Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“ Proficiency, superiority, were rated on a scale quite out of my experience. To be distinguished was to possess high spiritual traits. Deep at the root of every public custom, of every private deed, there hid the seed of one universal emotion,—the love of a living soul for the Being who had created it.
I, who knew not of this feeling, I, who was as a savage among this intelligence, who was no more than an object of charity at the hands of this community,—what had I to offer to my son?
A father's personal position? Loving influence? Power to push the little fellow to the front? ”

“ In the depth of my consciousness, I knew that, come what might, I had for ever lost the chance to be a symmetrical healthy human creature, whose spiritual faculties are exercised like his brain or muscle; who has lived upon the earth, and loved it, and gathered its wealth and sweetness and love of living into his being, as visible food whereby to create invisible stature; whose earthly experience has carried him on, as Nature carries growth—unconsciously, powerfully, perfectly, into a diviner life. ”

“ The mare, now mad as any maniac, ran on.
Something had broken, but it mattered little what. I think we turned a corner. I think she struck a lamp-post or a tree. At all events, the buggy went over; and, scooped into the top, and dragged, and blinded, and stunned, I came to the ground.
As I went down, I uttered the two words of all that are human, most solemn; perhaps, one may add, most automatic. Believer or sceptic, saint or sinner, mortal danger hurls them from us, as it wrests the soul from out our bodies. ”

“ I looked up and down the street, where the living men scurried to and fro upon their little errands. These seemed immeasurably small. I looked upon them with disgust. Fettered to that pavement, like a convict to his ball-and-chain, I passed and repassed in wretchedness whose quality I cannot express, and would not if I could.
"I am punished," I said; "I am punished for that which I have done. This is my doom. I am imprisoned here."
Sometimes I broke into uncontrollable misery, crying upon my wife's dear name. ”

“ The love of healing? The relief of suffering? Sympathy with the wretched? Chivalry for the helpless? Generosity to the poor? Friendship to the friendless? Were these the motives, all the motives, the whole motives, of him who had in my name ministered in that place so long? Even the love of science? Devotion to a therapeutic creed? Sacrifice for a surgical doctrine? Enthusiasm for an important professional cause? Did these, and only these, sources of conduct explain the great hospital? Or the surgeon who had created and sustained it? ”

“ Were it for me to expect to be successful in that solemn effort which is as old as time, and as hopeless as the eyes of mourners?
What shall I say? It is willed that I shall speak. The angel said unto me: Write. How shall I obey, who am the most unworthy of any soul upon whom has been laid the burden of the higher utterance? Sacred be the task. Would that its sacredness could sanctify the unfitness of him who here fulfils it.
The experience which I have already narrated was followed by an indefinite period of great misery. ”

“ I had been a man of will so developed and freedom so sufficient that helplessness came upon me like a change of temperament; it took the form of hopelessness almost at once.
What was death? The secret of life. What knew I of the system of things on which a blow upon the head had ushered me all unready, reluctant, and uninstructed as I was? No more than the ruddiest live stockbroker in the street, whose blood went bounding, that fresh morning, to the antics of the Santa Ma. ”

“ The telegraph and the messenger boy we had always with us; it was a little matter for a man to take the trouble to tell his wife why and where he was kept away all night. I do not remember that I had ever failed to do so. It was a bother sometimes, I admit, but the pleasure it gave her usually repaid me; such is the small, sweet coin of daily love.
As I sat there at the broker's desk, like a creature in a trap, all that long and wretched night, the image of my wife seemed to devour my brain and my reason. ”

“ It is easier to philosophize about these things than it is to record them in cold fact. With shame and sorrow do I say it, but say it I must: My love went the way of the love of other men who feel (this was and remains the truth) far less than I. I, who had believed myself to love like no other before me, and none to come after me, and I, who had won the dearest woman in all the world—I stooped to suffer myself to grow used to my blessedness, like any low man who was incapable of winning or of wearing it. ”

“ My helplessness before these facts chafed me sorely.
I made no futile effort to make myself known to any of the hospital patients. I had learned too well the limitations of my new condition now. I had in no wise learned to bear them. In truth, I think I bore them less, for my knowledge that these poor creatures did truly love me, and leaned on me, and mourned for me; I found it hard. I think it even occurred to me that a dead man might not be able to bear it to see his wife and child.
"Doctor!" said a low, sweet voice, "Doctor?" My heart leaped within me, as I turned. ”

“ I may rather say that I had come almost to feel that when I was worthy to see Helen I should be worthy of life eternal; and that I had dropped my love and my longing and my shame into the Hands of Infinite Love, and seen them close over these, as over a trust.
The special matter to which I refer was this: I desired to be permitted to visit human homes, and set myself, as well as I might, to the effort of cultivating their kindliness. I longed to cherish the sacred graces of human speech. I wished to emphasize the opportunity of those who love each other. ”

“ What was habit before death was habit after. What was natural then was natural now. What I loved living I loved dead. That which interested Esmerald Thorne the man interested Esmerald Thorne the spirit. The incident of death had raised the temperature of intellect; it had, perhaps, I may say, by this time quickened the pulse of conscience; but it had in no wise wrought any miracle upon me, nor created a religious believer out of a worldly and indifferent man of science. Dying had not forthwith made me a devout person. ”

“ But here I lost command of myself, and fleeing from the place where my presence and my misery and my entreaty alike were lost upon the attention of the living throng as were the elements of the air they breathed, I rushed into the outer world again; there to wander up and down the street, and hate the place, and hate myself for being there, and hate the greed of gain I used to love, and hate myself for having loved it ”

“ Thorne, who had the habit of success, who expected to make his point, who was accustomed to receive obedience, who fought death or hysteria, an opposing school or a tricky patient, with equal fidelity, as one who pursues the avocation of life,—I stood, conquered before this slender woman whose eyes, like the sword of flame, turned this way and that, guarding the barred gates of the only Eden I had ever chosen to enter. ”

“ The place, the springs of conduct, wearied me, something in the manner that an educated person is wearied by low conversation. It seemed to be like this:—that the moral motives of the living created the atmosphere of the dead therein confined. It was as if I inhaled the coarse friction, the low aspiration, the feverishness, the selfishness, the dishonour, that the getting of gain, when it became the purpose of life, involved. I experienced a sense of being stifled, and breathed with difficulty; much as those live men would have done, if the gas-pipes had burst in the street. ”

“ She was a powerful creature, and the weight yielded, hitting at her heels. In an instant she had cramped the wheels, and I saw that the buggy would go over. To spring back, reach the bit, snatch the reins, leap over the wheel, and whirl away in the reeling carriage was the work of some thing less than a thought; it was the elemental instinct by which a man must manage his horse, come life or death.
Like most doctors, I was something of a horseman, and the idea of being thwarted by any of Donna's whims had never occurred to me. ”

“ Our ideal of ourselves is to our highest life like the heart to the pulsation. It is the divinest art of the love of woman for man that she clasps him to his vision of himself, as breath and being are held together.
Until the time mentioned at the beginning of my narrative, I had in no sense appreciated the state of the case, as it lay between my ideal and my fact. That I had been more or less impatient of speech in my own home for some time past, is probably true. The ungoverned lip is a terrible master; and I had been a slave too long. I was in the habit of finding fault with my patients. ”

“ My unworthiness of her was more present with me even than my longing for her. If I could have scourged my soul clear of all unfitness for her as our Saviour was said to have scourged the tradesmen out of the Temple, I should have counted myself blessed, even though I never won her; though I beat out my last hope of her with the very blows which I inflicted upon myself.
In the vibrations of my strong emotion it used to surprise me that my will was such a cripple against the sensibilities of that delicate creature. I was a man of as much will as was naturally good for me ”

“ Now it happened to be the vesper hour in the hospital, and my visitor was going to his patients, the "sick of soul," with whom he was wont to join in the evening chant which, at a certain hour, daily arose from every roof in the wide city, and waxed mightily to the sides. It was music of a high order, and I always enjoyed it; no person of any musical taste could have done otherwise.
"Listen!" said my friend, as he turned to depart from me. I had only to glance at his rapt and noble countenance to perceive the high acoustic laws which separated his sensibility to the vesper from my own. ”

“ At the extreme end of the room stood chairs and settees provided for auctions. Between myself and these, the high, guarded public desk of the broker rose like a rampart.
In this sombre and severe place I now abandoned myself to my thoughts; and these gave me no mercy.
My wife was a reasonable woman; but she was a loving and sensitive one. I was accustomed to spare her all unnecessary uncertainty as to my movements—being more careful in this respect, perhaps, than most physicians would be; our profession covers a multitude of little domestic sins. ”

“ That which we have been accustomed to call love was an angel whose wings had been bruised by our unbelieving clutch. It was not the fashion to love greatly. One of the leading scientists of my time and of my profession had written: "There is nothing particularly holy about love." So far as I had given thought to the subject, I had, perhaps, agreed with him. It is easy for a physician to agree to anything which emphasizes the visible, and erases the invisible fact. ”

“ With all a father's heart and a physician's sensibility, I was proud of him.
I was proud of him, alas! until I began to perceive that, as matters were working, the boy was morally certain to be ashamed of me. This was a hard discovery; and it went hard with me after I had made it. But nothing could reduce the poignancy of the inquiry with which I had first gathered him to my heart, in the solitudes where he had found me lurking: If I were a spiritual outcast, what would become of Boy? ”

“ If I had never done anything, if I had never been anything, if I had never felt anything else in all my life, that was fit to last, I had loved one woman, and her only, and had thought high thoughts for her, and felt great emotions for her, and forgotten self for her sake, and thought it sweet to suffer for her, and been a better man for love of her. ”

“ I am here. It is I, Dr. Thorne; Dr. Esmerald Thorne. I am in this office. Gentlemen! Listen to me! Look at me! Look in this direction! For God's sake, try to see me—some of you!"...
"He drove too fast a horse," said the customer. "He always has."
"I must answer Mrs. Thorne's message," said the broker sadly, rising and pushing back the office chair.
...I shrank, and tried no more. I bowed my head, and said no other word. The truth, incredible and terrible though it were, the truth which neither flesh nor spirit can escape, had now forced itself upon my consciousness. ”

“ How much residuum was there in the solution of that absorption which (outside of my own home) I had thought the purest and highest of my interests in life?
For the first of all the uncounted times that I had entered the hospital for now these many years, I crossed the threshold questioning myself in this manner, and doubting of my fitness to be there, or to be what I had been held to be in that place. Life had carried me gaily and swiftly, as it carries successful men. I had found no time, or made none, to cross-question the sources of conduct. My success had been my religion. ”

“ Every movement that he makes seems to be bearing him farther from the society and the sympathy of his kind. Too benumbed, perhaps, to turn, he glides on, helpless as an ice-boat before the wind. Conscious of his mistake, of his danger, and knowing not how to retract the one or avoid the other, his helpless motions, seemingly guided by idleness, by madness, or by folly, lead him to the last place whither he would have led himself,—the weak spot in the ice. ”

“ Thorne!" a soft voice answered, in the accented tone of an impulsive, tender-hearted woman. "It's bad enough to be a patient. But, oh, his wife!"
"Let me pass, ladies!" I cried, or tried to cry, forgetting, in the anguish which their words fanned to its fiercest, that I could not be heard and might not be seen. "There seems to be some obstruction. Let me by, for I am in mortal haste!" ”