Part 22

We live mortal lives for immortal good. And really this world is so mysterious, that there is not one of its commonest ways but is perhaps sublimer to walk on than we at all think. At night, when we walk about and see at all, it is by the light of other worlds; though we do not often think of this. It is the same in life. There is many a matter concerning us that is little thought of, but which is ours, as it were, from out of the infinite. Yes, our lives are to be felt as being very great, even in their nothingness. Even our mortal lives are as wonderful as immortality. Is the next life a mystery? So it is. But then how mysterious even now life is. Food is not all that a man lives by. There is some way by which food has to turn to strength in him; and that way is something else than his own will. I am hungry, I sit down to a meal, and I enjoy it. And the next day, from what I ate and drank for my pleasure, there is blood in my veins, and moisture on my skin, and new flesh making in all my limbs. And this is not my doing or willing; for I do not even know how my nails grow from under the skin of my fingers. I can well believe in my being to live hereafter. How, indeed, I am to live, I do not know; but, then, neither do I know how I do live now. When I am asleep, my lungs keep breathing, my heart keeps beating, my stomach keeps digesting, and my whole body keeps making anew. And in the morning, when I look in the glass, it is as though I see myself a new creature; and really, for the wonder of it, it is all the same as though another body had grown about me in my sleep. This living from day to day is astonishing, when it is thought of; and we are let feel the miracle of it, so, perhaps, that our being to live again may not be too wonderful for our belief.

Though there be storm and turbulence on this earth, one would rise but little way, through the blackened air, before he would come to a region of calm and peace, where the stars shine unobstructed, and where there is no storm. And a little above our cloud, a little higher than our darkness, a little beyond our storm, is God’s upper region of tranquil peace and calm. And when we have had the discipline of winter here, it will be possible for us to have eternal summer there.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

EXTRACTS FROM

THE GRANDMOTHER’S APOLOGY.

BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

And Willy, my eldest born, is gone you say, little Ann? Ruddy and white and strong on his legs, he looks like a man. “Here’s a leg for a babe of a week!” says doctor; and he would be bound There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.

Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue! I ought to have gone before him; I wonder he went so young. I cannot cry for him, Annie; I have not long to stay; Perhaps I shall see him the sooner, for he lived far away.

Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold; But all my children have gone before me, I am so old: I cannot weep for Willy, nor can I weep for the rest; Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.

The first child that ever I bore was dead before he was born: Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn. I had not wept, little Annie, not since I had been a wife; But I wept like a child, that day; for the babe had fought for his life.

His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain; I looked at the still little body,--his trouble had all been in vain. For Willy I cannot weep; I shall see him another morn; But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born.

But he cheered me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay: Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have his way; Never jealous,--not he: we had many a happy year: And he died, and I could not weep,--my own time seemed so near.

But I wished it had been God’s will that I, too, then could have died: I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side; And that was ten years back, or more, if I don’t forget: But as for the children, Annie, they are all about me yet.

Pattering over the boards, my Annie, who left me at two; Patter she goes, my own little Annie,--an Annie like you. Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will, While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing the hill.

And Harry and Charlie, I hear them, too,--they sing to their team; Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of dream. They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed: I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.

And yet I know for a truth, there’s none of them left alive; For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five; And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and ten; I knew them all as babies, and now they are elderly men.

For mine is a time of peace; it is not often I grieve; I am oftener sitting at home in my father’s farm at eve: And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I; I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.

To be sure the preacher says our sins should make us sad; But mine is a time of peace, and there is grace to be had; And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease; And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of peace.

And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain; And happy has been my life, but I would not live it again. I seem to be tired a little, that’s all, and long for rest; Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.

So Willy has gone,--my beauty, my eldest born, my flower; But how can I weep for Willy? he has but gone for an hour,-- Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next; I too shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?

THE ANCIENT MAN.

TRANSLATED BY L. O. FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL RICHTER’S MEMOIR OF FIBEL, AUTHOR OF THE BIENENRODA SPELLING-BOOK.

“He is insensibly subdued To settled quiet. He is one by whom All effort seems forgotten; one to whom Long patience hath such mild composure given, That patience now doth seem a thing of which He hath no need. He is by Nature led To peace so perfect, that the young behold With envy what the old man hardly feels.”

WORDSWORTH.

The stream of Fibel’s history having vanished under ground, like a second river Rhone, I was obliged to explore where story or stream again burst forth, and for this purpose I questioned every one. I was told that no one could better inform me than an exceedingly aged man, more than a hundred and twenty-five years old, who lived a few miles from the village of Bienenroda, and who, having been young at the same time with Fibel, must know all about him. The prospect of shaking hands with the very oldest man living on the face of the earth enraptured me. I said to myself that a most novel and peculiar sensation must be excited by having a whole past century before you, bodily present, compact and alive, in the century now passing; by holding, hand to hand, a man of the age of the antediluvians, over whose head so many entire generations of young mornings and old evenings have fled, and before whom one stands, in fact, as neither young nor old; to listen to a human spirit, outlandish, behind the time, almost mysteriously awful; sole survivor of the thousand gray, cold sleepers, coevals of his own remote, hoary age; standing as sentinel before the ancient dead, looking coldly and strangely on life’s silly novelties; finding in the present no cooling for his inborn spirit-thirst, no more enchanting yesterdays or to-morrows, but only the day-before-yesterday of youth, and the day-after-to-morrow of death. It may consequently be imagined that so very old a man would speak only of his farthest past, of his early day-dawn, which, of course, in the long evening of his protracted day, must now be blending with his midnight. On the other hand, that one like myself would not feel particularly younger before such a millionnaire of hours, as the Bienenroda Patriarch must be; and that his presence must make one feel more conscious of death than of immortality. A very aged man is a more powerful memento than a grave; for the older a grave is, the farther we look back to the succession of young persons who have mouldered in it; sometimes a maiden is concealed in an ancient grave; but an ancient dwindled body hides only an imprisoned spirit.

An opportunity for visiting the Patriarch was presented by a return coach-and-six, belonging to a count, on which I was admitted to a seat with the coachman. Just before arriving at Bienenroda, he pointed with his whip toward an orchard, tuneful with song, and said, “There sits the old man with his little animals around him.” I sprang from the noble equipage and went toward him. I ventured to expect that the Count’s six horses would give me, before the old man, the appearance of a person of rank, apart from the simplicity of my dress, whereby princes and heroes are wont to distinguish themselves from their tinselled lackeys. I was, therefore, a little surprised that the old man kept on playing with his pet hare, not even checking the barking of his poodle, as if counts were his daily bread, until, at last, he lifted his oil-cloth hat from his head. A buttoned overcoat, which gave room to see his vest, a long pair of knit over-alls, which were, in fact, enormous stockings, and a neckerchief, which hung down to his bosom, made his dress look modern enough. His time-worn frame was far more peculiar. The inner part of the eye, which is black in childhood, was quite white; his tallness, more than his years, seemed to bow him over into an arch; the out-turned point of his chin gave to his speech the appearance of mumbling; yet the expression of his countenance was lively, his eyes bright, his jaws full of white teeth, and his head covered with light hair.

I began by saying: “I came here solely on your account to see a man for whom there can assuredly be little new under the sun, though he himself is something very new under it. You are now strictly in your five and twenties; a man in your best years; since after a century a new reckoning commences. For myself, I confess that after once clambering over the century terminus, or church-wall of a hundred years, I should neither know how old I was, nor whether I was myself. I should begin fresh and free, just as the world’s history has often done, counting again from the year one, in the middle of a thousand years. Yet why can not a man live to be as old as is many a giant tree of India still standing? It is well to question very old people concerning the methods by which they have prolonged their lives. How do you account for it, dear old sir?”

I was beginning to be vexed at the good man’s silence, when he softly replied: “Some suppose it is because I have always been cheerful; because I have adopted the maxim, ‘Never sad, ever glad’; but I ascribe it wholly to our dear Lord God; since the animals, which here surround us, though never sad, but happy for the most part, by no means so frequently exceed the usual boundary of their life, as does man. He exhibits an image of the eternal God, even in the length of his duration.”