Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860», sayfa 12

There is (or was) an enormous key suspended just beneath the cross of Strasburg Cathedral, its use, and why it was placed there, having passed away from the memory of man. If it were not to open the gates of heaven for those who built this ladder of light and those who worship in its shadow, it remains a riddle and a blank. Let us accept the interpretation, and, made mild-eyed by the lens of tender memories, we shall behold in every spire a means of grace and a hope of glory.

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY

PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE. THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR

Queerangle Building, Nov. '59.

Dr. SR,—

Will you contract to do us a tale or a novel, at the rate of say 10 pp. per month, with some popular subject, such as philanthropy, or the Broad Church movement, or fashionable weddings, or the John Brown invasion, brought in so as to make a taking thing of it? When finished, to come to a 12mo of 350 pp. more or less. A good article of novel is always salable about Christmas time, and we can do it up by Dec. 1, 1860. Our Mr. Goader has been round among the hands that do the light jobbing,—finds several ready to undertake the contract, at say 75c. @ 3.00 per page;—but want the job done in first-rate style, and think you could furnish us a good article. Our firm has great facilities for working a novel, tale, or any kind of fancy stuff. What w'd be y'r terms in cash payment, 1st of every month?

P.S. Would any additional compensation induce you to allow each number to be illustrated by a colored engraving?

Yr obt serv'ts.

THE AUTHOR TO THE PUBLISHERS

GENTLEMEN,—

In reply to your polite request, I have to say, that under no circumstances can I entertain your proposition to write a fictitious narrative. I could, however, relate some very interesting events which have come to my knowledge, and which, if told in a connected form, might undoubtedly be taken by the public for a work of fiction. I think my narrative, with some collateral matter I should introduce, would take up a reasonable space in about a dozen numbers of the Oceanic Miscellany. I cannot listen to your proposal about the engraving. If you accept my offer to write out, in the form of a story, the incidents of real life to which I have referred, we will arrange the terms at a private interview. I consider the first day of a month as unobjectionable as any other in the same month, as a time for receiving payment of any sum that may be due me under the proposed contract.

Yours truly.

CONFIDENTIAL EDITOR OF THE OCEANIC MISCELLANY TO THE AUTHOR

MY DEAR PROF.,—

We have had lots of bob-tail stories,—docked short in from one to three months. Can't you give us a switch-tail one, that will hang on so as to touch next December? Something imaginary, based on your recollections,—the incidents of the War of 1812, for instance;—but, at any rate, a regular "to be continued" "pièce de résistance"

Yours ever.

THE AUTHOR TO THE CONFIDENTIAL EDITOR

MY DEAR ED.,—

I really wouldn't undertake to tell an "imaginary" story, or to write a romance, or anything of the kind. I might be willing to relate some curious matters that have come to my knowledge, arranging them in a collective form, so that they would probably pass with most readers for fictitious, and perhaps excite very much the same kind of interest they would if genuine fictions. I don't remember much about the "last war"; but I suppose both of us may recollect the illumination when peace was declared in 1815.

Ever yours.

THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR

(Inclosing a check, in advance, for the first number.)

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

Finding myself in possession of certain facts which possess interest sufficient to warrant their publication, I am led to ask myself whether I shall put them in the form of a narrative. There are, evidently, two sides to this question. In the first place, I have a number of friends who write me letters, and tell me openly to my face, that they want me to go on writing. It doesn't make much difference to them, they say, what I write about,—only they want me to keep going. They have got used to seeing me, in one shape or another,—and I am a kind of habit with them, like a nap after dinner. They tell me not to be frightened about it,—to begin as dull as I like, and that I shall warm up, by-and-by, as old Dutchman used to, who could hardly put one leg before the other when he started, but, after a while, got so limbered and straightened out by his work, that he dropped down into the forties, and, I think they say, into the thirties. L'appétit vient en mangeant, one of them said who talks French,—which, you know, means, that eating makes one hungry. I remember, when I sat down to that last book of mine, which you may perhaps have read, although I had the facts of the story, of course, all in my head, it seemed to me that I should never have the patience to tell them all; and yet, before I was through, I got so full of the scenes and characters I was talking about, that I had to bolt my door and lay in an extra bandanna, before I could trust myself to put my recollections and thoughts on paper. You don't expect a locomotive is going to start off with a train of thirty or forty thousand passengers, without straining a little,—do you? That isn't the way; but this is. Puff! The wheels begin to turn, but very slowly. Papas hold up their little Johnnys to the car-windows to be kissed. Puff–Puff! People shake hands from the platform to the cars, walking along by their side. Puff—puff—puff! Now, then, Ma'am! pass out that tumbler pretty spry, out of which you have been swallowing that eternal "drink o' wotter," to which the human female of a certain social grade is so odiously addicted. Puff, puff, puff, puff! Too late, old gentleman I unless you can do a mile in a good deal less than three minutes, carrying weight, in the shape of a valise in one hand and a carpet-bag in the other. That's the way with anything that's got any freight to carry. It's slow when it sets out;—but steam is steam,—and what's bred in the boiler will show in the driving-wheel, sooner or later.

If I had to make up a story, now, it would be a very different matter. I could never conceive how some of those romancers go to work, in cold blood, to draw, out of what they call their imagination, a parcel of impossible events and absurd characters. That is not my trouble; for I have come into relation with a series of persons and events which will save me the pains of drawing on my invention, in case I shall see fit to follow the counsel of my too partial friends. I am only afraid I should not disguise the circumstances enough, if I were to arrange these facts in the narrative form. Some of them are of such a nature, that they cannot be supposed to have happened more than once in the experience of a generation; and I feel that the greatest caution and delicacy are necessary in the manner of their presentation, not to offend the living or wrong the memory of the dead.

It is very easy for you, the Reader, to sit down and run over the pages of a monthly narrative as a boy "skips" a stone,—and the flatter and thinner your capacity, the more skips, perhaps, you will make. But I tell you, for a man who has live people to deal with, and hearts that are beating even while he handles them,—a man who can go into families and pull up by the roots all the mysteries of their dead generations and their living sons' and daughters' secret history,—responsible for what he says, here and elsewhere,—open to a libel suit, if he isn't pretty careful in his personalities, or to a visit from a brother or other relative, wishing to know, Sir, and so forth,—or to a paragraph in the leading journal of that whispering-gallery of a nation's gossip, Little Millionville, to the effect that—We understand the personages alluded to in the tale now publishing in the Oceanic Miscellany are the Reverend Dr. S–h and his accomplished lady, the distinguished financier, Mr. B–n,—and so through the whole list of characters;—I say, for a man who writes the pages you skim over, it is a mighty different piece of business. Why, if I do tell all I know about some things that have come to my cognizance, I shall make you open your eyes and spread your pupils, as if you had been to the Eye Infirmary, and the doctors there had anointed your lids with the extract of belladonna. Mark what I tell you! I have happened to become intimately acquainted with circumstances of a very extraordinary nature,—not, perhaps, without precedent, but such as very few have been called upon to witness. Suppose that I should see fit to tell these in connection with the story of which they form a part? I may render myself obnoxious to persons whom it is not safe to offend,—persons that won't come out in the public prints, perhaps, but will poke incendiary letters under your doors,—that won't step up to you in broad daylight, and lug a Colt out of their pocket, or draw a bowie-knife from their back, where they had carried it under their coat, but who will dog you about to do you a mischief unseen,—who will carry air-guns in the shape of canes, and hang round the place where you get your provisions, and practise with long-range rifles out in the lonely fields,—rifles that crack no louder than a parlor-pistol, but spit a bit of lead out of their mouths half a mile and more, so that you wait as you do for the sound of the man's axe who is chopping on the other side of the river, to see the fellow you have "saved" clap his hand to his breast and stagger over. It makes me nervous to think of such things. I don't want to be suspicious of every queer taste in my coffee, and to shiver if I see a little powdered white sugar on the upper crust of my pastry. I don't want, every time I hear a door bang, to think it is a ragged slug from an unseen gun-barrel.

If Dick V– was not killed on the Pampas, as they have always said he was, I should never sleep easy after telling my story. For such a fellow as he was would certainly see through all the disguises I could cover up a real-life story with, and then–. He has learned the use of the lasso too well for me to want to trust my neck anywhere within a rod of him, if there were light enough for him to see, and nothing between us, and nobody near.

And besides, there were a good many opinions handled by some of these people I should have to talk about. Now, of course, a magazine like the Oceanic is no place for opinions. Look out for your Mormon subscribers, if you question the propriety of Solomon's domestic arrangements! And if you say one word that touches the Sandemanians, be sure their whole press will be down on you; for, as Sandemanianism is the undoubted and absolutely true religion, it follows, of course, that it is as sore as a scalded finger, and must be handled like a broken bone.

Add to this that I have always had the greatest objection to writing anything which those who were not acquainted with the facts might call a romance or a tale. We think very ill of a man who offers us as a truth some single statement which we find he knew to be false. Now what can we think of a man who tells three volumes, or even one, full of just such lies? Of course the primâ-facie aspect of the case is, that he is guilty of the most monstrous impertinence; and, in point of fact, I confess the greatest disgust towards any person of whom I hear the assertion that he has written a story, unless I hear something more than that. He is bound to show extenuating or justifying circumstances, as much as the man who writes what he calls "poems." For, as the world is full of real histories, and every day in every great city begins and ends a score or half a dozen score of tragic dramas, it is a huge piece of assumption to undertake to make one out of one's own head. A man takes refuge under your porch in a rain-storm, and you offer him the use of your shower-bath!

Also, I cannot help remembering, that, on the whole, I have been more intensely bored with works of fiction,—beginning with "Gil Blas," and ending with—on the whole, I won't even mention it,—than I ever was by the Latin Grammar or Rollin's History. Naturally, therefore, I should not wish to threaten my friends with the punishment I have endured from others. But then, as I said before, if I write down the circumstances that have come to my knowledge, with some account of persons, opinions, and conversations, no one can accuse me of writing a novel,—a thing which I never meant to do, under any circumstances.

–—After having carefully weighed my friends' arguments and my own objections, I have come to the conclusion to do pretty much as I like about it. Now the truth is, I have grown to be rather fonder of you, the Reader, than I have ever been willing to confess. You are such a good, kind creature,—it takes so little to please you,—you laugh and cry so very obligingly at just the right time,—you send me such charming notes, such dear little copies of verses,—nay, (shall I venture to say it?) such prodigal tokens of kindness, some of you, that I–in short, I love you very much, and cannot make up my mind to part with you. Rather than do this, as I could not and would not write a romance, I have made up my mind to tell you something of some persons and events of which I have known enough,—of some of them, I might say, too much. Of course, you must trust wholly to my discretion and sense of propriety, in dealing with living personages, recent events, and subjects still in dispute. Trusting that none of my friends will pay any attention to any idle rumors tending to fix the personages or localities of which I shall speak, and reminding my readers that the narrative will constitute only a part of what I have to say, inasmuch as there will be no small amount of reflections introduced, and perhaps of conversations reported, I begin this connected statement of facts with an essay on a social phenomenon not hitherto distinctly recognized.

CHAPTER I

THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a sharp line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen" and the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for an abstraction,—whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.

What our people mean by "aristocracy" is merely the richer part of the community, that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not "kerridges,") kid-glove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies' heads, give parties where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United States, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,—but they form a class, and are named as above in the common speech.

It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and here in America. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for four ancient maidens,—with whom it is best the family should die out, unless it can begin again as its grandfather did. Now a million is a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the summer's growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In other words, the millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration without falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and fugitive fact of personal wealth does not create a permanent class, unless some special means are taken to arrest the process of disintegration in the third generation. This is so rarely done, at least successfully, that one need not live a very long life to see most of the rich families he knew in childhood more or less reduced, and the millions shifted into the hands of the country-boys who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels when the now decayed gentry were driving their chariots, eating their venison over silver chafing-dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers, wearing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in white-topped boots with silken tassels.

There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. It has grown to be a caste,—not in any odious sense,—but, by the repetition of the same influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity, and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all we can and tell all we see.

If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,—inelegant, partly from careless attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,—the face is uncouth in feature, or at least common,—the mouth coarse and unformed,—the eye unsympathetic, even if bright,—the movements of the face clumsy, like those of the limbs,—the voice unmusical,—and the enunciation as if the words were coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect is commonly slender,—his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,—his features are regular and of a certain delicacy,—his eye is bright and quick,—his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers dance over their music,—and his whole air, though it may be timid, and even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a pointer or a setter to his field-work.

The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than their share of development,—the organs of thought and expression less than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed. A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration. You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of will and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very few of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is almost always the son of scholars or scholarly persons.

That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the Brahmin caste of New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy to which I have referred, and which I am sure you will at once acknowledge. There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary. Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. They break out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out. At last some newer name takes their place, it may be,—but you inquire a little and you find it is the blood of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys or some of the old historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of a female descendant.

I suppose there is not an experienced instructor anywhere in our Northern States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,—and he may, perhaps, even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the English alphabet, but of no other.

It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great multitude of those who are continually working their way up into the intellectual classes. The results which are habitually reached by hereditary training are occasionally brought about without it. There are natural filters as well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in the large uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary class-leaders by striding past them all. That is Nature's republicanism; thank God for it, but do not let it make you illogical. The race of the hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its animal vigor for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a good deal of animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special grace from an unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always overmatch an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered vitality. A man's breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted to add muscular) are just as important to him on the floor of the Senate as his thinking organs. You broke down in your great speech, did you? Yes, your grandfather had an attack of dyspepsia in '82, after working too hard on his famous Election Sermon. All this does not touch the main fact: our scholars come chiefly from a privileged order, just as our best fruits come from well-known grafts,—though now and then a seedling apple, like the Northern Spy, or a seedling pear, like the Seckel, springs from a nameless ancestry and grows to be the pride of all the gardens in the land.

Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the Brahmin caste of New England.