The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Go back into Nature's heart, and, with contemplation, bear fruit of noble thoughts unto eternal life!" But he hesitated; his enthusiasm hung fire strangely.

      After a while,—"Well, well, Zachary," with a laugh, "we'd better go back into the world, and take up our work again. Josiah is partly right, may be. There are a thousand fibres of love and trade and mutual help which bind us to our fellow-man, and if we try to slip out of our place and loose any of them, our own souls suffer the loss by so much life withdrawn. It is as well not to live altogether outside of the market; nor—to escape from this," lifting Tony up on his knee, and beginning a rough romp with him. But I saw his face work strangely as he threw the boy up in the air, and when he caught him, he strained him to his burly breast until the child cried out. "Tut! tut! What now, you young ruffian? Come, shoes off, and to bed; we'll have a little respite from you. I say, Humphreys, do you see the hungry look with which the old women follow the child? God help them! I wonder if it will be made right for them in another world!" An hour after, I heard him still pacing the floor up stairs, crooning some old nursery song to put the boy to sleep.

      I visited the Harmonists again not many months ago; the village and orchards lie as sleepily among the quiet hills as ever. There are more houses closed, more grass on the streets. A few more of the simple, honest folk have crept into their beds under the apple-trees, from which they will not rise in the night to eat, or to make money,—Christina among the rest. I was glad she was gone where it was sunny and bright, and where she would not have to grow tired for the sight of "a little shild." There have been but few additions, if any, to the society in the last twenty years. They still retain the peculiar dress which they wore when they left Würtemberg: the men wearing the common German peasant habit; the women, a light, narrow flannel gown, with wide sleeves and a bright-colored silk handkerchief crossed over the breast, the whole surmounted by a straw hat, with a rim of immense width. They do not carry on the manufactures of silk or woollen now, which were Rapp's boast; they have "struck oil" instead, and are among the most successful and skillful land-owners in Pennsylvania in the search for that uncertain source of wealth.

      The "Economite Wells" are on the Upper Alleghany, nearly opposite Tidionte. In later years, I believe, children have been brought into the society to be cared for by the women.

      It needs no second-sight to discern the end of Rapp's scheme. His single strength sustained the colony during his life, and since his death one or two strong wills have kept it from crumbling to pieces, converting the whole machinery of his system into a powerful money-making agent. These men are the hand by which it keeps its hold on the world,—or the market, perhaps I should say. They are intelligent and able; honorable too, we are glad to know, for the sake of the quiet creatures drowsing away their little remnant of life, fat and contented, driving their ploughs through the fields, or smoking on the stoops of the village houses when evening comes. I wonder if they ever cast a furtive glance at the world and life from which Rapp's will so early shut them out? When they finish smoking, one by one, the great revenues of the society will probably fall into the hands of two or three active survivors, and be merged into the small currents of trade, according to the rapid sequence which always follows the accretion of large properties in this country.

      Rapp is remembered, already, even by the people whom he meant to serve, only as a harsh and tyrannical ruler, and his very scheme will not only prove futile, but be forgotten very soon after Fredrika and Joseph have drank their last cup of home-made wine, and gone to sleep under the trees in the apple-orchard.

      ABRAHAM DAVENPORT

      In the old days (a custom laid aside

      With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent

      Their wisest men to make the public laws.

      And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound

      Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,

      Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,

      And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,

      Stamford sent up to the councils of the State

      Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.

      'Twas on a May-day of the far old year

      Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell

      Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,

      Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,

      A horror of great darkness, like the night

      In day of which the Norland sagas tell,—

      The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky

      Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim

      Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs

      The crater's sides from the red hell below.

      Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls

      Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars

      Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings

      Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;

      Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp

      To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter

      The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ

      Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked

      A loving guest at Bethany, but stern

      As Justice and inexorable Law.

      Meanwhile in the old State-House, dim as ghosts,

      Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,

      Trembling beneath their legislative robes.

      "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"

      Some said; and then, as if with one accord,

      All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.

      He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice

      The intolerable hush. "This well may be

      The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;

      But be it so or not, I only know

      My present duty, and my Lord's command

      To occupy till he come. So at the post

      Where he hath set me in his providence,

      I choose, for one, to meet him face to face,—

      No faithless servant frightened from my task,

      But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;

      And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,

      Let God do his work, we will see to ours.

      Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.

      Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read,

      Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands,

      An act to amend an act to regulate

      The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon

      Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport,

      Straight to the question, with no figures of speech

      Save the nine Arab signs, yet not without

      The shrewd dry humor natural to the man:

      His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while,

      Between the pauses of his argument,

      To hear the thunder of the wrath of God

      Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.

      And there he stands in memory to this day,

      Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen

      Against the background of unnatural dark,

      A witness to the ages as they pass,

      That СКАЧАТЬ