第38章

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming.If they have an old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with their tomahawks,) - if they have, scattered about, those mighty square houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monument, - if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the side-walk, - if they have a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming decay, - I think Icould go to pieces, after my life's work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in.I visit such spots always with infinite delight.My friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties.Let a man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day and the stars by night.

- Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great towns? - I don't believe there is much difference.You know how they read Pope's line in the smallest town in our State of Massachusetts? - Well, they read it "All are but parts of one stupendous HULL!"- Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered.The front-door is on the street.Some keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some, bolted, - with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in;and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its threshold.This front-door leads into a passage which opens into an ante-room, and this into the inferior apartments.The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers.

There is almost always at least one key to this side-door.This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom.Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it.The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none is given with it!

If nature or accident has put one of these keys into the hands of a person who has the torturing instinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that Justice utters over its doomed victim, -THE LORD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL! You will probably go mad within a reasonable time, - or, if you are a man, run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco, - or, if you are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other.

Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the side-door.The fact of possessing one renders those even who are dear to you very terrible at times.You can keep the world out from your front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood.Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, - touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument.I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance.Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found.A delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities! From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses.A few exercises on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them.No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well, -parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.Be very careful to whom you give a side-door key; too many have them already.

- You remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became thawed? If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it should sting us and we should die than that its chill should slowly steal into our hearts; warm it we never can! I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women's hearts.I knew what freezing image lay on the white breasts beneath the laces!