The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844

But often when the silver beams
Of the pale stars are on my bed,
Ye come among my sweetest dreams,
And bend in silence o’er my head;
And throngs of bright imaginings
Float round and o’er me till the dawn;
I hear the fluttering of wings!
I start—I wake! but ye are gone.

Oh! I am sad; yet still the thought
That when this tired though willing hand
Its earthly destiny hath wrought,
Ye wait me in that distant land,
And that ye long to have me there,
More that I pine your absence here,
Shall heal the touch of every care
And quench the sting of every fear.

No marble stands with towering shaft
To catch the stranger’s curious eye;
No tablet graved with flattering craft,
Tells where your silent ashes lie;
But there is one secluded spot
In the deep shadows of my soul,
Where stranger foot intrudeth not,
Nor winter’s wanton tempests roll.

And there in Friendship’s burial-ground
The willow of remembrance bends,
And ye my sisters there have found
A home among my choicest friends;
And modelled with etherial grace,
The form of Hope with heavenward eyes,
Stands calmly on your burial-place,
And points her finger to the skies.

    I. G. Holland.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE PRAIRIE HERMIT

EDITED BY PETER VON GEIST

It happened on the twenty-seventh day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-two, that I, Peter Von Geist, found myself, in the natural course of events, journeying on horse-back along the northern bank of the Ohio river, in the state of Illinois. The space between me and the house where I designed to stop, and the time between then and sun-down, were somewhat disproportionate; so I pricked gallantly forward; as gallantly at least as could be expected from a tired horse, and a knight whose recreant thoughts were intensely fixed on dollars and cents, supper, and other trifling affairs. By dint however of much patience in the steed, and much impatience in the rider, we got over the ground, and approached a house that had been in sight for some distance.

It was placed on the summit of a steep, conical hill; there was no smoke from its chimney, or voices to be heard, or persons to be seen, or other signs of life, in its precincts. The grass grew high and green all around the hillock, and there was no road, not even a foot-path, visible on its side. Nevertheless, I dismounted, left my horse to improve the opportunity of snatching a light repast on the abundant herbage, and forced my way up to the top of the knoll.

The building was constructed in the rude fashion of the country; but the chinking had fallen out from between the logs; the chimney had partly tumbled down; tall weeds sprung up between the stones of the door-steps; the door itself was fastened with a huge padlock; the windows were nearly all beaten in, and every thing about it gave evidence that it had not been inhabited for several years. The summit of the hill was smooth and level. A few stumps grew around the edge; and the ground seemed to have been, at some former time, a garden.

The situation was exceedingly fine, and the view on all sides very beautiful. The eminence commanded on one hand three or four miles of the river, and on the other an unlimited tract of prairie. At the particular moment when I first visited it, the level sun-light came glancing over the face of flood and field, tinging every thing that it touched with its own mellow hue, and casting gigantic and ill-defined shadows of the hill, the house, and myself, on the plain beyond. At the distance of a mile and a half below, stood a couple of one-story houses, the logs of which they were built newly hewed, evidently of recent construction. The inhabitants of this old building, then, must have stood where I am standing, and gazed over the vast extent of country that is spread out before me, without meeting a single habitation of man, or any thing having life, except perhaps a wolf or a buffalo. And it could not have been desire of wealth that induced a family of refinement and taste, such as the little decorations and ornaments show that this was, to select this solitude for their home; for not more than an acre of land, at the foot of the hill, had ever been invaded by the plough.

There were several circumstances like these, that were unusual and unaccountable; but not being in a mood just then to be much perplexed about it, I descended the knoll, remounted, and hurried on towards the more hospitable dwellings below.

Of course, the traveller was received with a welcome, and his bodily wants speedily and abundantly cared for. After this most important duty had been satisfactorily performed, and quietude of spirit consequent thereon was restored to my breast, it chanced that the host and his blue-eyed, golden-haired, neatly-dressed, smiling-faced, half-matron, and half-girlish young wife, who had lately set up business on their own account, and I, seated ourselves without the door, to feel the cool air of the evening. It chanced too that the door faced the east; and the old house towered up darkly in the distance before us. In answer to my inquiries, they were able to give but little information concerning it, and that chiefly derived from others.

It appeared that there was on the other side of the river, and a little lower down, a small settlement. It had stood there from time immemorial; at least, the memory of the tidy little wife did not run to the contrary, and she had received her birth and education there, and ought to know. She remembered, one of the first things that she could remember, a middle-aged gentleman, in a black hat and coat, who used to row over the river from the other shore in a small skiff, and walk into her father’s store to make his purchases, with a grave, but not cold or forbidding face, and used to pat her on the head, with such a fatherly smile, and say a few words in such a kind tone, as to fill her little breast quite full with delight. She remembered more distinctly, a few years later, how this same gentleman used to come into the settlement as often as once-a-week, and how glad every one appeared to meet him and shake hands with him. The villagers seemed to repose unlimited confidence in him. The moment he landed, half-a-dozen were ready to ask his advice, or to show him papers, to see if all were correctly done. He was the umpire in all differences and quarrels, and seldom failed to send away the disputants at peace with each other. If there was a wedding, he of course must be present. On May-day, when the boys and girls went out into the woods to romp, and afterward to sit down to a rustic pic-nic, he was sure to walk into their midst, just at the right moment, bearing in his hand a wreath of flowers, so beautiful, and so tastefully made, that all the girls cried when at length it fell to pieces; and he would place it on the head of the Queen of May with such a gentle, sweet little speech, that she would blush up to the tips of her ears, and all her subjects would clap their hands and laugh out with pleasure.

At Christmas parties his place was never empty; and while he was there, mirth never flagged. Perhaps their sports were not so boisterous as they would have been if he had not been a spectator; but they were quite as pleasant at the time, and a great deal pleasanter when looked back upon from the next day. He used to sit in one corner, by the huge, roaring fire, and look on, apparently as much interested as they themselves were. Nothing went amiss; and there was never wanting some slight, good-natured remark or act, to rectify mistakes and set them all going again.

But much as he was loved by the villagers, he was no less respected. They did not even know his name. Many would have been glad to, and wearied themselves by indirect methods to find it out. But as no one had courage to ask him, and as it never happened to fall from him incidentally, they remained in the dark about it. He was known and addressed however, by the appellation of ‘the Lawyer,’ as their conversation with him was chiefly asking his advice on points of law too knotty for them, which he freely gave. He affected no mystery or reserve; yet there was something in his bearing, affable and unaristocratic as it was, that caused those very men—who, if the governor of the state had come among them, would have slapped him on the back, and offered him a glass of liquor—to rise in his presence and approach him with respect.

My bright-eyed informant, with her musical voice, recollected, a good while ago, when she was about ten years old, and he had become gray and wrinkled—though he never needed a staff, nor was his eye dim—that he rowed over one spring afternoon, and requested the men to leave their work for a few minutes, and hear something that he had to say to them. Accordingly, they collected ‘considerable of a little crowd’ around her father’s store. The lawyer stood in the door, while she made her way through the throng and sat down on the door-step, at his feet. She did not remember all that he said; only that he talked to them for about half an hour, in a calm, conversational tone, on the importance of building school-houses and educating their children. They seemed to be much pleased with what he said; and after another half hour’s free discussion, the whole village turned out, and went to work felling trees and hewing timber; and in the course of a few days a substantial school-house was erected. From that time forth, she and all her brothers and sisters, and all her play-mates, at stated hours and seasons, were rigidly imprisoned therein, and diligently instructed in the rudiments of science.

About this time, she and a brother who was about two years older embarked on a voyage of discovery. They pulled up the river, at least he did, for she only held the rudder, two miles, till they come in sight of the residence of the Great Unknown. There stood the old house, as she had often gazed at it with wondering eyes from the opposite bank, just as grim, and dark, and gloomy. It had been their intention to make an open descent upon it, and boldly beat up the premises. But now, the building was so silent, and deserted, and frowning, their hearts failed them, and they crept cautiously along up the southern shore till they were concealed by a bend in the river; then striking across, they floated down, by accident as it were, close under the northern bank. When they arrived under the hill, on the top of which the object of their curiosity was placed, they looked anxiously up at it; but every thing was as silent as the grave. Seeing it thus unguarded, they took courage, ran the skiff ashore, and prepared to land. But when on the point of stepping on the beach, the door of the house opened, the man himself walked out therefrom and advanced to the brow of the eminence. There he stood; black all over, except his face, which at that instant appeared to wear a peculiarly terrible and ferocious aspect. The children were frightened, and hastily shoved off their little cockle-boat. But the man came down to the edge of the water, and called them by name to return. She thought how far off home was, and no one near to afford assistance in case of need; and when she thought, she would have been glad to have retreated as fast as possible; but her brother was commander of the expedition, and without more words he pushed back to land.

They went ashore, neither of them altogether devoid of fear and trembling, and sat down on the grassy bank, by the side of their venerable friend. He soon talked away their timidity; and seemed so mild and affectionate, that in a few minutes they were chatting and laughing as merrily as ever children could. He showed them his garden, his trees, and flowers, and fruits. He gave them a little basket, which they filled with strawberries, some of which he squeezed between his fingers and rubbed on her cheeks, to see he said, if they could be made any redder. In fine, he amused them so much with his stories, and was so pleasant and kind, that they fell more than ever in love with him; and after promising a dozen times to come and see him every week while it was summer, they returned gaily home.

But the old man died at last. The children went up one sunshiny morning to pay him a visit, and found the house all still, and the door locked. They knocked and knocked, but no one answered. They peeped in at the window and saw him stretched at length on the bed, fully dressed, with a handkerchief over his face, and his gray hair lying dishevelled on the pillow. They called to him; but still there was no answer. Then they became alarmed, and hurried home. Some men came up, broke open the door, and found him dead. Without sickness, or premonition of any kind, he had calmly passed away.

They dug his grave by the side of the cottage, and laid him in it, with his feet to the east and his head to the west; and left him to rest there, unknown and unnamed in death, as he had been in life. The whole village, men, and women, and children, mourned for him many days. But when the days of lamentation were ended, and they saw his face no more, though their grief abated, his memory did not, and has not yet passed from their hearts.

I observed the voice of my hostess to falter more than once, while telling this simple and dream-like story of her childhood. I could see by the night-lights too that her bright eyes sometimes became brighter and sometimes dimmer; both of which circumstances made it only the more pleasant for me to sit and listen to her words.

‘There were no letters,’ she said, found in his possession from which they could learn his name. There were no writings of any kind, except a bundle of old papers, which she had looked into, but they seemed to be only disconnected thoughts and memoranda of events and feelings, and threw no light on his history. At my request she produced a lamp and spread out the papers on the table. I turned over the worn and time-stained manuscripts; but the leaves were loose, unnumbered, and put together at random, and it was some time before I could find a place to begin at.

At length, however, I managed to bring a few sheets in juxtaposition, such, that with a little stretch of the imagination I could discern a slight connection between them. And thus, by dim lamp-light, alone, with the silence of night around, and the old house lifting up its dark and shadowy form in the distance, I read some of the old man’s papers.

Those which I read I took the liberty of putting into my portmanteau, arguing that though they might be of no use to me, they certainly would be of none to their present possessors. Some of these papers having appeared in the Knickerbocker, and met with ‘acceptance bounteous,’ I am induced to transcribe for the edification of the reader, a portion of the autobiography of the writer. It is contained in the last chapter, or sheet, and is written in a different and more aged hand than the rest; and gives the ‘moving why’ of the old man, in isolating himself from his kind, in one of the great green deserts of the West, ‘for which the speech of England hath no name.’

A DREAM OF YOUTH

Sixty years old! Many sorrows, many storms encountered, both within and without, and much journeying along the road of life, have left their traces on my features and on my head; but I am thankful that they have not touched my heart. I live alone, but not solitary; for I hold daily communion with the absent and beloved; communion also, sad but sweet, with the departed. The forms of those once hated too, are ready to rise up at my bidding; but they are never summoned. For I wish all within me to be gentleness and repose; and it ill becomes me on this my last failing foothold on the verge of the grave, to allow thoughts of hatred to stir up the turbid waters of bitterness which have been slumbering so many years in my heart.

So I stand up here calmly at the end of my journey, and look back on the path which I have trodden. And what a path! Far back it runs, growing fainter and narrower, till I lose sight of it, an indistinct line, in the distance. I shall not say how many steep hills it crosses, where it might better have kept in the plains; how many deviations it makes from a straight course, apparently for the sole purpose of wandering through difficult places; or how often it runs along over burning sandy deserts, parallel with, and but a few steps from, the verge of a cool and pleasant meadow. I shall say nothing of this; for of the million of paths that intersect this vast plain of Life, there is probably not one which, when the traveller looks back upon it, does not like mine seem marked out by the veriest caprice of chance. Each one gropes its way along, like the crooked track of a blind man; and when it would appear the easier and almost the only way to keep on up the gentle eminence, whereon might have been found renown and happiness, by that same constant fatality, it suddenly turns short off to one side, plunges down into the rocky ravine, and pants on, for many a weary mile. That man shapes not his own ends, is a truth which I felt long since, and which each day’s experience brings home to me with the freshness of a new discovery. It is a truth which rises up and mocks us, when we sit down to calculate or plan for the future; and it almost staggers our confidence in the connection between human means and the desired result.

But what a path! Proceeding out of the darkness of morning, it struggles through a brief day, sometimes in sunshine, and sometimes in shade, and ends in the darkness of night. I glance along it, and the care-worn faces of the companions of my manhood rise up, on either side, and farther back, the speaking countenances of the friends of my youth. It is but a narrow space, the land of Youth, and soon passed; but pleasant, and full of images of beauty. The sun is not so bright and hot upon it as on some other parts of the path; but we do not expect happiness in the garish light of mid-day and reality. The mellowness of a summer evening sunset lays on it, and thereby it becomes a faëry land, a land of bliss and dreams. How throng up, as I gaze, the forms of those early and best-loved friends! How distinct and life-like, even at this distance, are their characters and features! They are all there; not one name has been erased, and not one picture dimmed, on the tablet of memory. The same warm smile of kindling pleasure greets me; the same hands are thrown out, as if to touch my own; and those bright eyes grow brighter as they are turned toward me.

It is with such companions that I spend the last days of my earthly pilgrimage; and thus, as I said before, though alone I am not solitary. Is not such companionship sweet? When they visit me, I throw off old age, as a garment. Smiling thoughts come gently over me, and life and happiness, as of wont, course like the mad blood of fever through my veins. I feel over again those old feelings, repass through those same scenes, and my heart beats faster or grows pale in the same places and in the same manner as it once did. The old fields and houses and roads come up too, clothed at my command, in the snows of winter, or in the beauty of summer. Old scenes, but still fresh and young; and I am sometimes tempted to believe that the intervening years have been the illusion of a dream, and that I am awakening in their midst.

All this, some will say, is the weakness of age. It seems to me to be rather its strength. The future in life is nothing; and what is the bare present to any one? The past, then, alone is left me. And if by living in it I can keep my affections alive, instead of letting their fires, according to the course of nature, or rather of custom, die down into cold ashes, I do not call myself weak if I do as much as possible forget the present.

I had, when I was young, many dreams; such as I dare say all have. They seem such to me now, only not at all shadowy. On the contrary, they become more and more like reality as my distance from them increases, while their hues are as well marked and distinct as ever. Many and bright; but the brightest of all, the dream of my youth, is that which flashes across my recollection, when there comes into my heart the thought of my cousin Jane!

My cousin Jane! Her form comes up before me, light and elastic and joyous, as though summoned for the first time, and as though it had not been my daily visitor for many a long year. Time writes no wrinkle on thy snowy brow, my first love! That glad smile knows no weariness, and I know no weariness in gazing on it. Those deep eyes, full of feeling; those soft words that thrill; I see and hear and feel them now, as I saw and heard and felt them first. Wilt thou never be tired of looking up to me, with that sweet, timid, confiding, tearful glance? Will the rising flush of thy cheek and thy subdued smile, be always fresh as now, and as in that hour when first we met? Thou hast been my companion, my unmurmuring, ever-present, unchanging companion, through many a dark time and stormy scene; and thou and the heart in which thou livest will die together.

We met, my cousin Jane and I, when she was just putting on womanhood; had begun to find out the depths of her own heart, to doubt whether those depths ever could be filled, and to feel that unless they were, life would be but a blank. Not that there were not many willing enough to love her and be loved; the beauty of her form and character drew around her a crowd of admirers. But among them all, her nice perception saw that there was not one, of whom the exterior did not form by far the largest part of the man. Her admirers were good, honorable men; she respected and esteemed them; but still, gentle and timid and humble as she was, without knowing why, she felt that there was an impassable gulf between her and them. Their thoughts were not like her thoughts. Her social disposition led her much into their way, and though she tried to avoid it, she was told more than once, that the happiness or misery of her devoted lover depended on her smiles. It was a painful situation for one of her retiring and benevolent disposition, to be sure; and it is doubtful to which of the two, the lover or the mistress, every such rejection caused the keenest pang.

But this was not the end of it. Malice soon prefixed to her name the epithet scornful; and among her school-girl friends there were some who always passed by on the other side. Poor girl! She wept bitter tears over these sneers and slights, for she had not studied the world enough to learn and despise its despicable things. Even then, dear girl! too, she tried to love all the world, that is, all her native village. And she succeeded, at least far enough to forgive them all, and thus to feel her own mind at peace and resigned. But there was a tinge of sadness left on her Grecian face after all; for to the young, when the out-stretched hand of kindly feeling is coldly put aside, the grief is as great as though the repulse were deserved.

And I—I hardly know what I was, when I first saw my cousin. I was without father or mother; the world seemed wide and rather cheerless; and there was a settled impression on my mind, that it was my business to glide along through life, calmly and noiselessly; attach my affections to no external object; exist without being the cause of joy, and die without being the cause of tears, to any human being. I came and took up my abode in the pleasant village where my uncle resided, and set down to gain some knowledge of that noble science, civil law. I took up the study, not because I had any intention of engaging in the active duties of the profession, but for the name’s sake, and because I loved it for itself. My uncle, he was a kind, good man, showed himself a father to me, took me into his family, tried to encourage and rouse me; and for his kindness, though it failed of its end, he had at the time, and has always had, my sincere though unexpressed thanks.