Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“ Life, and thought, and brain, are but crucibles to smelt gold in. Nobleness is made the slave of avarice, just as a pure stream is taught to turn a mill-wheel and become foul and muddied. The rich are scornful, and the poor sorrowful. O, Daisy, such things should not be! My heart beats when I think how poorly you and your mother are living."
"O, how much we owe you, Mortimer! you are selling your life for us. From morning till night, day after day, you have been our slave. Poor, dear Mortimer, how can we thank you? We can only give you love and prayers. ”

“ And so that appalling pile of closely-written manuscript is Mortimer's romance? Wasted hours and wasted thought—who would buy or read it?
A down-town clock strikes the hour of two so gently, that it sounds like the tinkling of sheep-bells coming through the misty twilight air from the green meadows. With which felicitous simile we will give our hero a little sleep, after having kept him up two hours after midnight.
Slumber touches his eyelids gently; but Daisy lies awake for hours; at last, falling into a trouble sleep, she dreams that she is an heiress.
Oh, Daisy Snarle! ”

“ At night the dreamers from their bed could see the stars hanging like fruit among its cloudy leaves.
When Bell and Mortimer came up from the sea-beach, the moonlight, breaking through this leafy lattice, made the chamber as that of Abon Ben Adhem—"like a lily in bloom." Nanny brought a lamp, and kissed them good-night.
"O, we don't want a lamp all this moon!" cried Bell.
The boy sat half undressed at the window. "Bell loves moonlight like a fairy," he said.
Bell's robe fell to her knees in snowy folds, and she stood like a petite Venus rising from the froth. ”

“ Oh Flint, I am a wrecked man! If it had only been murder—if I had killed a man in the heat of passion—but a poor innocent babe in the cold snow! The child! the little babe! Ah, Flint, I never see the white snow coming down but I think of it. Those eyes are always with me. They follow me out to sea. They haunt me in the long watches. One night, when a storm had torn our rigging to tatters, and we heard the breakers on the lee-shore, I saw her standing by the binnacle light, and, so help me Heaven! she had grown to be a woman. ”

“ With no one to teach them, save the old house-keeper Nanny, their minds had taken odd turns [Pg 32] and conceits; they had grown up old people in a hundred ways.
The roar of the winds and the sea had been in their ears from infancy. In the summer months they wandered late on the sandy beaches, or slept with the silent sunshine under the cherry trees. They had grown up with nature, and nature beat in them like another heart. She had imbued them with her richer and tenderer moods.
Bell was the wildest and strangest of the two. ”

“ When Bell had been a year in Heaven, a plain head-stone was placed over Nanny. She lingered only a little while after her darling. She folded her arms and fell asleep one summer twilight, and never again opened her kind old eyes on this world. Age had weakened her frame, and the parting of soul and body was only the severing of a fragile cord.
Mortimer did not remain long in the old house; its light and pleasantness had passed away. The little stock of money which his father had left previous to his last voyage, was exhausted; he could earn nothing in the village. ”

“ Desire is a restless pendulum, one end linked to the heart, and the other pointing downward! [Pg 42]
A year had added another link to that chain which stretches through eternity. A year! Battles lost and won: nations in mourning for their dead: ships gone down at sea; and new paths worn to graveyards!
O, for the castles that blow down in a year!
But time fell gently on the inmates of the Old House. The trees and vines were a little larger; and winter had somewhat browned the gables. Bell was paler and more beautiful, and Mortimer was still the same dreamer. ”

“ He hears her clear, crystal laugh, and sees her golden ringlets floating among the flowers, and cannot tell if they be curls or sunshine!
The child in the garden resembles the dead Bell as one white lily does another. She has the same wavy tresses, shading the same dreamy eyes, with their longing, languid expression. Her form has the abandon of childhood, with a certain shadow of dignity that is charming. She is very fragile and spiritual; and it seems to us as if Heaven, in moulding the child, had hesitated whether to make her an Angel or a Flower, and so gave her the better parts of each! ”

“ Daisy looks mystified, but forbears to question him, for he complains of sleep. The lovers part at the head of the stairs. Mortimer, on reaching his room, draws a paper from his bosom; he weeps over it, reads it again and again; then he holds it in the flame of a candle. When the ashes have fallen at his feet, he exclaims:
"I have kept my promise, Harvey Snarle! Peace to your memory!"
From a writing-desk in a corner of the room he takes a pile of manuscript, and weary as he is, adds several pages to it. The dream of his boyhood has grown with him—that delightful dream of authorship! ”

“ Time's Changes—Fall-down Castles—Little Bell Waiting—When will Father Come Home?—Little Bell Weary—What the Sea said—Never more.
Longfellow beautifully asks in Hyperion, "What is Time, but the shadow of the hour-hand on a dial-plate?"
The flowers of the earth and the hearts of men are dial-plates. The shadows coming and going on them are the hour-hands; when a flower fades, or a heart ceases to beat, it is only a weight run down. The whole universe is but one immense time-piece, throbbing with innumerable wheels, heavy with weights, and wearing itself away! ”

“ Captain Edward Walters sits on the door-step of the old house; and through a curtain of honeysuckle vines, which he draws aside, is watching the fawn-like motions of
"A six years loss to Paradise!"
Is it little Bell come back again? It is very like her. Walters thinks so, as the child runs from flower to flower like a golden-belted bee, and a mist comes over his fine eyes, and he can scarcely see his grandchild for tears. [Pg 201]
His lips move, and perhaps he is saying: "Little Bell! Little Bell!" ”

“ The man who steals a loaf of bread for famishing lips, is not such a criminal in God's sight as he who steals a million times its value by law to feed his avarice. Think no more of it. The angel who records in his book, has written a hundred good deeds over that unfortunate one. The world's frown is not God's frown, and His heart is open when man's is barred with unforgiveness."
"Thank you, thank you," said Snarle, brightening up a little. "Your words give me comfort. I have not much more to tell. Flint took me into the firm, but I was the same slave. ”

“ The white feathery snow came down cygnet-soft, and I wrote. I heard the wind ditties in the chimney, the merry wrangling of sleigh-bells, the sonorous clash of fire-bells, and the manuscript grew under my pen, as if by magic. I came to love the nurslings of my fancy as no one else will. I liked the cold, cynical features of Mr. Flint, with his undertaker's aspect; the child-spirit, Bell; Daisy Snarle's eyes; the heart-broken old sailor; the pale [Pg 23] book-keeper; Tim, the office boy; Mr. Hardwill, the great publisher; Joe Wilkes, and all of them! ”

“ Ah, child! what have such dreamers as you to do in the broad, deep world—the wonderful, restless sea, where men cast the net of thought and bring up pebbles?
"I would like that, Mort!" cried Bell, clapping her hands. "But then, what a grand place this would be to write them in! You can have your desk by the open window here; and when your eyes are tired, you can rest them on the sea. ”

“ Flint! they are red tears, and not jewels which glisten in your glass, for you crushed the poor, and took advantage of the unfortunate to buy this pleasant blood which pulses in your brittle chalice!
That night he thought of a pair of blue, innocent eyes which once looked pleadingly in his—of two tiny arms that were once wound fondly around his neck. Those eyes haunted him into the misty realm of dreams, where myriads of little arms were stretched out to him; and he turned restlessly on his pillow. Ah, Flint, there is an invisible and powerful spirit in the heart of every man that will speak. ”

“ Bell did not leave her room now.
Her fairy foot-steps were never heard tripping, nor her voice vibrating through the entry in some sweet song. She scarcely ever looked out at the window—all was dreary there; besides, she fancied that the wind "looked at her." It was in her armchair by the antique fire-place that she was most comfortable. She never wearied of watching the pictured tiles; and one, representing the infant Christ in the manger, was her favorite. There she sat from sunny morn until shadowy twilight, with her delicate hands crossed on her lap, while Mortimer read to her. ”

“ The black shadows had fallen from him; he had left them with Flint; and a bright day had dawned within him and without him. Everything was tinged with iridescent light, for he looked at the world, as it were, through dew-drops. Happy morning—happy life! when one can put aside the trailing vines of painful memory, and let the warm sunshine of Heaven find its way into the heart.
In this sunny mood he turned his way homeward. He passed Mrs. Snarle on the stairs with a smile; he heard Daisy singing in the sitting-room ”

“ I told him that my wife was sick; and he replied, bitterly, 'poor men should not have wives.' Wet my lips again. Can you love me, boy, after what I shall tell you? I forged a check for a trivial [Pg 79] amount!" and Snarle's voice sunk to a hoarse whisper. "Can you love me?"
"Can I love you?" cried Mortimer. He could not see the sick man for his tears. "Can I forget all your kindness. Years ago, when I was a mere child, toiling early and late in Flint's office, did you not take me to your home, a poor hope-broken boy? Have I not grown up with Daisy, like your own child? Not love you?" ”

“ Autumn and Winter—By the Fireside—Where little Bell is going—Nanny sings about Cloe—Bell reads a Poem—The flight of an Angel—The Funeral—The good Parson—The two Grave-stones.
It was autumn. The wind, with its chilly fingers, picked off the sere leaves, and made mounds of them in the garden walks. The boom of the sea was heavier, and the pale moon fell oftener on stormy waves than in the summer months. Change and decay had come over the face of Earth even as they come over the features of one dead. ”

“ Kiss me, Daisy."
The girl pouts, and declares she won't, as she coquettishly twines her arms around his neck, and Mortimer has such a kiss as all Flint's bank stock could not buy him—a pure, earnest kiss. He was rich, poor in the world's eye, richer than Flint, with his corpulent money bags, God pity him! [Pg 70]
They sit a long while without speaking. Mortimer breaks the silence.
"We are very poor, Daisy."
"Yes, but happy."
"Sometimes. To-night I am not; I am weary of this daily toiling. The world is not a workshop to wear out souls in. Man has perverted its use. ”

“ The said clothing consists of one white cravat full of hinges, and a dilapidated coat, twelve sizes too large for him, his widowed mother supplying the deficiency.
Save the monotonous ticking of a thick-set, croupy clock, and the nervous scratching of pens, not a sound is heard.
Mr. Flint in deep thought, with his thumbs lost in the arm-holes of a white vest, paces up and down his limited sanctum, just as a thoughtful-eyed, velvet-mouthed leopard walks its confined cage, only waiting for a chance to put its paws on somebody. ”

“ The sailor, with a scornful curl in his lip, stood by the chair of the merchant, whose dejected counte [Pg 102] nance, taken in connection with his white cravat, was delightfully comical.
"Flint," commenced the man, "your verdancy is refreshing. Your sweet and child-like simplicity is like a draught of your old wine—it's rare, it's rare."
If anything touched Flint, it was sarcasm. He stood in dread of ridicule, as most men do whose foibles and vices deserve lashing.
"Edward Walters!" he cried, springing to his feet, "you have outwitted me. Well, you are a knave; it is your pride to be one. ”

“ That pain?"
"No; my life. There is something drearier than death in the world." [Pg 77]
"Sometimes life," thought Mortimer, half aloud.
The sick man looked at him.
"Why did you say that?"
"I thought it. Life is a bitter gift sometimes. An ambition or a passion possess us, flatters and mocks us. Death is not so dreary a thing as life then."
"He felt that."
"Who?"
"The devil."
"His mind is wandering," murmured Mortimer—"wandering."
"It isn't," said Snarle, slowly. "A passion, a love, made Flint's life bitter."
"Flint! Did he ever love anything but gold?" ”

“ If there is anything more stupid than a "preface," it is a book-critic. If anything could be more stupid than a book-critic, it would be a preface. But, thank heaven, there is not. In saying this, I refer to a particular critic; for I would not, for the sake of a tenth edition, malign in such a wholesale manner those capital good fellows of the press—those verbal accoucheurs who are so pleasantly officious at the birth of each new genius. Not I. I have
"A fellow-feeling"
and a love for them, which would seem like a bid for their good nature, if expressed here. ”

“ Flint & Snarle, had been arrested on the charge of stealing a case of jewels from his employers.
Daisy, with dry eyes, read it again and again. Dark doubt and trusting love were at conflict for a moment; for doubt had pride for its ally, and love was only love. But the woman conquered. Mortimer, who had been arrested early in the forenoon, found means to send Daisy a note, in which he simply said—"I am charged with stealing the necklace, but I am as guiltless of the crime as you, Daisy." ”