Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862
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"Don't do that, Anna," he said.
"Is it any harm, papa?"
"Your mother died sitting in that chair; her hands spread the shawl over
it; it was the last work they did, Anna; it has never since been taken
off."
I dropped the fringe; my touch seemed sacrilegious.
Near the chair was a small cabinet; it looked like an altar, or would
have done so, had my father been a devotee to any religion requiring
visible sacrifice. He opened it.
"Come hither, Anna,"--and I went.
Long, luxuriant bands of softly purplish hair lay within, upon the place
of sacrifice.
"Sophie's is like this," I said.
"And Sophie wears one like unto this," said my father; and he took up
a circlet of shining gold that lay among the tresses. "Sophie's
marriage-ring was hallowed unto her. I gave it the morning she went out
from me." He uttered these words with slow reverence of voice.
Why did self come up?
"You gave Sophie _our_ mother's marriage-ring," I said, "and I"--
"Shall wear this," said my father. "I laid it here, with hers;" and he
gently lifted the sacred hair, and, freeing the ring, put it upon my
finger.
"This is not my marriage-day," I said. "Papa, I don't want it. Besides,
gentlemen don't wear marriage-rings: how came you to?"
"Perhaps I have not worn this one; but will you wear it to please me?"
"Why will it please you? It is not symbolical, is it?"
"It makes you doubly mine," he said; and he led me back to outside life,
with this strange sort of marriage-ring circling with its planet weight
around my finger.
Did my father mean to keep me forever? And with the question came an
answer that left sweet contentment in its pathway; it accorded with the
intent of my heart.
"Father, have you made me your friend?" I asked, in the room that was
terribly tossed, as I restored to place chairs that seemed to have been
in a deplorably long dance, and to have forgotten their home at its
close.
"You wear my ring, you have come into my orbit," he answered.
"That being true, I am as much interested in the flying comet in there
as you are,--for if it strikes you, it hurts me;" and I waited his
answer.
After a moment of pause, it came.
"My poor patient is very ill; his life will burn out, if the fever is
not stayed;" and as the frenzied laugh reached us, Dr. Percival forgot
my presence; he passed his hand slowly across his brow, as if to retouch
memory, and then taking down a volume, he began to read. I waited long.
At last he closed the book suddenly, said to himself, "I'll try it," and
in half a moment my father's white hairs were separated from me by the
impassable barrier of the sick-room.
I waited; he did not come. The chairs were not the only articles that
had lost the commodity of order in my absence. I went to the table upon
which were kept the papers, etc., that lingered there a little while,
and then were thought no longer of. Idly I turned them over. What a
chaos on a small scale! all the elements of literature were represented.
I listened for coming footsteps; none came. "I may as well arrange this
table," I thought, "as wait for the morrow;" and I made a beginning by
sweeping the chaos at once upon the carpet. Then slowly I began picking
them up, one by one, and appointing them stations. My task was nearly
done, when, in turning over some magazines, I came upon a pile of papers
that had been laid between the leaves of one, and ere I was aware of
their presence, they slid down and scattered. I remember having felt
a little surprise that my father should have left them there, but I
hastened to gather them together. The last one of the number, I noticed,
was torn; it had a foreign look. "Father has some new correspondent," I
thought, as I looked at the number of mail-marks upon it. "He doesn't
think much of it, though, or it would have received better treatment;"
and I took a second look at it. A something in the feel of the paper
seemed familiar. "It is good for nothing," I said aloud, and I tossed
it toward the grate, put the pile of papers where I had found them,
surveyed my work with satisfaction, and stood thinking whether or not I
should wait to see my father again--it was more than an hour since
he went up--to say good-night to me. "I will wait a half-hour; if he
doesn't come then, I'll go," I said to the housekeeper, who came to see
that all was right for the night, and to remind me that Redleaf had not
proved very advantageous to my complexion, and to recommend early hours
as a restorative.
In accordance with my promise, I drew a chair forward, placed my feet
upon the fender, and began to study the dying embers that were slowly
falling through the grate-bars. One, larger than usual, burned its way
down. It lighted up, for an instant, the bit of paper, that had not
fallen into the coals. Strange fancy it was that led me to imagine
that I saw a capital A, followed immediately by that unknown quantity
represented by x. I made an effort to gain it, scorched my face, and
burned my fingers; for I touched the grate, in rescuing that which I had
cast into the place of burning.
"This bit of paper, found in New York, had once been integral with that
I had found within the church-yard tower in Redleaf," some inner
voice assured me. "Yes, it is a part of it," I said, for I distinctly
remembered the fragment whose possession I had so rejoiced over. Some
one had written a letter to Miss Axtell; the envelope was torn,--one
part there, another here. The letter itself I had found in the gloom of
the passage-way; for it Miss Axtell had gone out to search, ill, and in
the night; what must its contents have been, to have been worthy of such
effort?--and for the time I quite forgot to connect this man, ill in my
father's house, with the Herbert whose far-out-at-sea voice I had heard
winding up at me through the very death-darkness of the tower. Suddenly
the consciousness scintillated in my soul, and wonderful it was; but the
picture of my dream came in with it, and I said again, "I am ready for
the work which is given me to do," and I waited for its coming till
I grew very weary, holding this fragment of envelope fast, as a ship
clings to its anchor in mild seas. I ventured to knock at the entrance
of my own room. All was silent within. I tried the second time. There
came no answer. I dared not venture on the conquering third.
* * * * *
AT SYRACUSE.
All day my mule with patient tread
Had moved along the plain,
Now o'er the lava's ashen bed,
Now through the sprouting grain,
Across the torrent's rocky lair,
Beneath the aloe-hedge,
Where yellow broom makes sweet the air,
And waves the purple sedge.
Lone were the hills, save where supine
The dozing goatherd lay,
Or, at a rude and broken shrine,
The peasant knelt to pray;
Or where athwart the distant blue
Thin saffron clouds ascend,
As Carbonari, hid from view,
Their smouldering embers tend.
Luxuriant vale or sterile reach,
A mountain temple-crowned
Or inland curve of glistening beach,
The changeful scene surround;
While scarlet poppies burning near,
And citrons' emerald gleam,
Make barren intervals appear
Dim lapses of a dream.
How meekly o'er the meadows gay
The azure flax-blooms spread!
What fragrance on the breeze of May
The almond-blossoms shed!
Wide-branching fig-trees deck the fields
Or round the quarries cling,
And cactus-stalks, with thorny shields,
In wild contortions spring.
Here groves of cork dusk shadows throw,
There vine-leaves lightsome sway,
While chestnut-plumes serenely glow
Above the olives gray;
Tall pines upon the sloping meads
Their sylvan domes uprear,
And rankly the papyrus-reeds
Low cluster in the mere.
And Syracuse with pensive mien,
In solitary pride,
Like an untamed, but throneless queen,
Crouched by the lucent tide;
With honeyed thyme still Hybla teemed,
Its scent each zephyr bore,
And Arethusa's fountain gleamed
Pellucid as of yore.
Methought, upstarting from his bath,
Old Archimedes cried,
"Eureka!" in my silent path,
Whose echoes long replied;
That Pythias, in the sunset-glow,
Rushed by to Damon's arms,
While from the Tyrant's Cave below
Moaned impotent alarms.
And where upon a sculptured stone
The ruined arch beside,
A hoary, bronzed, and wrinkled crone
The twirling distaff plied,--
Love with exalted Reason fraught
In Plato's accents came,
And Truth by Paul sublimely taught
Relumed her virgin flame.
The ancient sepulchres that rose
Along the voiceless street
Time's myriad vistas seemed to close
And bid life's waves retreat,--
As if intrusive footsteps stole
Beyond their mortal sphere,
And felt the awed and eager soul
Immortal comrades near.
The moss-grown ramparts loom in sight
Like warders of the deep,
Where, flushed with evening's amber light,
The havened waters sleep;
Unfurrowed by a Roman keel
Or Carthaginian oar,
The speared and burnished galleys now
Their slumber break no more.
But when the distant convent-bell,
Ere Day's last smiles depart,
With mellow cadence pleading fell
Upon my brooding heart,--
And Memory's phantoms thick and fast
Their fond illusions bred,
From peerless spirits of the past,
And wrecks of ages fled,--
Joy broke the spell; an emblem blest
That lonely harbor cheered:
As if to greet her pilgrim guest,
My country's flag appeared!
Its radiant folds auroral streamed
Amid that haunted air,
And every star prophetic beamed
With Freedom's triumph there!
* * * * *
METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.
All important changes in the social and political condition of man,
whether brought about by violent convulsions or effected gradually, are
at once recognized as eras in the history of humanity. But on the broad
high-road of civilization along which men are ever marching, they pass
by unnoticed the landmarks of intellectual progress, unless they chance
to have some direct bearing on what is called the practical side of
life. Such an era marked the early part of our own century; and though
at the time a thousand events seemed more full-freighted for the world
than the discovery of some old bones at the quarry of Montmartre, and
though many a man seemed greater in the estimation of the hour than the
professor at the Jardin des Plantes who strove to reconstruct these
fragments, yet the story that they told lighted up all the past, and
showed its true connection with the present. Cuvier, as one sees him in
a retrospective glance at the wonderful period in which he lived, and
which brought to the surface all its greatest elements,--one among a
throng of exceptional men, generals, soldiers, statesmen, as well as
men of commanding intellect in literary and scientific pursuits,--seems
always standing at the meeting-point between the past and present. His
gaze is ever fixed upon the path along which Creation has moved, and, as
he travels back, recovering step by step the road that has been lost to
man in apparently impenetrable darkness and mystery, the light brightens
and broadens before him, and seems to tempt him on into the dim regions
where the great mystery of Creation lies hidden.
Before the year 1800, men had never suspected that their home had been
tenanted in past times by a set of beings totally different from those
that inhabit it now; still farther was it from their thought to imagine
that creation after creation had followed each other in successive ages,
every one stamped with a character peculiarly its own. It was Cuvier
who, aroused to new labors by the hint he received from the bones
unearthed at Montmartre, to which all his vast knowledge of living
animals gave him no clue, established by means of most laborious
investigations the astounding conclusion, that, prior to the existence
of the animals and plants now living, this globe had been the theatre of
another set of beings, every trace of whom had vanished from the face of
the earth. To his alert and active intellect and powerful imagination a
word spoken out of the past was pregnant with meaning; and when he had
once convinced himself that he had found a single animal that had no
counterpart among living beings, it gave him the key to many mysteries.
It may be doubted whether men's eyes are ever opened to truths which,
though new to them, are old to God, till the time has come when they
can apprehend their meaning and turn them to good account. It certainly
seems, that, when such a revelation has once been made, light pours in
upon it from every side; and this is especially true of the case in
point. The existence of a past creation once suggested, confirmation
was found in a thousand facts overlooked before. The solid crust of the
earth gave up its dead, and from the snows of Siberia, from the soil of
Italy, from caves of Central Europe, from mines, from the rent sides of
mountains and from their highest peaks, from the coral beds of ancient
oceans, the varied animals that had possessed the earth ages before man
was created spoke to us of the past.
No sooner were these facts established, than the relation between the
extinct world and the world of to-day became the subject of extensive
researches and comparisons; innumerable theories were started to account
for the differences, and to determine the periods and manner of the
change. It is not my intention to enter now at any length upon the
subject of geological succession, though I hope to return to it
hereafter in a series of papers upon that and kindred topics; but I
allude to it here, before presenting some views upon the maintenance of
organic types as they exist in our own period, for the following reason.
Since it has been shown that from the beginning of Creation till the
present time the physical history of the world has been divided into
a succession of distinct periods, each one accompanied by its
characteristic animals and plants, so that our own epoch is only the
closing one in the long procession of the ages, naturalists have been
constantly striving to find the connecting link between them all, and to
prove that each such creation has been a normal and natural growth
out of the preceding one. With this aim they have tried to adapt the
phenomena of reproduction among animals to the problem of creation, and
to make the beginning of life in the individual solve that great mystery
of the beginning of life in the world. In other words, they have
endeavored to show that the fact of successive generations is analogous
to that of successive creations, and that the processes by which
animals, once created, are maintained unchanged during the period to
which they belong will account also for their primitive existence.
I wish, at the outset, to forestall any such misapplication of the facts
I am about to state, and to impress upon my readers the difference
between these two subjects of inquiry,--since it by no means follows,
that, because individuals are endowed with the power of reproducing and
perpetuating their kind, they are in any sense self-originating. Still
less probable does this appear, when we consider, that, since man has
existed upon the earth, no appreciable change has taken place in the
animal or vegetable world; and so far as our knowledge goes, this would
seem to be equally true of all the periods preceding ours, each one
maintaining unbroken to its close the organic character impressed upon
it at the beginning.
The question I propose to consider here is simply the mode by which
organic types are preserved as they exist at present. Every one has
a summary answer to this question in the statement, that all these
short-lived individuals reproduce themselves, and thus maintain their
kinds. But the modes of reproduction are so varied, the changes some
animals undergo during their growth so extraordinary, the phenomena
accompanying these changes so startling, that, in the pursuit of the
subject, a new and independent science--that of Embryology--has grown
up, of the utmost importance in the present state of our knowledge.
The prevalent ideas respecting the reproduction of animals are made
up from the daily observation of those immediately about us in the
barn-yard and the farm. But the phenomena here are comparatively simple,
and easily traced. The moment we extend our observations beyond our
cattle and fowls, and enter upon a wider field of investigation, we are
met by the most startling facts. Not the least baffling of these are
the disproportionate numbers of males and females in certain kinds
of animals, their unequal development, as well as the extraordinary
difference between the sexes among certain species, so that they seem as
distinct from each other as if they belonged to separate groups of the
Animal Kingdom. We have close at hand one of the most striking instances
of disproportionate numbers in the household of the Bee, with its one
fertile female charged with the perpetuation of the whole community,
while her innumerable sterile sisterhood, amid a few hundred drones,
work for its support in other ways. Another most interesting chapter
connected with the maintenance of animals is found in the various ways
and different degrees of care with which they provide for their progeny:
some having fulfilled their whole duty toward their offspring when they
have given them birth; others seeking hiding-places for the eggs they
have laid, and watching with a certain care over their development;
others feeding their young till they can provide for themselves, and
building nests, or burrowing holes in the ground, or constructing earth
mounds for their shelter.
But, whatever be the difference in the outward appearance or the habits
of animals, one thing is common to them all without exception: at some
period of their lives they produce eggs, which, being fertilized, give
rise to beings of the same kind as the parent. This mode of generation
is universal, and is based upon that harmonious antagonism between the
sexes, that contrast between the male and the female element, that at
once divides and unites the whole Animal Kingdom. And although this
exchange of influence is not kept up by an equality of numeric
relations,--since not only are the sexes very unequally divided in some
kinds of animals, but the male and female elements are even combined
in certain types, so that the individuals are uniformly
hermaphrodites,--yet I firmly believe that this numerical distribution,
however unequal it may seem to us, is not without its ordained accuracy
and balance. He who has assigned its place to every leaf in the thickest
forest, according to an arithmetical law which prescribes to each its
allotted share of room on the branch where it grows, will not have
distributed animal life with less care.
But although reproduction by eggs is common to all animals, it is only
one among several modes of multiplication. We have seen that certain
animals, besides the ordinary process of generation, also increase their
number naturally and constantly by self-division, so that out of one
individual many individuals may arise by a natural breaking up of
the whole body into distinct surviving parts. This process of normal
self-division may take place at all periods of life: it may form an
early phase of metamorphosis, as in the Hydroid of our common Aurelia,
described in the last article; or it may even take place before the
young is formed in the egg. In such a case, the egg itself divides into
a number of portions: two, four, eight, or even twelve and sixteen
individuals being normally developed from every egg, in consequence of
this singular process of segmentation of the yolk,--which takes place,
indeed, in all eggs, but in those which produce but one individual is
only a stage in the natural growth of the yolk during its transformation
into a young embryo. As the facts here alluded to are not very familiar
even to professional naturalists, I may be permitted to describe them
more in detail.
No one who has often walked across a sand-beach in summer can have
failed to remark what the children call "sand saucers." The name is not
a bad one, with the exception that the saucer lacks a bottom; but the
form of these circular bands of sand is certainly very like a saucer
with the bottom knocked out. Hold one of them against the light and you
will see that it is composed of countless transparent spheres, each of
the size of a small pin's head. These are the eggs of our common Natica
or Sea-Snail. Any one who remembers the outline of this shell will
easily understand the process by which its eggs are left lying on the
beach in the form I have described. They are laid in the shape of a
broad, short ribbon, pressed between the mantle and the shell, and,
passing out, cover the outside of the shell, over which they are rolled
up, with a kind of glutinous envelope,--for the eggs are held together
by a soft glutinous substance. Thus surrounded, the shell, by its
natural movements along the beach, soon collects the sand upon it, the
particles of which in contact with the glutinous substance of the eggs
quickly forms a cement that binds the whole together in a kind of paste.
When consolidated, it drops off from the shell, having taken the mould
of its form, as it were, and retaining the curve which distinguishes the
outline of the Natica. Although these saucers look perfectly round, it
will be found that the edges are not soldered together, but are simply
lapped one over the other. Every one of the thousand little spheres
crowded into such a circle of sand contains an egg. If we follow the
development of these eggs, we shall presently find that each one divides
into two halves, these again dividing to make four portions, then the
four breaking up into eight, and so on, till we may have the yolks
divided into no less than sixteen distinct parts. Thus far this process
of segmentation is similar to that of the egg in other animals; but, as
we shall see hereafter, it seems usually to result only in a change in
the quality of its substance, for the portions coalesce again to form
one mass, from which a new individual is finally sketched out, at first
as a simple embryo, and gradually undergoing all the changes peculiar to
its kind, till a new-born animal escapes from the egg. But in the case
of the Natica this regular segmentation changes its character, and at a
certain period, in a more or less advanced stage of the segmentation,
according to the species, each portion of the yolk assumes an
individuality of its own, and, instead of uniting again with the rest,
begins to subdivide for itself. In our _Natica heros_, for instance, the
common large gray Sea-Snail of our coast, this change takes place when
the yolk has subdivided into eight parts. At that time each portion
begins a life of its own, not reuniting with its seven twin portions; so
that in the end, instead of a single embryo growing out of this yolk,
we have eight embryos arising from a single yolk, each one of which
undergoes a series of developments similar in all respects to that by
which a single embryo is formed from each egg in other animals. We have
other Naticas in which the normal number is twelve, others again in
which no less than sixteen individuals arise from one yolk. But this
process of segmentation, though in these animals it leads to such a
multiplication of individuals, is exactly the same as that discovered
by K.E. von Baer in the egg of the Frog, and described and figured by
Professor Bischof in the egg of the Rabbit, the Dog, the Guinea-Pig,
and the Deer, while other embryologists have traced the same process in
Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes, as well as in a variety of Articulates,
Mollusks, and Radiates.
Multiplication by division occurs also normally in adult animals that
have completed their growth. This is especially frequent among Worms;
and strange to say, there are species in this Class which never lay eggs
before they have already multiplied themselves by self-division.
Another mode of increase is that by budding, as in the Corals and many
other Radiates. The most common instance of budding we do not, however,
generally associate with this mode of multiplication in the Animal
Kingdom, because we are so little accustomed to compare and generalize
upon phenomena that we do not see to be directly connected with one
another. I allude here to the budding of trees, which year after year
enlarge by the addition of new individuals arising from buds. I trust
that the usual acceptation of the word _individual_, used in science
simply to designate singleness of existence, will not obscure a correct
appreciation of the true relation of buds to their parents and to the
beings arising from them. These buds have the same organic significance,
whether they drop from the parent stock to become distinct individuals
in the common acceptation of the term, or remain connected with
the parent stock, as in Corals and in trees, thus forming growing
communities of combined individuals. Nor will it matter much in
connection with the subject under discussion, whether these buds start
from the surface of an animal or sprout in its interior, to be cast off
in due time. Neither is the inequality of buds, varying more or less
among themselves, any sound reason for overlooking their essential
identity of structure. We have seen instances of this among Acalephs,
and it is still more apparent among trees which produce simultaneously
leaf and flower-buds, and even separate male and female flower-buds, as
is the case with our Hazels, Oaks, etc.
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