribed and uncriticised,
nor attempt to settle the question of superiority between ancient
and modern art.

For the same reason I shall pass lightly over the specimens of
antique sculpture which this indefatigable and fortunate virtuoso
had dug out of the dust of fallen empires. Here was AEtion’s cedar
statue of AEsculapius, much decayed, and Alcon’s iron statue of
Hercules, lamentably rusted. Here was the statue of Victory, six
feet high, which the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias had held in his
hand. Here was a forefinger of the Colossus of Rhodes, seven feet
in length. Here was the Venus Urania of Phidias, and other images
of male and female beauty or grandeur, wrought by sculptors who
appeared never to have debased their souls by the sight of any
meaner forms than those of gods or godlike mortals. But the deep
simplicity of these great works was not to be comprehended by a mind
excited and disturbed, as mine was, by the various objects that had
recently been presented to it. I therefore turned away with merely
a passing glance, resolving on some future occasion to brood over
each individual statue and picture until my inmost spirit should
feel their excellence. In this department, again, I noticed the
tendency to whimsical combinations and ludicrous analogies which
seemed to influence many of the arrangements of the museum. The
wooden statue so well known as the Palladium of Troy was placed in
close apposition with the wooden head of General Jackson, which was
stolen a few years since from the bows of the frigate Constitution.

We had now completed the circuit of the spacious hall, and found
ourselves again near the door. Feeling somewhat wearied with the
survey of so many novelties and antiquities, I sat down upon
Cowper’s sofa, while the virtuoso threw himself carelessly into
Rabelais’s easychair. Casting my eyes upon the opposite wall, I was
surprised to perceive the shadow of a man flickering unsteadily
across the wainscot, and looking as if it were stirred by some
breath of air that found its way through the door or windows. No
substantial figure was visible from which this shadow might be
thrown; nor, had there been such, was there any sunshine that would
have caused it to darken upon the wall.

“It is Peter Schlemihl’s shadow,” observed the virtuoso, “and one of
the most valuable articles in my collection.”

“Methinks a shadow would have made a fitting doorkeeper to such a
museum,” said I; “although, indeed, yonder figure has something
strange and fantastic about him, which suits well enough with many
of the impressions which I have received here. Pray, who is he?”

While speaking, I gazed more scrutinizingly than before at the
antiquated presence of the person who had admitted me, and who still
sat on his bench with the same restless aspect, and dim, confused,
questioning anxiety that I had noticed on my first entrance. At
this moment he looked eagerly towards us, and, half starting from
his seat, addressed me.

“I beseech you, kind sir,” said he, in a cracked, melancholy tone,
“have pity on the most unfortunate man in the world. For Heaven’s
sake, answer me a single question! Is this the town of Boston?”

“You have recognized him now,” said the virtuoso. “It is Peter
Rugg, the missing man. I chanced to meet him the other day still in
search of Boston, and conducted him hither; and, as he could not
succeed in finding his friends, I have taken him into my service as
doorkeeper. He is somewhat too apt to ramble, but otherwise a man
of trust and integrity.”

“And might I venture to ask,” continued I, “to whom am I indebted
for this afternoon’s gratification?”

The virtuoso, before replying, laid his hand upon an antique dart,
or javelin, the rusty steel head of winch seemed to have been
blunted, as if it had encountered the resistance of a tempered
shield, or breastplate.

“My name has not been without its distinction in the world for a
longer period than that of any other man alive,” answered he. “Yet
many doubt of my existence; perhaps you will do so to-morrow. This
dart which I hold in my hand was once grim Death’s own weapon. It
served him well for the space of four thousand years; but it fell
blunted, as you see, when he directed it against my breast.”

These words were spoken with the calm and cold courtesy of manner
that had characterized this singular personage throughout our
interview. I fancied, it is true, that there was a bitterness
indefinably mingled with his tone, as of one cut off from natural
sympathies and blasted with a doom that had been inflicted on no
other human being, and by the results of which he had ceased to be
human. Yet, withal, it seemed one of the most terrible consequences
of that doom that the victim no longer regarded it as a calamity,
but had finally accepted it as the greatest good that could have
befallen him.

“You are the Wandering Jew!” exclaimed I.

The virtuoso bowed without emotion of any kind; for, by centuries of
custom, he had almost lost the sense of strangeness in his fate, and
was but imperfectly conscious of the astonishment and awe with which
it affected such as are capable of death.

“Your doom is indeed a fearful one!” said I, with irrepressible
feeling and a frankness that afterwards startled me; “yet perhaps
the ethereal spirit is not entirely extinct under all this
corrupted or frozen mass of earthly life. Perhaps the immortal
spark may yet be rekindled by a breath of heaven. Perhaps you may
yet be permitted to die before it is too late to live eternally.
You have my prayers for such a consummation. Farewell.”

“Your prayers will be in vain,” replied he, with a smile of cold
triumph. “My destiny is linked with the realities of earth. You
are welcome to your visions and shadows of a future state; but give
me what I can see, and touch, and understand, and I ask no more.”

“It is indeed too late,” thought I. “The soul is dead within him.”

Struggling between pity and horror, I extended my hand, to which the
virtuoso gave his own, still with the habitual courtesy of a man of
the world, but without a single heart-throb of human brotherhood.
The touch seemed like ice, yet I know not whether morally or
physically. As I departed, he bade me observe that the inner door
of the hall was constructed with the ivory leaves of the gateway
through which Aeneas and the Sibyl had been dismissed from Hades.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Add comment April 30th, 2007

The Village Uncle

An Imaginary Retrospect.

Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is
comfortable, especially here, where the old man sits in his old arm-
chair; but on Thanksgiving night the blaze should dance high up the
chimney, and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss
on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relics of the Mermaid’s
knee-timbers, the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and
clearer be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in
the village, and the light of our household mirth flash far across
the bay to Nahant. And now, come, Susan, come, my children, draw
your chairs round me, all of you. There is a dimness over your
figures! You sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the
blaze, which eddies about you like a flood, so that you all have the
look of visions, or people that dwell only in the fire light, and
will vanish from existence, as completely as your own shadows, when
the flame shall sink among the embers. Hark! let me listen for the
swell of the surf; it should be audible a mile inland, on a night
like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but only an uncertain
murmur, as if a good way down over the beach; though, by the almanac,
it is high tide at eight o’clock, and the billows must now be dashing
within thirty yards of our door. Ah! the old man’s ears are failing
him; and so is his eyesight, and perhaps his mind; else you would not
all be so shadowy, in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire.

How strangely the Past is peeping over the shoulders of the Present!
To judge by my recollections, it is but a few moments since I sat in
another room; yonder model of a vessel was not there, nor the old
chest of drawers, nor Susan’s profile and mine, in that gilt frame;
nothing, in short, except this same fire, which glimmered on books,
papers, and a picture, and half discovered my solitary figure in a
looking-glass. But it was paler than my rugged old self, and younger,
too, by almost half a century. Speak to me, Susan; speak, my beloved
ones; for the scene is glimmering on my sight again, and as it
brightens you fade away. O, I should be loath to lose my treasure of
past happiness, and become once more what I was then; a hermit in the
depths of my own mind; sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes, and anon
a scribbler of wearier trash than what I read; a man who had wandered
out of the real world and got into its shadow, where his troubles,
joys, and vicissitudes were of such slight stuff, that he hardly knew
whether he lived, or only dreamed of living. Thank Heaven, I am an old
man now, and have done with all such vanities!

Still this dimness of mine eyes! Come nearer, Susan, and stand before
the fullest blaze of the hearth. Now I behold you illuminated from
head to foot, in your clean cap and decent gown, with the dear lock of
gray hair across your forehead, and a quiet smile about your mouth,
while the eyes alone are concealed, by the red gleam of the fire upon
your spectacles. There, you made me tremble again! When the flame
quivered, my sweet Susan, you quivered with it, and grew indistinct,
as if melting into the warm light, that my last glimpse of you might
be as visionary as the first was, full many a year since. Do you
remember it? You stood on the little bridge, over the brook, that
runs across King’s Beach into the sea. It was twilight; the waves
rolling in, the wind sweeping by, the crimson clouds fading in the
west, and the silver moon brightening above the hill; and on the
bridge were you, fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might
skim away at your pleasure. You seemed a daughter of the viewless
wind, a creature of the ocean foam and the crimson light, whose merry
life was spent in dancing on the crests of the billows, that threw up
their spray to support your footsteps. As I drew nearer, I fancied
you akin to the race of mermaids, and thought how pleasant it would be
to dwell with you among the quiet coves, in the shadow of the cliffs,
and to roam along secluded beaches of the purest sand, and when our
northern shores grew bleak, to haunt the islands, green and lonely,
far amid summer seas. And yet it gladdened me, after all this
nonsense, to find you nothing but a pretty young girl, sadly perplexed
with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats.

Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days,
dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic
hues, before I could see her as she really was. Now, Susan, for a
sober picture of our village! It was a small collection of dwellings
that seemed to have been cast up by the sea, with the rock-weed and
marine plants that it vomits after a storm, or to have come ashore
among the pipe-staves and other lumber, which had been washed from the
deck of an Eastern schooner. There was just space for the narrow and
sandy street between the beach in front, and a precipitous hill that
lifted its rocky forehead in the rear, among a waste of juniper-bushes
and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The village was picturesque,
in the variety of its edifices, though all were rude. Here stood a
little old hovel, built, perhaps, of drift-wood, there a row of boat-
houses, and beyond them a two-story dwelling, of dark and weather-
beaten aspect, the whole intermixed with one or two snug cottages,
painted white, a sufficiency of pigsties, and a shoemaker’s shop. Two
grocery-stores stand opposite each other, in the centre of the
village. These were the places of resort, at their idle hours, of a
hardy throng of fishermen, in red baize shirts, oilcloth trousers, and
boots of brown leather covering the whole leg; true seven-league
boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth. The wearers
seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun
themselves; nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs
covered with clusters of little shellfish, such as cling to rocks and
old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and flows. When their fleet
of boats was weather-bound, the butchers raised their price, and the
spit was busier than the frying-pan; for this was a place of fish, and
known as such, to all the country round about; the very air was fishy,
being perfumed with dead sculpins, hardheads, and dogfish, strewn
plentifully on the beach. You see, children, the village is but
little changed, since your mother and I were young.

How like a dream it was, when I bent over a pool of water, one
pleasant morning, and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me
and made me a fisherman! There were the tarpauling, the baize shirt,
the oil-cloth trousers and seven-league boots, and there my own
features, but so reddened with sunburn and sea-breezes, that methought
I had another face, and on other shoulders too. The sea-gulls and the
loons, and I, had now all one trade; we skimmed the crested waves and
sought our prey beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the
birds. Always, when the east grew purple, I launched my dory, my
little flat-bottomed skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the
Middle Ledge, or, perhaps, beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor
off Dread Ledge, a spot of peril to ships unpiloted; and sometimes
spread an adventurous sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore,
casting my lines in sight of Scituate. Ere nightfall, I hauled my
skiff high and dry on the beach, laden with red rock-cod, or the
whitebellied ones of deep water; haddock, bearing the black marks of
St. Peter’s fingers near the gills; the longbearded hake, whose liver
holds oil enough for a midnight lamp; and now and then a mighty
halibut, with a back broad as my boat. In the autumn, I trolled and
caught those lovely fish, the mackerel. When the wind was high,–when
the whale-boats, anchored off the Point, nodded their slender masts at
each other, and the dories pitched and tossed in the surf,–when
Nahant Beach was thundering three miles off, and the spray broke a
hundred feet in air, round the distant base of Egg Rock,–when the
brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the street of our
village,–then I made a holiday on shore.

Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett’s store, attentive to
the yarns of Uncle Parker; uncle to the whole village, by right of
seniority, but of Southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His
figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel; a lean old
man, of great height, but bent with years, and twisted into an uncouth
shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed also, and weather-worn, as if
every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere
on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest, a shipmate of the
Flying Dutchman. After innumerable voyages aboard men-of-war and
merchant-men, fishing-schooners and chebacco-boats, the old salt had
become master of a handcart, which he daily trundled about the
vicinity, and sometimes blew his fish-horn through the streets of
Salem. One of Uncle Parker’s eyes had been blown out with gunpowder,
and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it upward as he
spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French, and
battles with his own shipmates, when he and an antagonist used to be
seated astride of a sailor’s chest, each fastened down by a spike-nail
through his trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he
expatiated on the delicious flavor of the liagden, a greasy and goose-
like fowl, which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand
Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of
Sables, where he had gladdened himself, amid polar snows, with the rum
and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And
wrathfully did he shake his fist, as he related how a party of Cape
Cod men had robbed him and his companions of their lawful spoil, and
sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to
drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood
who are said to tie lanterns to horses’ tails, to mislead the mariner
along the dangerous shores of the Cape.

Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen, with that old salt in
the midst. One fellow sits on the counter, a second bestrides an oil-
barrel, a third lolls at his length on a parcel of new cod-lines, and
another has planted the tarry seat of his trousers on a heap of salt,
which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish. They are a likely
set of men. Some have voyaged to the East Indies or the Pacific, and
most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to Newfoundland; a
few have been no farther than the Middle Banks, and one or two have
always fished along the shore; but, as Uncle Parker used to say, they
have all been christened in salt water, and know more than men ever
learn in the bushes. A curious figure, by way of contrast, is a fish-
dealer from farup country, listening with eyes wide open to narratives
that might startle Sindbad the sailor. Be it well with you, my
brethren! Ye are all gone, some to your graves ashore, and others to
the depths of ocean; but my faith is strong that ye are happy; for
whenever I behold your forms, whether in dream or vision, each
departed friend is puffing his long-nine, and a mug of the right
blackstrap goes round from lip to lip.

But where was the mermaid in those delightful times? At a certain
window near the centre of the village appeared a pretty display of
gingerbread men and horses, picture-books and ballads, small fish-
hooks, pins, needles, sugar-plums, and brass thimbles, articles on
which the young fishermen used to expend their money from pure
gallantry. What a picture was Susan behind the counter! A slender
maiden, though the child of rugged parents, she had the slimmest of
all waists, brown hair curling on her neck, and a complexion rather
pale, except when the sea-breeze flushed it. A few freckles became
beauty-spots beneath her eyelids. How was it, Susan, that you talked
and acted so carelessly, yet always for the best, doing whatever was
right in your own eyes, and never once doing wrong in mine, nor
shocked a taste that had been morbidly sensitive till now? And whence
had you that happiest gift, of brightening every topic with an
unsought gayety, quiet but irresistible, so that even loomy spirits
felt your sunshine, and did not shrink from it? Nature wrought the
charm. She made you a frank, simple, kind-hearted, sensible, and
mirthful girl. Obeying nature, you did free things without
indelicacy, displayed a maiden’s thoughts to every eye, and proved
yourself as innocent as naked Eve.

It was beautiful to observe, how her simple and happy nature mingled
itself with mine. She kindled a domestic fire within my heart, and
took up her dwelling there, even in that chill and lonesome cavern
hung round with glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me warmth of
feeling, while the influence of my mind made her contemplative. I
taught her to love the moonlight hour, when the expanse of the
encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent
shadow; while beyond Nahant, the wind rippled the dim ocean into a
dreamy brightness, which grew faint afar off, without becoming
gloomier. I held her hand and pointed to the long surf wave, as it
rolled calmly on the beach, in an unbroken line of silver; we were
silent together, till its deep and peaceful murmur had swept by us.
When the Sabbath sun shone down into the recesses of the cliffs, I led
the mermaid thither, and told her that those huge, gray, shattered
rocks, and her native sea, that raged forever like a storm against
them, and her own slender beauty, in so stern a scene, were all
combined into a strain of poetry. But on the Sabbath eve, when her
mother had gone early to bed, and her gentle sister had smiled and
left us, as we sat alone by the quiet hearth, with household things
around, it was her turn to make me feel that here was a deeper poetry,
and that this was the dearest hour of all. Thus went on our wooing,
till I had shot wild-fowl enough to feather our bridal bed, and the
Daughter of the Sea was mine.

I built a cottage for Susan and myself, and made a gateway in the form
of a Gothic arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw-bones. We bought a
heifer with her first calf, and had a little garden on the hillside,
to supply us with potatoes and green sauce for our fish. Our parlor
small and neat, was ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt
frame, and with shells and pretty pebbles on the mantel-piece,
selected from the sea’s treasury of such things, on Nahant Beach. On
the desk, beneath the looking-glass, lay the Bible, which I had begun
to read aloud at the Book of Genesis, and the singing-book that Susan
used for her evening psalm. Except the almanac, we had no other
literature. All that I heard of books, was when an Indian history, or
tale of shipwreck, was sold by a peddler or wandering subscription-man,
to some one in the village, and read through its owner’s nose to a
slumberous auditory. Like my brother fishermen, I grew into the
belief that all human erudition was collected in our pedagogue, whose
green spectacles and solemn phiz, as he passed to his little school-
house, amid a waste of sand, might have gained him a diploma from a