Haversack

“ There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,—
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some—
Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall;
But go, and if you trust her she will call.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal—
Luke Havergal.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise. ”

“ Up, this very minute, or we shall lose the Great Carbuncle!'
In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all night, and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine; while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness, or dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize their dreams with the earliest peep of dawn. ”

“ It is not necessary to describe in detail that elaborate dinner of ten courses, which was served from solid silver, with two or three servants in attendance. Haverleigh was very rich and very purse-proud, and it suited him to live like a prince wherever he was; besides, he wished to impress the simple New England girl with a sense of his greatness and wealth, and he enjoyed her evident embarrassment, or rather bewilderment, at so much glitter and display for just themselves and no one else. ”

“ She at length withdrew her eyes from the dark countenance of the Colonel's portrait, heaved a sigh,—indeed, her breast was a very cave of Aolus that morning,—and stept across the room on tiptoe, as is the customary gait of elderly women. Passing through an intervening passage, she opened a door that communicated with the shop, just now so elaborately described. Owing to the projection of the upper story—and still more to the thick shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, which stood almost directly in front of the gable—the twilight, here, was still as much akin to night as morning. ”

“ He therefore made no more attempts to escape, but told the hero how to find the garden of the Hesperides, and likewise warned him of many difficulties which must be overcome, before he could arrive thither.
“You must go on, thus and thus,” said the Old Man of the Sea, after taking the points of the compass, “till you come in sight of a very tall giant, who holds the sky on his shoulders. And the giant, if he happens to be in the humor, will tell you exactly where the garden of the Hesperides lies.” ”

“ In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the object of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
“So, fellow-pilgrims,” said he, “here we are, seven wise men, and one fair damsel—who, doubtless, is as wise as any graybeard of the company: here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Me-thinks, now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch it. What says our friend in the bear skin? ”

“ After looking at the crypt and the cloisters, we returned through the close and the churchyard, and went back to the hotel through a path by the river-side. This is the same dim and dusky path through which I wandered the night before, and in the sunshine it looked quite as beautiful as I knew it must,— a shadow of elm-trees clothing the high bank, and overarching the paths above and below; some of the elms growing close to the water-side, and flinging up their topmost boughs not nearly so high as where we stood, and others climbing upward and upward, till our way wound among their roots ”

“ Where is the life that seemed so full and substantial? The phantom of that hour of long ago declares itself still the sole reality, and shames the long substantial years into a phantom.
Such moods soon pass, however. The weight of actual things presses them down into the depths whence they arose. They remain, at most, but hints doubtfully prophetic of changes and developments to come, or that might have been. The wide room, with the afternoon sunshine sending its latest glance across the white tables and busy eaters ”

“ The American tourist usually comes straight to this quarter of England—chiefly for the purpose of paying his respects to Shakespeare's birthplace. Being here, he comes to Warwick to see the castle; and being at Warwick, he comes to see the odd little theatrical-looking refuge for superannuated warriors which, lurks in the shadow of one of the old gate-towers. Every one will remember Hawthorne's charming account of the place, which has left no touch of fancy to be added to any reference to it. ”

“ Faversham looked at them expectantly. The exploration of the house roused in him now the same kind of excitement that drives on the excavators of Delphi or Ephesus, or the divers for Spanish treasure. He and Melrose had already dug out so many precious things—things many of them which had long sunk below the surface of the old man's memory—that heaven only knew what might turn up. The passion of adventure ran high; he longed to be at the business again and was sorry to think it must some day have an end. ”

“ Into Sigurd’s haven we sailed on the morning tide, and strange it seemed to me to see the well-known place unchanged as we neared it. My father’s house was there, and Arngeir’s, and the great hall of the jarl towered over all, as I remembered it. Men were building a ship in the long shed where ours had been built, and where the queen had hidden; and the fishing boats lay on the hard as on the day when Havelok had come to us. ”

“ At night-fall, once, in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come thither, not as friends, nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for this wondrous gem. ”

“ Betimes in the forenoon, a traveller—the first traveller that has come hitherward this morning—rides slowly into the street on his patient steed. He seems a clergyman; and, as he draws near, we recognize the minister of Lynn, who was pre-engaged to lecture here, and has been revolving his discourse, as he rode through the hoary wilderness. Behold, now, the whole town thronging into the meeting-house, mostly with such sombre visages that the sunshine becomes little better than a shadow when it falls upon them. There go the Thirteen Men, grim rulers of a grim community! ”

“ Such, indeed, is the impression which it makes on every new adventurer, even if he plunge into it while the warmest tide of life is bubbling through his veins. What, then, must it have been to Hepzibah and Clifford,—so time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in their inexperience,—as they left the door-step, and passed from beneath the wide shelter of the Pyncheon-elm! ”

“ Brave Azolta!
“We had got well out to sea,” went on Paul, “when the storm burst. We rode it out for some time, but at last determined to run back to the bay for shelter.”
“And mistook this place for it?”
Paul bowed his head.
“If you have spoken the truth about saving the lives of the true men,” said Hoogstraaten, “you have saved your own. As for you,” and he frowned at the half-drowned mutineers. “Friend Diedrich, I think I shall have to trouble you to erect a gallows for me, since I have no longer a ship or a yard-arm to hang them on!” ”

“ Said dressed himself quickly, and followed the servants to the roof, where he found three men, of whom the tallest and handsomest came forward to meet him in a pleasant manner.
"Who are you, wonderful stranger," said he, "you who tame the fishes of the sea, and guide them to the right and left, as the best horseman governs his steed. Are you a sorcerer, or a being like us?" ”

“ Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved frame-work of the portal is marked strongly out. At length, the morning glory, in its descent from Heaven, comes down the stone steps, one by one; and there stands the steeple, glowing with fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks, though the same sun brightens it, every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of brightness for the Sabbath.
By dwelling near a church, a person soon contracts an attachment for the edifice. ”

“ This catastrophe of course broke up the festival.
"How is this? You do not tremble!" observed the tremulous old woman to Gervayse Hastings, who was gazing at the dead man with singular intentness. "Is it not awful to see him so suddenly vanish out of the midst of life,--this man of flesh and blood, whose earthly nature was so warm and strong? There is a never-ending tremor in my soul, but it trembles afresh at, this! And you are calm!"
"Would that he could teach me somewhat!" said Gervayse Hastings, drawing a long breath. "Men pass before me like shadows on the wall ”

“ When, in travelling toward Haverhill through Hampstead in this State, on the height of land between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua or the sea, you commence the descent eastward, the view toward the coast is so distant and unexpected, though the sea is invisible, that you at first suppose the unobstructed atmosphere to be a fog in the lowlands concealing hills of corresponding elevation to that, you are upon; but it is the mist of prejudice alone, which the winds will not disperse. ”

“ The shadows of the elms, in The House of the Seven Gables, are exceptionally dense and cool; the summer afternoon is peculiarly still and beautiful; the atmosphere has a delicious warmth, and the long daylight seems to pause and rest. But the mild provincial quality is there, the mixture of shabbiness and [125] freshness, the paucity of ingredients. The end of an old race—this is the situation that Hawthorne has depicted, and he has been admirably inspired in the choice of the figures in whom he seeks to interest us. ”

“ On the evening of the autumn day, that had witnessed the martyrdom of two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from the metropolis to the neighboring country town in which he resided. The air was cool, the sky clear, and the lingering twilight was made brighter by the rays of a young moon, which had now nearly reached the verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a grey frieze cloak, quickened his pace when he had reached the outskirts of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay between him and his home. ”

“ Hawthorne’s Gervayse Hastings is a type and symbol, when he describes himself as depressed by a haunting perception of unreality; as one to whom all things, all persons, are like shadows flickering on the wall. ”

“ He stood outside the door listening to the muffled talk on the other side of the panels, and, with a shiver, lighted his candle, and held it aloft in the dark and silent hall. There was not one man's portrait upon the walls which did not glow with the colours of a uniform,—and there were the portraits of many men. Father and son the Faversham's had been soldiers from the very birth of the family. ”

“ Yet we feel it to be a questionable venture, even for Phœbe, at this juncture, to cross the threshold of the seven gables. Is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale, hideous, and sinful phantoms that have gained admittance there since her departure? Or will she, likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and be only another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs, and affright children, as she pauses at the window? ”

“ E. besmutted.
habergeoun, though etymologically a diminutive of hauberk, is often used as synonymous with it. 'It was a defence of an inferior description to the hauberk; but when the introduction of plate-armour, in the reign of Edward III, had supplied more convenient and effectual defences for the legs and thighs, the long skirt of the hauberk became superfluous; from that period the habergeon alone appears to have been worn.'—Way, note to Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 220. ”

“ The homes we leave in Haverhill.
The singer of a farewell rhyme,
Upon whose outmost verge of time
The shades of night are falling down,
I pray, God bless the good old town!
TO G. G. AN AUTOGRAPH. The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., delegate from Haverhill, England, to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Rev. John Ward of the former place and many of his old parishioners were the pioneer settlers of the new town on the Merrimac. ”

“ I guessed from Paul’s presence that there had been a mutiny, and an attempt to run away with the ship. I would not, however, speak to him, but gave orders to the armed natives to guard them closely and kill any who attempted to escape. Then I went back to Hoogstraaten. He had somewhat mastered himself, and taking my arm asked me how it happened. I said I had asked no questions, but it must have been a mutiny, as Paul was amongst them. As we descended, the sea flung a body on to the rocks close to us. We both recognized it. It was Arendsoon! ”

“ And remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin. If you are really going to be left at Hawarden, you ought to shut your door, shut your eyes, recall all that you have seen and heard during the last six months, and write it carefully down. You have such an opportunity and such a power. ”