Margaret Smith's Journal, and Tales and Sketches Part 15

"The eagle," said Elder Staples, "seems to have been a favorite ill.u.s.tration of the sacred penman. 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount upward as on the wings of an eagle.'"

"What think you of this pa.s.sage?" said the Doctor. "'As when a bird hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found; but the light air, beaten with the stroke of her wings and parted by the violent noise and motion thereof, is pa.s.sed through, and therein afterward no sign of her path can be found.'

"I don't remember the pa.s.sage," said the Elder.

"I dare say not," quoth the Doctor. "You clergymen take it for granted that no good thing can come home from the Nazareth of the Apocrypha.

But where will you find anything more beautiful and cheering than these verses in connection with that which I just cited?--'The hope of the unG.o.dly is like dust that is blown away by the wind; like the thin foam which is driven by the storm; like the smoke which is scattered here and there by the whirlwind; it pa.s.seth away like the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day. But the righteous live forevermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them with the Most High.

Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand; for with his right hand shall He cover them, and with his arm shall He protect them.'"

"That, if I mistake not, is from the Wisdom of Solomon," said the Elder.

"It is a striking pa.s.sage; and there are many such in the uncanonical books."

"Canonical or not," answered the Doctor, "it is G.o.d's truth, and stands in no need of the endors.e.m.e.nt of a set of well-meaning but purblind bigots and pedants, who presumed to set metes and bounds to Divine inspiration, and decide by vote what is G.o.d's truth and what is the Devil's falsehood. But, speaking of eagles, I never see one of these spiteful old sea-robbers without fancying that he may be the soul of a mad Viking of the middle centuries. Depend upon it, that Italian philosopher was not far out of the way in his ingenious speculations upon the affinities and sympathies existing between certain men and certain animals, and in fancying that he saw feline or canine traits and similitudes in the countenances of his acquaintance."

"Swedenborg tells us," said I, "that lost human souls in the spiritual world, as seen by the angels, frequently wear the outward shapes of the lower animals,--for instance, the gross and sensual look like swine, and the cruel and obscene like foul birds of prey, such as hawks and vultures,--and that they are entirely unconscious of the metamorphosis, imagining themselves marvellous proper men,' and are quite well satisfied with their company and condition."

"Swedenborg," said the Elder, "was an insane man, or worse."

"Perhaps so," said the Doctor; "but there is a great deal of 'method in his madness,' and plain common sense too. There is one grand and beautiful idea underlying all his revelations or speculations about the future life. It is this: that each spirit chooses its own society, and naturally finds its fitting place and sphere of action,--following in the new life, as in the present, the leading of its prevailing loves and desires,--and that hence none are arbitrarily compelled to be good or evil, happy or miserable. A great law of attraction and gravitation governs the spiritual as well as the material universe; but, in obeying it, the spirit retains in the new life whatever freedom of will it possessed in its first stage of being. But I see the Elder shakes his head, as much as to say, I am 'wise above what is written,' or, at any rate, meddling with matters beyond my comprehension. Our young friend here," he continued, turning to me, "has the appearance of a listener; but I suspect he is busy with his own reveries, or enjoying the fresh sights and sounds of this fine morning. I doubt whether our discourse has edified him."

"Pardon me," said I; "I was, indeed, listening to another and older oracle."

"Well, tell us what you hear," said the Doctor.

"A faint, low murmur, rising and falling on the wind. Now it comes rolling in upon me, wave after wave of sweet, solemn music. There was a grand organ swell; and now it dies away as into the infinite distance; but I still hear it,--whether with ear or spirit I know not,--the very ghost of sound."

"Ah, yes," said the Doctor; "I understand it is the voice of the pines yonder,--a sort of morning song of praise to the Giver of life and Maker of beauty. My ear is dull now, and I cannot hear it; but I know it is sounding on as it did when I first climbed up here in the bright June mornings of boyhood, and it will sound on just the same when the deafness of the grave shall settle upon my failing senses. Did it never occur to you that this deafness and blindness to accustomed beauty and harmony is one of the saddest thoughts connected with the great change which awaits us? Have you not felt at times that our ordinary conceptions of heaven itself, derived from the vague hints and Oriental imagery of the Scriptures, are sadly inadequate to our human wants and hopes? How gladly would we forego the golden streets and gates of pearl, the thrones, temples, and harps, for the sunset lights of our native valleys; the woodpaths, whose moss carpets are woven with violets and wild flowers; the songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees in the apple-blossom,--the sweet, familiar voices of human life and nature! In the place of strange splendors and unknown music, should we not welcome rather whatever reminded us of the common sights and sounds of our old home?"

"You touch a sad chord, Doctor," said I. "Would that we could feel a.s.sured of the eternity of all we love!"

"And have I not an a.s.surance of it at this very moment?" returned the Doctor. "My outward ear fails me; yet I seem to hear as formerly the sound of the wind in the pines. I close my eyes; and the picture of my home is still before me. I see the green hill slope and meadows; the white shaft of the village steeple springing up from the midst of maples and elms; the river all afire with suns.h.i.+ne; the broad, dark belt of woodland; and, away beyond, all the blue level of the ocean. And now, by a single effort of will, I can call before me a winter picture of the same scene. It is morning as now; but how different! All night has the white meteor fallen, in broad flake or minutest crystal, the sport and plaything of winds that have wrought it into a thousand shapes of wild beauty. Hill and valley, tree and fence, woodshed and well-sweep, barn and pigsty, fis.h.i.+ng-smacks frozen tip at the wharf, ribbed monsters of dismantled hulks scattered along the river-side,--all lie transfigured in the white glory and suns.h.i.+ne. The eye, wherever it turns, aches with the cold brilliance, unrelieved save where. The blue smoke of morning fires curls lazily up from the Parian roofs, or where the main channel of the river, as yet unfrozen, shows its long winding line of dark water glistening like a snake in the sun. Thus you perceive that the spirit sees and hears without the aid of bodily organs; and why may it not be so hereafter? Grant but memory to us, and we can lose nothing by death.

The scenes now pa.s.sing before us will live in eternal reproduction, created anew at will. We a.s.suredly shall not love heaven the less that it is separated by no impa.s.sable gulf from this fair and goodly earth, and that the pleasant pictures of time linger like sunset clouds along the horizon of eternity. When I was younger, I used to be greatly troubled by the insecure tenure by which my senses held the beauty and harmony of the outward world. When I looked at the moonlight on the water, or the cloud-shadows on the hills, or the sunset sky, with the tall, black tree-boles and waving foliage relieved against it, or when I heard a mellow gush of music from the brown-breasted fife-bird in the summer woods, or the merry quaver of the bobolink in the corn land, the thought of an eternal loss of these familiar sights and sounds would sometimes thrill through me with a sharp and bitter pain. I have reason to thank G.o.d that this fear no longer troubles me. Nothing that is really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost. The present will live hereafter; memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds; for only on the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our ident.i.ty and personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world, and what would heaven or h.e.l.l be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would be simple annihilation of our actual selves, and the subst.i.tution therefor of a new creation, in which we should have no more interest than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or the fixed stars."

The Elder, who had listened silently thus far, not without an occasional and apparently involuntary manifestation of dissent, here interposed.

"Pardon me, my dear friend," said he; "but I must needs say that I look upon speculations of this kind, however ingenious or plausible, as unprofitable, and well-nigh presumptuous. For myself, I only know that I am a weak, sinful man, accountable to and cared for by a just and merciful G.o.d. What He has in reserve for me hereafter I know not, nor have I any warrant to pry into His secrets. I do not know what it is to pa.s.s from one life to another; but I humbly hope that, when I am sinking in the dark waters, I may hear His voice of compa.s.sion and encouragement, 'It is I; be not afraid.'"

"Amen," said the Skipper, solemnly.

"I dare say the Parson is right, in the main," said the Doctor. "Poor creatures at the best, it is safer for us to trust, like children, in the goodness of our Heavenly Father than to speculate too curiously in respect to the things of a future life; and, notwithstanding all I have said, I quite agree with good old Bishop Hall: 'It is enough for me to rest in the hope that I shall one day see them; in the mean time, let me be learnedly ignorant and incuriously devout, silently blessing the power and wisdom of my infinite Creator, who knows how to honor himself by all those unrevealed and glorious subordinations.'"

CHAPTER VI. THE SKIPPER'S STORY.

"WELL, what's the news below?" asked the Doctor of his housekeeper, as she came home from a gossiping visit to the landing one afternoon.

"What new piece of scandal is afloat now?"

"Nothing, except what concerns yourself," answered Widow Matson, tartly.

"Mrs. Nugeon says that you've been to see her neighbor Wait's girl--she that 's sick with the measles--half a dozen times, and never so much as left a spoonful of medicine; and she should like to know what a doctor's good for without physic. Besides, she says Lieutenant Brown would have got well if you'd minded her, and let him have plenty of thoroughwort tea, and put a split fowl at the pit of his stomach."

"A split stick on her own tongue would be better," said the Doctor, with a wicked grimace.

"The Jezebel! Let her look out for herself the next time she gets the rheumatism; I'll blister her from head to heel. But what else is going?"

"The schooner Polly Pike is at the landing."

"What, from Labrador? The one Tom Osborne went in?"

"I suppose so; I met Tom down street."

"Good!" said the Doctor, with emphasis. "Poor Widow Osborne's prayers are answered, and she will see her son before she dies."

"And precious little good will it do her," said the housekeeper.

"There's not a more drunken, swearing rakeshame in town than Tom Osborne."

"It's too true," responded the Doctor. "But he's her only son; and you know, Mrs. Matson, the heart of a mother."

The widow's hard face softened; a tender shadow pa.s.sed over it; the memory of some old bereavement melted her; and as she pa.s.sed into the house I saw her put her checked ap.r.o.n to her eyes.

By this time Skipper Evans, who had been slowly working his way up street for some minutes, had reached the gate.

"Look here!" said he. "Here's a letter that I've got by the Polly Pike from one of your old patients that you gave over for a dead man long ago."

"From the other world, of course," said the Doctor.

"No, not exactly, though it's from Labrador, which is about the last place the Lord made, I reckon."

"What, from d.i.c.k Wilson?"

"Sartin," said the Skipper.

"And how is he?"

"Alive and hearty. I tell you what, Doctor, physicking and blistering are all well enough, may be; but if you want to set a fellow up when he's kinder run down, there's nothing like a fis.h.i.+ng trip to Labrador, 'specially if he's been bothering himself with studying, and writing, and such like. There's nothing like fish chowders, hard bunks, and sea fog to take that nonsense out of him. Now, this chap," (the Skipper here gave me a thrust in the ribs by way of designation,) "if I could have him down with me beyond sunset for two or three months, would come back as hearty as a Bay o' Fundy porpoise."

a.s.suring him that I would like to try the experiment, with him as skipper, I begged to know the history of the case he had spoken of.

The old fisherman smiled complacently, hitched up his pantaloons, took a seat beside us, and, after extracting a jack-knife from one pocket, and a hand of tobacco from the other, and deliberately supplying himself with a fresh quid, he mentioned, apologetically, that he supposed the Doctor had heard it all before.

"Yes, twenty times," said the Doctor; "but never mind; it's a good story yet. Go ahead, Skipper."

"Well, you see," said the Skipper, "this young Wilson comes down here from Hanover College, in the spring, as lean as a shad in dog-days. He had studied himself half blind, and all his blood had got into brains.

So the Doctor tried to help him with his poticary stuff, and the women with their herbs; but all did no good. At last somebody advised him to try a fis.h.i.+ng cruise down East; and so he persuaded me to take him aboard my schooner. I knew he'd be right in the way, and poor company at the best, for all his Greek and Latin; for, as a general thing, I've noticed that your college chaps swop away their common sense for their larning, and make a mighty poor bargain of it. Well, he brought his books with him, and stuck to them so close that I was afraid we should have to slide him off the plank before we got half way to Labrador. So I just told him plainly that it would n't do, and that if he 'd a mind to kill himself ash.o.r.e I 'd no objection, but he should n't do it aboard my schooner. 'I'm e'en just a mind,' says I, 'to pitch your books overboard. A fis.h.i.+ng vessel's no place for 'em; they'll spoil all our luck. Don't go to making a Jonah of yourself down here in your bunk, but get upon deck, and let your books alone, and go to watching the sea, and the clouds, and the islands, and the fog-banks, and the fishes, and the birds; for Natur,' says I, don't lie nor give hearsays, but is always as true as the Gospels.'

"But 't was no use talking. There he'd lay in his bunk with his books about him, and I had e'en a'most to drag him on deck to snuff the sea- air. Howsomever, one day,--it was the hottest of the whole season,-- after we left the Magdalenes, and were running down the Gut of Canso, we hove in sight of the Gannet Rocks. Thinks I to myself, I'll show him something now that he can't find in his books. So I goes right down after him; and when we got on deck he looked towards the northeast, and if ever I saw a chap wonder-struck, he was. Right ahead of us was a bold, rocky island, with what looked like a great snow bank on its southern slope; while the air was full overhead, and all about, of what seemed a heavy fall of snow. The day was blazing hot, and there was n't a cloud to be seen.

"'What in the world, Skipper, does this mean?' says he. 'We're sailing right into a snow-storm in dog-days and in a clear sky.'