Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX.

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"'It is all I am capable of doing,' she said. 'If I go, Grey can marry.
The family will have a sure support.'

"Then she folded the letter into odd shapes, with an idiotic look.

"'Do you want me to answer it?' I asked.

"'Yes, I do. Tell him I'll go. Grey can be happy then, and the others will
have enough to eat. I never was of any use before.'

"I knew that well enough. I sat down to write the letter.

"'You will be turned out of church for this,' I said.

"She stood by the window, her finger tracing the rain-drops on the pane,
for it was a rainy night. She said,--

"'They won't understand. God knows.'

"So I wrote on a bit, and then I said,--for I felt sorry for the girl,
though she was doing it for Grey,--I said,--

'"Lizzy, I'll be plain with you. There never was but one human being loved
you, perhaps. When he was dying, he said, "Tell my wife to be true and
pure." There is a bare possibility that you can be both as an
opera-singer, but he never would believe it. If you met him in heaven, he
would turn his back on you, if you should do this thing.'

"I could not see her face,--her back was towards me,--but the hand on the
window-pane lay there for a long while motionless, the blood settling blue
about the nails. I did not speak to her. There are some women with whom a
physician, if he knows his business, will never meddle when they grow
nervous; they come terribly close to God and the Devil then, I think. I
tell you, Mrs. Sheppard, now and then one of your sex has the vitality and
pain and affection of a thousand souls in one. I hate such women,"
vehemently.

"Men like you always do," quietly. "But I am not one of them."

"No, nor Grey, thank God! Whoever contrived that allegory of Eve and the
apple, though, did it well. If the Devil came to Lizzy Gurney, he would
offer no meaner temptation than 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.'"

"'_Allegory_'--eh? You forget your story, I think, Doctor Blecker,"--with
a frown.

The Doctor stopped to help her to jelly, with a serious face, and then
went on. "She turned round at last. I did not look up at her, only said,--

"'I will not write the letter.'

"'Go on,' she said.

"I wrote it, then; but when I went to give it to her, my heart failed me.

"'Lizzy,' I said, 'you shall not do this thing.'

"She looked so childish and pitiful, standing there!

"'You think you are cutting yourself off from your chance of love through
all time by it,--just for Grey and the others.'

"Her eyes filled at that; she could not bear the kind word, you see.

"'Yes, I do, Doctor Blecker,' she said. 'Nobody ever loved me but Uncle
Dan. Since he went away, I have gone every day to his house, coming nearer
to him that way, growing purer, more like other women. There's a picture
of his mother there, and his sister. They are dead now, but I think their
souls looked at me out of those pictures and loved me.'

"She came up, her head hardly reaching to the top of the chair I sat on,
half smiling, those strange gray eyes of hers.

"'I thought they said,--"This is Lizzy: this is the little girl Daniel
loves." Every day I'd kneel down by that dead lady's chair, and pray to
God to make me fit to be her son's wife. But he's dead now,' drawing
suddenly back, 'and I am going to be--an opera-singer.'

"'Not unless by your own free will,' I said.

"She did not hear me, I think, pulling at the fastening about her throat.

"'Daniel would say it was the Devil's calling. Daniel was all I had. But
he don't know. I know. God means it. I might have lived on here, keeping
myself true to his notions of right: then, when I went yonder, he would
have been kind to me, he would have loved me,'--looking out through the
rain, in a dazed way.

"'The truth is, Lizzy,' I said, 'you have a power within you, and you want
to give it vent; it's like a hungry devil tearing you. So you give up your
love-dream, and are going to be an opera-singer. That's the common-sense
of the matter.'

"I sealed the letter, and gave it to her.

"'You think that?'

"That was all she answered. But I'm sorry I said it; I don't know whether
it was true or not. There,--that is the whole story. I never told it to
Grey before. You can judge for yourselves."

"My dear," said Mrs. Sheppard, "let me go with you to see your sister in
New York. Some more coffee, please. My cup is cold."

* * * * *

A clear, healthy April night: one of those bright, mountain-winded nights
of early spring, when the air is full of electric vigor,--starlight, when
the whole earth seems wakening slowly and grandly into a new life.

Grey, going with her husband and Mrs. Sheppard down Broadway, from their
hotel, had a fancy that the world was so cheerfully, heartily at work,
that the night was no longer needed. Overhead, the wind from the yet
frozen hills swept in such strong currents, the great city throbbed with
such infinite kinds of motion, and down in the harbor yonder the rush of
couriers came and went incessantly from the busy world without. Grey was a
country-girl: in this throbbing centre of human life she felt suddenly
lost, atom-like,--drew her breath quickly, as she clung to Paul's arm. The
world was so vast, was hurrying on so fast. She must get to work in
earnest: why, one must justify her right to live, here.

Mrs. Sheppard, as she plodded solidly along, took in the whole blue air
and outgoing ocean, and the city, with its white palaces and gleaming
lights.

"People look happy here," she said. "Even Grey laughs more, going down the
streets. Nothing talks of the war here."

Paul looked down into the brown depths of the eyes that were turned
towards him.

"It is a good, cheery world, ours, after all. More laughing than crying in
it,--when people find out their right place, and get into it."

Mrs. Sheppard said, "Umph?" Kentuckians don't like abstract propositions.

They stopped before a wide-open door, in a by-street. _Not_ an
opera-house; one of the haunts of the "legitimate drama," Yet the posters
assured the public in every color, that _La petite Elise_, the beautiful
_debutante_, etc., etc., would sing, etc., etc. Grey's hand tightened on
her husband's arm.

"This is the place,"--her face burning scarlet.

A pretty little theatre: softly lighted, well and quietly filled. Quietly
toned, too, the dresses of the women in the boxes,--of that neutral,
subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People
of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her
emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the
world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant
trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out
_ennui_, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple
little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there was a good
deal of fun in it. Grey laughed with everybody else; she would ask God to
bless her to-night none the worse for that. It had some touches of pathos
in it, and she cried, and saw some men about her with the smug
New-York-city face doing the very same,--not just as she did, but
glowering at the footlights, and softly blowing their noses. Then the
music came, and _La petite Elise_. Grey drew back where she could not see
her. Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she
came out from the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or
gift she had had found vent, certainly, now. Every poise and inflection
said, "Here I am what I am,--fully what God made me, at last: no more, no
less." God had made her an actress. Why, He knows. The Great Spirit of
Love says to the toad in your gutter,--"Thou, too, art my servant, in
whom, fulfilling the work I give, I am well pleased."

_La petite Elise_ had only a narrow and peculiar scope of power, suited to
vaudevilles: she could not represent her own character,--an actress's
talent and heart being as widely separated, in general, as yours are. She
could bring upon the stage in her body the presentment of a _naive_,
innocent, pathetic nature, and use the influence such nature might have on
the people outside the orchestra-chairs there. It was not her own nature,
we know. She dressed and looked it. A timid little thing, in her
fluttering white slip, her light hair cut close to her head, in short
curls. So much for the actress and her power.

She sang at last. She sang ballads generally, (her voice wanting
cultivation,) such as agreed with her _role_. But it was Lizzy Gurney who
sang, not _la petite Elise_.

"Of course," a society-mother said to me, one day, "I do _not_ wish my
Rosa should have a great sorrow, but--how it would develop her voice!" The
bonnet-worshipper stumbled on a great truth.

So with Lizzy: life had taught her; and the one bitter truth of
self-renunciation she had wrung out of it must tell itself somehow. No
man's history is dumb. It came out vaguely, an inarticulate cry to God and
man, in the songs she sang, I think. That very night, as she stood there
with her gray eyes very sparkling and happy, (they were dramatic eyes, and
belonged to her brain,) and her baby-hands crossed archly before her, her
voice made those who listened quite forget her: _la petite Elise_ took
them up to the places where men's souls struggle with the Evil One and
conquer. A few, perhaps, understood that full meaning of her song: if
there was one, it was well she was an actress and sang it.

"I'm damned," growled a fellow in the pit, "if she a'n't a good little
thing!" when the song was ended. There was not a soul in the house that
did not think the same. Yet the girl turned fiercely towards the
side-scenes, hearing it, and pitied herself at that,--that she, a woman,
should stand before the public for them to examine and chatter over her
soul and her history, and her very dress and shoes. But that was gone in a
moment, and Lizzy laughed,--naturally now. Why, they were real friends,
heart-warm to her there: when they laughed and cried with her, she knew
it. Many of their faces she knew well: that pale lady's in the third box,
who brought her boys so often, and gave them a bouquet to throw to
Lizzy,--always white flowers; and the old grandfather yonder, with the
pretty, chubby-faced girls. The girl's thought now was earnest and
healthful, as everybody's grows, who succeeds in discovering his real
work. They encored her song: when she began, she looked up and balked
suddenly, her very neck turning crimson. She had seen Doctor Blecker. "A
tawdry actress!" She could have torn her stage-dress in rags from her.
Then her tone grew low and clear.

There was a young couple just facing her with a little child, a dainty
baby-thing in cap and plume. Neither of them listened to Lizzy: the mother
was tying the little fellow's shoe as he hoisted it on the seat, and the
father was looking at _her_. "I missed my chance," said Lizzy Gurney, in
her heart. "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight!" A tawdry
actress. She might have stayed at home yonder, quiet and useless: that
might have been. Then she thought of Grey, well beloved,--of the other
house, full of hungry mouths she was feeding. Looking more sharply at
Doctor Blecker while she sang, she saw Grey beside him, drawn back behind
a pillar. Presently she saw her take the glass from her husband and lean
forward. There was a red heat under her eyes: she had been crying. They
applauded Lizzy just then, and Grey looked around frightened, and then
laughed nervously.

"How beautiful she is! Do you see? Oh, Paul! Mrs. Sheppard, _do_ you
see?"--tearing her fan, and drawing heavy breaths, moving on her seat
constantly.

"She never loved me heartily before," thought Lizzy, as she sang. "I never
deserved it. I was a heartless dog. I"--

People applauded again, the old grandfather this time nodding to the
girls. There was something so cheery and healthy and triumphant in the low
tones. Even the young mother looked up suddenly from her boy, listening,
and glanced at her husband. It was like a Christmas-song.

"She never loved me before. I deserve it."

That was what she said in it. But they did not know.

Doctor Blecker looked at her, unsmiling, critical. She could see, too, a
strange face beside him,--a motherly, but a keen, harsh-judging face.

"Grey," said Mrs. Sheppard, "I wish we could go behind the scenes. Can we?
I want to talk to Lizzy this minute."

"To tell her she is at the Devil's work, Mrs. Sheppard, eh?"

Doctor Blecker pulled at his beard, angrily.

"Suppose you and I let her alone. We don't understand her."

"I think I do. God help her!"

"We will go round when the song is over," said Grey, gently.

Lizzy, scanning their faces, scanning every face in pit or boxes,
discerned a good will and wish on each. Something wholesome and sound in
her heart received it, half afraid.

"I don't know," she thought.

One of the windows was open, and out beyond the gas-light and smells of
the theatre she could see a glimpse of far space, with the eternal stars
shining. There had been once a man who loved her: he, looking down, could
see her now. If she had stayed at home, selfish and useless, there might
have been a chance for her yonder.

Her song was ended; as she drew back, she glanced up again through the
fresh air.

They were curious words the soul of the girl cried out to God in that dumb
moment:--"Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." Yet in that moment a
new feeling came to the girl,--a peace that never left her afterwards.

An actress: but she holds her work bravely and healthily and well in her
grasp, with her foot always on a grave, as one might say, and God very
near above. And it may be, that, when her work is nearer done, and she
comes closer to the land where all things are clearly seen at last in
their real laws, she will know that the faces of those who loved her wait
kindly for her, and of whatever happiness has been given to them they will
not deem her quite unworthy.

Perhaps they have turned Lizzy out of the church. I do not know. But her
Friend, the world's Christ, they could not make dead to her by shutting
him up in formula or church. He never was dead. From the girding sepulchre
he passed to save the spirits long in prison; and from the visible church
now he lives and works out from every soul that has learned, like Lizzy,
the truths of life,--to love, to succor, to renounce.

* * * * *

BY THE RIVER.

I.

In the beautiful greenwood's charmed light,
And down through the meadows wide and bright,
Deep in the silence, and smooth in the gleam,
For ever and ever flows the stream.

Where the mandrakes grow, and the pale, thin grass
The airy scarf of the woodland weaves,
By dim, enchanted paths I pass,
Crushing the twigs and the last year's leaves.

Over the wave, by the crystal brink,
A kingfisher sits on a low, dead limb:
He is always sitting there, I think,--
And another, within the crystal brink,
Is always looking up at him.

I know where an old tree leans across
From bank to bank, an ancient tree,
Quaintly cushioned with curious moss,
A bridge for the cool wood-nymphs and me:
Half seen they flit, while here I sit
By the magical water, watching it.

In its bosom swims the fair phantasm
Of a subterraneous azure chasm,
So soft and clear, you would say the stream
Was dreaming of heaven a visible dream.

Where the noontide basks, and its warm rays tint
The nettles and clover and scented mint,
And the crinkled airs, that curl and quiver,
Drop their wreaths in the mirroring river,--
Under the shaggy magnificent drapery
Of many a wild-woven native grapery,--
By ivy-bowers, and banks of violets,
And golden hillocks, and emerald islets,
Along its sinuous shining bed,
In sheets of splendor it lies outspread.

In the twilight stillness and solitude
Of green caves roofed by the brooding wood,
Where the woodbine swings, and beneath the trailing
Sprays of the queenly elm-tree sailing,--
By ribbed and wave-worn ledges shimmering,
Gilding the rocks with a rippled glimmering,
All pictured over in shade and sun,
The wavering silken waters run.

Upon this mossy trunk I sit,
Over the river, watching it.
A shadowed face peers up at me;
And another tree in the chasm I see,
Clinging above the abyss it spans;
The broad boughs curve their spreading fans,
From side to side, in the nether air;
And phantom birds in the phantom branches
Mimic the birds above; and there,
Oh I far below, solemn and slow,
The white clouds roll the crumbling snow
Of ever-pendulous avalanches,
Till the brain grows giddy, gazing through
Their wild, wide rifts of bottomless blue.

II.

Through the river, and through the rifts
Of the sundered earth I gaze,
While Thought on dreamy pinion drifts,
Over cerulean bays,
Into the deep ethereal sea
Of her own serene eternity.

Transfigured by my tranced eye,
Wood and meadow, and stream and sky,
Like vistas of a vision lie:
THE WORLD is the River that flickers by.

Its skies are the blue-arched centuries;
And its forms are the transient images
Flung on the flowing film of Time
By the steadfast shores of a fadeless clime.

As yonder wave-side willows grow,
Substance above, and shadow below,
The golden slopes of that upper sphere
Hang their imperfect landscapes here.

Fast by the Tree of Life, which shoots
Duplicate forms from self-same roots,
Under the fringes of Paradise,
The crystal brim of the River lies.

There are banks of Peace, whose lilies pure
Paint on the wave their portraiture;
And many a holy influence,
That climbs to God like the breath of prayer,
Creeps quivering into the glass of sense,
To bless the immortals mirrored there.

Through realms of Poesy, whose white cliffs
Cloud its deeps with their hieroglyphs,
Alpine fantasies heaped and wrought
At will by the frolicsome winds of Thought,--
By shores of Beauty, whose colors pass
Faintly into the misty glass,--
By hills of Truth, whose glories show
Distorted, broken, and dimmed, as we know,--
Kissed by the tremulous long green tress
Of the glistening tree of Happiness,
Which ever our aching grasp eludes
With sweet illusive similitudes,--
All pictured over in shade and gleam,
For ever and ever runs the Stream.

The orb that burns in the rifts of space
Is the adumbration of God's Face.
My Soul leans over the murmuring flow,
And I am the image it sees below.

* * * * *

THE GROWTH OF CONTINENTS.

Before entering upon a sketch of the growth of the European Continent from
the earliest times until it reached its present dimensions and outlines, I
will say something of the growth of continents in general, connecting
these remarks with a few words of explanation respecting some geological
terms, which, although in constant use, are nevertheless not clearly
defined. I will explain, at the outset, the meaning I attach to them and
the sense in which I use them, that there may be no misunderstanding
between me and my readers on this point. The words Age, Epoch, Period,
Formation, may be found on almost every page of any modern work on
geology; but if we sift the matter carefully, we shall find that there is
a great uncertainty as to the significance of these terms, and that
scarcely any two geologists use them in the same sense. Indeed, I shall
not be held blameless in this respect myself; for, on looking over
preceding articles, I find that I have, from old habit, used somewhat
indiscriminately names which should have a perfectly definite and
invariable meaning.

As long as zooelogical nomenclature was uncontrolled by any principle, the
same vagueness and indecision prevailed here also. The words Genus, Order,
Class, as well as those applied to the most comprehensive division of all
in the animal kingdom, the primary branches or types, were used
indiscriminately, and often allowed to include under one name animals
differing essentially in their structural character. It is only since it
has been found that all these groups are susceptible of limitation,
according to distinct categories of structure, that our nomenclature has
assumed a more precise and definite significance. Even now there is still
some inconsistency among zooelogists as to the use of special terms,
arising from their individual differences in appreciating, structural
features; but I believe it to be, nevertheless, true, that general orders,
classes, etc., are not merely larger or smaller groups of the same kind,
but are really based upon distinct categories of structure. As soon as
such a principle is admitted in geology, and investigators recognize
certain physical and organic conditions, more or less general in their
action, as characteristic of all those chapters in geological history
designated as Ages, Epochs, Periods, Formations, etc., all vagueness will
vanish from the scientific nomenclature of this department also, and there
will be no hesitation as to the use of words for which we shall then have
a positive, definite meaning.

Although the fivefold division of Werner, by which he separated the rocks
into Primitive, Transition, Secondary, Alluvial, and Volcanic, proved to
be based on a partial misapprehension of the nature of the earth-crust,
yet it led to their subsequent division into the three great groups now
known as the Primary, or Palaeozoic, as they are sometimes called, because
here are found the first organic remains, the Secondary, and the Tertiary.
I have said in a previous article that the general unity of character
prevailing throughout these three divisions, so that, taken from the
broadest point of view, each one seems a unit in time, justifies the
application to them of that term, _Age_, by which we distinguish in human
history those periods marked throughout by one prevailing tendency;--as we
say the age of Egyptian or Greek or Roman civilization,--the age of stone
or iron or bronze. I believe that this division of geological history into
these great sections or chapters is founded upon a recognition of the
general features by which they are characterized.

Passing over the time when the first stratified deposits were accumulated
under a universal ocean in which neither animals nor plants existed, there
was an age in the physical history of the world when the lands consisted
of low islands,--when neither great depths nor lofty heights diversified
the surface of the earth,--when both the animal and vegetable creation,
however numerous, was inferior to the later ones, and comparatively
uniform in character,--when marine Cryptogams were the highest plants, and
Fishes were the highest animals. And this broad statement holds good for
the whole of that time, even though it was not without its minor changes,
its new forms of animal and vegetable life, its variations of level, its
upheavals and subsidences; for, nevertheless, through its whole duration,
it was the age of low detached lands,--it was the age of Cryptogams,--it
was the age of Fishes. From its beginning to its close, no higher type in
the animal kingdom, no loftier group in the vegetable world, made its
appearance.

There was an age in the physical history of the world when the patches of
land already raised above the water became so united as to form large
islands; and though the aspect of the earth retained its insular
character, yet the size of the islands, their tendency to coalesce by the
addition of constantly increasing deposits, and thus to spread into wider
expanses of dry land, marked the advance toward the formation of
continents. This extension of the dry land was brought about not only by
the gradual accumulation of materials, but also by the upheaval of large
tracts of stratified deposits; for, though the loftiest mountain-chains
did not yet exist, ranges like those of the Alleghanies and the Jura
belong to this division of the world's history. During this time, the
general character of the animal and vegetable kingdoms was higher than
during the previous age. Reptiles, many and various, gigantic in size,
curious in form, some of them recalling the structure of fishes, others
anticipating birdlike features, gave a new character to the animal world,
while in the vegetable world the reign of the aquatic Cryptogams was over,
and terrestrial Cryptogams, and, later, Gymnosperms and Monocotyledonous
trees, clothed the earth with foliage. Such was the character of this
second age from its opening to its close; and though there are
indications, that, before it was wholly past, some low, inferior Mammalian
types of the Marsupial kind were introduced,[2] and also a few
Dicotyledonous plants, yet they were not numerous or striking enough to
change the general aspect of the organic world. This age was throughout,
in its physical formation, the age of large continental islands; while in
its organic character it was the age of Reptiles as the highest animal
type, and of Gymnosperms and Monocotyledonous plants as the highest
vegetable groups.

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