The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858

Blaring out, never asking your pardon:
This terrible blurting he thinks is not hurting,
As long as his own ear-drums harden.

He thinks, I've no doubt, it is sweet,
While thus Time and Tune he is flaying;
The little house-sparrows feel all through their marrows
The jar and the fuss of his playing,—
The windows all shaking, the babies all waking,
The very dogs howling and baying.

One note out of twenty he hits,
And, cheered, blows pianos like fortes.
His time is his own. He goes sounding alone,
(A sort of Columbus or Cortés,)
On a perilous ocean, without any notion
Whereabouts in the dim deep his port is.

Like a man late from club, he has lost
His key, and around stumbles moping,
Touching this, trying that, now a sharp, now a flat,
Till he strikes on the note he is hoping,
And a terrible blare at the end of the air
Shows he's got through at last with his groping.

There,—he's finished,—at least, for a while;
He is tired, or come to his senses;
And out of his horn shakes the drops that were borne
By the winds of his musical frenzies.
There's a rest, thank our stars, of ninety-nine bars,
Ere the tempest of sound recommences.

When all the bad players are sent
Where all their false notes are protested,
I am sure that Old Nick will play him a trick,
When his bad trump and he are arrested,
And down in the regions of Discord's own legions
His head with two French horns be crested.

* * * * *

MY JOURNAL TO MY COUSIN MARY

March, 1855.

Of all the letters of condolence I have received since my misfortune, yours has consoled me most. It surprises me, I confess, that a far-away cousin—of whom I only remember that she had the sweetest of earthly smiles—should know better how to reach the heart of my grief and soothe it into peace, than any nearest of kin or oldest of friends. But so it has been, and therefore I feel that your more intimate acquaintance would be something to interest me and keep my heart above despair.

My sister Catalina, my devoted nurse, says I must snatch at anything likely to do that, as a drowning man catches at straws, or I shall be overwhelmed by this calamity. But is it not too late? Am I not overwhelmed? I feel that life is a revolting subject of contemplation in my circumstances, a poor thing to look forward to. Death itself looks pleasanter.

Call up to your mind what I was, and what my circumstances were. I was healthy and strong. I could run, and wrestle, and breast strong winds, and cleave rough waters, and climb steep hills,—things I shall henceforth be able only to remember,—yes, and to sigh to do again.

I was thoroughly educated for my profession. I was panting to fulfil its duties and rise to its honors. I was beginning to make my way up. I had gained one cause,—my first and last,—and my friends thought me justified in entertaining the highest hopes.

It had always been an object of ambition with me to—well, I will confess—to be popular in society; and I know I was not the reverse.—So much, Mary, for what I was. Now see what I am.

I am, and shall forever be,—so the doctors tell me,—a miserable, sickly, helpless being, without hope of health or independence. My object in life can only be—to be comfortable, if possible, and not to be an intolerable trial to those about me! Worth living for,—isn't it?

An athlete, eager and glowing in the race of life, transformed by a thunder-bolt into a palsied and whining cripple for whom there is no Pool of Bethesda,—that is what has befallen me!

I suppose you read the shocking details of the collision in the papers. Catalina and I sat, of course, side by side in the cars. We had that day met in New York, after a separation of years. She had just returned from Europe. I went to meet and escort her home, and, as we whirled over the Jersey sands, I told her of all my plans and hopes. She listened at first with her usual lively interest; but as I went on, she looked me full in the face with an air of exasperated endurance, as if what I proposed to accomplish were beyond reason. I own that I was in a fool's paradise of buoyant expectation. At last she interrupted me.

"Ah, yes! No doubt! You'll do those trifles, of course! And, perhaps, among your other plans and intentions is that of living forever? It is an easy thing to resolve upon;—better not stop short of it."

At this instant came the crash, and I knew nothing more until I heard people remonstrating with Kate for persisting in trying to revive a dead man, (myself,) while the blood was flowing profusely from her own wound. I heard her indignantly deny that I was dead, and, with her customary irritability, tell them that they ought to be ashamed of themselves for saying so. They still insisted that I was "a perfect jelly," and could not possibly survive, even if I came to consciousness. She contradicted them energetically. Yet they pardoned, and liked her. They knew that a fond heart keenly resents evil prophecies of its beloved ones. Besides, whatever she does or says, people always like Kate.

After a physician arrived, it was found that the jellying of my flesh was not the worst of it; for, in consequence of some injury to my spine, my lower limbs were paralyzed. My sister, thank Heaven, had received only a slight cut upon the forehead.

Of course I don't mean to bore you with a recital of all my sufferings through those winter months. I don't ask your compassion for such trifles as bodily pain; but for what I am, and must forever be in this life, my own heart aches for pity. Let yours sympathize with it.

I thought to be so active, so useful, perhaps so distinguished as a man, so blest as husband and father!—for you must know how from my boyhood up I have craved, what I have never had, a home.

Now that I have been thrust out of active life and forced to make up my mind to perfect passiveness, I have become a bugbear to myself. I cannot endure the thought of ever being the peevish egotist, the exacting tyrant, which men are apt to become when they are thrown upon woman's love and long-suffering, as I am.

My only safeguard is, I believe, to keep up interests out of myself, and I beg of you to help me. I believe implicitly in your expressed desire to be of some service to me, and I ask you to undertake the troublesome task of correspondence with a sick man, and almost a stranger. I will, however, try to make you acquainted with myself and my surroundings, so thoroughly that the latter difficulty will soon be obviated.

First, let me present my sister,—named Catalina,—called Kate, Catty, or Lina, according to the fancy of the moment, or the degree of sentimentality in the speaker. You have not seen her since she was a child, so that, of course, you cannot imagine her as she is now. But you know the circumstances in which our parents left us. You remember, that, after living all his life in careless luxury, my father died penniless. Our mother had secured her small fortune for Kate; and at her death, just before my father's, she gave me—an infant a few weeks old—into my sister's young arms, with full trust that I should be taken care of by her. You know of all my obligations to her in my babyhood and for my education, which she drudged at teaching for years to obtain for me. I could never repay her for such devotion, but I hoped to make her forget all her trials, and only retain the happy consciousness of having had the making of such a famous man! I expected to place her in affluence, at least.

And now what can I bring to her but grief and gray hairs? I am dependent upon her for my daily bread; I occupy all her time, either in nursing or sewing for me; I try her temper hourly with my sick-man's whims; and I doom her to a future of care and economy. Yet I believe in my soul that she blesses me every time she looks upon me!

Thackeray says women like to be martyrized. I hardly think it is the pursuit of pleasure which leads them to self-denial. Men, at any rate, do not often seek enjoyment in that form. If women do make choice of such a class of delights, even instinctively, they need advance no other claim to superiority over men. The higher the animal, the higher its propensities.

Kate the other day was asserting a wife's right to the control of her own property, and incidentally advocating the equality of the sexes,—a touchy point with her. I put in,—

"Tell me, then, Lina, why animals form stronger attachments to men than to women. Your dog, your parrot, even your cat, already prefers me to you. How can you account for it, unless by allowing that there is more in us to respect and love?"

"I account for it," said she, with her most decided nod, "by affinity. There is more affinity between you and brutes. It is the sons of God who find the daughters of men fair. We draw angels from the skies;—even your jealous, reluctant sex has borne witness to that."

"Pshaw! only those anomalous creatures, the poets. But please yourself with such fancies; they encourage a pretty pride that becomes your sex. Conscious forever of being your lords, we feel that the higher you raise yourselves, the higher you place us. You can't help owning that angelic woman-kind submits—and gladly—to us."

"Nonsense! conceited nonsense!"

"But don't they?"

"Some do; but I do not."

"Why, all my life you have been to me a most devoted, obedient servant, Kate."

"Yes, I have my pets," she answered, "and I care for them. I am housemaid to my bird; my cat makes her bed of my lap and my best silk dress; I am purveyor to my dog, head-scratcher to my parrot, and so forth. It is my pleasure to be kind. Higher natures always are so,—yes, Charlie, even minutely solicitous for the welfare of the objects of their care; for are not the very hairs of our head all numbered by the Most Beneficent?"

She began in playful insolence, but ended with tearful eyes, and a grateful, humble glow upon her face. Its like I had never seen before in her rather imperious countenance. I gazed at her with interest. She saw me, and was irritated to be caught with moistened eyes. She scorns crying, like a man.