within that the pulsating
lullaby of the evening crickets used to
make itself most
distinctly heard, - so that I well remember I used
to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled
with the batrachian hymns from the
neighboring swamp, WAS PECULIAR
TO SATURDAY EVENINGS. I don't know that anything could give a
clearer idea of the quieting and subduing effect of the old habit
of
observance of what was considered holy time, than this strange,
childish fancy.
Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn
cadences with the waking and
sleeping dreams of my
boyhood. It was
heard only at times, - a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell,
not loud, but vast, - a whistling boy would have drowned it for his
next neighbor, but it must have been heard over the space of a
hundred square miles. I used to wonder what this might be. Could
it be the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten thousand
footsteps jarring and trampling along the stones of the
neighboringcity? That would be
continuous; but this, as I have said, rose and
fell in regular
rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this
to have been the true
solution, that it was the sound of the waves,
after a high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles distant.
I should really like to know whether any observing people living
ten miles, more or less,
inland from long beaches, - in such a
town, for
instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the
Territory of the Massachusetts, - have ever observed any such
sound, and whether it was
rightly accounted for as above.
Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low murmur of
memory, are the echoes of certain voices I have heard at rare
intervals. I
grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have not
generally
agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that
shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly
padded beneath, and
velvet linings to their singing-pipes, are not
so common among us as that other pattern of
humanity with angular
outlines and plane surfaces, and integuments, hair like the fibrous
covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well as color,
and voices at once thin and
strenuous, - acidulous enough to
produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing
duets with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as
sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young
persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great
industrial centres, for
instance, - young persons of the female
sex, we will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in loud
strident speech, and who, after free
discussion, have fixed on two
or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat
apples and hand round daguerreotypes, - I say, I think the
conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not
be among the allurements the old Enemy would put in requisition,
were he getting up a new
temptation of St. Anthony.
There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and voices not
musical, it may be, to those who hear them for the first time, yet
sweeter to us than any we shall hear until we listen to some
warbling angel in the overture to that
eternity of blissful
harmonies we hope to enjoy. - But why should I tell lies? If my
friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never
heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by their
sweetness.
- Frightened you? - said the
schoolmistress. - Yes, frightened me.
They made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with
such a chord in her voice to some string in another's soul, that,
if she but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though it were
into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, that
there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this
string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred
a little by and by come into
harmony with it. - But I tell you this
is no
fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a
fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who
followed him?
- Whose were those two voices that bewitches me so? - They both
belonged to German women. One was a chambermaid, not otherwise
fascinating. The key of my room at a certain great hotel was
missing, and this Teutonic
maiden was summoned to give information
respecting it. The simple soul was
evidently not long from her
mother-land, and spoke with sweet
uncertainty of
dialect. But to
hear her wonder and
lament and suggest, with soft, liquid
inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious
tenderness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a child
that had strayed from its mother, was so
winning, that, had her
features and figure been as
delicious as her accents, - if she had
looked like the
marble Clytie, for
instance, - why, all can say is
-
[The
schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that I stopped short.]
I was only going to say that I should have drowned myself. For
Lake Erie was close by, and it is so much better to accept
asphyxia, which takes only three minutes by the watch, than a
MESALLIANCE, that lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes
along down the line of
descent, (breaking out in all manner of
boorish manifestations of feature and manner, which, if men were
only as short-lived as horses, could be
readily traced back through
the square-roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on which you
have hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons or the De la
Morues, until one came to beings that ate with
knives and said
"Haow?") that no person of right feeling could have hesitated for a
single moment.
The second of the ravishing voices I have heard was, as I have
said, that of another German woman. - I suppose I shall ruin myself
by
saying that such a voice could not have come from any
Americanized human being.
- What was there in it? - said the
schoolmistress, - and, upon my
word, her tones were so very
musical, that I almost wished I had
said three voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic
remark above reported. - Oh, I said, it had so much WOMAN in it, -
MULIEBRITY, as well as FEMINEITY; - no self-assertion, such as free
suffrage introduces into every word and
movement; large, vigorous
nature,
running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but
subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture
of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil,
independence,
enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things
for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us, - I have
known families famous for them, - but ask the first person you meet
a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic,
matter-of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that
produces the effect of one of those bells which small trades-people
connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon your ear with
such vivacity, as you enter, that your first
impulse is to retire
at once from the precincts.
- Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard
in a French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out
of her chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient,
gentle. Rough students round her, some in white aprons, looking
fearfully business-like; but the child
placid,
perfectly still. I
spoke to her, and the
blessed little creature answered me in a
voice of such
heavenlysweetness, with that reedy
thrill in it
which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at
this moment, while I am
writing, so many, many years afterwards. -
C'EST TOUT COMME UN SERIN, said the French student at my side.
These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as
to what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall
enter through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be
other things besides aerolites that
wander from their own spheres
to ours; and when we speak of
celestialsweetness or beauty, we may
be nearer the literal truth than we dream. If mankind generally
are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set
adrift in these little open boats of
humanity to make one more
trial to reach the shore, - as some grave theologians have
maintained, - if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead
devils who have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from
Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living rags which lasts
three or four score summers, - why, there must have been a few good
spirits sent to keep them company, and these sweet voices I speak
of must belong to them.
- I wish you could once hear my sister's voice, - said the
schoolmistress.
If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, - said I.
I never thought mine was anything, - said the
schoolmistress.
How should you know? - said I. - People never hear their own
voices, - any more than they see their own faces. There is not
even a looking-glass for the voice. Of course, there is something
audible to us when we speak; but that something is not our own
voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I think, if an
image spoke to us in our own tones, we should not know them in the
least. - How pleasant it would be, if in another state of being we
could have shapes like our former selves for playthings, - we
standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they being to
us just what we used to be to others!
- I wonder if there will be nothing like what we call "play," after
our
earthly toys are broken, - said the
schoolmistress.
Hush, - said I, - what will the divinity-student say?
[I thought she was hit, that time; - but the shot must have gone
over her, or on one side of her; she did not flinch.]
Oh, - said the
schoolmistress, - he must look out for my sister's
heresies; I am afraid he will be too busy with them to take care of
mine.
Do you mean to say, - said I, - that it is YOUR SISTER whom that
student -
[The young fellow
commonly known as John, who had been sitting on
the
barrel, smoking, jumped off just then, kicked over the
barrel,
gave it a push with his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his
saucy-looking face in at the window so as to cut my question off in
the middle; and the
schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes
afterwards, I did not have a chance to finish it.
The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, putting his heels
on the top of another.
Pooty girl, - said he.
A fine young lady, - I replied.
Keeps a first-rate school, according to accounts, - said he, -
teaches all sorts of things, - Latin and Italian and music. Folks
rich once, - smashed up. She went right ahead as smart as if she'd
been born to work. That's the kind o' girl I go for. I'd marry
her, only two or three other girls would drown themselves, if I
did.
I think the above is the longest speech of this young fellow's
which I have put on record. I do not like to change his peculiar
expressions, for this is one of those cases in which the style is
the man, as M. de Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a
good-hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes, - and if
it were not for those heat-lightning winks on one side of his face,
I should not mind his fun much.]
[Some days after this, when the company were together again, I
talked a little.]
- I don't think I have a
genuinehatred for anybody. I am well
aware that I
differherein from the
sturdy English moralist and the
stout American tragedian. I don't deny that I hate THE SIGHT of
certain people; but the qualities which make me tend to hate the
man himself are such as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except
under immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough to the worst of
them. It is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much
worse than to
inherit a hump-back or a couple of club-feet, that I
sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if I may
use this expression, with a certain
tenderness which we need not
waste on noble natures. One who is born with such congenital
incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is entitled,
not to our wrath, but to our profoundest
sympathy. But as we