Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules with his club, subjugating man and woman in our fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the second by our handling of it,--we rehearse it, I say, by our own hearth-stones, with the cold poker as our club, and the exercise is easy.But when we come to real life, the poker is in the fore, and, ten to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;--lucky for us, if it is not white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our hands sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or silent cry!
--I am frightened when I find into what a labyrinth of human character and feeling I am winding.I meant to tell my thoughts, and to throw in a few studies of manner and costume as they pictured themselves for me from day to day.Chance has thrown together at the table with me a number of persons who are worth studying, and I mean not only to look on them, but, if I can, through them.You can get any man's or woman's secret, whose sphere is circumscribed by your own, if you will only look patiently on them long enough.Nature is always applying her reagents to character, if you will take the pains to watch her.Our studies of character, to change the image, are very much like the surveyor's triangulation of a geographical province.We get a base-line in organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our observation are tending; then another;--and so we construct our first triangle.Once fix a man's ideals, and for the most part the rest is easy.A wants to die worth half a million.Good.B (female) wants to catch him,--and outlive him.All right.Minor details at our leisure.
What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike to tell your nearest friend?--Be so good as to pause for a brief space, and shut the volume you hold with your finger between the pages.--Oh, that is it!
What a confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a cry among the craggy bills!
At the house of a friend where I once passed the night was one of those stately upright cabinet desks and cases of drawers which were not rare in prosperous families during the last century.It had held the clothes and the books and the papers of generation after generation.The hands that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last been folded in death.The children that played with the lower handles had got tall enough to open the desk, to reach the upper shelves behind the folding-doors,--grown bent after a while,--and then followed those who had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new generation.
A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk.
Prying about with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing which, a secret drawer flew from its hiding-place.It had never been opened but by the maker.The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it as when the artisan closed it,--and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if that day finished.
Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seem to have suspected? What does it hold?--A sin?--I hope not.
What a strange thing an old dead sin laid away in a secret drawer of the soul is! Must it some time or other be moistened with tears, until it comes to life again and begins to stir in our consciousness,--as the dry wheel-animalcule, looking like a grain of dust, becomes alive, if it is wet with a drop of water?
Or is it a passion? There are plenty of withered men and women walking about the streets who have the secret drawer in their hearts, which, if it were opened, would show as fresh as it was when they were in the flush of youth and its first trembling emotions.
What it held will, perhaps, never be known, until they are dead and gone, and same curious eye lights on an old yellow letter with the fossil footprints of the extinct passion trodden thick all over it.
There is not a boarder at our table, I firmly believe, excepting the young girl, who has not a story of the heart to tell, if one could only get the secret drawer open.Even this arid female, whose armor of black bombazine looks stronger against the shafts of love than any cuirass of triple brass, has had her sentimental history, if I am not mistaken.I will tell you my reason for suspecting it.
Like many other old women, she shows a great nervousness and restlessness whenever I venture to express any opinion upon a class of subjects which can hardly be said to belong to any man or set of men as their strictly private property,--not even to the clergy, or the newspapers commonly called "religious." Now, although it would be a great luxury to me to obtain my opinions by contract, ready-made, from a professional man, and although I have a constitutional kindly feeling to all sorts of good people which would make me happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that were possible, still I must have an idea, now and then, as to the meaning of life; and though the only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least, not to express them, with reference to such subjects, I can't afford to pay quite so much as that even for peace.
I find that there is a very prevalent opinion among the dwellers on the shores of Sir Isaac Newton's Ocean of Truth, that salt, fish, which have been taken from it a good while ago, split open, cured and dried, are the only proper and allowable food for reasonable people.
