Part 13

The idea came to him as an inspiration, but immediately there was suggested an objection which to a less resourceful mind would have seemed insuperable. “What an appearance should I make in my present dress? which consisted of a light gray coat, with silver-plated buttons, green vest, and red velvet breeches.”

Down the Connecticut valley he trudged, calling to mind his father’s old sermons and gradually working himself into a state of pious rapture. The heart of no young pulpiteer beat with more appropriate emotions than his, when on the next Sunday, under an assumed name, he preached his first sermon in the village of Ludlow. “I awoke with anxious palpitation for the issue of the day. I considered this as the most important scene of my life--that, in a great measure, my future happiness or wretchedness depended on my conduct this day. The time for assembling approached! I saw the people come together. My feelings were up in arms against me, my heart would almost leap into my mouth. What a strange thing, said I, is man! Why am I thus perturbated by these whimsical feelings!”

The moment he began the service these perturbations came to an end. Words came in a steady flow, and he felt sure that he had found his true calling in life. “No monarch when seated on a throne had more sensible feelings of prosperity than what I experienced at this time.”

The neighboring town of Pelham being without a minister, Burroughs presented himself as a candidate, and was enthusiastically accepted. He made a specialty of funeral sermons, and was soon in demand in all the surrounding country. It was at this time also that he became acquainted with the coiner who showed him how he might surreptitiously increase the amount of cash in circulation. All went well till an enemy appeared who called him by name and revealed his antecedents. All Pelham was in an uproar, for the Pelhamites were “a people generally possessing violent passions, which, once disturbed, raged uncontrolled by the dictates of reason, unpolished in their manners, possessing a jealous disposition, and either very friendly or very inimical, not knowing a medium between these extremes.”

In this case they suddenly became very inimical, and Burroughs was again compelled to depart under cover of darkness. His night thoughts were always among his very best.

“Journeying on, I had time for reflection. At the dead of night--all alone--reflection would have its operation. A very singular scene have I now passed through, said I, and to what does it amount? Have I acted with propriety as a man, or have I deviated from the path of rectitude? I have had an unheard-of, disagreeable part to act; I do not feel entirely satisfied with myself in this business, and yet I do not know how I could have done otherwise, and have made the matter better. My situation has been such that I have violated the principle of veracity which we implicitly pledge ourselves to maintain towards each other, as a general thing, in society. Whether my peculiar circumstances would warrant such a line of procedure is the question. I know many things will be said in favor of it as well as against it.”

From this difficult question of casuistry he found relief in reverting to the one instance in which he had been clearly wrong, viz., joining the young men in Hanover in their raid on the farmer’s beehive. “My giving countenance to an open breach of the laws of the land in the case of the bees was a matter in which I was justly reprehensible; but that matter is now past. I must take things as they are, and under these circumstances do the best I can. I know the world will blame me, but I wish to justify my conduct to myself, let the world think what it may.”

In this endeavor he was highly successful; and as he walked on, his spirits rose. He contrasted his own clear views with the muddled ideas of his late parishioners. “They understand the matter in the gross, that I have preached under a fictitious name and character, and consequently have roused many ideas in the minds of the people not founded on fact. Therefore they concluded from this general view the whole to be founded on wrong. The name impostor is therefore easily fixed on my character. An impostor, we generally conceive, puts on feigned appearances in order to enrich or aggrandize himself to the damage of others. That this is not the case with me in this transaction, I think is clear. That I have aimed at nothing but the bare necessaries of life, is a fact.”

Having thus cleared himself of the charge of imposture, he determined to rest his case on the broad ground of religious liberty. “That I have a good and equitable right to preach, if I choose and others choose to hear me, is a truth of which I entertain no doubt.”

When he was pursued into the borders of the town of Rutland, it was too much for his patience. “I turned and ran about twenty rods down a small hill, and the Pelhamites all after me, hallooing with all their might, ‘Stop him! stop him!’ To be pursued like a thief, an object of universal speculation to the inhabitants of Rutland, gave me very disagreeable sensations, which I determined not to bear. I therefore stopped, took up a stone, and declared that the first who should approach me I would kill on the spot. To hear such language and to see such a state of determined defiance in one whom they had lately reverenced as a clergyman struck even the people of Pelham with astonishment and fear.”

By the way, there follows a scene which makes us suspect that parts of Massachusetts in the good old days may have had a touch of “the wild West.” The two deacons who were leaders of the mob drew attention to the fact that besides having come to them under false pretenses Burroughs had absconded with five dollars that had been advanced on his salary. He owed them one sermon which was theirs of right. In the present excited state of public opinion it was obviously impossible for Burroughs to deliver the sermon, but it was suggested that he might give an equivalent. A peacemaker intervened, saying, “Wood keeps an excellent tavern hard by; I propose for all to move up there.” This proposal was accepted by all. “I therefore came down, and we all went up towards the tavern. I called for drink, according to the orator’s advice, to the satisfaction of all.”

After that the career of Burroughs went on from bad to worse, but never was he without the inner consolations that belong to those who are misunderstood by the world. Even when he unsuccessfully sought to set fire to the jail he was full of fine sentiments borrowed from Young’s “Night Thoughts.” He quotes the whole passage beginning

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne.

This he seems to consider to be in some way a justification for his action. He is ever of the opinion that a man’s heart can not be wrong so long as he is able to quote poetry.

The various incarcerations to which he was subjected might only have imbittered a less magnanimous mind. They rather instilled into Burroughs a missionary spirit. He felt that he ought to take more pains to enlighten the ignorance of the world in regard to his excellent qualities. “I have many times lamented my want of patient perseverance in endeavoring to convince my persecutors of their wrong by the cool dictates of reason. Error once seen ought to be corrected. The pruning hook should never be laid aside; then we should live up to the condition of our nature, which requires a state of improving and progressing in knowledge till time shall cease.”

But even Burroughs was human. It is easier to bear great misfortunes than to meet the petty annoyances of every-day life. To one who plans his life in such a way as to depend largely on the casual gifts of strangers, their dilatoriness is often a cause of real anxiety.

Here is a painful incident which happened to him in Philadelphia. He applied to a member of Congress for a small sum of money. The gentleman was not all that he should have been. “The most striking features of his character were his great fondness for close metaphysical reasoning and a habit of great economy in his domestic concerns, and he had so long practiced upon this system that any variation from it in a person’s conduct or any want of success in a person’s undertakings were, in his view, perfectly wrong. This was the man to whom I applied as my ultimatum.”

We can see at a glance that such a man was likely to be disappointing.

“I described my circumstances to him in as clear terms as possible, and afterwards told him of the request I wished to make. Without giving me an answer either in the affirmative or the negative, he went on with a lengthy discourse to prove that my system of economy had been wrong, drawing a comparison between his prosperity and my adversity, and then pointed out a certain line of conduct that I ought then to take up and observe, and offered to assist me in prosecuting such; but as his plan had many things in it which I could not reconcile my mind to, I took the liberty of reasoning with him upon a better plan which I had marked out in my own mind.”

Upon this, the congressman became obstinate and would do nothing. His depravity came to Burroughs as a sudden shock.

“When I took a view of the world, of the pomp and splendor which surrounded crowds which perpetually passed before my eyes, to see them roll in affluence and luxury, inhabiting lofty houses, with superb equipages, and feasting upon all the delicacies of life, under these affluent circumstances withholding from me what would never have been missed from their superfluity, this brought to my mind a train of ideas that were desperate and horrid.... My eyes lighted up with indignation, my countenance was fortified with despair, my heart was swollen to that bigness which was almost too large for my breast to contain. Under this situation I arose with a tranquil horror, composedly took my hat, and politely bid Mr. Niles farewell. I believe the desperate emotions of my heart were apparently manifested to his view by my countenance; his apparent immovability relaxed, he put his hand in his pocket, and handed me three dollars. This act of kindness in a moment melted the ferocious feelings of my heart, all those desperate sensations vanished, and I found myself a man.”

Dear reader, have you not often taken a part in such a scene? When instead of handing out your dollars at once you conditioned them upon adherence to some “line of conduct,”--your conscience accuses you that you might have pointed even to the buck-saw,--do you realize what a pitiful spectacle you made of yourself?

* * * * *

Stephen Burroughs does not at all fulfill our preconceived notion of an habitual criminal. He did not love evil for its own sake. His crimes were incidental, and he mentions them only as the unfortunate results of circumstances beyond his own control. His life was rather spent in the contemplation of virtue. There were some virtues which came easy to him, and he made the most of them. Like an expert prestidigitator, he kept the attention fixed on what was irrelevant, so that what was really going on passed unnoticed. He had eliminated personal responsibility from his scheme of things, and then proceeded as if nothing were lacking. He had one invariable measure for right and wrong. That was right which ministered to his own peace of body and of mind; that was wrong which did otherwise.

We are coming to see that that imperturbable egotism is the characteristic of the “criminal mind” that is least susceptible to treatment. Sins of passion are often repented of as soon as they are committed. Sins of ignorance are cured by letting in the light. Sins of weakness yield to an improved environment. But what are you going to do with the man who is incapable of seeing that he is in the wrong? Treat him with compassion, and he accepts the kindness as a tribute to his own merits; attempt to punish him, and he is a martyr; reason with him, and his controversial ardor is aroused in defense of his favorite thesis.

Sometimes the lover of humanity, after he has tried everything which he can think of to make an impression on such a character and to bring him to a realizing sense of social responsibility, becomes utterly discouraged. He feels tempted to give up trying any longer. In this he is wrong. He should not allow himself to be discouraged. Something must be done, even though nobody knows what it is.

But if the lover of humanity _should_ give up for a time and take a rest by turning his attention to a more hopeful case, I should not be too hard on him. My Pardoner, I am sure, must have some indulgence for such a weakness.

A MAN UNDER ENCHANTMENT

[Illustration]

I sat down by the wayside of life like a man under enchantment.” So Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of his own visionary youth, and, truth to tell, the spell lasted through life.

The wayside itself was not conducive to dreams. It was a busy thoroughfare. Eager traffickers jostled one another, and there was much crying up of new wares. Many important personages went noisily along. There was a fresh interest in all sorts of good works and many improvements on the roadway. There were not many priests or Levites passing by on the other side, for ecclesiasticism was not in fashion, but there were multitudes of Good Samaritans, each one intent on his own brand-new device for universal helpfulness. There were so many of them that the poor man who fell among philanthropists often sighed for the tender mercies of the thieves. The thieves, at least, when they had done their work would let him alone. From time to time there would come groups of eager reformers, advance agents of the millennium. At last there came down the road troops hurrying to the front, and there was the distant sound of battle.

It was a stirring time, the noon of the nineteenth century; and the stir was nowhere more felt than in New England. It was a ferment of speculation, a whirl of passion, a time of great aspiration and of no mean achievement.

But if you would get a sense of all this, do not turn to the pages of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The ardor of Transcendentalism, the new spirit of reform, the war between the States,--these were noted, but they made no very vivid impression on the man who sat under enchantment. There was an interval between these happenings and his consciousness that made them seem scarcely contemporaneous.

It is a fashion in literary criticism to explain an author by his environment. With Hawthorne this method is not successful. It is not that his environment was not interesting in itself. His genius was essentially aloof. It was a plant that drew its nourishment from the air rather than from the soil. There are some men who have the happy faculty of making themselves at home wherever they happen to be. Hawthorne, wherever he had been born, would have looked upon the scene with something of a stranger’s eye. Indeed, when we think about it, the wonder is that most of us are able to take the world in such a matter-of-fact way. One would suppose that we had always been here, instead of being transient guests who cannot even engage our rooms a day in advance.

It is perhaps a happy limitation which makes us to forget our slight tenure, and to feel an absolute ownership in the present moment. We are satisfied with the passing experience because it appears to us as permanent.

To the man who sat by the wayside the present moment did not stand in the sunshine sufficient unto itself. It did not appear, as it did to the man of affairs, an ultimate and satisfying reality. He was not unobservant. He saw the persons passing by. But each one, in the present moment, seemed but a fugitive escaping from the past into the future. Futile flight! unavailing freedom! for in the Future the Past stands waiting for it. As he looked at each successive action it was as one who watches the moving shadow of an old deed, which now for some creature has become doom.

Did I say that Hawthorne was little influenced by his environment? It would be truer to say that the environment to which he responded was that to which most men are so strangely oblivious. He felt what another Salem mystic has expressed:

Around us ever lies the enchanted land In marvels rich to thine own sons displayed.

The true-born Yankee has always persisted, in spite of the purists, in using “I guess” as equivalent to “I think.” To his shrewd good-humored curiosity, all thinking resolves itself into a kind of guesswork; and one man has as good a right to his guess as another.

It is a far cry from the talk of the village store to Emerson and Hawthorne, but to these New Englanders thinking was still a kind of guessing. The observer looks at the outward show of things, which has such an air of finality, and says, “I guess there’s something behind all this. I guess it’s worth while to look into it.”

Such a mind is not deterred by the warnings of formal logic that there is “no thoroughfare.” When it leaves the public road and sees the sign “Private way, dangerous passing,” it says, “that looks interesting. I guess I’ll take that.”

And from our streets and shops and newspapers, from our laboratories and lecture rooms and bureaus of statistics, it is, after all, such a little way to the border-land of mystery, where all minds are on an equality and where the wisest can but dimly guess the riddles that are propounded.

Hawthorne belonged to no school or party. To the men of his generation he was like the minister of whom he writes who preached with a veil over his face.

Nor is his relation in thought to his ancestry more intimate than that to his contemporaries. Born to the family of New England Puritanism, we think we recognize the family likeness--and yet we are not quite sure. There are traits that suggest a spiritual changeling.

When we enter into the realm of Hawthorne’s imagination we are conscious of sombre realities.

Is not this a survival of the puritanic spirit, with its brooding mysticism, its retributive predestination, its sense of the judgment to come? It was said of Carlyle that he was a Calvinist who had lost his creed. May not the same be said of Hawthorne? The old New England theology had in him become attenuated to a mere film, but through it all may we not see the old New England conscience?

Doubtless there is much of this transmitted influence. Hawthorne himself insisted upon it. Speaking of “the stern and black-browed Puritan ancestors,” he said, “Let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine.”

But it is possible to exaggerate such likenesses. In Hawthorne’s case there is danger of argument in a circle. We say that there is something in Hawthorne’s imagination, in its sombre mysticism, in its brooding sense of destiny, which is like that of the spirit of the inhabitants of Salem and Boston in the old days when they walked through the narrow streets and through the shadowy woodland ways pondering the fatal sequences of life.

But how do we see these old Puritans? We see them through Hawthorne’s eyes. His imagination peoples for us the old houses. Was Hawthorne’s genius tinged with Puritanism, or are our conceptions of the Puritan character largely Hawthornesque? It is not necessary to argue this matter; it might be better to answer “Yes” to both questions.

It is the privilege of a creative genius to imprint his own features upon his forbears. It is difficult here to determine which is cause and which is effect. How marvelously Rembrandt gets the spirit of the Dutch Burgomeisters! It was fortunate for him that he had such subjects,--stalwart men with faces that caught the light so marvelously. Yes, but had it not been for Rembrandt, who would have told us that these Dutch gentlemen were so picturesque?

The subject of a good artist is accurately figured; the subject of a great artist is transfigured. We cannot separate the historic reality from the transfiguring light.

But however Hawthorne may have been influenced by his Puritan inheritance, it would be hard to find one whose habitual point of view was further removed from what we are accustomed to call the “New England conscience.” It is the characteristic of that type of conscience that it has an ever-present and sometimes oppressive sense of personal responsibility. It is militant and practical rather than mystical. To it evil is not something to be endured but something to be resisted. If there is a wrong it must be righted, and with as little delay as possible.

The highest praise a Puritan could give his pastor was that he was “a painful preacher.” Jonathan Mitchell, writing of the beginnings of the church in Cambridge, says that the people of Cambridge “were a gracious, savory-spirited people, principled by Mr. Sheperd, liking an humbling, heart-breaking ministry and spirit.”

The Puritan theology was based on predestination, but the Puritan temper was not fatalistic. When that latter-day Puritan, Lyman Beecher, was expounding the doctrines of the divine decrees, one of his sons asked him, “Father, what if we are decreed to be lost?” The answer was, “Fight the decrees, my boy!”

The Calvinistic spirit was exactly opposite to the fatalistic acquiescence which shifts the responsibility from the creature to the Creator. To be sure the fall of man took place a long time ago, but we cannot say that it was none of our business. It was not an hereditary misfortune to be borne with fortitude; it was to be assumed as our personal guilt. “Original sin” means real sin. Adam sinned as the typical and representative man, and every man became a sinner. No individual could plead an _alibi_. The “conviction of sin” was not the acquiescence in a penalty,--it was the heartbreaking consciousness of the “exceeding sinfulness of sin.”

“In Adam’s fall _we_ sinned all.” When they said that, they were thinking not of Adam, but of themselves. _They_ did it; it was the guilt that was imputed to them. Sensitive consciences were tortured in the attempt fully to realize their guilt.

The real inheritors of this type of conscience were to be found among many of the radical reformers and agitators who were Hawthorne’s contemporaries and with whom he had little in common. When their formal creed had fallen off, there remained the sense of personal guilt for original sin. The sin of the nation and of the whole social order weighed heavily upon them and tortured them, and they found relief only in action.