Marietta Holley

“ As we went acrost a corner of this immense door-yard, through the most beautiful pieces of woodland, and the verdant slopes covered with velvety sward, great, beautiful pheasants and herds of deer would look round at us and then walk off, not a mite afraid, fearless as they will be if they’re used well. Anon we would ketch a glimpse of some enchantin’ vista, with herds of contented cattle, makin’ picters of themselves aginst the background of green grass and noble trees centuries old. ”

“ Yes, I will cower down behind the thick folds, knowin’ that I am doin’ the best I can for myself and the world at large. Yes, I will let ’em droop down over our voyage through the wild waves, our arrival in our own dear native land, our feelin’s when we see the shore we loved dawn on us out of the mist, and when we sot our feet on the sile of the Continent that wears Jonesville like a pearl of great price on its tawny old bosom. ”

“ Goin’ up six heavey, oak, semicircular steps, we go into the ball-room, over a hundred feet long, with great bay-winders, out of which you see picters more beautiful than any that could be painted by the hand of man—perfect landscape of quiet country, silvery stream, rustic bridges, grand old parks, and the spire of the church from the distant village pintin’ up to the blue sky. ”

“ About the first thing that strikes you as you venter out-doors is the wideness and beauty of the streets, with their double row of trees and their elegant housen, lookin’ so sort o’ finished—not put in anyhow, like a palace and a hovel, but all kinder of the same style and make, handsome as picters, and the sidewalk is as wide as from our house to the barn, and I d’no but wider. ”

“ All have different ways and beliefs. All say God is here within the narrow walls of this church, and not in the others. Oh! I get so confused, I know not what to do. How can I, a poor stranger, trace His footsteps through all these conflicting creeds? I grow sad, and my heart fills with doubt and darkness. ”

“ But though Death bore her off in her first sweet youth, and him long years after, a sad, middle-aged man, with a big family of children, who called another woman mother—still they stand there by the Bonny Doon.
[Pg 231]
The blue eyes and the brown eyes (that have been dust for a century) are still lookin’ love to each other.
Warm, clingin’ hands, that can hardly be torn apart, love so great that it fills the universe—love! constancy! despair! heartache! flowin’ out from the rapt atmosphere that surrounds this immortal pair of lovers; it is a power that enfolds all feelin’ hearts. ”

“ In some I see grand pictures, and note the incense floating up toward the Heavens; in some I see high vaulted roofs, and the light in many glowing colors falls on the bowed forms of the worshippers. I hear holy words, the voice of prayer, but I see no crosses borne, and all are rich and grand. I go down in the low places. I see the poor toiling on unpitied and uncared for. ”

“ Are you ever permitted to come down in the stillness of a Summer evenin’ and stand clost by the side of that white-haired old man, who grew old so fast after you left him, whose heart yearns for you, and who is a-tryin’ so faithfully to carry out his little pardner’s wishes? He sez that sometimes he feels that you are so near to him that he almost expects to see your face blossom out of the dark, like the evenin’ star out of the misty twilight. ”

“ Why, the treasures of art in the Vatican is the finest collection in the world, and when you realize how big the world is—take it from Jonesville to Chicago, and so by New York to Ingy, and back agin by the North Pole to Loontown and Zoar, you can git a faint idee on’t.
There is everything in it besides the glorious picters and statutes made by the greatest artists and sculpters that ever lived. There are ancient coins and household utensils of every age, tapestry, mosaics, jewels, embroideries, carvin’s, etc., etc. ”

“ I go into your great halls where laws are made—I see the wise men making laws to bind the weak and tempted with iron chains—laws to help bad men lead lives of impurity—laws to make legal crimes that your Holy Book says renders one forever unfit for Heaven. ”

“ I find your rich men controlling the market—holding back the bread that the poor hungered and starved for, putting burdens on them more grievous than they could bear. These rich men, sitting with their soft, white hands, and forms that never ached with labor, putting such high prices on [Pg 53] grain and corn that the poor could not buy to eat—these rich men prayed in the morning (for they often go through the forms of the holy religion) —they prayed, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ and then made it their first business to keep people from having that prayer answered to them. ”

“ How can you sit down calmly and know that such a law is in existence? How can mothers happily watch their sweet little baby girls at play, and know that such a horrible danger lurks in the path their ignorant little feet have got to tread, such a snare is set for them? ”

“ I see it agin, I almost feel the shadders of the tall lilock [Pg 546] bushes; I see the June roses a-shinin’ like rosy stars above the deep lush grass, and the delicate white tracery of the caraway a-hoverin’ over ’em like a snowy mist.
Oh, summer garden! oh, summer hours of life! oh, beauty and bloom, divine sadness and rapter, and rich promise of the glowin’ futer a-layin’ fur off in the distance, like the sun in the glowin’ west.
My Josiah had brung ’em all back to me. What wuz cologne or bergamot in them rapt hours?
Men are deep. ”

“ It is seven acres of land full of everything rich and rare and beautiful from our time back to the year one, and further, for all I know. The marbles, engravin’s, picters, coins, manuscripts, curosities—if I had the wealth of ’em in money—if I could have the worth of jest one article out of the innumerable multitude of ’em, I could jest buy out the hull town of Lyme, and live on the interest of my money. ”

“ A green, velvety lawn a hundred feet wide and over five hundred long, bordered by most beautiful colored flowers, and out of another winder you could see the velvety slopes, with walks and river and bridge, and way off the noble trees and terraces, one risin’ above another, all full of beautiful plants and shrubs. ”

“ I ask many people to show me the temple where God is, to show me the great mosque where Truth and Right dwell, and the [Pg 39] people are blessed by their white shining light, for I thought He would be in all the customs and ways of this wise people, so good that they instruct all the rest of the world. ”

“ In the season of pilgrimage the meetin’-house is crowded all day and way into the night, and round it the way is blocked with the pilgrims, and way up onto the hillside their kneelin’ forms are massed. ”

“ Pompey, jest a-thinkin’ on’t, and so what could they have been when I at last stood in the city on which fell sech a sudden doom.
To see the silent forms struck down, jest as full of life and love and happiness as Alice and Adrian wuz to-day. There wuz a woman clingin’ to a bag of gold—gold couldn’t help her. A young man and young girl clasped in each others’ arms—love couldn’t save ’em. A priest of Isis, who knew all the secrets of the Mystic Religion—his wisdom couldn’t save him, or what he called his wisdom. A giant form full of courage and defiance—strength couldn’t save him, nor courage. ”

“ The city occupies the centre—the inside on’t, little villages and tree-embowered castles and villas a-linin’ the shores on each side, and on the off side, addin’ the one touch of mystery that gives a vivid but dark charm to the picter, rises Mount Vesuvius, a-standin’ there all the time as if protestin’ aginst the poor wisdom of the ages. ”

“ I will draw a curtain of cretonne over the incidents of our tegus, tegus journey, and only draw it back agin, on its hot, dry, brass rings, when we are once more settled down in a middlin’ good tarvern at Madrid—I a-settin’ by the winder and Josiah a-layin’ on the bed fast asleep, the dressin’-gown folded lovin’ly round his small-boneded figger. ”

“ Josiah sez to me, “Never before sence I wuz born have I seen a man dressed up as he ort to be to carry out my idees. You can see for yourself, Samantha, jest how perfectly beautiful, and how dressy and stylish a man can be if he sets out; why,” sez he, “a dress like that would take twenty years offen my age, and I d’no but twenty-one, and I’m bound to have one jest exactly like it if I ever live to git home. What a sensation it will create in Jonesville!” ”

“ And he sez, “There you be agin—meetin’-housen and castles can’t stop you, nor buryin’-grounds skair you out; I’m sick of your dum W. C. T. U. talk!”
I felt too riz up to argy with him, but I felt deeply the truth of what whiskey had done in his case. And as to his pa, I said to myself, “Weakness of will, and opium, mebby, stood in the way of the world’s seein’ another Shakespeare—not jest like him, but a new and uneek type of poet; jest as great and dazzlin’, but different as one big star differs from another—all on ’em a-flashin’ out light onto a dark, dull world. ”

“ Now I know,” sez I, a-glancin’ at my pardner’s shinin’ bald head a-risin’ up like a full harvest moon from behind the pages of The World—
“I know one life that if it went down in darkness [Pg 18] under them wheels, it would make the hull world black and empty. It would take all the happiness and hope and meanin’ out of this world, and change it into a funeral gloom.”
Sez I, “It would darken the world for all who love him.” And sez I, “Every one of them fifty that have gone down under them death chariots have left ’em who loved ’em. ”

“ Sez he, “It is a pity if a man can’t sing a little durin’ the evenin’ without his folks actin’ like perfect fools!”
“Sing!” sez I; “I wonder how many more episodes you’ll have to go through without your learnin’ the truth about what you call your singin’.” Sez I, “You can’t sing, Josiah Allen, any more than a cow can play on the melodian, and I’ve told you so often enough for you to believe it.”
“Wall, wall,” sez he, “it’s time to go to bed. When a man is a-travellin’ with a hull crew of loonaticks and fools, it stands him in hand to git what little rest he can, nights.” ”

“ I have known ’em who lived in the country, fur back from the delights and advantages of Jonesville—I have known them creeters, when they come in on a saw log or on a load of calves to ship, I have seen ’em look with perfect or at the commotion and life in the Jonesville street, where, right in front of the tarvern, I have seen with my own eyes as many as five teams and two open buggies, besides walkers on the sidewalk. This sight to ’em, fresh from country wilds, where one wagon along the road a day wuz a fair average, wuz as good as a circus to ’em. ”

“ How clean Paris is! how gay and bright the streets look! what pretty wimmen, and what neat, smart-lookin’ men, and pretty children, too, with their smart nurse-maids! elegant carriages, splendid housen, magnificent buildin’s, and arches, and towers, and monuments, and meetin’-housen, and around everything and over everything the gay, bright atmosphere of good feelin’ and politeness.
No wonder folks love to come here, and don’t want to go away. Why, I enjoyed myself first-rate in Paris, and Paris enjoyed my bein’ there, so fur as I know ”

“ Two prettier, winnin’er creeters never lived than them two.
Alice wuz about sixteen then, and Adrian wuz about five, and wuzn’t they happy! My hull heart went out to ’em, and mebby it wuz that love atmosphere that wropped ’em completely round that made ’em grow so bright and cheerful and healthy.
There hain’t no atmosphere that is at the same time so inspirin’ and so restful as the heart atmosphere of love.
You can always tell ’em that breathe its rare, fine atmosphere by the radiance in their faces and the lightness of their step. ”

“ Everybody in the village had sunthin’ to say of Burns. Everybody wuz proud of livin’ in the place his feet had once trod.
Them who looked the coldest on him when livin’, or descendents of them who had wrung his sensitive soul while warm and beatin’, and achin’ for sympathy—
Descendents of the big man of the village, “Holy Willie” himself, who once would not have spoken to his humble neighbor, or if he’d spoken at all, they’d been words of insult that would have rankled in the soul of the poet, now considered it their greatest pride and honor to live in the country that gave him birth. ”

“ For that strong, inexecrable hand holds empires in its grasp, blood drippin’ through the firm, cast-iron fingers. A well-meanin’ grasp in the first place, nobody doubts, and as time has passed, a-snatchin’ many savages from their barbarous lives and savage beliefs into better ways of livin’, and bringin’ ’em into the shelter of the Cross.
Good and evil, evil and good. Loyola is not the only Leader who has waded through seas of blood, and all to “The Greater Glory of God.” And what will be the end?
Onlimited power is a dangerous weepon to handle. ”

“ In the palaces we see the height of luxury and richness of beauty. In the prisons and dungeons [Pg 584] we can see the black depths of terror and cruelty of the time when the Council of Ten ruled Venice.
The Doge’s palace is a dream of magnificence. You look up the Giant’s Staircase, way up—up to the great statutes of Mars and Neptune, where them mean creeters wuz crowned—the Doges, I mean. And then you can’t help meditatin’ that whilst they clumb to the very top of magnificence, they didn’t do well, they didn’t die peaceable in their beds, none on ’em. ”

“ The poor givin’ their strength and good-will, the rich givin’ their wealth and learnin’, and so becomin’ a strong bulwark, protectin’ society from the high flood of undisciplined passions—Ignorance and Crime.
Do you see it all, little Pardner? Sometimes I think you do.
I am writin’ this at the open winder you looked out of as you sed you would work for the poor.
And as I think how you have worked for ’em, and are still a-workin’, my heart is as full of the thought of you, little Adrian, as the voyalets you loved are filled with their strong, onseen perfume. ”

“ Smooth, wild waste of blue-gray waters stretchin’ out as fur as the eye could reach on every side.
In the east a silvery moon hangin’ low and a shinin’ path leadin’ up to it. In the west Mars a-dazzlin’ bright over a pale pink sky, with streaks of yeller and crimson a-layin’ stretched acrost it, like bars put up by angel hands a-fencin’ in their world from ourn.
[Pg 2]
Now in a sunset in Jonesville it might seem as if you could put on your sun-bunnet and stride off over hills and valleys and at las’ reach the Sunset Land, and peek over the bars and ketch a glimpse of what wuz beyend. ”