THE LESSON OF A USEFUL AND BEAUTIFUL LIFE.
"A beautiful life I have had. Not more trial than was for my good.
Countless blessings beyond expectation or desert.... Behind me stretch the green pastures and still waters by which I have been led all my days. Around is the lingering of hardy flowers and fruits that bide the Winter. Before stretches the shining sh.o.r.e."
These are the words of Mrs. Sigourney, written near the close of a life of seventy-four years. All who have much observed human life will agree that the rarest achievement of man or woman on this earth is a solid and continuous happiness. There are very few persons past seventy who can look back upon their lives, and sincerely say that they would willingly live their lives over again. Mrs. Sigourney, however, was one of the happy few.
Lydia Huntley, for that was her maiden name, was born at Norwich, Connecticut, on the first of September, 1791. Her father was Ezekiel Huntley, an exceedingly gentle, affectionate man, of Scotch parentage, who had as little of a Yankee in him as any man in Connecticut. Unlike a Yankee, he never attempted to set up in business for himself, but spent the whole of the active part of his life in the service of the man to whom he was apprenticed in his youth. His employer was a druggist of great note in his day, who made a large fortune in his business, and built one of the most elegant houses in the State. On his retirement from business his old clerk continued to reside under his roof, and to a.s.sist in the management of his estate; and, even when he died, Mr.
Huntley did not change his abode, but remained to conduct the affairs of the widow. In the service of this family he saved a competence for his old age, and he lived to eighty-seven, a most happy, serene old man, delighting chiefly in his garden and his only child. He survived as late as 1839.
Owing to the peculiar relations sustained by her father to a wealthy family--living, too, in a wing of their stately mansion, and having the free range of its extensive gardens--Lydia Huntley enjoyed in her youth all the substantial advantages of wealth, without encountering its perils. She was surrounded by objects pleasing or beautiful, but no menial pampered her pride or robbed her of her rightful share of household labor. As soon as she was old enough to toddle about the grounds, her father delighted to have her hold the trees which he was planting, and drop the seed into the little furrows prepared for it, and never was she better pleased than when giving him the aid of her tiny fingers. Her parents never kept a servant, and she was brought up to do her part in the house. Living on plain, substantial fare, inured to labor, and dressed so as to allow free play to every limb and muscle, she laid in a stock of health, strength, and good temper that lasted her down to the last year of her life. She never knew what dyspepsia was.
She never possessed a costly toy, nor a doll that was not made at home, but she pa.s.sed a childhood that was scarcely anything but joy. She was an only child, and she was the pet of two families, yet she was not spoiled.
She was one of those children who take naturally to all kinds of culture. Without ever having had a child"s book, she sought out, in the old-fashioned library of the house, everything which a child could understand. Chance threw a novel in her way ("Mysteries of Udolpho"), which she devoured with rapture, and soon after, when she was but eight years of age, she began to write a novel. Poetry, too, she read with singular pleasure, never weary of repeating her favorite pieces. But the pa.s.sion of her childhood was painting pictures. Almost in her infancy she began to draw with a pin and lilac-leaf, and advanced from that to slate and pencil, and, by and by, to a lead-pencil and backs of letters.
When she had learned to draw pretty well, she was on fire to paint her pictures, but was long puzzled to procure the colors. Having obtained in some way a cake of gamboge, she begged of a washerwoman a piece of indigo, and by combining these two ingredients she could make different shades of yellow, blue, and green. The trunks of her trees she painted with coffee-grounds, and a mixture of India ink and indigo answered tolerably well for sky and water. She afterwards discovered that the pink juice of chokeberry did very well for lips, cheeks, and gay dresses. Mixed with a little indigo it made a very bad purple, which the young artist, for the want of a better, was obliged to use for her royal robes. In sore distress for a better purple she squeezed the purple flowers of the garden and the field for the desired tint, but nothing answered the purpose, until, at dinner, one day, she found the very hue for which she longed in the juice of a currant and whortleberry tart.
She hastened to try it, and it made a truly gorgeous purple, but the sugar in it caused it to come off in flakes from her kings and emperors, leaving them in a sorry plight. At length, to her boundless, inexpressible, and lasting joy, all her difficulties were removed by her father giving her a complete box of colors.
At school she was fortunate in her teachers. One of them was the late Pelatiah Perit, who afterward won high distinction as a New York merchant and universal philanthropist. Her first serious attempts at practical composition were translations from Virgil, when she was fourteen years of age. After leaving school she studied Latin with much zeal under an aged tutor, and, later in life, she advanced far enough in Hebrew to read the Old Testament, with the aid of grammar and dictionary. To these grave studies her parents added a thorough drill in dancing. Often, when her excellent mother observed that she had sat too long over her books, she would get her out upon the floor of their large kitchen, and then, striking up a lively song, set her dancing until her cheeks were all aglow.
This studious and happy girl, like other young people, had her day-dream of the future. _It was to keep a school_. This strange ambition, she tells us in her autobiography, she feared to impart to her companions, lest they should laugh at her; and she thought even her parents would think her _arrogant_ if she mentioned it to them. The long-cherished secret was revealed to her parents at length. Her mother had guessed it before, but her father was exceedingly surprised. Neither of them, however, made any objection, and one of the pleasantest apartments of their house was fitted up for the reception of pupils. She was then a delicate-looking girl of about eighteen, and rather undersized. As soon as her desks were brought home by the carpenter, the ambitious little lady went around to the families of the place, informed them of her intention, and solicited their patronage at the established rate of three dollars a quarter for each pupil. She was puzzled and disappointed at the coolness with which her project was received. Day after day she tramped the streets of Norwich, only to return at night without a name upon her catalogue. She surmised, after a time, that parents hesitated to intrust their children to her because of her extreme youth, which was the fact. At length, however, she began her school with two children, nine and eleven years of age, and not only did she go through all the formalities of school with them, working six hours a day for five days, and three hours on Sat.u.r.day, but at the end of the term she held an examination in the presence of a large circle of her pupils" admiring relations.
Afterwards, a.s.sociating herself with another young lady, to whom she was tenderly attached, she succeeded better. A large and populous school gathered about these zealous and admirable girls, several of their pupils being older than themselves. Compelled to hold the school in a larger room, Lydia Huntley walked two miles every morning, and two more every night, besides working hard all day; and she was as happy as the weeks were long. Her experience confirms that of every genuine teacher--from Dr. Arnold downward--that, of all employments of man or woman on this earth, the one that is capable of giving the most constant and intense happiness is teaching in a rationally conducted school. So fond was she of teaching, that when the severity of the Winter obliged her to suspend the school for many weeks, she opened a free school for poor children, one of her favorite cla.s.ses in which was composed of colored girls. In the course of time, the well-known Daniel Wadsworth, the great man of Hartford sixty or seventy years ago, lured her away to that city, where he personally organized a school of thirty young ladies, the daughters of his friends, and gave her a home in his own house. There she spent five happy years, cherished as a daughter by her venerable patron and his wife, and held in high honor by her pupils and their parents.
It was in 1815, while residing in Hartford, that her fame was born. Good old Mrs. Wadsworth, having obtained sight of her journals and ma.n.u.scripts in prose and verse, the secret acc.u.mulation of many years, inflamed her husband"s curiosity so that he, too, asked to see them. The blushing poetess consented. Mr. Wadsworth p.r.o.nounced some of them worthy of publication, and, under his auspices, a volume was printed in Hartford, ent.i.tled "Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse." The public gave it a generous welcome, and its success led to a career of authorship which lasted forty-nine years, and gave to the world fifty-six volumes of poetry, tales, travels, biography, and letters.
So pa.s.sed her life till she was past twenty-eight. She had received many offers of marriage from clergymen and others, but none of her suitors tempted her to forsake her pupils, and she supposed herself destined to spend her days as an old maid. But another destiny was in store for her.
On her way to and from her school, "a pair of deep-set and most expressive black eyes" sometimes encountered hers and spoke "unutterable things." Those eyes belonged to a widower, with three children, named Charles Sigourney, a thriving hardware merchant, of French descent, and those "unutterable things" were uttered at length through the unromantic medium of a letter. The marriage occurred a few months after, in the year 1819.
For the next fifteen years she resided in the most elegant mansion in Hartford, surrounded by delightful grounds, after Mr. Sigourney"s own design; and even now, though the Sigourney place is eclipsed in splendor and costliness by many of more recent date, there is no abode in the beautiful city of Hartford more attractive than this. Mr. Sigourney was a man of considerable learning, and exceedingly interested in the study of languages. When he was past fifty he began the study of modern Greek.
Mrs. Sigourney became the mother of several children, all of whom, but two, died in infancy. One son lived to enter college, but died at the age of nineteen, of consumption. A daughter grew to womanhood, and became the wife of a clergyman.
After many years of very great prosperity in business, Mr. Sigourney experienced heavy losses, which compelled them to leave their pleasant residence, and gave a new activity to her pen. He died at the age of seventy-six. During the last seven years of Mrs. Sigourney"s life, her chief literary employment was contributing to the columns of the _New York Ledger_. Mr. Bonner, having while an apprentice in the _Hartford Current_ office "set up" some of her poems, had particular pleasure in being the medium of her last communications with the public, and she must have rejoiced in the vast audience to which he gave her access--the largest she ever addressed.
Mrs. Sigourney enjoyed excellent health to within a few weeks of her death. After a short illness, which she bore with much patience, she died in June, 1865, with her daughter at her side, and affectionate friends around her. Nothing could exceed her tranquility and resignation at the approach of death. Her long life had been spent in honorable labor for the good of her species, and she died in the fullest certainty that death would but introduce her to a larger and better sphere.
LIV.
OLD AGE AND USEFULNESS
THE GLORY OF BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN.
Dear Lord! I thank thee for a life of use; Dear Lord! I do not pine for any truce.
Peace, peace has always come from duty done; Peace, peace will so until the end be won.
Thanks, thanks! a thankful heart is my reward; Thanks, thanks befit the children of the Lord.
Wind, wind! the peaceful reel must still go round; Wind, wind! the thread of life will soon be wound.
The worker has no dread of growing old; First, years of toil, and then the age of gold!
For lo! he hopes to bear his flag unfurled Beyond the threshold of another world.
John Foster, he who sprang into celebrity from one essay, _Popular Ignorance_, had a diseased feeling against growing old, which seems to us to be very prevalent. He was sorry to lose every parting hour. "I have seen a fearful sight to-day," he would say--"I have seen a b.u.t.tercup." To others the sight would only give visions of the coming Spring and future Summer; to him it told of the past year, the last Christmas, the days which would never come again--the so many days nearer the grave. Thackeray continually expressed the same feeling. He reverts to the merry old time when George the Third was king. He looks back with a regretful mind to his own youth. The black Care constantly rides, behind his chariot. "Ah, my friends," he says, "how beautiful was youth! We are growing old. Spring-time and Summer are past. We near the Winter of our days. We shall never feel as we have felt. We approach the inevitable grave." Few men, indeed, know how to grow old gracefully, as Madame de Stael very truly observed. There is an unmanly sadness at leaving off the old follies and the old games. We all hate fogyism. Dr.
Johnson, great and good as he was, had a touch of this regret, and we may pardon him for the feeling. A youth spent in poverty and neglect, a manhood consumed in unceasing struggle, are not preparatives to growing old in peace. We fancy that, after a stormy morning and a lowering day, the evening should have a sunset glow, and, when the night sets in, look back with regret at the "gusty, babbling, and remorseless day;" but, if we do so, we miss the supporting faith of the Christian and the manly cheerfulness of the heathen. To grow old is quite natural; being natural, it is beautiful; and if we grumble at it, we miss the lesson, and lose all the beauty.
Half of our life is spent in vain regrets. When we are boys we ardently wish to be men; when men we wish as ardently to be boys. We sing sad songs of the lapse of time. We talk of "auld lang syne," of the days when we were young, of gathering sh.e.l.ls on the sea-sh.o.r.e and throwing them carelessly away. We never cease to be sentimental upon past youth and lost manhood and beauty. Yet there are no regrets so false, and few half so silly. Perhaps the saddest sight in the world is to see an old lady, wrinkled and withered, dressing, talking, and acting like a very young one, and forgetting all the time, as she clings to the feeble remnant of the past, that there is no sham so transparent as her own, and that people, instead of feeling with her, are laughing at her. Old boys disguise their foibles a little better; but they are equally ridiculous. The feeble protests which they make against the flying chariot of Time are equally futile. The great Mower enters the field, and all must come down. To stay him would be impossible; We might as well try with a finger to stop Ixion"s wheel, or to dam up the current of the Thames with a child"s foot.
Since the matter is inevitable, we may as well sit down and reason it out. Is it so dreadful to grow old? Does old age need its apologies and its defenders? Is it a benefit or a calamity? Why should it be odious and ridiculous? An old tree is picturesque, an old castle venerable, an old cathedral inspires awe--why should man be worse than his works?
Let us, in the first place, see what youth is. Is it so blessed and happy and flourishing as it seems to us? Schoolboys do not think so.
They always wish to be older. You cannot insult one of them more than by telling him that he is a year or two younger than he is. He fires up at once: "Twelve, did you say, sir? No, I"m fourteen." But men and women who have reached twenty-eight do not thus add to their years. Amongst schoolboys, notwithstanding the general tenor of those romancists who see that every thing young bears a rose-colored blush, misery is prevalent enough. Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, were each and all unhappy boys. They all had their rebuffs, and bitter, bitter troubles; all the more bitter because their sensitiveness was so acute. Suicide is not unknown amongst the young; fears prey upon them and terrify them; ignorances and follies surround them. Arriving at manhood, we are little better off. If we are poor, we mark the difference between the rich and us; we see position gains all the day. If we are as clever as Hamlet, we grow just as philosophically disappointed. If we love, we can only be sure of a brief pleasure--an April day. Love has its bitterness. "It is," says Ovid, an adept in the matter, "full of anxious fear." We fret and fume at the authority of the wise heads; we have an intense idea of our own talent. We believe calves of our own age to be as big and as valuable as full-grown bulls; we envy whilst we jest at the old. We cry, with the puffed-up hero of the _Patrician"s Daughter_:
"It may be by the calendar of years You are the elder man; but "tis the sun Of knowledge on the mind"s dial shining bright, And chronicling deeds and thoughts, that makes true time."
And yet withal life is very unhappy, whether we live amongst the grumbling captains of the clubs, who are ever seeking and not finding promotion; amongst the struggling authors and rising artists who never rise; or among the young men who are full of riches, t.i.tles, places, and honor, who have every wish fulfilled, and are miserable because they have nothing to wish for. Thus the young Romans killed themselves after the death of their emperor, not for grief, not for affection, not even for the fashion of suicide, which grew afterwards prevalent enough, but from the simple weariness of doing every thing over and over again. Old age has pa.s.sed such stages as these, landed on a safer sh.o.r.e, and matriculated in a higher college, in a purer air. We sigh not for impossibilities; we cry not:
"Bring these anew, and set me once again In the delusion of life"s infancy; I was not happy, but I knew not then That happy I was never doom"d to be."
We know that we are not happy. We know that life, perhaps, was not given us to be continuously comfortable and happy. We have been behind the scenes, and know all the illusions; but when we are old we are far too wise to throw life away for mere _ennui_. With Dandolo, refusing a crown at ninety-six, winning battles at ninety-four; with Wellington, planning and superintending fortifications at eighty; with Bacon and Humboldt, students to the last gasp; with wise old Montaigne, shrewd in his grey-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of gout and colic--Age knows far too much to act like a sulky child. It knows too well the results and the value of things to care about them; that the ache will subside, the pain be lulled, the estate we coveted be worth little; the t.i.tles, ribbons, gewgaws, honors, be all more or less worthless. "Who has honor? He that died o" Wednesday!" Such a one pa.s.sed us in the race, and gained it but to fall. We are still up and doing; we may be frosty and shrewd, but kindly. We can wish all men well; like them, too, so far as they may be liked, and smile at the fuss, bother, hurry, and turmoil, which they make about matters which to us are worthless dross. The greatest prize in the whole market--in any and in every market--success, is to the old man nothing. He little cares who is up and who is down; the present he lives in and delights in. Thus, in one of those admirable comedies in which Robson acted, we find the son a wanderer, the mother"s heart nearly broken, the father torn and broken by a suspicion of his son"s dishonesty, but the grandfather all the while concerned only about his gruel and his handkerchief. Even the pains and troubles incident to his state visit the old man lightly.
Because Southey sat for months in his library, unable to read or touch the books he loved, we are not to infer that he was unhappy. If the stage darkens as the curtain falls, certain it also is that the senses grow duller and more blunted. "Don"t cry for me, my dear," said an old lady undergoing an operation; "I do not feel it."
It seems to us, therefore, that a great deal of unnecessary pity has been thrown away upon old age. We begin at school reading Cicero"s treatise, hearing Cato talk with Scipio and Laelius; we hear much about poor old men; we are taught to admire the vigor, quickness, and capacity of youth and manhood. We lose sight of the wisdom which age brings even to the most foolish. We think that a circ.u.mscribed sphere must necessarily be an unhappy one. It is not always so. What one abandons in growing old is, perhaps, after all not worth having. The chief part of youth is but excitement; often both unwise and unhealthy. The same pen which has written, with a morbid feeling, that "there is a cla.s.s of beings who do not grow old in their youth and die ere middle age," tells us also that "the best of life is but intoxication." That pa.s.ses away.
The man who has grown old does not care about it. The author at that period has no feverish excitement about seeing himself in print; he does not hunt newspapers for reviews and notices. He is content to wait; he knows what fame is worth. The obscure man of science, who has been wishing to make the world better and wiser; the struggling curate, the poor and hard-tried man of G.o.d; the enthusiastic reformer, who has watched the sadly slow dawning of progress and liberty; the artist, whose dream of beauty slowly fades before his dim eyes--all lay down their feverish wishes as they advance in life, forget the bright ideal which they can not reach, and embrace the more imperfect real. We speak not here of the a.s.sured Christian. He, from the n.o.blest pinnacle of faith, beholds a promised land, and is eager to reach it; he prays "to be delivered from the body of this death;" but we write of those humbler, perhaps more human souls, with whom increasing age each day treads down an illusion. All feverish wishes, raw and inconclusive desires, have died down, and a calm beauty and peace survive; pa.s.sions are dead, temptations weakened or conquered; experience has been won; selfish interests are widened into universal ones; vain, idle hopes, have merged into a firmer faith or a complete knowledge; and more light has broken in upon the soul"s dark cottage, battered and decayed, "through c.h.i.n.ks which Time has made."
Again, old men are valuable, not only as relics of the past, but as guides and prophets for the future. They know the pattern of every turn of life"s kaleidoscope. The colors merely fall into new shapes; the ground-work is just the same. The good which a calm, kind, and cheerful old man can do is incalculable. And whilst he does good to others, he enjoys himself. He looks not unnaturally to that which should accompany old age--honor, love, obedience, troops of friends; and he plays his part in the comedy or tragedy of life with as much gusto as any one else. Old Montague, or Capulet, and old Polonius, that wise maxim-man, enjoy themselves quite as well as the moody Hamlet, the perturbed Laertes, or even gallant Mercutio or love-sick Romeo. Friar Lawrence, who is a good old man, is perhaps the happiest of all in the _dramatis personae_--unless we take the gossiping, garrulous old nurse, with her sunny recollections of maturity and youth. The great thing is to have the mind well employed, to work whilst it is yet day. The precise Duke of Wellington, answering every letter with "F.M. presents his compliments;" the wondrous worker Humboldt with his orders of knighthood, stars, and ribbons, lying dusty in his drawer, still contemplating _Cosmos_, and answering his thirty letters a day--were both men in exceedingly enviable, happy positions; they had reached the top of the hill, and could look back quietly over the rough road which they had traveled. We are not all Humboldts or Wellingtons; but we can all be busy and good. Experience must teach us all a great deal; and if it only teaches us not to fear the future, not to cast a maundering regret over the past, we can be as happy in old age--ay, and far more so--than we were in youth. We are no longer the fools of time and error.
We are leaving by slow degrees the old world; we stand upon the threshold of the new; not without hope, but without fear, in an exceedingly natural position, with nothing strange or dreadful about it; with our domain drawn within a narrow circle, but equal to our power.
Muscular strength, organic instincts, are all gone; but what then? We do not want them; we are getting ready for the great change, one which is just as necessary as it was to be born; and to a little child perhaps one is not a whit more painful--perhaps not so painful as the other. The wheels of Time have brought us to the goal; we are about to rest while others labor, to stay at home while others wander. We touch at last the mysterious door--are we to be pitied or to be envied?
The desert of the life behind, Has almost faded from my mind, It has so many fair oases Which unto me are holy places.
It seems like consecrated ground, Where silence counts for more than sound, That way of all my past endeavor Which I shall tread no more forever.
And G.o.d I was too blind to see, I now, somewhat from blindness free, Discern as ever-present glory, Who holds all past and future story.
Eternity is all in all; Time, birth and death, ephemeral-- Point where a little bird alighted, Then fled lest it should be benighted.
LV.
RHYMES AND CHIMES