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1835

TWICE-TOLD TALES

ALICE DOANE’S APPEAL

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

ON A PLEASANT AFTERNOON of June, it was my good fortune to be the

companion of two young ladies in a walk. The direction of our course

being left to me, I led them neither to Legge’s Hill, nor to the

Cold Spring, nor to the rude shores and old batteries of the Neck, nor

yet to Paradise; though if the latter place were rightly named, my

fair friends would have been at home there. We reached the outskirts

of the town, and turning aside from a street of tanners and

curriers, began to ascend a hill, which at a distance, by its dark

slope and the even line of its summit, resembled a green rampart along

the road. It was less steep than its aspect threatened. The eminence

formed part of an extensive tract of pasture land, and was traversed

by cow paths in various directions; but, strange to tell, though the

whole slope and summit were of a peculiarly deep green, scarce a blade

of grass was visible from the base upward. This deceitful verdure

was occasioned by a plentiful crop of "woodwax," which wears the

same dark and glossy green throughout the summer, except at one

short period, when it puts forth a profusion of yellow blossoms. At

that season, to a distant spectator, the hill appears absolutely

overlaid with gold, or covered with a glory of sunshine, even

beneath a clouded sky. But the curious wanderer on the hill will

perceive that all the grass, and everything that should nourish man or

beast, has been destroyed by this vile and ineradicable weed: its

tufted roots make the soil their own, and permit nothing else to

vegetate among them; so that a physical curse may be said to have

blasted the spot, where guilt and frenzy consummated the most

execrable scene that our history blushes to record. For this was the

field where superstition won her darkest triumph; the high place where

our fathers set up their shame, to the mournful gaze of generations

far remote. The dust of martyrs was beneath our feet. We stood on

Gallows Hill.

For my own part, I have often courted the historic influence of the

spot. But it is singular how few come on pilgrimage to this famous

hill; how many spend their lives almost at its base, and never once

obey the summons of the shadowy past, as it beckons them to the

summit. Till a year or two since, this portion of our history had been

very imperfectly written, and, as we are not a people of legend or

tradition, it was not every citizen of our ancient town that could

tell, within half a century, so much as the date of the witchcraft

delusion. Recently, indeed, an historian has treated the subject in

a manner that will keep his name alive, in the only desirable

connection with the errors of our ancestry, by converting the hill

of their disgrace into an honorable monument of his own antiquarian

lore, and of that better wisdom, which draws the moral while it

tells the tale. But we are a people of the present, and have no

heartfelt interest in the olden time. Every fifth of November, in

commemoration of they know not what, or rather without an idea

beyond the momentary blaze, the young men scare the town with bonfires

on this haunted height, but never dream of paying funeral honors to

those who died so wrongfully, and, without a coffin or a prayer,

were buried here.

Though with feminine susceptibility, my companions caught all the

melancholy associations of the scene, yet these could but

imperfectly overcome the gayety of girlish spirits. Their emotions

came and went with quick vicissitude, and sometimes combined to form a

peculiar and delicious excitement, the mirth brightening the gloom

into a sunny shower of feeling, and a rainbow in the mind. My own more

sombre mood was tinged by theirs. With now a merry word and next a sad

one, we trod among the tangled weeds, and almost hoped that our feet

would sink into the hollow of a witch’s grave. Such vestiges were to

be found within the memory of man, but have vanished now, and with

them, I believe, all traces of the precise spot of the executions.

On the long and broad ridge of the eminence, there is no very

decided elevation of any one point, nor other prominent marks,

except the decayed stumps of two trees, standing near each other,

and here and there the rocky substance of the hill, peeping just above

the woodwax.

There are few such prospects of town and village, woodland and

cultivated field, steeples and country seats, as we beheld from this

unhappy spot. No blight had fallen on old Essex; all was prosperity

and riches, healthfully distributed. Before us lay our native town,

extending from the foot of the hill to the harbor, level as a chess

board embraced by two arms of the sea, and filling the whole peninsula

with a close assemblage of wooden roofs, overtopped by many a spire,

and intermixed with frequent heaps of verdure, where trees threw up

their shade from unseen trunks. Beyond was the bay and its islands,

almost the only objects, in a country unmarked by strong natural

features, on which time and human toil had produced no change.

Retaining these portions of the scene, and also the peaceful glory and

tender gloom of the declining sun, we threw, in imagination, a veil of

deep forest over the land, and pictured a few scattered villages,

and this old town itself a village, as when the prince of hell bore

sway there. The idea thus gained of its former aspect, its quaint

edifices standing far apart, with peaked roofs and projecting stories,

and its single meeting-house pointing up a tall spire in the midst;

the vision, in short, of the town in 1692, served to introduce a

wondrous tale of those old times.

I had brought the manuscript in my pocket. It was one of a series

written years ago, when my pen, now sluggish and perhaps feeble,

because I have not much to hope or fear, was driven by stronger

external motives, and a more passionate impulse within, than I am

fated to feel again. Three or four of these tales had appeared in

the "Token," after a long time and various adventures, but had

encumbered me with no troublesome notoriety, even in my birthplace.

One great heap had met a brighter destiny: they had fed the flames;

thoughts meant to delight the world and endure for ages had perished

in a moment, and stirred not a single heart but mine. The story now to

be introduced, and another, chanced to be in kinder custody at the

time, and thus, by no conspicuous merits of their own, escaped

destruction.

The ladies, in consideration that I had never before intruded my

performances on them, by any but the legitimate medium, through the

press, consented to hear me read. I made them sit down on a moss-grown

rock, close by the spot where we chose to believe that the death

tree had stood. After a little hesitation on my part, caused by a

dread of renewing my acquaintance with fantasies that had lost their

charm in the ceaseless flux of mind, I began the tale, which opened

darkly with the discovery of a murder.

A hundred years, and nearly half that time, have elapsed since

the body of a murdered man was found, at about the distance of three

miles, on the old road to Boston. He lay in a solitary spot, on the

bank of a small lake, which the severe frost of December had covered

with a sheet of ice. Beneath this, it seemed to have been the

intention of the murderer to conceal his victim in a chill and

watery grave, the ice being deeply hacked, perhaps with the weapon

that had slain him, though its solidity was too stubborn for the

patience of a man with blood upon his hand. The corpse therefore

reclined on the earth, but was separated from the road by a thick

growth of dwarf pines. There had been a slight fall of snow during the

night, and as if nature were shocked at the deed, and strove to hide

it with her frozen tears, a little drifted heap had partly buried

the body, and lay deepest over the pale dead face. An early traveller,

whose dog had led him to the spot, ventured to uncover the features,

but was affrighted by their expression. A look of evil and scornful

triumph had hardened on them, and made death so life-like and so

terrible, that the beholder at once took flight, as swiftly as if

the stiffened corpse would rise up and follow.

I read on, and identified the body as that of a young man, a

stranger in the country, but resident during several preceding

months in the town which lay at our feet. The story described, at some

length, the excitement caused by the murder, the unavailing quest

after the perpetrator, the funeral ceremonies, and other commonplace

matters, in the course of which, I brought forward the personages

who were to move among the succeeding events. They were but three. A

young man and his sister; the former characterized by a diseased

imagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous,

and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heart

of her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature.

The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, with

fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to execute

it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all better

purposes. The central scene of the story was an interview between this

wretch and Leonard Doane, in the wizard’s hut, situated beneath a

range of rocks at some distance from the town. They sat beside a

smouldering fire, while a tempest of wintry rain was beating on the

roof. The young man spoke of the closeness of the tie which united him

and Alice, the consecrated fervor of their affection from childhood

upwards, their sense of lonely sufficiency to each other, because they

only of their race had escaped death, in a night attack by the

Indians. He related his discovery or suspicion of a secret sympathy

between his sister and Walter Brome, and told how a distempered

jealousy had maddened him. In the following passage, I threw a

glimmering light on the mystery of the tale.

"Searching," continued Leonard, "into the breast of Walter Brome, I

at length found a cause why Alice must inevitably love him. For he was

my very counterpart! I compared his mind by each individual portion,

and as a whole, with mine. There was a resemblance from which I shrunk

with sickness, and loathing, and horror, as if my own features had

come and stared upon me in a solitary place, or had met me in

struggling through a crowd. Nay! the very same thoughts would often

express themselves in the same words from our lips, proving a

hateful sympathy in our secret souls. His education, indeed, in the

cities of the old world, and mine in this rude wilderness, had wrought

a superficial difference. The evil of his character, also, had been

strengthened and rendered prominent by a reckless and ungoverned life,

while mine had been softened and purified by the gentle and holy

nature of Alice. But my soul had been conscious of the germ of all the

fierce and deep passions, and of all the many varieties of wickedness,

which accident had brought to their full maturity in him. Nor will I

deny that, in the accursed one, I could see the withered blossom of

every virtue, which, by a happier culture, had been made to bring

forth fruit in me. Now, here was a man whom Alice might love with

all the strength of sisterly affection, added to that impure passion

which alone engrosses all the heart. The stranger would have more than

the love which had been gathered to me from the many graves of our

household- and I be desolate!"

Leonard Doane went on to describe the insane hatred that had

kindled his heart into a volume of hellish flame. It appeared, indeed,

that his jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had

actually sought the love of Alice, who also had betrayed an

undefinable, but powerful interest in the unknown youth. The latter,

in spite of his passion for Alice, seemed to return the loathful

antipathy of her brother; the similarity of their dispositions made

them like joint possessors of an individual nature, which could not

become wholly the property of one, unless by the extinction of the

other. At last, with the same devil in each bosom, they chanced to

meet, they two on a lonely road. While Leonard spoke, the wizard had

sat listening to what he already knew, yet with tokens of

pleasurable interest, manifested by flashes of expression across his

vacant features, by grisly smiles and by a word here and there,

mysteriously filling up some void in the narrative. But when the young

man told how Walter Brome had taunted him with indubitable proofs of

the shame of Alice, and, before the triumphant sneer could vanish from

his face, had died by her brother’s hand, the wizard laughed aloud.

Leonard started, but just then a gust of wind came down the chimney,

forming itself into a close resemblance of the slow, unvaried

laughter, by which he had been interrupted. "I was deceived,"

thought he; and thus pursued his fearful story.

"I trod out his accursed soul, and knew that he was dead; for my

spirit bounded as if a chain had fallen from it and left me free.

But the burst of exulting certainty soon fled, and was succeeded by

a torpor over my brain and a dimness before my eyes, with the

sensation of one who struggles through a dream. So I bent down over

the body of Walter Brome, gazing into his face, and striving to make

my soul glad with the thought, that he, in very truth, lay dead before

me. I know not what space of time I had thus stood, nor how the vision

came. But it seemed to me that the irrevocable years since childhood

had rolled back, and a scene, that had long been confused and broken

in my memory, arrayed itself with all its first distinctness.

Methought I stood a weeping infant by my father’s hearth; by the

cold and blood-stained hearth where he lay dead. I heard the

childish wail of Alice, and my own cry arose with hers, as we beheld

the features of our parent, fierce with the strife and distorted

with the pain, in which his spirit had passed away. As I gazed, a cold

wind whistled by, and waved my father’s hair. Immediately I stood

again in the lonesome 91 road, no more a sinless child, but a man of

blood, whose tears were falling fast over the face of his dead

enemy. But the delusion was not wholly gone; that face still wore a

likeness of my father; and because my soul shrank from the fixed glare

of the eyes, I bore the body to the lake, and would have buried it

there. But before his icy sepulchre was hewn, I heard the voice of two

travellers and fled."

Such was the dreadful confession of Leonard Doane. And now tortured

by the idea of his sister’s guilt, yet sometimes yielding to a

conviction of her purity; stung with remorse for the death of Walter

Brome, and shuddering with a deeper sense of some unutterable crime,

perpetrated, as he imagined, in madness or a dream; moved also by dark

impulses, as if a fiend were whispering him to meditate violence

against the life of Alice; he had sought this interview with the

wizard, who, on certain conditions, had no power to withhold his aid

in unravelling the mystery. The tale drew near its close.

The moon was bright on high; the blue firmament appeared to glow

with an inherent brightness; the greater stars were burning in their

spheres; the northern lights threw their mysterious glare far over the

horizon; the few small clouds aloft were burdened with radiance; but

the sky, with all its variety of light, was scarcely so brilliant as

the earth. The rain of the preceding night had frozen as it fell, and,

by that simple magic, had wrought wonders. The trees were hung with

diamonds and many-colored gems; the houses were overlaid with

silver, and the streets paved with slippery brightness; a frigid glory

was flung over all familiar things, from the cottage chimney to the

steeple of the meetinghouse, that gleamed upward to the sky. This

living world, where we sit by our firesides, or go forth to meet

beings like ourselves, seemed rather the creation of wizard power,

with so much of the resemblance to known objects that a man might

shudder at the ghostly shape of his old beloved dwelling, and the

shadow of a ghostly tree before his door. One looked to behold

inhabitants suited to such a town, glittering in icy garments, with

the motionless features, cold, sparkling eyes, and just sensation

enough in their frozen hearts to shiver at each other’s presence.

By this fantastic piece of description, and more in the same style,

I intended to throw a ghostly glimmer round the reader, so that his

imagination might view the town through a medium that should take

off its every-day aspect, and make it a proper theatre for so wild a

scene as the final one. Amid this unearthly show, the wretched brother

and sister were represented as setting forth, at midnight, through the

gleaming streets, and directing their steps to a graveyard, where

all the dead had been laid, from the first corpse in that ancient

town, to the murdered man who was buried three days before. As they

went, they seemed to see the wizard gliding by their sides, or walking

dimly on the path before them. But here I paused, and gazed into the

faces of my two fair auditors, to judge whether, even on the hill

where so many had been brought to death by wilder tales than this, I

might venture to proceed. Their bright eyes were fixed on me; their

lips apart. I took courage, and led the fated pair to a new-made

grave, where for a few moments, in the bright and silent midnight,

they stood alone. But suddenly there was a multitude of people among

the graves.

Each family tomb had given up its inhabitants, who, one by one,

through distant years, had been borne to its dark chamber, but now

came forth and stood in a pale group together. There was the gray

ancestor, the aged mother, and all their descendants, some withered

and full of years, like themselves, and others in their prime;

there, too, were the children who went prattling to the tomb, and

there the maiden who yielded her early beauty to death’s embrace,

before passion had polluted it. Husbands and wives arose, who had lain

many years side by side, and young mothers who had forgotten to kiss

their first babes, though pillowed so long on their bosoms. Many had

been buried in the habiliments of life, and still wore their ancient

garb; some were old defenders of the infant colony, and gleamed

forth in their steel-caps and bright breast-plates, as if starting

up at an Indian war-cry; other venerable shapes had been pastors of

the church, famous among the New England clergy, and now leaned with

hands clasped over their gravestones, ready to call the congregation

to prayer. There stood the early settlers, those old illustrious ones,

the heroes of tradition and fireside legends, the men of history whose

features had been so long beneath the sod that few alive could have

remembered them. There, too, were faces of former townspeople, dimly

recollected from childhood, and others, whom Leonard and Alice had

wept in later years, but who now were most terrible of all, by their

ghastly smile of recognition. All, in short, were there; the dead of

other generations, whose moss-grown names could scarce be read upon

their tombstones, and their successors, whose graves were not yet

green; all whom black funerals had followed slowly thither now

reappeared where the mourners left them. Yet none but souls accursed

were there, and fiends counterfeiting the likeness of departed saints.

The countenances of those venerable men, whose very features had

been hallowed by lives of piety, were contorted now by intolerable

pain or hellish passion, and now by an unearthly and derisive

merriment. Had the pastors prayed, all saintlike as they seemed, it

had been blasphemy. The chaste matrons, too, and the maidens with

untasted lips, who had slept in their virgin graves apart from all

other dust, now wore a look from which the two trembling mortals

shrank, as if the unimaginable sin of twenty worlds were collected

there. The faces of fond lovers, even of such as had pined into the

tomb, because there their treasure was, were bent on one another

with glances of hatred and smiles of bitter scorn, passions that are

to devils what love is to the blest. At times, the features of those

who had passed from a holy life to heaven would vary to and fro,

between their assumed aspect and the fiendish lineaments whence they

had been transformed. The whole miserable multitude, both sinful

souls and false spectres of good men, groaned horribly and gnashed

their teeth, as they looked upward to the calm loveliness of the

midnight sky, and beheld those homes of bliss where they must never

dwell. Such was the apparition, though too shadowy for language to

portray; for here would be the moonbeams on the ice, glittering

through a warrior’s breast-plate, and there the letters of a

tombstone, on the form that stood before it; and whenever a breeze

went by, it swept the old men’s hoary heads, the women’s fearful

beauty, and all the unreal throng, into one indistinguishable cloud

together.

I dare not give the remainder of the scene, except in a very

brief epitome. This company of devils and condemned souls had come

on a holiday, to revel in the discovery of a complicated crime; as

foul a one as ever imagined in their dreadful abode. In the course

of the tale, the reader had been permitted to discover that all the

incidents were results of the machinations of the wizard, who had

cunningly devised that Walter Brome should tempt his unknown sister

to guilt and shame, and himself perish by the hand of his

twin-brother. I described the glee of the fiends at this hideous

conception, and their eagerness to know if it were consummated. The

story concluded with the Appeal of Alice to the spectre of Walter

Brome, his reply, absolving her from every stain; and the trembling

awe with which ghost and devil fled, as from the sinless presence of

an angel.

The sun had gone down. While I held my page of wonders in the

fading light, and read how Alice and her brother were left alone

among the graves, my voice mingled with the sigh of a summer wind,

which passed over the hill-top, with the broad and hollow sound as

of the flight of unseen spirits. Not a word was spoken till I added

that the wizard’s grave was close beside us, and that the woodwax had

sprouted originally from his unhallowed bones. The ladies started;

perhaps their cheeks might have grown pale had not the crimson west

been blushing on them; but after a moment they began to laugh, while

the breeze took a livelier motion, as if responsive to their mirth.

I kept an awful solemnity of visage, being, indeed, a little piqued

that a narrative which had good authority in our ancient

superstitions, and would have brought even a church deacon to

Gallows Hill, in old witch times, should now be considered too

grotesque and extravagant for timid maids to tremble at. Though it

was past supper time, I detained them a while longer on the hill, and

made a trial whether truth were more powerful than fiction.

We looked again towards the town, no longer arrayed in that icy

splendor of earth, tree, and edifice, beneath the glow of a wintry

midnight, which shining afar through the gloom of a century had made

it appear the very home of visions in visionary streets. An

indistinctness had begun to creep over the mass of buildings and

blend them with the intermingled tree-tops, except where the roof of

a statelier mansion, and the steeples and brick towers of churches,

caught the brightness of some cloud that yet floated in the

sunshine. Twilight over the landscape was congenial to the obscurity

of time. With such eloquence as my share of feeling and fancy could

supply, I called back hoar antiquity, and bade my companions imagine

an ancient multitude of people, congregated on the hill-side,

spreading far below, clustering on the steep old roofs, and climbing

the adjacent heights, wherever a glimpse of this spot might be

obtained. I strove to realize and faintly communicate the deep,

unutterable loathing and horror, the indignation, the affrighted

wonder, that wrinkled on every brow, and filled the universal heart.

See! the whole crowd turns pale and shrinks within itself, as the

virtuous emerge from yonder street. Keeping pace with that devoted

company, I described them one by one; here tottered a woman in her

dotage, knowing neither the crime imputed her, nor its punishment;

there another, distracted by the universal madness, till feverish

dreams were remembered as realities, and she almost believed her

guilt. One, a proud man once, was so broken down by the intolerable

hatred heaped upon him, that he seemed to hasten his steps, eager to

hide himself in the grave hastily dug at the foot of the gallows. As

they went slowly on, a mother looked behind, and beheld her peaceful

dwelling; she cast her eyes elsewhere, and groaned inwardly yet with

bitterest anguish, for there was her little son among the accusers.

I watched the face of an ordained pastor, who walked onward to the

same death; his lips moved in prayer; no narrow petition for himself

alone, but embracing all his fellow-sufferers and the frenzied

multitude; he looked to Heaven and trod lightly up the hill.

Behind their victims came the afflicted, a guilty and miserable

band; villains who had thus avenged themselves on their enemies, and

viler wretches, whose cowardice had destroyed their friends;

lunatics, whose ravings had chimed in with the madness of the land;

and children, who had played a game that the imps of darkness might

have envied them, since it disgraced an age, and dipped a people’s

hands in blood. In the rear of the procession rode a figure on

horseback, so darkly conspicuous, so sternly triumphant, that my

hearers mistook him for the visible presence of the fiend himself;

but it was only his good friend, Cotton Mather, proud of his well-won

dignity, as the representative of all the hateful features of his

time; the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were concentrated those

vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed to madden the

whole surrounding multitude. And thus I marshalled them onward, the

innocent who were to die, and the guilty who were to grow old in long

remorse- tracing their every step, by rock, and shrub, and broken

track, till their shadowy visages had circled round the hill-top,

where we stood. I plunged into my imagination for a blacker horror,

and a deeper woe, and pictured the scaffold-

But here my companions seized an arm on each side; their nerves

were trembling; and, sweeter victory still, I had reached the seldom

trodden places of their hearts, and found the well-spring of their

tears. And now the past had done all it could. We slowly descended,

watching the lights as they twinkled gradually through the town, and

listening to the distant mirth of boys at play, and to the voice of

a young girl warbling somewhere in the dusk, a pleasant sound to

wanderers from old witch times. Yet, ere we left the hill, we could

not but regret that there is nothing on its barren summit, no relic

of old, nor lettered stone of later days, to assist the imagination

in appealing to the heart. We build the memorial column on the height

which our fathers made sacred with their blood, poured out in a holy

cause. And here, in dark, funereal stone, should rise another

monument, sadly commemorative of the errors of an earlier race, and

not to be cast down, while the human heart has one infirmity that

may result in crime.

THE END

.

1835

TWICE-TOLD TALES

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

ONE SEPTEMBER NIGHT a family had gathered round their hearth, and

piled it high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of

the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come

crashing down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and

brightened the room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father

and mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed; the eldest

daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged

grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of

Happiness grown old. They had found the "herb, heart’s-ease," in the

bleakest spot of all New England. This family were situated in the

Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the

year, and pitilessly cold in the winter- giving their cottage all

its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of the Saco.

They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for a mountain

towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often

rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.

The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all

with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause

before their cottage- rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and

lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it

saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But

the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch was

lifted by some traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the

dreary blast which heralded his approach, and wailed as he was

entering, and went moaning away from the door.

Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily

converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great

artery, through which the life-blood of internal commerce is

continually throbbing between Maine, on one side, and the Green

Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The

stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The

way-farer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange

a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him

ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the

first house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to

Portland market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor, might

sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a kiss from the

mountain maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns

where the traveller pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a

homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard,

therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole

family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to welcome

someone who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs.

The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the

melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild

and bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he

saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring

forward to meet them all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with

her apron, to the little child that held out its arms to him. One

glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent

familiarity with the eldest daughter.

"Ah, this fire is the right thing!" cried he; "especially when

there is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the

Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a

terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett."

"Then you are going towards Vermont?" said the master of the house,

as he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man’s shoulders.

"Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. "I meant

to have been at Ethan Crawford’s tonight; but a pedestrian lingers

along such a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this

good fire, and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled

it on purpose for me, and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down

among you, and make myself at home."

The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire

when something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down

the steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and

taking such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite

precipice. The family held their breath, because they knew the

sound, and their guest held his by instinct.

"The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should

forget him," said the landlord, recovering himself. "He sometimes nods

his head and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and

agree together pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure

place of refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest."

Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of

bear’s meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed

himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they

talked as freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood.

He was of a proud, yet gentle spirit- haughty and reserved among the

rich and great; but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly

cottage door, and be like a brother or a son at the poor man’s

fireside. In the household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity

of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of

native growth, which they had gathered when they little thought of

it from the mountain peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of

their romantic and dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone;

his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path; for, with the

lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those

who might otherwise have been his companions. The family, too,

though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among

themselves, and separation from the world at large, which, in every

domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no stranger

may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the

refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple

mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free

confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a

common fate a closer tie than that of birth?

The secret of the young man’s character was a high and abstracted

ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not

to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed

to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty, that,

obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway-

though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity

should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they

would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner

glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his

cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him.

"As yet," cried the stranger- his cheek glowing and his eye

flashing with enthusiasm- "as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to

vanish from the earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as

you: that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the

Saco, and opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through

the Notch by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, ‘Who

was he? Whither did the wanderer go?’ But I cannot die till I have

achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my

monument!"

There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid

abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this

young man’s sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick

sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he

had been betrayed.

"You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter’s hand,

and laughing himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I

were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only

that people might spy at me from the country round about. And,

truly, that would be a noble pedestal for a man’s statue!"

"It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl,

blushing, "and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks

about us."

"I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, "there is

something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had

been turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is

strange, wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are

pretty certain never to come to pass."

"Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man thinking what he

will do when he is a widower?"

"No, no!" cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness.

"When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was

wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or

some other township round the White Mountains; but not where they

could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my

neighbors and be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term

or two; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer.

And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman,

so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and

leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as

well as a marble one- with just my name and age, and a verse of a

hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest man

and died a Christian."

"There now!" exclaimed the stranger; "it is our nature to desire

a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a

glorious memory in the universal heart of man."

"We’re in a strange way, tonight," said the wife, with tears in her

eyes. "They say it’s a sign of something, when folks’ minds go

a-wandering so. Hark to the children!"

They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed

in another room, but with an open door between, so that they could

be heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have

caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying

each other in wild wishes, and childish projects, of what they would

do when they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead

of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.

"I’ll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he. "I want you and

father and grandma’m, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start

right away, and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!"

Nobody could help laughing at the child’s notion of leaving a

warm bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin

of the Flume- a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within

the Notch. The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the

road, and stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two

or three men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus

of a song, which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while

the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here

for the night.

"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name."

But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and

was unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting

people to patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door;

and the lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the

Notch, still singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came

back drearily from the heart of the mountain.

"There, mother!" cried the boy, again. "They’d have given us a ride

to the Flume."

Again they laughed at the child’s pertinacious fancy for a night

ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the

daughter’s spirit; she looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath

that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little

struggle to repress it. Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly

round the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom.

The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.

"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile. "Only I felt

lonesome just then."

"Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other

people’s hearts," said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the secrets

of yours? For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm

hearth, and complains of lonesomeness at her mother’s side. Shall I

put these feelings into words?"

"They would not be a girl’s feelings any longer if they could be

put into words," replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding

his eye.

All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in

their hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it

could not be matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity

as his; and the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest

captivated by simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and

he was watching the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy

yearnings of a maiden’s nature, the wind through the Notch took a

deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said,

like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast, who in old

Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains, and made

their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the

road, as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the

family threw pine branches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled

and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and

humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly, and caressed

them all. There were the little faces of the children, peeping from

their bed apart, and here the father’s frame of strength, the mother’s

subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth, the budding girl, and

the good old grandam, still knitting in the warmest place. The aged

woman looked up from her task, and, with fingers ever busy, was the

next to speak.

"Old folks have their notions," said she, "as well as young ones.

You’ve been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one

thing and another, till you’ve set my mind a-wandering too. Now what

should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before

she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day

till I tell you."

"What is it, mother?" cried the husband and wife at once.

Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle

closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her

grave-clothes some years before- a nice linen shroud, a cap with a

muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since

her wedding day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely

recurred to her. It used to be said, in her younger days, that if

anything were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth,

or the cap did not set right, the corpse in the coffin and beneath the

clods would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare

thought made her nervous.

"Don’t talk so, grandmother!" said the girl, shuddering.

"Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet

smiling strangely at her own folly, "I want one of you, my children-

when your mother is dressed and in the coffin- I want one of you to

hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a

glimpse at myself, and see whether all’s right?"

"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the

stranger youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is

sinking, and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried

together in the ocean- that wide and nameless sepulchre?"

For a moment, the old woman’s ghastly conception so engrossed the

minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the

roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated

group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled;

the foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful

sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one

wild glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without

utterance, or power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously

from all their lips.

"The Slide! The Slide!"

The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the

unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their

cottage, and sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot- where, in

contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared.

Alas! they had quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway

of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain, in a

cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house, the stream broke

into two branches- shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the

whole vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its

dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to

roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the

victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.

The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the

cottage chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet

smouldering on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as

if the inhabitants had but gone forth to view the devastation of the

Slide, and would shortly return, to thank Heaven for their

miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens, by which those who

had known the family were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not

heard their name? The story has been told far and wide, and will

forever be a legend of these mountains. Poets have sung their fate.

There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a

stranger had been received into the cottage on this awful night, and

had shared the catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that

there were sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Wo for the

high-souled youth, with his dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and

person utterly unknown; his history, his way of life, his plans, a

mystery never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a

doubt! Whose was the agony of that death moment?

THE END

.

1844

TWICE-TOLD TALES

THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

AN ELDERLY MAN, with his pretty daughter on his arm, was passing

along the street, and emerged from the gloom of the cloudy evening

into the light that fell across the pavement from the window of a

small shop. It was a projecting window; and on the inside were

suspended a variety of watches- pinchbeck, silver, and one or two of

gold- all with their faces turned from the street, as if churlishly

disinclined to inform the wayfarers what o’clock it was. Seated within

the shop, sidelong to the window, with his pale face bent earnestly

over some delicate piece of mechanism, on which was thrown the

concentrated lustre of a shade-lamp, appeared a young man.

"What can Owen Warland be about?" muttered old Peter Hovenden-

himself a retired watchmaker, and the former master of this same young

man, whose occupation he was now wondering at. "What can the fellow be

about? These six months past, I have never come by his shop without

seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It would be a flight

beyond his usual foolery to seek for the Perpetual Motion. And yet I

know enough of my old business to be certain, that what he is now so

busy with is no part of the machinery of a watch."

"Perhaps, father," said Annie, without showing much interest in the

question, "Owen is inventing a new kind of time-keeper. I am sure he

has ingenuity enough."

"Pooh, child! he has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything

better than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerly been

put to much vexation by Owen Warland’s irregular genius. "A plague

on such ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it was, to spoil

the accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. He would turn the

sun out of its orbit, and derange the whole course of time, if, as I

said before, his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger than a

child’s toy!"

"Hush, father! he hears you," whispered Annie, pressing the old

man’s arm. "His ears are as delicate as his feelings, and you know how

easily disturbed they are. Do let us move on."

So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded on, without

further conversation, until, in a by-street of the town, they found

themselves passing the open door of a blacksmith’s shop. Within was

seen the forge, now blazing up, and illuminating the high and dusky

roof, and now confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the

coal-strewn floor, according as the breath of the bellows was puffed

forth, or again inhaled into its vast leathern lungs. In the intervals

of brightness, it was easy to distinguish objects in remote corners of

the shop, and the horse-shoes that hung upon the wall; in the

momentary gloom, the fire seemed to be glimmering amidst the vagueness

of un-enclosed space. Moving about in this red glare and alternate

dusk, was the figure of the blacksmith, well worthy to be viewed in so

picturesque an aspect of light and shade, where the bright blaze

struggled with the black night, as if each would have snatched his

comely strength from the other. Anon, he drew a white-hot bar of

iron from the coals, laid it on the anvil, uplifted his arm of

might, and was seen enveloped in the myriads of sparks which the

strokes of his hammer scattered into the surrounding gloom.

"Now, that is a pleasant sight," said the old watchmaker. "I know

what it is to work in gold, but give me the worker in iron, after

all is said and done. He spends his labor upon a reality. What say

you, daughter Annie?"

"Pray don’t speak so loud, father," whispered Annie. "Robert

Danforth will hear you."

"And what if he should hear me?" said Peter Hovenden; "I say again,

it is a good and a wholesome thing to depend upon main strength and

reality, and to earn one’s bread with the bare and brawny arm of a

blacksmith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzled by his wheels within a

wheel, or loses his health or the nicety of his eyesight, as was my

case; and finds himself, at middle age, or a little after, past

labor at his own trade, and fit for nothing else, yet too poor to live

at his ease. So, I say once again, give me main strength for my money.

And then, how it takes the nonsense out of a man! Did you ever hear of

a blacksmith being such a fool as Owen Warland, yonder?"

"Well said, uncle Hovenden!" shouted Robert Danforth, from the

forge, in a full, deep, merry voice, that made the roof reecho. "And

what says Miss Annie to that doctrine? She, I suppose, will think it a

genteeler business to tinker up a lady’s watch than to forge a

horse-shoe or make a gridiron!"

Annie drew her father onward, without giving him time for reply.

But we must return to Owen Warland’s shop, and spend more

meditation upon his history and character than either Peter

Hovenden, or probably his daughter Annie, or Owen’s old school-fellow,

Robert Danforth, would have thought due to so slight a subject. From

the time that his little fingers could grasp a pen-knife, Owen had

been remarkable for a delicate ingenuity, which sometimes produced

pretty shapes in wood, principally figures of flowers and birds, and

sometimes seemed to aim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism. But it

was always for purposes of grace, and never with any mockery of the

useful. He did not, like the crowd of school-boy artizans, construct

little windmills on the angle of a barn, or watermills across the

neighboring brook. Those who discovered such peculiarity in the boy,

as to think it worth their while to observe him closely, sometimes saw

reason to suppose that he was attempting to imitate the beautiful

movements of nature, as exemplified in the flight of birds or the

activity of little animals. It seemed, in fact, a new development of

the love of the Beautiful, such as might have made him a poet, a

painter, or a sculptor, and which was as completely refined from all

utilitarian coarseness, as it could have been in either of the fine

arts. He looked with singular distaste at the stiff and regular

processes of ordinary machinery. Being once carried to see a

steam-engine, in the expectation that his intuitive comprehension of

mechanical principle would be gratified, he turned pale, and grew

sick, as if something monstrous and unnatural had been presented to

him. This horror was partly owing to the size and terrible energy of

the Iron Laborer; for the character of Owen’s mind was microscopic,

and tended naturally to the minute, in accordance with his

diminutive frame, and the marvellous smallness and delicate power of

his fingers. Not that his sense of beauty was thereby diminished

into a sense of prettiness. The beautiful Idea has no relation to

size, and may be as perfectly developed in a space too minute for

any but microscopic investigation, as within the ample verge that is

measured by the arc of the rainbow. But, at all events, this

characteristic minuteness in his objects and accomplishments made

the world even more incapable than it might otherwise have been, of

appreciating Owen Warland’s genius. The boy’s relatives saw nothing

better to be done- as perhaps there was not- than to bind him

apprentice to a watchmaker, hoping that his strange ingenuity might

thus be regulated, and put to utili-tarian purposes.

Peter Hovenden’s opinion of his apprentice has already been

expressed. He could make nothing of the lad. Owen’s apprehension of

the professional mysteries, it is true, was inconceivably quick. But

he altogether forgot or despised the grand object of a watchmaker’s

business, and cared no more for the measurement of time than if it had

been merged into eternity. So long, however, as he remained under

his old master’s care, Owen’s lack of sturdiness made it possible,

by strict injunctions and sharp oversight, to restrain his creative

eccentricity within bounds. But when his apprenticeship was served

out, and he had taken the little shop which Peter Hovenden’s failing

eyesight compelled him to relinquish, then did people recognize how

unfit a person was Owen Warland to lead old blind Father Time along

his daily course. One of his most rational projects was, to connect

a musical operation with the machinery of his watches, so that all the

harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tuneful, and each flitting

moment fall into the abyss of the Past in golden drops of harmony.

If a family-clock was entrusted to him for repair- one of those

tall, ancient clocks that have grown nearly allied to human nature, by

measuring out the lifetime of many generations- he would take upon

himself to arrange a dance or funeral procession of figures across its

venerable face, representing twelve mirthful or melancholy hours.

Several freaks of this kind quite destroyed the young watchmaker’s

credit with that steady and matter-of-fact class of people, who hold

the opinion that time is not to be trifled with, whether considered as

the medium of advancement and prosperity in this world, or preparation

for the next. His custom rapidly diminished- a misfortune, however,

that was probably reckoned among his better accidents by Owen Warland,

who was becoming more and more absorbed in a secret occupation,

which drew all his science and manual dexterity into itself, and

likewise gave full employment to the characteristic tendencies of

his genius. This pursuit had already consumed many months.

After the old watchmaker and his pretty daughter had gazed at

him, out of the obscurity of the street, Owen Warland was seized

with a fluttering of the nerves, which made his hand tremble too

violently to proceed with such delicate labor as he was now engaged

upon.

"It was Annie herself!" murmured he. "I should have known by this

throbbing of my heart, before I heard her father’s voice. Ah, how it

throbs! I shall scarcely be able to work again on this exquisite

mechanism tonight. Annie- dearest Annie- thou shouldst give firmness

to my heart and hand, and not shake them thus; for if I strive to

put the very spirit of Beauty into form, and give it motion, it is for

thy sake alone. Oh, throbbing heart, be quiet! If my labor be thus

thwarted, there will come vague and unsatisfied dreams, which will

leave me spiritless tomorrow."

As he was endeavoring to settle himself again to his task, the

shop-door opened, and gave admittance to no other than the stalwart

figure which Peter Hovenden had paused to admire, as seen amid the

light and shadow of the blacksmith’s shop. Robert Danforth had brought

a little anvil of his own manufacture, and peculiarly constructed,

which the young artist had recently bespoken. Owen examined the

article, and pronounced it fashioned according to his wish.

"Why, yes," said Robert Danforth, his strong voice filling the shop

as with the sound of a bass-viol, "I consider myself equal to anything

in the way of my own trade; though I should have made but a poor

figure at yours, with such a fist as this"- added he, laughing, as

he laid his vast hand beside the delicate one of Owen. "But what then?

I put more main strength into one blow of my sledge-hammer, than all

that you have expended since you were a ‘prentice. Is not that the

truth?"

"Very probably," answered the low and slender voice of Owen.

"Strength is an earthly monster. I make no pretensions to it. My

force, whatever there may be of it, is altogether spiritual."

"Well, but, Owen, what are you about?" asked his old school-fellow,

still in such a hearty volume of tone that it made the artist

shrink; especially as the question related to a subject so sacred as

the absorbing dream of his imagination. "Folks do say, that you are

trying to discover the Perpetual Motion."

"The Perpetual Motion? nonsense!" replied Owen Warland, with a

movement of disgust; for he was full of little petulances. "It never

can be discovered! It is a dream that may delude men whose brains

are mystified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such a discovery

were possible, it would not be worth my while to make it, only to have

the secret turned to such purposes as are now effected by steam and

water-power. I am not ambitious to be honored with the paternity of

a new kind of cotton-machine."

"That would be droll enough!" cried the blacksmith, breaking out

into such an uproar of laughter, that Owen himself, and the

bell-glasses on his work-board, quivered in unison. "No, no, Owen!

No child of yours will have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won’t

hinder you any more. Good night, Owen, and success; and if you need

any assistance, so far as a downright blow of hammer upon anvil will

answer the purpose, I’m your man!"

And with another laugh, the man of main strength left the shop.

"How strange it is," whispered Owen Warland to himself, leaning his

head upon his hand, "that all my musings, my purposes, my passion

for the Beautiful, my consciousness of power to create it- a finer,

more ethereal power, of which this earthly giant can have no

conception- all, all, look so vain and idle, whenever my path is

crossed by Robert Danforth! He would drive me mad, were I to meet

him often. His hard, brute force darkens and confuses the spiritual

element within me. But I, too, will be strong in my own way. I will

not yield to him!"

He took from beneath a glass, a piece of minute machinery, which he

set in the condensed light of his lamp, and, looking intently at it

through a magnifying glass, proceeded to operate with a delicate

instrument of steel. In an instant, however, he fell back in his

chair, and clasped his hands, with a look of horror on his face,

that made its small features as impressive as those of a giant would

have been.

"Heaven! What have I done!" exclaimed he. "The vapor! the influence

of that brute force! it has bewildered me, and obscured my perception.

I have made the very stroke- the fatal stroke- that I have dreaded

from the first! It is all over- the toil of months- the object of my

life! I am ruined!"

And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in

the socket, and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.

Thus it is, that ideas which grow up within the imagination, and

appear so lovely to it, and of a value beyond whatever men call

valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact

with the Practical. It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess

a force of character that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy;

he must keep his faith in himself, while the incredulous world assails

him with its utter disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and

be his own sole disciple, both as respects his genius, and the objects

to which it is directed.

For a time, Owen Warland succumbed to this severe, but inevitable

test. He spent a few sluggish weeks, with his head so continually

resting in his hands, that the townspeople had scarcely an opportunity

to see his countenance. When, at last, it was again uplifted to the

light of day, a cold, dull, nameless change was perceptible upon it.

In the opinion of Peter Hovenden, however, and that order of sagacious

understandings who think that life should be regulated, like

clock-work, with leaden weights, the alteration was entirely for the

better. Owen now, indeed, applied himself to business with dogged

industry. It was marvellous to witness the obtuse gravity with which

he would inspect the wheels of a great, old silver watch; thereby

delighting the owner, in whose fob it had been worn till he deemed

it a portion of his own life, and was accordingly jealous of its

treatment. In consequence of the good report thus acquired, Owen

Warland was invited by the proper authorities to regulate the clock in

the church-steeple. He succeeded so admirably in this matter of public

interest, that the merchants gruffly acknowledged his merits on

‘Change; the nurse whispered his praises, as she gave the potion in

the sick-chamber; the lover blessed him at the hour of appointed

interview; and the town in general thanked Owen for the punctuality of

dinner-time. In a word, the heavy weight upon his spirits kept

everything in order, not merely within his own system, but wheresoever

the iron accents of the church-clock were audible. It was a

circumstance, though minute, yet characteristic of his present

state, that, when employed to engrave names or initials on silver

spoons, he now wrote the requisite letters in the plainest possible

style; omitting a variety of fanciful flourishes, that had

heretofore distinguished his work in this kind.

One day, during the era of this happy transformation, old Peter

Hovenden came to visit his former apprentice.

"Well, Owen," said he, I am glad to hear such good accounts of

you from all quarters; and especially from the town-clock yonder,

which speaks in your commendation every hour of the twenty-four.

Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the Beautiful-

which I, nor nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand-

only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as

daylight. Why, if you go on in this way, I should even venture to

let you doctor this precious old watch of mine; though, except my

daughter Annie, I have nothing else so valuable in the world."

"I should hardly dare touch it, sir," replied Owen in a depressed

tone; for he was weighed down by his old master’s presence.

"In time, said the latter, "in time, you will be capable of it."

The old watchmaker, with the freedom naturally consequent on his

former authority, went on inspecting the work which Owen had in hand

at the moment, together with other matters that were in progress.

The artist, meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head. There was nothing

so antipodal to his nature as this man’s cold, unimaginative sagacity,

by contact with which everything was converted into a dream, except

the densest matter of the physical world. Owen groaned in spirit,

and prayed fervently to be delivered from him.

"But what is this?" cried Peter Hovenden abruptly, taking up a

dusty bell-glass, beneath which appeared a mechanical something, as

delicate and minute as the system of a butterfly’s anatomy. "What have

we here! Owen, Owen! there is witchcraft in these little chains, and

wheels, and paddles! See! with one pinch of my finger and thumb, I

am going to deliver you from all future peril."

"For Heaven’s sake," screamed Owen Warland, springing up with

wonderful energy, "as you would not drive me mad- do not touch it! The

slightest pressure of your finger would ruin me for ever.

"Aha, young man! And is it so?" said the old watchmaker, looking at

him with just enough of penetration to torture Owen’s soul with the

bitterness of worldly criticism. "Well; take your own course. But I

warn you again, that in this small piece of mechanism lives your

evil spirit. Shall I exorcise him?"

"You are my Evil Spirit," answered Owen, much excited- "you, and

the hard, coarse world! The leaden thoughts and the despondency that

you fling upon me are my clogs. Else, I should long ago have

achieved the task that I was created for."

Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture of contempt and

indignation which mankind, of whom he was partly a representative,

deem themselves entitled to feel towards all simpletons who seek other

prizes than the dusty one along the highway. He then took his leave

with an uplifted finger, and a sneer upon his face, that haunted the

artist’s dreams for many a night afterwards. At the time of his old

master’s visit, Owen was probably on the point of taking up the

relinquished task; but, by this sinister event, he was thrown back

into the state whence he had been slowly emerging.

But the innate tendency of his soul had only been accumulating

fresh vigor, during its apparent sluggishness. As the summer advanced,

he almost totally relinquished his business, and permitted Father

Time, so far as the old gentleman was represented by the clocks and

watches under his control, to stray at random through human life,

making infinite confusion among the train of bewildered hours. He

wasted the sunshine, as people said, in wandering through the woods

and fields, and along the banks of streams. There, like a child, he

found amusement in chasing butterflies, or watching the motions of

water-insects. There was something truly mysterious in the

intentness with which he contemplated these living playthings, as they

sported on the breeze; or examined the structure of an imperial insect

whom he had imprisoned. The chase of butterflies was an apt emblem

of the ideal pursuit in which he had spent so many golden hours.

But, would the Beautiful Idea ever be yielded to his hand, like the

butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet, doubtless, were these days, and

congenial to the artist’s soul. They were full of bright

conceptions, which gleamed through his intellectual world, as the

butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and were real to

him for the instant, without the toil and perplexity, and many

disappointments, of attempting to make them visible to the sensual

eye. Alas, that the artist, whether in poetry or whatever other

material, may not content himself with the inward enjoyment of the

Beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his

ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a

material grasp! Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality

to his ideas, as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters, who

have arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly

copied from the richness of their visions.

The night was now his time for the slow progress of recreating

the one Idea, to which all his intellectual activity referred

itself. Always at the approach of dusk, he stole into the town, locked

himself within his shop, and wrought with patient delicacy of touch,

for many hours. Sometimes he was startled by the rap of the

watchman, who, when all the world should be asleep, had caught the

gleam of lamplight through the crevices of Owen Warland’s shutters.

Daylight, to the morbid sensibility of his mind, seemed to have an

intrusiveness that interfered with his pursuits. On cloudy and

inclement days, therefore, he sat with his head upon his hands,

muffling, as it were, his sensitive brain in a mist of indefinite

musings; for it was a relief to escape from the sharp distinctness

with which he was compelled to shape out his thoughts, during his

nightly toil.

From one of these fits of torpor, he was aroused by the entrance of

Annie Hovenden, who came into the shop with the freedom of a customer,

and also with something of the familiarity of a childish friend. She

had worn a hole through her silver thimble, and wanted Owen to

repair it.

"But I don’t know whether you will condescend to such a task," said

she, laughing, "now that you are so taken up with the notion of

putting spirit into machinery."

"Where did you get that idea, Annie?" said Owen, starting in

surprise.

"Oh, out of my own head," answered she, "and from something that

I heard you say, long ago, when you were but a boy, and I a little

child. But, come! will you mend this poor thimble of mine?"

"Anything for your sake, Annie," said Owen Warland- "anything! even

were it to work at Robert Danforth’s forge."

"And that would be a pretty sight!" retorted Annie, glancing with

imperceptible slightness at the artist’s small and slender frame.

"Well; here is the thimble."

"But that is a strange idea of yours," said Owen, "about the

spiritualization of matter!"

And then the thought stole into his mind, that this young girl

possessed the gift to comprehend him, better than all the world

beside. And what a help and strength would it be to him, in his lonely

toil, if he could gain the sympathy of the only being whom he loved!

To persons whose pursuits are insulated from the common business of

life- who are either in advance of mankind, or apart from it- there

often comes a sensation of moral cold, that makes the spirit shiver,

as if it had reached the frozen solitudes around the pole. What the

prophet, the poet, the reformer, the criminal, or any other man,

with human yearnings, but separated from the multitude by a peculiar

lot, might feel, poor Owen Warland felt.

"Annie," cried he, growing pale as death at the thought, "how

gladly would I tell you the secret of my pursuit! You, methinks, would

estimate it rightly. You, I know, would hear it with a reverence

that I must not expect from the harsh, material world."

"Would I not! to be sure I would!" replied Annie Hovenden,

lightly laughing. "Come; explain to me quickly what is the meaning

of this little whirligig, so delicately wrought that it might be a

plaything for Queen Mab. See; I will put it in motion."

"Hold," exclaimed Owen, hold!"

Annie had but given the slightest possible touch, with the point of

a needle, to the same minute portion of complicated machinery which

has been more than once mentioned, when the artist seized her by the

wrist with a force that made her scream aloud. She was affrighted at

the convulsion of intense rage and anguish that writhed across his

features. The next instant he let his head sink upon his hands.

"Go, Annie," murmured he, "I have deceived myself, and must

suffer for it. I yearned for sympathy- and thought- and fancied- and

dreamed- that you might give it me. But you lack the talisman,

Annie, that should admit you into my secrets. That touch has undone

the toil of months, and the thought of a lifetime! It was not your

fault, Annie- but you have ruined me!"

Poor Owen Warland! He had indeed erred, yet pardonably; for if

any human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processes so

sacred in his eyes, it must have been a woman’s. Even Annie

Hovenden, possibly, might not have disappointed him, had she been

enlightened by the deep intelligence of love.

The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way that satisfied any

persons, who had hitherto retained a hopeful opinion of him, that he

was, in truth, irrevocably doomed to inutility as regarded the

world, and to an evil destiny on his own part. The decease of a

relative had put him in possession of a small inheritance. Thus

freed from the necessity of toil, and having lost the steadfast

influence of a great purpose- great, at least, to him- he abandoned

himself to habits from which, it might have been supposed, the mere

delicacy of his organization would have availed to secure him. But

when the ethereal portion of a man of genius is obscured, the

earthly part assumes an influence the more uncontrollable, because the

character is now thrown off the balance to which Providence had so

nicely adjusted it, and which, in coarser natures, is adjusted by some

other method. Owen Warland made proof of whatever show of bliss may be

found in riot. He looked at the world through the golden medium of

wine, and contemplated the visions that bubble up so gaily around

the brim of the glass, and that people the air with shapes of pleasant

madness, which so soon grow ghostly and forlorn. Even when this dismal

and inevitable change had taken place, the young man might still

have continued to quaff the cup of enchantments, though its vapor

did but shroud life in gloom, and fill the gloom with spectres that

mocked at him. There was a certain irksomeness of spirit, which, being

real, and the deepest sensation of which the artist was now conscious,

was more intolerable than any fantastic miseries and horrors that

the abuse of wine could summon up. In the latter case, he could

remember, even out of the midst of his trouble, that all was but a

delusion; in the former, the heavy anguish was his actual life.

From this perilous state, he was redeemed by an incident which more

than one person witnessed, but of which the shrewdest could not

explain nor conjecture the operation on Owen Warland’s mind. It was

very simple. On a warm afternoon of Spring, as the artist sat among

his riotous companions, with a glass of wine before him, a splendid

butterfly flew in at the open window, and fluttered about his head.

"Ah!" exclaimed Owen, who had drunk freely, "are you alive again,

child of the sun, and playmate of the summer breeze, after your dismal

winter’s nap! Then it is time for me to be at work!"

And leaving his unemptied glass upon the table, he departed, and

was never known to sip another drop of wine.

And now, again, he resumed his wanderings in the woods and

fields. It might be fancied that the bright butterfly, which had

come so spiritlike into the window, as Owen sat with the rude

revellers, was indeed a spirit, commissioned to recall him to the

pure, ideal life that had so etherealised him among men. It might be

fancied, that he went forth to seek this spirit, in its sunny

haunts; for still, as in the summer-time gone by, he was seen to steal

gently up, wherever a butterfly had alighted, and lose himself in

contemplation of it. When it took flight, his eyes followed the winged

vision, as if its airy track would show the path to heaven. But what

could be the purpose of the unseasonable toil, which was again

resumed, as the watchman knew by the lines of lamp-light through the

crevices of Owen Warland’s shutters? The townspeople had one

comprehensive explanation of all these singularities. Owen Warland had

gone mad! How universally efficacious- how satisfactory, too, and

soothing to the injured sensibility of narrowness and dullness- is

this easy method of accounting for whatever lies beyond the world’s

most ordinary scope! From Saint Paul’s days, down to our poor little

Artist of the Beautiful, the same talisman had been applied to the

elucidation of all mysteries in the words or deeds of men, who spoke

or acted too wisely or too well. In Owen Warland’s case, the

judgment of his townspeople may have been correct. Perhaps he was mad.

The lack of sympathy- that contrast between himself and his neighbors,

which took away the restraint of example- was enough to make him so.

Or, possibly, he had caught just so much of ethereal radiance as

served to bewilder him, in an earthly sense, by its intermixture

with the common day light.

One evening, when the artist had returned from a customary

ramble, and had just thrown the lustre of his lamp on the delicate

piece of work, so often interrupted, but still taken up again, as if

his fate were embodied in its mechanism, he was surprised by the

entrance of old Peter Hovenden. Owen never met this man without a

shrinking of the heart. Of all the world, he was most terrible, by

reason of a keen understanding, which saw so distinctly what it did

see, and disbelieved so uncompromisingly in what it could not see.

On this occasion, the old watchmaker had merely a gracious word or two

to say.

"Owen, my lad," said he, "we must see you at my house tomorrow

night."

The artist began to mutter some excuse.

"Oh, but it must be so," quoth Peter Hovenden, "for the sake of the

days when you were one of the household. What, my boy, don’t you

know that my daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth? We are

making an entertainment, in our humble way, to celebrate the event."

"Ah!" said Owen.

That little monosyllable was all he uttered; its tone seemed cold

and unconcerned, to an ear like Peter Hovenden’s; and yet there was in

it the stifled outcry of the poor artist’s heart, which he

compressed within him like a man holding down an evil spirit. One

slight out-break, however, imperceptible to the old watchmaker, he

allowed himself. Raising the instrument with which he was about to

begin his work, he let it fall upon the little system of machinery

that had, anew, cost him months of thought and toil. It was

shattered by the stroke!

Owen Warland’s story would have been no tolerable representation of

the troubled life of those who strive to create the Beautiful, if,

amid all other thwarting influences, love had not interposed to

steal the cunning from his hand. Outwardly he had been no ardent or

enterprising lover; the career of his passion had confined its tumults

and vicissitudes so entirely within the artist’s imagination, that

Annie herself had scarcely more than a woman’s intuitive perception of

it. But, in Owen’s view, it covered the whole field of his life.

Forgetful of the time when she had shown herself incapable of any deep

response, he had persisted in connecting all his dreams of

artistical success with Annie’s image; she was the visible shape in

which the spiritual power that he worshipped, and on whose altar he

hoped to lay a not unworthy offering, was made manifest to him. Of

course he had deceived himself; there were no such attributes in Annie

Hovenden as his imagination had endowed her with. She, in the aspect

which she wore to his inward vision, was as much a creation of his

own, as the mysterious piece of mechanism would be were it ever

realized. Had he become convinced of his mistake through the medium of

successful love; had he won Annie to his bosom, and there beheld her

fade from angel into ordinary woman, the disappointment might have

driven him back, with concentrated energy, upon his sole remaining

object. On the other hand, had he found Annie what he fancied, his lot

would have been so rich in beauty, that out of its mere redundancy

he might have wrought the Beautiful into many a worthier type than

he had toiled for. But the guise in which his sorrow came to him,

the sense that the angel of his life had been snatched away and

given to a rude man of earth and iron, who could neither need nor

appreciate her ministrations; this was the very perversity of fate,

that makes human existence appear too absurd and contradictory to be

the scene of one other hope or one other fear. There was nothing

left for Owen Warland but to sit down like a man that had been

stunned.

He went through a fit of illness. After his recovery, his small and

slender frame assumed an obtuser garniture of flesh than it had ever

before worn. His thin cheeks became round; his delicate little hand,

so spiritually fashioned to achieve fairy task-work, grew plumper than

the hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had a childishness, such

as might have induced a stranger to pat him on the head- pausing,

however, in the act, to wonder what manner of child was here. It was

as if the spirit had gone out of him, leaving the body to flourish

in a sort of vegetable existence. Not that Owen Warland was idiotic.

He could talk, and not irrationally. Somewhat of a babbler, indeed,

did people begin to think him; for he was apt to discourse at

wearisome length, of marvels of mechanism that he had read about in

books, but which he had learned to consider as absolutely fabulous.

Among them he enumerated the Man of Brass, constructed by Albertus

Magnus, and the Brazen Head of Friar Bacon; and, coming down to

later times, the automata of a little coach and horses, which, it

was pretended, had been manufactured for the Dauphin of France;

together with an insect that buzzed about the ear like a living fly,

and yet was but a contrivance of minute steel springs. There was a

story, too, of a duck that waddled, and quacked, and ate; though,

had any honest citizen purchased it for dinner, he would have found

himself cheated with the mere mechanical apparition of a duck.

"But all these accounts," said Owen Warland, "I am now satisfied,

are mere impositions."

Then, in a mysterious way, he would confess that he once thought

differently. In his idle and dreamy days he had considered it

possible, in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery; and to

combine with the new species of life and motion, thus produced, a

beauty that should attain to the ideal, which Nature has proposed to

herself, in all her creatures, but has never taken pains to realize.

He seemed, however, to retain no very distinct perception either of

the process of achieving this object, or of the design itself.

"I have thrown it all aside now," he would say. "It was a dream,

such as young men are always mystifying themselves with. Now that I

have acquired a little common sense, it makes me laugh to think of it.

Poor, poor, and fallen Owen Warland! These were the symptoms that

he had ceased to be an inhabitant of the better sphere that lies

unseen around us. He had lost his faith in the invisible, and now

prided himself, as such unfortunates invariably do, in the wisdom

which rejected much that even his eye could see, and trusted

confidently in nothing but what his hand could touch. This is the

calamity of men whose spiritual part dies out of them, and leaves

the grosser understanding to assimilate them more and more to the

things of which alone it can take cognizance. But, in Owen Warland,

the spirit was not dead, nor past away; it only slept.

How it awoke again, is not recorded. Perhaps, the torpid slumber

was broken by a convulsive pain. Perhaps, as in a former instance, the

butterfly came and hovered about his head, and reinspired him- as,

indeed, this creature of the sunshine had always a mysterious

mission for the artist- reinspired him with the former purpose of

his life. Whether it were pain or happiness that thrilled through

his veins, his first impulse was to thank Heaven for rendering him

again the being of thought, imagination, and keenest sensibility, that

he had long ceased to be.

"Now for my task," said he. "Never did I feel such strength for

it as now."

Yet, strong as he felt himself, he was incited to toil the more

diligently, by an anxiety lest death should surprise him in the

midst of his labors. This anxiety, perhaps, is common to all men who

set their hearts upon anything so high, in their own view of it,

that life becomes of importance only as conditional to its

accomplishment. So long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread

the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of an object, we

recognize the frailty of its texture. But, side by side with this

sense of insecurity, there is a vital faith in our invulnerability

to the shaft of death, while engaged in any task that seems assigned

by Providence as our proper thing to do, and which the world would

have cause to mourn for, should we leave it unaccomplished. Can the

philosopher, big with the inspiration of an idea that is to reform

mankind, believe that he is to be beckoned from this sensible

existence, at the very instant when he is mustering his breath to

speak the word of light? Should he perish so, the weary ages may

pass away- the world’s whole life- sand may fall, drop by drop- before

another intellect is prepared to develope the truth that might have

been uttered then. But history affords many an example, where the most

precious spirit, at any particular epoch manifested in human shape,

has gone hence untimely, without space allowed him, so far as mortal

judgment could discern, to perform his mission on the earth. The

prophet dies; and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives on.

The poet leaves his song half sung, or finishes it, beyond the scope

of mortal ears, in a celestial choir. The painter- as Allston did-

leaves half his conception on the canvas, to sadden us with its

imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth the whole, if it be no

irreverence to say so, in the hues of Heaven. But, rather, such

incomplete designs of this life will be perfected nowhere. This so

frequent abortion of man’s dearest projects must be taken as a

proof, that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or

genius, are without value, except as exercises and manifestations of

the spirit. In Heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more

melodious than Milton’s song. Then, would he add another verse to

any strain that he had left unfinished here?

But to return to Owen Warland. It was his fortune, good or ill,

to achieve the purpose of his life. Pass we over a long space of

intense thought, yearning effort, minute toil, and wasting anxiety,

succeeded by an instant of solitary triumph; let all this be imagined;

and then behold the artist, on a winter evening, seeking admittance to

Robert Danforth’s fireside circle. There he found the Man of Iron,

with his massive substance, thoroughly warmed and attempered by

domestic influences. And there was Annie, too, now transformed into

a matron, with much of her husband’s plain and sturdy nature, but

imbued, as Owen Warland still believed, with a finer grace, that might

enable her to be the interpreter between Strength and Beauty. It

happened, likewise, that old Peter Hovenden was a guest, this evening,

at his daughter’s fireside; and it was his well-remembered

expression of keen, cold criticism, that first encountered the

artist’s glance.

"My old friend Owen!" cried Robert Danforth, starting up, and

compressing the artist’s delicate fingers within a hand that was

accustomed to gripe bars of iron. "This is kind and neighborly, to

come to us at last! I was afraid your Perpetual Motion had bewitched

you out of the remembrance of old times."

"We are glad to see you!" said Annie, while a blush reddened her

matronly cheek. "It was not like a friend to stay from us so long."

"Well, Owen," inquired the old watchmaker, as his first greeting,

"how comes on the Beautiful? Have you created it at last?"

The artist did not immediately reply, being startled by the

apparition of a young child of strength, that was tumbling about on

the carpet; a little personage who had come mysteriously out of the

infinite, but with something so sturdy and real in his composition

that he seemed moulded out of the densest substance which earth

could supply. This hopeful infant crawled towards the newcomer, and

setting himself on end- as Robert Danforth expressed the posture-

stared at Owen with a look of such sagacious observation, that the

mother could not help exchanging a proud glance with her husband.

But the artist was disturbed by the child’s look, as imagining a

resemblance between it and Peter Hovenden’s habitual expression. He

could have fancied that the old watchmaker was compressed into this

baby-shape, and looking out of those baby-eyes, and repeating- as he

now did- the malicious question: "The Beautiful, Owen! How comes on

the Beautiful? Have you succeeded in creating the Beautiful?"

"I have succeeded," replied the artist, with a momentary light of

triumph in his eyes, and a smile of sunshine, yet steeped in such

depth of thought, that it was almost sadness. "Yes, my friends, it

is the truth. I have succeeded!"

"Indeed!" cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness peeping out of

her face again. "And is it lawful, now, to inquire what the secret

is?"

"Surely; it is to disclose it, that I have come," answered Owen

Warland. "You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess the

secret! For, Annie- if by that name I may still address the friend

of my boyish years- Annie, it is for your bridal gift that I have

wrought this spiritualized mechanism, this harmony of motion, this

Mystery of Beauty! It comes late, indeed; but it is as we go onward in

life, when objects begin to lose their freshness of hue, and our souls

their delicacy of perception, that the spirit of Beauty is most

needed. If- forgive me, Annie- if you know how to value this gift,

it can never come too late!"

He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel-box. It was carved

richly out of ebony by his own hand, and inlaid with a fanciful

tracery of pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly, which,

elsewhere, had become a winged spirit, and was flying heavenward;

while the boy, or youth, had found such efficacy in his strong desire,

that he ascended from earth to cloud, and from cloud to celestial

atmosphere, to win the Beautiful. This case of ebony the artist

opened, and bade Annie place her finger on its edge. She did so, but

almost screamed, as a butterfly fluttered forth, and, alighting on her

finger’s tip, sat waving the ample magnificence of its purple and

gold-speckled wings, as if in prelude to a flight. It is impossible to

express by words the glory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness,

which were softened into the beauty of this object. Nature’s ideal

butterfly was here realized in all its perfection; not in the

pattern of such faded insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of

those which hover across the meads of Paradise, for child-angels and

the spirits of departed infants to disport themselves with. The rich

down was visible upon its wings; the lustre of its eyes seemed

instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered around this wonder-

the candles gleamed upon it- but it glistened apparently by its own

radiance, and illuminated the finger and outstretched hand on which it

rested, with a white gleam like that of precious stones. In its

perfect beauty, the consideration of size was entirely lost. Had its

wings overreached the firmament, the mind could not have been more

filled or satisfied.

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" exclaimed Annie. "Is it alive? Is it

alive?"

"Alive? To be sure it is," answered her husband. "Do you suppose

any mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly- or would put

himself to the trouble of making one, when any child may catch a score

of them in a summer’s afternoon? Alive? certainly! But this pretty box

is undoubtedly of our friend Owen’s manufacture; and really it does

him credit."

At this moment, the butterfly waved its wings anew, with a motion

so absolutely lifelike that Annie was startled, and even awe-stricken;

for, in spite of her husband’s opinion, she could not satisfy

herself whether it was indeed a living creature, or a piece of

wondrous mechanism.

"Is it alive?" she repeated, more earnestly than before.

"Judge for yourself," said Owen Warland, who stood gazing in her

face with fixed attention.

The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered round

Annie’s head, and soared into a distant region of the parlor, still

making itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the

motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant, on the floor, followed

its course with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the

room, it returned, in a spiral curve, and settled again on Annie’s

finger.

"But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger, on which

the gorgeous mystery had alighted, was so tremulous that the butterfly

was forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell me if it be alive,

or whether you created it?"

"Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?" replied Owen

Warland. "Alive? Yes, Annie; it may well be said to possess life,

for it has absorbed my own being into itself; and in the secret of

that butterfly, and in its beauty- which is not merely outward, but

deep as its whole system- is represented the intellect, the

imagination, the sensibility, the soul, of an Artist of the Beautiful!

Yes, I created it. But"- and here his countenance somewhat changed-

"this butterfly is not now to me what it was when I beheld it afar

off, in the day-dreams of my youth."

"Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything," said the blacksmith,

grinning with childlike delight. "I wonder whether it would condescend

to alight on such a great clumsy finger as mine? Hold it hither,

Annie!"

By the artist’s direction, Annie touched her finger’s tip to that

of her husband; and, after a momentary delay, the butterfly

fluttered from one to the other. It preluded a second flight by a

similar, yet not precisely the same waving of wings, as in the first

experiment. Then ascending from the blacksmith’s stalwart finger, it

rose in a gradually enlarging curve to the ceiling, made one wide

sweep around the room, and returned with an undulating movement to the

point whence it had started.

"Well, that does beat all nature!" cried Robert Danforth, bestowing

the heartiest praise that he could find expression for; and, indeed,

had he paused there, a man of finer words and nicer perception could

not easily have said more. "That goes beyond me, I confess! But what

then? There is more real use in one downright blow of my

sledge-hammer, than in the whole five years’ labor that our friend

Owen has wasted on this butterfly!"

Here the child clapped his hands, and made a great babble of

indistinct utterance, apparently demanding that the butterfly should

be given him for a plaything.

Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at Annie, to discover

whether she sympathized in her husband’s estimate of the comparative

value of the Beautiful and the Practical. There was, amid all her

kindness towards himself, amid all the wonder and admiration with

which she contemplated the marvellous work of his hands, and

incarnation of his ideal a secret scorn; too secret, perhaps, for

her own consciousness, and perceptible only to such intuitive

discernment as that of the artist. But Owen, in the latter stages of

his pursuit, had risen out of the region in which such a discovery

might have been torture. He knew that the world, and Annie as the

representative of the world, whatever praise might be bestowed,

could never say the fitting word, nor feel the fitting sentiment which

should be the perfect recompense of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty

moral by a material trifle- converting what was earthly to spiritual

gold- had won the Beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest

moment was he to learn that the reward of all high performance must be

sought within itself, or sought in vain. There was, however, a view of

the matter, which Annie, and her husband, and even Peter Hovenden,

might fully have understood, and which would have satisfied them

that the toil of years had here been worthily bestowed. Owen Warland

might have told them, that this butterfly, this plaything, this

bridal-gift of a poor watchmaker to a blacksmith’s wife, was, in

truth, a gem of art that a monarch would have purchased with honors

and abundant wealth, and have treasured it among the jewels of his

kingdom, as the most unique and wondrous of them all! But the artist

smiled and kept the secret to himself.

"Father," said Annie, thinking that a word of praise from the old

watchmaker might gratify his former apprentice, "do come and admire

this pretty butterfly!"

"Let us see," said Peter Hovenden, rising from his chair, with a

sneer upon his face that always made people doubt, as he himself

did, in everything but a material existence. "Here is my finger for it

to alight upon. I shall understand it better when once I have

touched it."

But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, when the tip of her

father’s finger was pressed against that of her husband, on which

the butterfly still rested, the insect drooped its wings, and seemed

on the point of falling to the floor. Even the bright spots of gold

upon its wings and body, unless her eyes deceived her, grew dim, and

the glowing purple took a dusky hue, and the starry lustre that

gleamed around the blacksmith’s hand became faint, and vanished.

"It is dying! it is dying!" cried Annie, in alarm.

"It has been delicately wrought," said the artist, calmly. "As I

told you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence- call it magnetism, or

what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery, its exquisite

susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who

instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a

few moments more, its mechanism would be irreparably injured."

"Take away your hand, father!" entreated Annie, turning pale. "Here

is my child; let it rest on his innocent hand. There, perhaps, its

life will revive, and its colors grow brighter than ever."

Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. The butterfly

then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion; while its hues

assumed much of their original lustre, and the gleam of starlight,

which was its most ethereal attribute, again formed a halo round about

it. At first, when transferred from Robert Danforth’s hand to the

small finger of the child, this radiance grew so powerful that it

positively threw the little fellow’s shadow back against the wall. He,

meanwhile, extended his plump hand as he had seen his father and

mother do, and watched the waving of the insect’s wings with infantine

delight. Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity,

that made Owen Warland feel as if here were old Peter Hovenden,

partially, and but partially, redeemed from his hard scepticism into

childish faith.

"How wise the little monkey looks!" whispered Robert Danforth to

his wife.

"I never saw such a look on a child’s face," answered Annie,

admiring her own infant, and with good reason, far more than the

artistic butterfly. "The darling knows more of the mystery than we

do."

As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something

not entirely congenial in the child’s nature, it alternately

sparkled and grew dim. At length, it arose from the small hand of

the infant with an airy motion, that seemed to bear it upward

without an effort; as if the ethereal instincts, with which its

master’s spirit had endowed it, impelled this fair vision

involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruction, it

might have soared into the sky, and grown immortal. But its lustre

gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite texture of its wings brushed

against that earthly medium; and a sparkle or two, as if stardust,

floated downward and lay glimmering on the carpet. Then the

butterfly came fluttering down, and, instead of returning to the

infant, was apparently attracted towards the artist’s hand.

"Not so, not so!" murmured Owen Warland, as if his handiwork

could have understood him. "Thou hast gone forth out of thy master’s

heart. There is no return for thee!"

With a wavering movement, and emitting a tremulous radiance, the

butterfly struggled, as it were, towards the infant, and was about

to alight upon his finger. But, while it still hovered in the air, the

little Child of Strength, with his grandsire’s sharp and shrewd

expression in his face, made a snatch at the marvellous insect, and

compressed it in his hand. Annie screamed! Old Peter Hovenden burst

into a cold and scornful laugh. The blacksmith, by main force,

unclosed the infant’s hand, and found within the palm a small heap

of glittering fragments, whence the Mystery of Beauty had fled for

ever. And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the

ruin of his life’s labor, and which yet was no ruin. He had caught a

far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to

achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to

mortal senses became of little value in his eyes, while his spirit

possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.

THE END

.

1843

TWICE-TOLD TALES

THE BIRTHMARK

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

IN THE LATTER PART of the last century, there lived a man of

science- an eminent proficient in every branch of natural

philosophy- who, not long before our story opens, had made

experience of a spiritual affinity, more attractive than any

chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an

assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace-smoke, washed

the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman

to become his wife. In those days, when the comparatively recent

discovery of electricity, and other kindred mysteries of nature,

seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual

for the love of science to rival the love of woman, in its depth and

absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit,

and even the heart, might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits

which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from

one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher

should lay his hand on the secret of creative force, and perhaps

make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this

degree of faith in man’s ultimate control over nature. He had

devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies, ever

to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young

wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by

intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength

of the latter to its own.

Such an union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly

remarkable consequences, and a deeply impressive moral. One day,

very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife, with

a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger, until he spoke.

"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark

upon your cheek might be removed?"

"No, indeed, said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of

his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so

often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might

be so."

"Ah, upon another face, perhaps it might," replied her husband.

"But never on yours! No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect

from the hand of Nature, that this slightest possible defect- which we

hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty- shocks me, as being the

visible mark of earthly imperfection."

"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first

reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then

why did you take me from my mother’s side? You cannot love what shocks

you!"

To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned, that, in the

centre of Georgiana’s left cheek, there was a singular mark, deeply

interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In

the usual state of her complexion- a healthy, though delicate bloom-

the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined

its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed, it

gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the

triumphant rush of blood, that bathed the whole cheek with its

brilliant glow. But, if any shifting emotion caused her to turn

pale, there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what

Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore

not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest

pigmy size. Georgiana’s lovers were wont to say, that some fairy, at

her birth-hour, had laid her tiny hand upon the infant’s cheek, and

left this impress there, in token of the magic endowments that were to

give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would

have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the

mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the

impression wrought by this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly,

according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some

fastidious persons- but they were exclusively of her own sex- affirmed

that the Bloody Hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the

effect of Georgiana’s beauty, and rendered her countenance even

hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say, that one of those small

blue stains, which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble,

would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers,

if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented

themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one

living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a

flaw. After his marriage- for he thought little or nothing of the

matter before- Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful- if Envy’s self could have found

aught else to sneer at- he might have felt his affection heightened by

the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost,

now stealing forth again, and glimmering to and fro with every pulse

of emotion that throbbed within her heart. But, seeing her otherwise

so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable,

with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of

humanity, which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably

on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and

finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The

Crimson Hand expressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality

clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them

into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom

their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as

the symbol of his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death,

Aylmer’s sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark

a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever

Georgiana’s beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he

invariably, and without intending it- nay, in spite of a purpose to

the contrary- reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at

first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of

thought, and modes of feeling, that it became the central point of

all. With the morning twilight, Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife’s

face, and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat

together at the evening hearth, his eyes wandered stealthily to her

cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the

spectral Hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have

worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed

but a glance, with the peculiar expression that his face often wore,

to change the roses of her cheek into a death-like paleness, amid

which the Crimson Hand was brought strongly out, like a bas-relief

of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late, one night, when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly

to betray the stain on the poor wife’s cheek, she herself, for the

first time, voluntarily took up the subject.

"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble

attempt at a smile- "have you any recollection of a dream, last night,

about this odious Hand?"

"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he

added in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the

real depth of his emotion: "I might well dream of it; for, before I

fell asleep, it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."

"And you did dream of it," continued Georgiana, hastily; for she

dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say-

"A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible

to forget this one expression? ‘It is in her heart now- we must have

it out!’ Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall

that dream."

The mind is in a sad state, when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot

confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers

them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that

perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream.

He had fancied himself, with his servant Aminadab, attempting an

operation for the removal of the birthmark. But the deeper went the

knife, the deeper sank the Hand, until at length its tiny grasp

appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana’s heart; whence, however,

her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer

sat in his wife’s presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds

its way to the mind close-muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks

with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we

practise an unconscious self-deception, during our waking moments.

Until now, he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired

by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in

his heart to go, for the sake of giving himself peace.

"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be

the cost to both of us, to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its

removal may cause cureless deformity. Or, it may be, the stain goes as

deep as life itself. Again, do we know that there is a possibility, on

any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little Hand, which was

laid upon me before I came into the world?"

"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"

hastily interrupted Aylmer- "I am convinced of the perfect

practicability of its removal."

"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued

Georgiana, "let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is

nothing to me; for life- while this hateful mark makes me the object

of your horror and disgust- life is a burthen which I would fling down

with joy. Either remove this dreadful Hand, or take my wretched

life! You have deep science! All the world bears witness of it. You

have achieved great wonders! Cannot you remove this little, little

mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers! Is this beyond

your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife

from madness?"

"Noblest- dearest- tenderest wife!" cried Aylmer, rapturously.

"Doubt not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest

thought- thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a

being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper

than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent

to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most

beloved, what will be my triumph, when I shall have corrected what

Nature left imperfect, in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his

sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will

be."

"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling- "And,

Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refug