Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 by Various

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It was the voice of God: the scar burned fiercer; the slave came forward
boldly,--

"Mars'er, what shall I do?"

"Give the poor devil a musket," said one of the men. "Let him come with
us, and strike a blow for freedom."

He took a knife from his belt, and threw it to him, then sauntered off
to his tent.

"A blow for freedom?" mumbled Ben, taking it up.

"Let us sing to the praise of God," said the boatman, "the sixty-eighth
psalm," lining it out while they sang,--the scattered men joining,
partly to keep themselves awake. In old times David's harp charmed away
the demon from a human heart. It roused one now, never to be laid again.
A dull, droning chant, telling how the God of Vengeance rode upon the
wind, swift to loose the fetters of the chained, to make desert the
rebellious land; with a chorus, or refrain, in which Ben's wild,
melancholy cry sounded like the wail of an avenging spirit:--

"That in the blood of enemies
Thy foot imbrued may be:
And of thy dogs dipped in the same
The tongues thou mayest see."

The meaning of that was plain; he sang it lower and more steadily each
time, his body swaying in cadence, the glitter in his eye more steely.

Lamar, asleep in his prison, was wakened by the far-off plaintive song:
he roused himself, leaning on one elbow, listening with a half-smile. It
was Naomi they sang, he thought,--an old-fashioned Methodist air that
Floy had caught from the negroes, and used to sing to him sometimes.
Every night, down at home, she would come to his parlor-door to say
good-night: he thought he could see the little figure now in its white
nightgown, and hear the bare feet pattering on the matting. When he was
alone, she would come in, and sit on his lap awhile, and kneel down
before she went away, her head on his knee, to say her prayers, as she
called it. Only God knew how many times he had remained alone after
hearing those prayers, saved from nights of drunken debauch. He thought
he felt Floy's pure little hand on his forehead now, as if she were
saying her usual "Good night, Bud." He lay down to sleep again, with a
genial smile on his face, listening to the hymn.

"It's the same God," he said,--"Floy's and theirs."

Outside, as he slept, a dark figure watched him. The song of the men
ceased. Midnight, white and silent, covered the earth. He could hear
only the slow breathing of the sleeper. Ben's black face grew ashy pale,
but he did not tremble, as he crept, cat-like, up to the wicket, his
blubber lips apart, the white teeth clenched.

"It's for Freedom, Mars' Lord!" he gasped, looking up to the sky, as if
he expected an answer. "Gor-a'mighty, it's for Freedom!" And went in.

A belated bird swooped through the cold moonlight into the valley, and
vanished in the far mountain-cliffs with a low, fearing cry, as though
it had passed through Hades.

They had broken down the wicket: he saw them lay the heavy body on the
lumber outside, the black figures hurrying over the snow. He laughed
low, savagely, watching them. Free now! The best of them despised him;
the years past of cruelty and oppression turned back, fused in a slow,
deadly current of revenge and hate, against the race that had trodden
him down. He felt the iron muscles of his fingers, looked close at the
glittering knife he held, chuckling at the strange smell it bore. Would
the Illinois boatman blame him, if it maddened him? And if Ben took the
fancy to put it to his throat, what right has he to complain? Has not he
also been a dweller in Babylon? He hesitated a moment in the cleft of
the hill, choosing his way, exultantly. He did not watch the North now;
the quiet old dream of content was gone; his thick blood throbbed and
surged with passions of which you and I know nothing: he had a lost life
to avenge. His native air, torrid, heavy with latent impurity, drew him
back: a fitter breath than this cold snow for the animal in his body,
the demon in his soul, to triumph and wallow in. He panted, thinking of
the saffron hues of the Santilla flats, of the white, stately dwellings,
the men that went in and out from them, quiet, dominant,--feeling the
edge of his knife. It was his turn to be master now! He ploughed his way
doggedly through the snow,--panting, as he went,--a hotter glow in his
gloomy eyes. It was his turn for pleasure now: he would have his fill!
Their wine and their gardens and----He did not need to choose a wife
from his own color now. He stopped, thinking of little Floy, with her
curls and great listening eyes, watching at the door for her brother.
He had watched her climb up into his arms and kiss his cheek. She never
would do that again! He laughed aloud, shrilly. By God! she should keep
the kiss for other lips! Why should he not say it?

Up on the hill the night-air throbbed colder and holier. The guards
stood about in the snow, silent, troubled. This was not like a death in
battle: it put them in mind of home, somehow. All that the dying man
said was, "Water," now and then. He had been sleeping, when struck,
and never had thoroughly wakened from his dream. Captain Poole, of the
Snake-hunters, had wrapped him in his own blanket, finding nothing more
could be done. He went off to have the Colonel summoned now, muttering
that it was "a damned shame." They put snow to Lamar's lips constantly,
being hot and parched; a woman, Dorr's wife, was crouching on the ground
beside him, chafing his hands, keeping down her sobs for fear they would
disturb him. He opened his eyes at last, and knew Dorr, who held his
head.

"Unfasten my coat, Charley. What makes it so close here?"

Dorr could not speak.

"Shall I lift you up, Captain Lamar?" asked Dave Hall, who stood leaning
on his rifle.

He spoke in a subdued tone, Babylon being far off for the moment. Lamar
dozed again before he could answer.

"Don't try to move him,--it is too late," said Dorr, sharply.

The moonlight steeped mountain and sky in a fresh whiteness. Lamar's
face, paling every moment, hardening, looked in it like some solemn work
of an untaught sculptor. There was a breathless silence. Ruth, kneeling
beside him, felt his hand grow slowly colder than the snow. He moaned,
his voice going fast,--

"At two, Ben, old fellow! We'll be free to-night!"

Dave, stooping to wrap the blanket, felt his hand wet: he wiped it with
a shudder.

"As he hath done unto My people, be it done unto him!" he muttered, but
the words did not comfort him.

Lamar moved, half-smiling.

"That's right, Floy. What is it she says? 'Now I lay me down'----I
forget. Good night. Kiss me, Floy."

He waited,--looked up uneasily. Dorr looked at his wife: she stooped,
and kissed his lips. Charley smoothed back the hair from the damp face
with as tender a touch as a woman's. Was he dead? The white moonlight
was not more still than the calm face.

Suddenly the night-air was shattered by a wild, revengeful laugh from
the hill. The departing soul rushed back, at the sound, to life, full
consciousness. Lamar started from their hold,--sat up.

"It was Ben," he said, slowly.

In that dying flash of comprehension, it may be, the wrongs of the white
man and the black stood clearer to his eyes than ours: the two lives
trampled down. The stern face of the boatman bent over him: he was
trying to stanch the flowing blood. Lamar looked at him: Hall saw no
bitterness in the look,--a quiet, sad question rather, before which his
soul lay bare. He felt the cold hand touch his shoulder, saw the pale
lips move.

"Was this well done?" they said.

Before Lamar's eyes the rounded arch of gray receded, faded into dark;
the negro's fierce laugh filled his ear: some woful thought at the sound
wrung his soul, as it halted at the gate. It caught at the simple faith
his mother taught him.

"Yea," he said aloud, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me."

Dorr gently drew down the uplifted hand. He was dead.

"It was a manly soul," said the Northern captain, his voice choking, as
he straightened the limp hair.

"He trusted in God? A strange delusion!" muttered the boatman.

Yet he did not like that they should leave him alone with Lamar, as
they did, going down for help. He paced to and fro, his rifle on his
shoulder, arming his heart with strength to accomplish the vengeance
of the Lord against Babylon. Yet he could not forget the murdered man
sitting there in the calm moonlight, the dead face turned towards the
North,--the dead face, whereon little Floy's tears should never fall.
The grave, unmoving eyes seemed to the boatman to turn to him with the
same awful question. "Was this well done?" they said. He thought in
eternity they would rise before him, sad, unanswered. The earth, he
fancied, lay whiter, colder,--the heaven farther off; the war, which had
become a daily business, stood suddenly before him in all its terrible
meaning. God, he thought, had met in judgment with His people. Yet he
uttered no cry of vengeance against the doomed city. With the dead face
before him, he bent his eyes to the ground, humble, uncertain,--speaking
out of the ignorance of his own weak, human soul.

"The day of the Lord is nigh," he said; "it is at hand; and who can
abide it?"

MOUNTAIN PICTURES.

II.

MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET.

I would I were a painter, for the sake
Of a sweet picture, and of her who led,
A fitting guide, with light, but reverent tread,
Into that mountain mystery! First a lake
Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines
Of far receding hills; and yet more far,
Monadnock lifting from his night of pines
His rosy forehead to the evening star.
Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid
His head against the West, whose warm light made
His aureole; and o'er him, sharp and clear,
Like a shaft of lightning in mid launching stayed,
A single level cloud-line, shone upon
By the fierce glances of the sunken sun,
Menaced the darkness with its golden spear!

So twilight deepened round us. Still and black
The great woods climbed the mountain at our back;
And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day
On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay,
The brown old farm-house like a bird's nest hung.
With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred:
The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard,
The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well,
The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell;
Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate
Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight
Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung,
The welcome sound of supper-call to hear;
And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear,
The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung.
Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took,
Praising the farmer's home. He only spake,
Looking into the sunset o'er the lake,
Like one to whom the far-off is most near:
"Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look;
I love it for my good old mother's sake,
Who lived and died here in the peace of God!"
The lesson of his words we pondered o'er,
As silently we turned the eastern flank
Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank,
Doubling the night along our rugged road:
We felt that man was more than his abode,--
The inward life than Nature's raiment more;
And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill,
The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dim
Before the saintly soul, whose human will
Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod,
Making her homely toil and household ways
An earthly echo of the song of praise
Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim!

INDIVIDUALITY.

At a certain depth, as has already been intimated in our literature,
all bosoms communicate, all hearts are one. Hector and Ajax, in Homer's
great picture, stand face to face, each with advanced foot, with
levelled spear, and turgid sinew, eager to kill, while on either side
ten thousand slaughterous wishes poise themselves in hot breasts,
waiting to fly with the flying weapons; yet, though the combatants
seem to surrender themselves wholly to this action, there is in each a
profound element that is no party to these hostilities. It is the pure
nature of man. Ajax is not all Greek, nor is Hector wholly Trojan: both
are also men; and to the extent of their mutual participation in this
pure and perpetual element of Manhood, they are more than friends,
more than relatives,--they are of identical spirit. For there is an
imperishable nature of Man, ever and everywhere the same, of which each
particular man is a testimony and representation. As the solid earth
underruns the "dissociating sea"--_Oceano dissociabili_--and joins in
one all sundered lands, so does this nature dip beneath the dividing
parts of our being, and make of all men one simple and inseparable
humanity. In love, in friendship, in true conversation, in all happiness
of communion between men, it is this unchangeable substratum or
substance of man's being that is efficient and supreme: out of
divers bosoms, Same calls, and replies to Same with a great joy
of self-recognition. It is only in virtue of this nature that men
understand, appreciate, admire, trust each other,--that books of the
earliest times remain true in the latest,--that society is possible; and
he in whom the virtue of it dwells divinely is admitted to the secret
confidence of all bosoms, lives in all times, and converses with each
soul and age in its own vernacular. Socrates looked beyond the gates of
death for happy communion with Homer and all the great; but already we
interchange words with these, whenever we are so sweetly prospered as to
become, in some good degree, identical with the absolute nature of man.

Not only, moreover, is this immortal substance of man's being common and
social, but it is so great and venerable that no one can match it
with an equal report. All the epithets by which we would extol it
are disgraced by it, as the most brilliant artificial lights become
blackness when placed between the eye and the noonday sun. It is older,
it is earlier in existence than the earliest star that shone in heaven;
and it will outlive the fixed stars that now in heaven seem fixed
forever. There is nothing in the created universe of which it was not
the prophecy in its primal conception; there is nothing of which it is
not the interpretation and ultimatum in its final form. The laws which
rule the world as forces are, in it, thoughts and liberties. All the
grand imaginations of men, all the glorified shapes, the Olympian gods,
cherubic and seraphic forms, are but symbols and adumbrations of what it
contains. As the sun, having set, still leaves its golden impress on the
clouds, so does the absolute nature of man throw up and paint, as it
were, on the sky testimonies of its power, remaining itself unseen.
Only, therefore, is one a poet, as he can cause particular traits and
events, without violation of their special character, or concealment
of their peculiar interest, to bear the deep, sweet, and infinite
suggestion of this. All princeliness and imperial worth, all that is
regal, beautiful, pure in men, comes from this nature; and the words
by which we express reverence, admiration, love, borrow from it their
entire force: since reverence, admiration, love, and all other grand
sentiments, are but modes or forms of _noble unification_ between men,
and are therefore shown to spring from that spiritual unity of which
persons are exponents; while, on the other hand, all evil epithets
suggest division and separation. Of this nature all titles of honor, all
symbols that command homage and obedience on earth, are pensioners. How
could the claims of kings survive successions of Stuarts and Georges,
but for a royalty in each peasant's bosom that pleads for its poor image
on the throne?

In the high sense, no man is great save he that is a large continent of
this absolute humanity. The common nature of man it is; yet those are
ever, and in the happiest sense, uncommon men, in whom it is liberally
present.

But every man, besides the nature which constitutes him man, has, so to
speak, another nature, which constitutes him a particular individual. He
is not only like all others of his kind, but, at the same time, unlike
all others. By physical and mental feature he is distinguished,
insulated; he is endowed with a quality so purely in contrast with the
common nature of man, that in virtue of it he can be singled out from
hundreds of millions, from all the myriads of his race. So far, now, as
one is representative of absolute humanity, he is a Person; so far
as, by an element peculiar to himself, he is contrasted with absolute
humanity, he is an Individual. And having duly chanted our _Credo_
concerning man's pure and public nature, let us now inquire respecting
this dividing element of Individuality,--which, with all the force it
has, strives to cut off communication, to destroy unity, and to make of
humanity a chaos or dust of biped atoms.

Not for a moment must we make this surface nature of equal estimation
with the other. It is secondary, _very_ secondary, to the pure substance
of man. The Person first in order of importance; the Individual next,--

"Proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo,"--

"next with an exceeding wide remove."

Take from Epaminondas or Luther all that makes him man, and the
rest will not be worth selling to the Jews. Individuality is an
accompaniment, an accessory, a red line on the map, a fence about the
field, a copyright on the book. It is like the particular flavors of
fruits,--of no account but in relation to their saccharine, acid, and
other staple elements. It must therefore keep its place, or become
an impertinence. If it grow forward, officious, and begin to push in
between the pure nature and its divine ends, at once it is a meddling
Peter, for whom there is no due greeting but "Get thee behind me,
Satan." If the fruit have a special flavor of such ambitious pungency
that the sweets and acids cannot appear through it, be sure that to come
at this fruit no young Wilhelm Meister will purloin keys. If one be so
much an Individual that he wellnigh ceases to be a Man, we shall not
admire him. It is the same in mental as in physical feature. Let there,
by all means, be slight divergence from the common type; but by all
means let it be no more than a slight divergence. Too much is monstrous:
even a very slight excess is what we call _ugliness_. Gladly I perceive
in my neighbor's face, voice, gait, manner, a certain charm of
peculiarity; but if in any the peculiarity be so great as to suggest
a doubt whether he be not some other creature than man, may he not be
neighbor of mine!

A little of this surface nature suffices; yet that little cannot be
spared. Its first office is to guard frontiers. We must not lie quite
open to the inspection or invasion of others: yet, were there no medium
of unlikeness interposed between one and another, privacy would be
impossible, and one's own bosom would not be sacred to himself. But
Nature has secured us against these profanations; and as we have locks
to our doors, curtains to our windows, and, upon occasion, a passport
system on our borders, so has she cast around each spirit this veil to
guard it from intruding eyes, this barrier to keep away the feet of
strangers. Homer represents the divinities as coming invisibly to
admonish their favored heroes; but Nature was beforehand with the poet,
and every one of us is, in like manner, a celestial nature walking
concealed. Who sees _you_, when you walk the street? Who would walk the
street, did be not feel himself fortressed in a privacy that no foreign
eyes can enter? But for this, no cities would be built. Society,
therefore, would be impossible, save for this element, which seems to
hinder society. Each of us, wrapt in his opaque individuality, like
Apollo or Athene in a blue mist, remains hidden, if he will; and
therefore do men dare to come together.

But this superficial element, while securing privacy to the pure nature,
also aids it to expression. It emphasizes the outlines of Personality by
gentle contrast. It is like the shadow in the landscape, without which
all the sunbeams of heaven could not reveal with precision a single
object. Assured lovers resort to happy banter and light oppositions, to
give themselves a sweeter sense of unity of heart. The child, with a
cunning which only Nature has taught, will sometimes put a little honey
of refusal into its kisses before giving them; the maiden adds to her
virgin blooms the further attraction of virgin coyness and reserve; the
civilizing dinner-table would lose all its dignity in losing its delays;
and so everywhere, delicate denial, withholding reserve have an inverse
force, and add a charm of emphasis to gift, assent, attraction, and
sympathy. How is the word Immortality emphasized to our hearts by the
perpetual spectacle of death! The joy and suggestion of it could,
indeed, never visit us, had not this momentary loud denial been uttered
in our ears. Such, therefore, as have learned to interpret these
oppositions in Nature, hear in the jarring note of Death only a jubilant
proclamation of life eternal; while all are thus taught the longing for
immortality, though only by their fear of the contrary. And so is the
pure universal nature of man affirmed by these provocations of contrast
and insulation on the surface. We feel the personality far more, and far
more sweetly, for its being thus divided from our own. From behind this
veil the pure nature comes to us with a kind of surprise, as out of
another heaven. The joy of truth and delight of beauty are born anew for
us from each pair of chanting lips and beholding eyes; and each new soul
that comes promises another gift of the universe. Whoever, in any time
or under any sky, sees the worth and wonder of existence, sees it for
me; whatever language he speak, whatever star he inhabit, we shall
one day meet, and through the confession of his heart all my ancient
possessions will become a new gain; he shall make for me a natal day of
creation, showing the producing breath, as it goes forth from the lips
of God, and spreads into the blue purity of sky, or rounds into the
luminance of suns; the hills and their pines, the vales and their
blooms, and heroic men and beauteous women, all that I have loved or
reverenced, shall come again, appearing and trooping out of skies never
visible before. Because of these dividing lines between souls, each new
soul is to all the others a possible factor of heaven.

Such uses does individuality subserve. Yet it is capable of these
ministries only as it does indeed _minister_. All its uses are lost with
the loss of its humility and subordinance. It is the porter at the
gate, furthering the access of lawful, and forbidding the intrusion of
unlawful visitors to the mansion; who becomes worse than useless, if in
surly excess of zeal he bar the gate against all, or if in the excess of
self-importance he receive for himself what is meant for his master,
and turn visitors aside into the porter's lodge. Beautiful is virgin
reserve, and true it is that delicate half-denial reinforces attraction;
yet the maiden who carries only _No_ upon her tongue, and only refusal
in her ways, shall never wake before dawn on the day of espousal, nor
blush beneath her bridal veil, like Morning behind her clouds. This
surface element, we must remember, is not income and resource, but
an item of needful, and, so far as needful, graceful and economical
expenditure. Excess of it is wasteful, by causing Life to pay for
that which he does not need, by increase of social fiction, and by
obstruction of social flow with the fructifications which this brings,
not to be spared by any mortal. Nay, by extreme excess, it may so cut
off and sequester a man, that no word or aspect of another soul can
reach him; he shall see in mankind only himself, he shall hear in the
voices of others only his own echoes. Many and many a man is there, so
housed in his individuality, that it goes, like an impenetrable wall,
over eye and ear; and even in the tramp of the centuries he can find
hint of nothing save the sound of his own feet. It is a frequent
tragedy,--but profound as frequent.

One great task, indeed _the_ great task of good-breeding is,
accordingly, to induce in this element a delicacy, a translucency,
which, without robbing any action or sentiment of the hue it imparts,
shall still allow the pure human quality perfectly and perpetually to
shine through. The world has always been charmed with fine manners; and
why should it not? For what are fine manners but this: to carry your
soul on your lip, in your eye, in the palm of your hand, and yet to
stand not naked, but clothed upon by your individual quality,--visible,
yet inscrutable,--given to the hearts of others, yet contained in your
own bosom,--nobly and humanly open, yet duly reticent and secured from
invasion? _Polished_ manners often disappoint us; _good_ manners never.

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