第76章

But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the Star-of-Bethlehems, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest home-feeling.Close to our ancient gambrel-roofed house is the dwelling of pleasant old Neighbor Walrus.I remember the sweet honeysuckle that I saw in flower against the wall of his house a few months ago, as long as I remember the sky and stars.That clump of peonies, butting their purple heads through the soil every spring in just the same circle, and by-and-by unpacking their hard balls of buds in flowers big enough to make a double handful of leaves, has come up in just that place, Neighbor Walrus tells me, for more years than I have passed on this planet.It is a rare privilege in our nomadic state to find the home of one's childhood and its immediate neighborhood thus unchanged.Many born poets, I am afraid, flower poorly in song, or not at all, because they have been too often transplanted.

Then a good many of our race are very hard and unimaginative;--their voices have nothing caressing; their movements are as of machinery without elasticity or oil.I wish it were fair to print a letter a young girl, about the age of our Iris, wrote a short time since."Iam *** *** ***," she says, and tells her whole name outright.Ah!--said I, when I read that first frank declaration,--you are one of the right sort!--She was.A winged creature among close-clipped barn door fowl.How tired the poor girl was of the dull life about her,--the old woman's "skeleton hand " at the window opposite, drawing her curtains,--"Ma'am shooing away the hens,"--the vacuous country eyes staring at her as only country eyes can stare,--a routine of mechanical duties, and the soul's half-articulated cry for sympathy, without an answer! Yes,--pray for her, and for all such! Faith often cures their longings; but it is so hard to give a soul to heaven that has not first been trained in the fullest and sweetest human affections! Too often they fling their hearts away on unworthy objects.Too often they pine in a secret discontent, which spreads its leaden cloud over the morning of their youth.The immeasurable distance between one of these delicate natures and the average youths among whom is like to be her only choice makes one's heart ache.How many women are born too finely organized in sense and soul for the highway they must walk with feet unshod! Life is adjusted to the wants of the stronger sex.There are plenty of torrents to be crossed in its journey; but their stepping-stones are measured by the stride of man, and not of woman.

Women are more subject than men to atrophy of the heart.So says the great medical authority, Laennec.Incurable cases of this kind used to find their hospitals in convents.We have the disease in New England,--but not the hospitals.I don't like to think of it.

I will not believe our young Iris is going to die out in this way.

Providence will find her some great happiness, or affliction, or duty,--and which would be best for her, I cannot tell.One thing is sure: the interest she takes in her little neighbor is getting to be more engrossing than ever.Something is the matter with him, and she knows it, and I think worries herself about it.

I wonder sometimes how so fragile and distorted a frame has kept the fiery spirit that inhabits it so long its tenant.He accounts for it in his own way.

The air of the Old World is good for nothing, he said, one day.--Used up, Sir,--breathed over and over again.You must come to this side, Sir, for an atmosphere fit to breathe nowadays.Did not worthy Mr.Higginson say that a breath of New England's air is better than a sup of Old England's ale? I ought to have died when Iwas a boy, Sir; but I could n't die in this Boston air,--and I think I shall have to go to New York one of these days, when it's time for me to drop this bundle,--or to New Orleans, where they have the yellow fever,--or to Philadelphia, where they have so many doctors.

This was some time ago; but of late he has seemed, as I have before said, to be ailing.An experienced eye, such as I think I may call mine, can tell commonly whether a man is going to die, or not, long before he or his friends are alarmed about him.I don't like it.

Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her family, and that she is afraid she has it.Those who are so endowed look upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him.According to the degree to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote.It is an awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it.Luckily for our friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.