John C. Hutcheson

“ Did you ever watch an Alpine sunrise? How the light leaps from peak to peak, warming the monotonous white landscape in an instant with a tinge of crimson lake, and making the ice prisms sparkle like sapphires!
It was just so in my dream:—not a detail was omitted.
With the brightening of the dawn my troubles began to disappear. The crevasse narrowed, and the distant peaks of the Matterhorn approached nearer. Min was close to me, so close that I could almost touch the hand she held out to guide my steps. I heard her say, “Come, Frank, come! courage, and you’re safe!” ”

“ Min dead—my darling whom I had hurried home to see once more, the whisper of whose calling I had heard across the expanse of vast Atlantic in eager entreaty; and whose tender, clinging affection I had looked forward to, as the earnest of all my toils and struggles, my longing hopes, my halting doubts, my groans, my tears!
It could not be.
I would not believe it. God could not be so cruel as man; and what man would do such a heartless deed? ”

“ I wanted to be alone in my misery; and so, I walked the whole way to Saint Canon’s—three miles if it were an inch, over a rough, newly-stoned road, too, and in patent-leather boots with paper soles! I never thought of that, however, nor felt the stones, notwithstanding that my boots were entirely worn out when I reached home. I might have been walking along on a Brussels carpet, for all that I knew to the contrary!
My thoughts were agony:—my mind, a perfect hell; and, that dreadful Mabel waltz seemed to be continually running through my brain, tinkling the death knell of all my hopes! ”

“ Her last words had rendered me almost as hopeful as she professed to be; so, in spite of my great grief at our parting, a grief which was too deep for words, I was endeavouring more to look forward sanguinely to the future than dwell on all our past unhappiness—which I tried to put away from me as a bad dream.
I was only musing, that’s all.
It is impossible to keep one’s mind idle, you know; for, even when engaged in an abstract contemplation of the most engrossing theme, the fancy will stray off into by-paths that lead to strangely dissimilar ideas and very disconnected associations. ”

“ Know, that repentance brings us always once more beneath the shelter of divine love! You will think of this by-and-by, Frank:—you may carve out a new life for yourself in the new world, and return to us successful. Be comforted, my boy! Do not forget David’s spirit-stirring words of promise,—‘They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy; and he that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him!’ ”

“ The suspense is killing me:—anxiety and uncertainty are driving me mad! Tell me, Min—dear as you are to me, I ask it for the last time—whether you will promise to be my wife? Only give me a grain of hope, that I may have something to look forward to; something to work for; some object in life? At present, I have nothing; and, my existence is a burden to me!”
“Can we not be friends still, Frank?” she asked, sadly.
“No, Min,” I answered; “I cannot promise any longer what I feel unable to perform. You must be everything to me or nothing! I would lay down my life for you, darling! ”

“ The giving up of my appointment was the finish of my mad career.
I awoke now to a consciousness of all my foolishness and wickedness; the revelation of the misery, present and future alike, which my conduct had prepared for me, coming to mind, with a sudden, sharp stroke of painful distinctness that prostrated me into an abyss of self-torture and repentance.
Ah! There is no use in repining, unless one mends matters by deeds, not words. Repentance is worth little if it be not followed up by reformation. ”

“ Early in the spring, when the warming breath of the power-increasing sun was slowly unloosing the chains of winter—when the rapid-running Hudson was sweeping down huge blocks and fields of ice from Albany, flooding New York Bay with a collection of little bergs, so that it looked somewhat like the Arctic effect I had seen on the Thames on that happy Christmas of the past, only on ever so much larger a scale—I received letters from England that cheered me up wonderfully, changing the whole aspect of my life. ”

“ Where is the “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,” now, when you really come to dive below the surface, and see things as they are in America, eh?—
But, bless you, these reformers will not so regard the objects of their veneration. They will only see them in the light in which they choose to see them; and would swear black was white in order to answer their purpose!
Your true radical or republican—the name “liberal” is a misnomer—is, as I have often heard the vicar say, one of the most intolerant, illiberal persons under the sun. ”

“ Do you remember those lines he wrote to the memory of “Boatswain,” on the monument he erected in his honour at Newstead Abbey? I would like them on Catch’s tomb, if I only knew where the dear old fellow lies; for, what “Boatswain” was to Byron, so was he to me:—
“In life the foremost friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonour’d falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth!”
Min’s news did not come all at once. ”

“ I knew that I—my other self—wished to reach the heights of the Matterhorn before and above me: the region of perpetual snow. I sympathised with that wish; and yet, I could look on at all my efforts to accomplish it, as if I were uninterested in their success, whilst I still felt, within myself, all the agony and suspense that must have filled the mind of my wraith, I could see myself making repeated exertions to reach the heights; constantly climbing, never getting any higher. ”

“ When, bright with mellow sunshine, it reflects the intense blue of the ocean sky above, with a brisk breeze topping its many-furrowed waves—that are racing by and leaping over each other like a parcel of schoolboys at play—and cutting off sheets and sparkling showers of the prismatic foam that exhibits every tint of the rainbow—azure and orange, violet, light-green, and pale luminous white,—scatters it broadcast into the air around ”

“ Say to yourself, ‘I’ll work and win her,’ and you will. Put your heart in it, and it will soon be done—sooner than you now think. There’s no good in your sitting down and whining at your present defeat, like the naughty child that cried for the moon! You must be up and doing. A man’s business is to overcome obstacles; it is only us, women, who are allowed to cry at home!”
“But, Mrs Clyde dislikes me,” I said.
“What of that?” retorted Miss Pimpernell; “her dislike may be overcome.” ”

“ I waited accordingly; but, my heart was daily torn with a despair and longing, that very much altered me from the merry Frank Lorton of former times.
Could I hope?
Would she only wait for me, too?
Should my trust and my devotion be finally rewarded?
Miss Pimpernell said “yes,” and Min, when I saw her, looked it; but, my heart frequently said “no”—and, I was miserable in consequence!
It is a truism, that, when one loves truly, one is never satisfied. ”

“ Il est naturel que nos idées les plus vives et les plus familières se rétracent pendant le sommeil.
I had a most curious dream about Min that very night.
Probably this was owing to the reactionary mental relief I experienced after all my doubts and jealousies—you know, “joie fait peur” sometimes. It might also have resulted from the stronger impression which my last interview with her had made upon my mind, coupled with all the sweet hopes and darling imaginings that had sprung suddenly into existence, when her rose-red lips told me in liquid accents that she loved me. ”

“ A woman’s heart, the heart of her I loved.
When “hope deferred,” and baffled love combined, had well-nigh made me as miserable and woebegone as I could possibly be, I heard a piece of news one day which almost nerved up my halting resolution to bring affairs to a final issue by speaking out again to Mrs Clyde—no matter what might be the result.
The joyful intelligence was circulated by the pleased Lady Dasher, that, Mr Mawley had at length proposed for her daughter, Bessie. ”

“ He goes on plodding round in his Government mill, grumbling and working still to the end of his active life, when superannuation or a starvation allowance comes, to ease his cares in one way and increase them in another! And, to do him scant justice, he really does work manfully, at a lesser rate of pay, and with fewer incentives to exertion through hopes of advancement, than any other representative person under the sun—I do not care to what class or clique he may belong! ”

“ Fancy, the consternation at Carlton House Terrace, the dismay in Downing Street, some fine morning, when no clerks were forthcoming!
Imagine the tons of correspondence awaiting answers, the acres of accounts to be audited, the minutes that would not be made, the “submissions” that could not go forward, the files that should have been docketed, and initialled, and stowed away uselessly till doomsday; and, that must, instead, remain untouched, uncared for! ”

“ And, I didn’t say, too, that you should have to wait seven years, or anything like it—although, if you really love Miss Min, you would think nothing of twice that time of probation. As for Jacob’s age, the vicar could explain about that better than I, Master Frank, sharp though you are; you had best ask him what he thinks on the subject? What I say, is, my boy, that you must make up your mind to work, and wait for your sweetheart; work, at any rate—and wait, if needs be. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day;’ and, when did you ever hear of the course of true love running smooth? Be a man, Frank! ”

“ Diffuse a brighter ray!
“O you lovers, you lovers!”—exclaimed little Miss Pimpernell, on my unbosoming myself to her, and recounting the incidents of my unhappy interview with Min’s mother, shortly after I quitted the scene of my discomfiture.—“O you lovers, you lovers! You are always, either on the heights of ecstasy, or deep down in the depths of despair! Be a man, Frank, and let her see what noble stuff there is in you! There is nothing in this world worth the having, which can be obtained by merely looking at it and longing for it. ”

“ What, can you imagine, made dear little Miss Pimpernell’s lengthy missive—scribed as it was in the most puzzling of calligraphies—of so engrossing an interest, that I read it again and again; valuing it more than all her previous budgets of parish gossip put together, entertaining as I thought them before?
Once, twice, three times?
No, I do not believe you can guess what it was that gave me such delight in the “good news from home,” sharp and shrewd though you may think yourself. ”

“ Learn, O brothers! loving, like myself, hopelessly, unsuccessfully:—learn by me, by my blighted life, my lost present, my vanished hopes of heaven, that, the worst possible use to which you can put the divine image in which you are clothed, is “to go to the devil” for a woman’s sake! ”

“ The current sweeps my boat onward, past each tiny paradise in turn; and, on each, I still see Min always coming towards me, yet never reaching me! Swiftly the boat glides, swiftly and more swift; until, at last, Min, the palm-tree-shaded coral islets and all, are lost to sight—gradually yet in a moment. ”

“ Take away the leading articles, foreign correspondence, and parliamentary intelligence of our Jupiters of the press; and what have you got left? Only some police reports and an attenuated column of telegrams—solely from France and Germany, or some other part of Europe.
We have an Atlantic cable; what news of America do our newspapers publish through its means? Simply the rise or fall in the value of gold, and the price of Erie and other shares! We have a telegraph line to India:—of course, we get general intelligence, of interest to all people, respecting our great eastern, empire? ”

“ Is it not strange how you may live on and live on in some quiet country spot, or retired suburb, without anything ever occurring to vary the dull monotony of its even existence; and yet, the moment you go away from this whilom, stagnant neighbourhood—which you had got to believe was everlastingly unchangeable—change then succeeds change with startling rapidity:—as you at a distance hear from those friends whom you had left behind—to simmer on there, as you had simmered on, until the end of the chapter? ”

“ Let a man be apprenticed to a skilled trade, and carry a bricklayer’s hod, or a carpenter’s rule. Let him only wear slops and work in an engine-room, or use a mason’s trowel—so long as he does these things and receives his wages weekly, he is a ‘working-man;’ and, must have the hours of labour made to suit him, the legislation of the country altered on his behalf, the taxation of the public judiciously contrived to steer clear of him. He is the typical ‘working-man,’ my dear, of whom demagogues are always prating:—the fetish, before which so-called ‘liberal’ statesmen fall down and worship! ”

“ I know that a brave man, one who does not credit an eternity and has not the slightest thought on the subject of future salvation or future punishment, can, when quitting the only world of his knowledge, look upon his approaching end with a courage and an apathetic calm which resemble the smiling fortitude wherewith the ancient gladiators uttered their parting salutations to Nero—when, in expectation, they waited for the fatal thumb to be turned down, in token of their doom. ”

“ A ‘crammer’ is a ‘coach,’ you know.”
“I’m sure I don’t,”—said little Miss Pimpernell, energetically;—“for, what with your crammers and coaches, I really do not know what you are speaking about!”
“Well, my dear, I’ll now enlighten you,”—said the vicar, still laughing at the old lady’s very natural mistake.—“Crammers and coaches, are certain high-pressure machines, in the form of man, for forcing any amount of superficial knowledge into uneducated youths within a fixed time. ”

“ Lady Dasher was, for a wonder, wise in her generation; and, the twain—not my lady and Mawley, but her daughter and ditto—were married within a month after the public announcement of their attachment, much to the surprise of Saint Canon’s, the mortification of sundry single ladies thereof, and the well-disguised delight of Lady Dasher, who, even on such a festive occasion, looked more melancholic than ever. ”

“ I used, I remember, to mark off the days as they passed, in the little almanack of my pocket-book—scoring them out, just as Robinson Crusoe was in the habit of notching his post for the same purpose:—I used to fret and fret, in fact, eating my soul away in vain repinings and foolish longings!
And, still, my fortunes did not brighten—notwithstanding that I hunted in every direction for work, and tried to wean my mind from painful associations by hopeful anticipations of “something turning up” on the morrow. ”

“ What can one think of them when one hears them talking of ‘economy,’ and cutting down the poor clerk’s salary, without dreaming of touching their own little snug incomes of five thousand a-year!”
“But what has all this got to do with Frank’s appointment, brother?” asked Miss Pimpernell, with a sly chuckle of satisfaction. She always said she disliked arguments; but, she was never better pleased than to hear the vicar expressing his sentiments on topics of the day. He was so earnest and delighted when he got a good listener—although, he was rather shy of speaking before strangers. ”