Bart Ridgeley Part 32

"Weeds and nettles!" repeated Sartliff; "and why weeds and nettles?

Was there ever such arrogance! Man in his boundless conceit and ignorance, after having ruined his powers, snuffs and picks about, and finds the use of a few insignificant things, which he p.r.o.nounces good; all the rest he pushes off in a ma.s.s as weeds and nettles. Thus the great bulk of the universe is to him useless or hurtful, because he will not, or cannot, learn its secrets. These unknown things are standing reproaches to his ignorance and sloth."

"Poisons, for instance, might become sanitary," said Case.

"If man lived in accord with nature," said Sartliff, "she would not harm him. It is a baby's notion that everything is made to eat, and that all must go into the mouth. Men should have got beyond this universal alimentiveness, ere this. Find the uses of things, and poisons and nettles fall into their places in harmony, and are no longer poisons and nettles."

"And accidents would help us on, instead of off," suggested Case.

"They help as often one way as the other now," replied Sartliff. "But there are really no accidents; everything is produced by law."

"There must be two or three systems then," suggested Case. "Things collide, while each obeys its law. Your systems clash."

"Not a bit. This is apparent only; man acts abnormally under evil influences; he will not observe law; he turns upon nature and says he will subvert her laws, and compel her to obey his. Of course confusion, disorder, and death are the consequences, and always will be, till he puts himself in harmony with her."

"It seems to me, Mr. Sartliff, that in your effort to get back individually, you have encountered more difficulties, collisions, and ills, than the most of us do, who keep on the old orthodox civilized way to the devil."

"That may be; I am one, looking alone; n.o.body helps me."

"And like the younger Mr. Weller, you find it a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties."

"Precisely; I inherited an artificial const.i.tution, and tastes, and needs. I began perverted and corrupted, and when I go back to Nature, she teaches me less than she does the beasts and birds. Before I can understand, or even hear her voice, I must recover the original purity and strength of organs and faculties which I might have had. I may perish in the attempt to reach a point at which I can learn. The earth chills and hurts my feet, the sun burns my skin, the winds shrivel me, and the snows and frosts would kill me, while many of the fruits good for food are indigestible to me. See to what the perversions of civilization have reduced me."

"Do you propose in thus getting back to nature, to go back to what we call savagery?" asked Bart.

"Not a bit of it. It was the wants and needs of the race that whipped it into what we call civilization. When once men got a start they went, and went in one direction alone, and completely away from Nature, instead of keeping with her and with an unvarying result; an endless series of common catastrophes has overtaken all civilized nations alike, while the savage tribes have alone been perpetual. I don't say that savage life is at all preferable, only that it alone has been capable of perpetuating races. In going back to Nature, I propose to take what of good we have derived from civilization."

"As historic verity," said Bart, "I am not quite prepared to admit that savage races are perpetual. We know little of them, and what little we do know is that tribes appear and disappear. General savagery may reign, like perpetual night, over a given region, but who can say how many races of savages have destroyed and devoured each other in its darkness?"

They had reached the forest, and Sartliff placed himself in an easy position at the foot of an old beech, extending his limbs and bare feet over the dry leaves, in such a way as not to injure any springing herb. "Mr. Ridgeley," said he, "I would like to know more of you.

You young men are fresher, see, and what is better, feel quicker and clearer than the older and more hackneyed. Are you already sh.e.l.led over with accepted dogmas, and without the power of receiving new ideas?"

"I hardly know; I fear I am not very reverent. I was born of a question-asking time, like that Galilean boy, whose, mother, after long search, found him in the Temple, disputing with the doctors, and asking them questions."

"Good! good! that is it; my great mother will find me in her Temple, asking questions of her doctors and ministers!" exclaimed Sartliff.

"And what do you ask, and what response do you get?" asked Bart.

"I lay myself on the earth's bosom in holy solitudes, with fasting and great prayer, and send my soul forth in one great mute, hungry demand for light. I, a man, with some of the Father G.o.d stirring the awful mysteries of my nature, go yearningly naked, empty, and alone, and clamor to know the way. And sometimes deep, sweet, hollow voices answer in murmurs, which I feel rather than hear; but I cannot interpret them, I cannot compa.s.s their sounds. And sometimes gigantic formless shadows overcloud me. I know they have forms of wondrous symmetry and beauty, but they are so grand that my vision does not reach their outline, and I cannot comprehend them. I know that I am dominant of the physical creation on this earth, but at those times I feel that these great and mighty essences, whose world in which they live and move, envelopes ours and us, and to whom our matter is as impalpable air--I know that they and we, theirs and ours, are involved in higher and yet higher conditions and elements, that in some mysterious way we mutually and blindly contribute and minister to each other."

"And what profit do you find in such communication?" asked Bart.

"It is but preparatory to try the powers, clear the vision and senses, train and discipline the essential faculties for a communion with this essence that may be fully revealed, and aid in the workings and immediate government of our gross material world, and the spirits that pertain to it more immediately, if such there are."

"And you are in doubt about that?"

"Somewhat; and yet through some such agencies came the givings forth of the Prophets."

"You believe in the Prophets?" asked Case.

"a.s.suredly. The many generations which inherited from each other the seer faculty, developed and improved, living the secluded, severe, and simple lives of the anchorite, amid the grand and solemn silence of mountain and desert, were enabled, by wondrous and protracted effort, to wear through the filament--impenetrable as adamant to common men--that screened from them the invisible future, and they told What they saw."

"Yet they never told it so that any mortal ever understood what they said, or could apply their visions to any pa.s.sing events, and the same givings out of these half-crazed old bards, for such they were, have been applied to fifty different things by as many different generations of men," said Case.

"That may have arisen, in part," said Bart, "from the dim sight of the seer, and the difficulty of clothing extraordinary visions in the garb of ordinary things. It is not easy, however, for the common mind to see why, if G.o.d had a special message for His children of such importance that He would provide a special messenger to communicate it, and had a choice of messengers, it should reach them finally, in a form that n.o.body could interpret. With G.o.d every thing is in the present, all that has happened, and all that will, is as the now is to us. If a man can reach the power or faculty of getting a glimpse of things as G.o.d sees them, he would make some utterance, if he survived, and it would be very incoherent. Besides, human events repeat themselves, and a good general description of great human calamities would truthfully apply to several, and so might be fulfilled your half hundred times, Mr. Case."

"That isn't a bad theory of prophecy," said Case approvingly; "but all these marvels were in the old time; how came the faculty to be lost?"

"Is it?" asked Bart. "Don't you hear of it in barbarous and savage conditions of men, now? Our friend Sartliff would say that the faculty was lost, through the corruptions and clogs of civilization; and he proposes to restore it."

"No, I don't propose to restore that exactly. I want to find a way back to Nature for myself, and then teach it to others, when the power of prophecy will be restored. I want to see man restored to his rightful position, as the head of this lower universe. There are ills and powers of mischief now at large, and operative, that would find their master in a perfect man. One such, under favorable auspices, was once born into this world; and we know that it is possible. He took His natural place at the head; and all minor powers and agencies acknowledged Him at once. I have never been quite able to understand why He, with His power of clear discernment, should have precipitated Himself upon the Jewish and Roman power, and so perished, and at so early a day in His life."

"So that the prophets might be fulfilled," said Case.

"It may have been," resumed Sartliff.

"Upon the merely human theory of the thing," said Bart, "He could foresee that this was the only logical conclusion of his teachings, and best, perhaps only means of fixing his messages and doctrines in the hearts of men. I may not venture a suggestion, Mr. Sartliff," Bart continued; "but it seems to me, that your search back will necessarily fail. In searching back, as you call it, for the happy point when the strength and purity and the inspiration of nature can be united with all that is good in Christian civilization, if your theory is correct, your civilized eyes will never discern the place. You will have pa.s.sed it before you have re-acquired the power to find it, and your life will be spent in a vain running to and fro, in search of it. Miracles have ceased to be wonders, for we work them by ordinary means now-a-days, and we don't know them when we meet them."

Sartliff arose; he had been for sometime silent. His face was sad.

"It may be. I like you, Barton; you have a good deal of your brother's common sense, uncommon as that is, and I shall come and see you often."

And without another word he strode off deeper into the woods, and was lost to the eyes of the young men.

"Is it possible," said Bart, "that this was an educated, strong, and brilliant mind, capable of dealing with difficult questions of law?

I fear that he has worn or torn through the filament that divides the workings of the healthy mind from the visions of the dreamer--wrecked on the everlasting old rocks that jut out all about our sh.o.r.es, and always challenging us to dash upon them. Shall we know when we die?

Shall we die when we know? After all, are not these things to be known? Why place them under our eyes so that a child of five years will ask questions that no mortal, or immortal, has yet solved? Have we lost the clue to this knowledge? Do we overlook it? Do we stumble over it, perish, wanting it, with it in our hands without the power to see or feel it? Has some rift opened to a hidden store of truth, and has a gleam of it come to the eyes of this man, filling him with a hunger of which he is to die? When the man arises to whom these mysteries shall reveal themselves, as he a.s.suredly will, the old gospels will be supplemented."

"Or superseded," said Case. "And is it not about time? Have not the old done for us about all they can? Do we not need, as well as wish for, a new?"

"A man may doubtless so abuse and deprave his powers, that old healthy food ceases to be endurable, and yields to him no nutrition; of course he must perish," answered Bart. "He will demand new food."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

OLD GID.

Towards the close of the term, there came into the court-room, one day, a man of giant mould: standing head and shoulders above his fellows, broad shouldered, deep chested, with a short neck and large flat face, a regal brow, and large, roomy head in which to work out great problems. He had light grayish blue, or blueish gray eyes, and a scarlet mark disfiguring one side of his face. The proceedings paused, and men gathered about him. His manner was bland, his smile, that took up his whole face, very pleasant. Bart knew that this was J.R.

Giddings, just home from Was.h.i.+ngton, where he had already overhauled the Seminole war, and begun that mining into the foundation of things that finally overthrew slavery.

During the term Bart heard him before the court and jury, and found him a dullish, heavy speaker, a little as he thought the indifferently good English parliamentary speaker might be. He often hesitated for a word, and usually waited for it; sometimes he would persist in having it at once, when he would close his eyes very tight, and compel it.

His manner and gesture could not be called good, and yet Bart felt that he was in the presence of a formidable man.

His mind was one of a high order, without a scintilla of genius or any of its elements. He had a powerful grasp, and elude, as it might, he finally clutched the idea or principle sought it never escaped him: and he never rested until its soul and blood were his, or rejected as useless, after the application of every test. It was a bad day for slavery when Giddings determined to enter Congress. Cool, shrewd, adroit, wary and wily, never baffled, never off his guard and never bluffed; with a reserve of power and expedients always sufficient, with a courage that knew no blenching, he moved forward. He had more industry and patience, and was a better lawyer than Wade, but was his inferior as an advocate. They were opposed in the case in which Giddings appeared, and Bart already felt that in the atmosphere of the contest was the element of dislike on the part of Wade, and of cool, watchful care on the part of Giddings. Wade made two or three headlong onsets, which were received and parried with bland, smiling coolness.

From his manner no one could tell what Giddings thought of his case or opponent.

Two or three evenings after, an informal "reception," as it would now be called, was held at the Giddings residence, to which the students and nearly everybody else went. It was a pleasant greeting between friends and neighbors, and a valued citizen, just home after a half year's absence. Nothing could be more kind and natural than the manner of Mr. Giddings, supported by motherly Mrs. Giddings, and the accomplished Miss Giddings, who had spent the winter with her father at Was.h.i.+ngton. She was like her father, in mind and person, softened and sweetened and much more gracious by s.e.x; tall, graceful, and with the easy presence and manner of society and cultivation.