Section 23

'* And Rebecca his wife.
Dark, silent grave, low in thy narrow bed, Weeping, we lay the body of our dead : All that was mortal now hath ceased to live, And all that earth can claim to earth we give."
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Lines between lines here: preacher, Christian, or simple philosopher, alike may write and can use them.
Here by the church-door eight graves. Upright marbles tell the names of honest yeomen of the old school and of the honest yeomen's helpmates. One was well known. How often, preacher, have I clam- bered his fences, eaten of the fruits of his fields, and fished in streams running through his grounds ! The gravestone tells of the burying as being in the year 1840. Why, preacher, I remember the funeral as if it had been an occurrence of but yesterday. Half a century ago ! Preacher, preacher, there is not over- width of margin between the years of half a century and threescore and ten !
From the grave of the farmer I start for a walk to his home of fifty years back, having keenly in memory a densely-shaded lane quite half a mile in length lead- ing from the highway to the house j a double avenue of old and gnarled apple-trees, a carriage-house at one end and a great stone barn together with hay-ricks at the other ; and, most vividly remembered of all, a watering-place where the horses were ridden bareback to drink. With what zest I am thinking of the water- ing-place; a fordable stream, clear as crystal, some twenty feet in breadth, a sandy shore on one side, on the other massive rocks smothered in vines which reach over them into the stream. Above, the great branches of lovingly embracing trees, their branchlets floated by the water; squirrel-holes in the trunks of the trees, where the boy risked the bite of snakes for the pos- sible prize of a flying rodent.
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The steps hasten as the sylvan scenes are recalled. How generous and profuse was the hospitality ! How untrammelled was the freedom ! How the horses, led from their stable unsaddled and unbridled, and often enough unmounted by boys too timid or not agile enough, are this moment in mind ! Then the heir of the house ! As full of hospitality as were the father and mother ; full of pride and of the aspirations of youth; overflowing with desire to do; rich in the cherry-red blood of health ; afraid of nothing ; tender of the feelings of others as a woman ; the admired and beloved of his neighborhood ; a valued friend of early days.
. . . The lane ! What is this ? A railroad-track. A bank of clay in place of the shading trees. Half- rotten ties lying promiscuously about, occupying the places of long-ago-familiar moss carpeted big stones. At the foot of a tree standing at junction of road and lane, whilom the gathering-place of cawing crows, now a caboose of a flagman ; the top of the tree cut off, the trunk serving as a post to the cabin. A great square rock standing by the tree at the entrance of the lane and reaching beyond the fence into the wood, — a favorite rest of fifty years back. Not a sign of this remaining. Broken by the blasters, no doubt, and now lying in the mud under some road-bridge.
How profound a revulsion of feeling ! Is change also with the old house and with the watering-place? Shall I go forward, or turn back?
. . . Not a vestige remaining of the apple trees ; no single fence in place as it used to be. Another barn, facing in opposite direction from the old one. No
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sign of hay-ricks. Streets making their way from every direction. No lane leading from barn-yard to watering-place.
. . . The watering-place found, after considerable search. Not an overhanging tree remaining. No sandy shore. No vine-covered rocks. Up and down everything of the old days found gone or going. The stream narrowed by the encroachments of the rail- road to a ditch between clay banks only a few feet in width. The sun unobstructed glaring to-day on these clay banks. The beautiful stream of old nothing to- day but a run carrying sewage.
*' Improvements" ! The word has got here from the town. Things called "improvements" in proportion as they deform and destroy ! Mud-covered railroad- ties in place of vine-bedecked rocks. Flat clay banks replacing arboring trees. Odor of the wild grape and honeysuckle driven away by smell of garbage.
. . . The house the home of a new race. The name of the farmer of fifty years ago unknown. Not the slightest memory of boys who belonged there as visitors half a century back. Not a black face where once were plenty. No wide-throated chimney holding benches of stone on either side of blazing logs. No brick-paved kitchen. No door going into a familiar pantry. No anything as it was.
. . . Building-lots now in place of arbored lane and the watering-place. Yard-palings, already break- ing down, where in old days were stone fences under which the ground-squirrels lived and over which they ran. Houses of wood, flaring in white and green, where once waved corn-tassels and the heavy heads 20*
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of wheat-Stalks. Strange people sauntering about, evi- dently at home, and looking on the walker as an in- truder. Alas !
*' Places that knew us know us no more." — And what if they do not ? I turn my steps toward what is of great contrast to the place of lanes and watering-place. The old house, whilom so inviting, is contracted and un- comfortable when compared with one that has its door standing open for me. In the olden time I knew nothing of the new home, nor dreamed even of its attractions ; the stone house at the end of the lane was a palace. The talks of willow-strippers, rude and low^ as now recalled, were attractions stronger than the voices of teachers in the village school. Islanders, coming in with the whaling-ships, half savages as they were, made impressions something of which stays, no doubt, as remain India-ink stains pricked by them with needles into the skin of my hands. Negro fisher- men ! How many could be named who were close friends in the olden times ! What wonderful springy poles and what unbreakable snoods were prepared by these for our days among the ditches ! Gone ! islanders and negroes ! Whaling-ships rotted to pieces ! Anchors seen by the creek-side so turned into rust as to be valueless even as iron ! The ditches gone !
... I sit down in the new home as I reach it and lose myself in confusion and wonderment at the self- gratulation felt that I am no longer of the old save as I choose to go back to it. I retrospect, finding it to be thus with all my experiences. New is found better
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than old ; that is, as adaptation to wants relates ; houses for increase of people. Going forward is going on- ward ; unless, as I am compelled to see, one will insist on going backward. Both forward and backward in the Now, however ; nowhere else. The graveyard, and the farm, and the farmer, and the fisherman, and the boy, all here. New trees for the graveyard and farm, new bodies for the humans.
... If the All were understood? Happiest of happy was the boy in the days of the willow-stripping and the ditch-fishing. To-day the strippers are with- out interest to the man. The ditches are distinguish- able alone by lines of ashes with which they have been filled. But in the olden time little was seen of mean- ness living with the strippers, nor did doubt exist as to an eternal continuance lying with the ditches. In the olden time the mortal needed no better heaven than what he had.
Referring to differences between past and present, or (is it not better said ?) to successions in the Eternal Now, memory is had of hesitation and drawing back when a trip to a distant country was to be entered upon. Firmness as to land was not to be doubted. Instability as to water had its record of multitudinous misadventures. But — when the sea was reached ! when was heard the wild music of the wind screeching by the sailless masts! when the up-liftings and the down tumblings of the driving waves were felt ! when the salt- laden air filled the lungs with life ! when that which was behind changed from immensity into a speck, and that which was before loomed up as a continent filled
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with wonders ! Ah ! here glory lying with courage and vigor becomes understood.
Memories of these things. Memories contrasted.
Memories of Heidelberg and its tun ; of the Neckar running from the hill-land to the flat-land; of the watching of duels in the Angelplatz ; of the pledging in great tankards the health of Kaiser and President. Memories of a Righi Culm and of its neighbor peaks encased in silver and gold. Memories of break-neck speed in the rolling of diligences as chains gave way in the declines of the Brlinig. Memories of jerking, driving waves met at the exit from Dieppe. Memo- ries of blinding sprays in the English Channel. Memories of evening sun-rays reddening the white cliffs of Albion. Memories of Brighton ablaze with excitement in the presence of royal personages, and memories of the spurring and prodding of racing horses at Lewes. Memories of Scotch hills and of mist-covered lochs. Memories of the Rhine as fol- lowed from the bleak North Sea to the dancing, leap- ing, laughing waters at Neuhausen. Memories of the ice-Alps as seen from the streets of sweltering Zurich. Memories of Lucerne and of long trout discovered in the crystal clearness of the Lake of the Four Cantons. Memories of Lausanne and of midnight moon-rays covering the face of Leman. Memories of snow-garbed Jungfrau contrasting with the surrounding greenness of summer-time.
Thoughts aroused by these contrasts as to greater contrasts. A condition of environment considered where lighter mounts over heavier to a higher plane of equilibrium. Higher reached, higher seen still above.
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From lower to higher forever and forever. Soon a plane reached where change is understood as one with freshness ; where change becomes courted as the scholar courts acquisitions to his treasures of knowledge. Sensible change understood as associated alone with body, and body understood as clothes, — heavy clothes for winter, light clothes for summer, intermediate clothes for intermediate seasons. Matter cloth, Nature a tailor.
Back to the Town. Upon a luxurious lounge, pillows of embroidered silken cushions under and about her, lies, stricken by disease pronounced fatal, one upon whom Refinement is seen to have set its divinest mark and Beauty to have competed with Grace for her adornment. With beginning were lessons after the strictest rules of the sects. Later the earth was travelled almost all over. The foot of her camel imprinted its steps upon the desert-sand; her dahabiyeh winged its way to old places where mystery had tarried along the banks of the Nile. India introduced her to Brahma. China brought her to acquaintance with Confucius. The shores of the Bosphorus gave her audience with Mahomet.
Bringing the new gods home with her, and their bibles, and finding still later gods and bibles wher- ever the good and beautiful were beholdable, — and, contrariwise, seeing perdition and devils wherever the bad and ugly were predominant, — Cordona found re- ligion in losing sect.
Coming to her lounge-side to-night bringing with me the experiences and feelings of the day, I meet with
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readiness and interest question propounded by her on the meaning of death; a word which she corrects, however, as quickly as uttered, by replacing it with the term "change."
I speak to her of the wanderings of the day, telling her that the things were once the very life of my life, but that they have dwindled and have waned to large divestment of the old-time charms, and that to-night I am rejoicing as one finding himself brought to higher possessions and pleasures through change.
"But," interrupts Cordona, "the old place knows you, and you know the old place."
"Put it after this manner," I suggest. "I know the old place, but the old place does not know me, — nor do I care about the old place knowing me. As for the willow-strippers and the fishermen, I am some- thing so entirely different from their acquaintance of old that neither they nor I would any longer find con- geniality as to the other's company; neither would have satisfaction or pleasure in a remeeting. The new people pass me as indifferently as I pass them. We are nothing at all to each other. Each, however, is much or all to the place of each and to the friends of each."
"Accepting immortality as a fact," asks Cordona, not fairly catching my idea, " what are your convic- tions regarding intercourse of the so-called newly dead with those that have passed along before? You are dead to the old place, but you are as well alive to it to live in it if you want to."
" Immortality and acceptance are words without association," I beg to correct. "Knowledge of exist-
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ence in the Now is knowledge of existence forever. As I go back now to the old place, so forever and for- ever shall I go back to where I want to go back. The want changes, however. Little by little old enters into new. Little by little, out of such reason, are the at- tractions of the old changed and lost. Do I walk through my native village, what are the new signs over new shops, and the new keepers of the shops, to me ? A door once open to me is now fast shut. Salutations, once warm and frequent, are now formal and infre- quent, as to a stranger. There is no house across the lane that invites me. Though entertainment reside with every home, there is no invitation to me. Nor is there with me slightest desire for invitation or enter- tainment. I have all I want of this, and more to my taste, elsewhere."
"And you can make," asks Cordona, "such nat- ural associations, confident that application is alike to spiritual matters?"
"If," I query, "natural and spiritual are found to be one, would the association apply ?' *
"Undoubtedly," answers Cordona.
"This, then," I reply, "is a oneness so absolutely self-proving that conclusion is reached as certainly as examination is made."*
" You make it nothing at all to die?" says Cordona.
" Nothing at all is the word," I reply, "as there is no death."
A slight paleness passes over Cordona's face as she hints at the grave.
* See body of the book.
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*' What," I ask, "if a body, out of which Ego has gone, be left lying upon a bed ? What is the body to Ego? or what is Ego to the body?" I hint to her of the bodies seen in dissecting-rooms. *' No one thinks of these," I suggest, ** but as something worn out and offensive that is to be got rid of. It would be inter- esting," I add, ''to note the effect made on an Ego come to a dissecting-room in search of an old body. Beholding self possessed of body, precisely as under- stood in the dream-state, the mass lying upon the slab would be to him, before all others, a thing to be buried out of sight; a greasy and worn thrown-off suit of clothes would not be less to him." I remind Cordona of a locust gotten out of its old hull. ** How curiously it must look at the shell !" I say.
" It certainly is the case," replies Cordona, " that the hull has little interest for the locust, as hardly so much as a look is bestowed before the insect flies away."
"It leaves its old body," I suggest, "just as the body of the boy was unconcernedly^indeed, unknow- ingly— left with the stones of the old graveyard and with the ditches where himself and the blackamoors fished ; two bodies, indeed, as for fourteen years he was among the gravestones and about the ditches.* Seven bodies more, used and parted from," I add. "A body for every seven years."
"As to these nine bodies ?" queries Cordona.
*Not the expense of a single funeral gone to. Nature turned undertaker, plus excess of wit to make it understood that she was burying nothing, but help-
* See page 194,
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ing kindly, on the contrary, her loves out of old dresses into new."
**Has a grave or a funeral nothing disagreeable about it to you?" asks the invalid.
"When I see either," I reply, ** I am reminded of one who has removed and whose friends insist that the rubbish left shall be packed away in a storehouse."
"You are unqualifiedly without regard for body?" queries Cordona.
" Yes, and no," I answer. " While my hair is orna- mental, I comb and care for it. When it grows over- long, I go to the barber, not concerned as to where he throws what he cuts off. My dentist showed me the other day a front tooth extracted years ago from my mouth and valued beyond price in the by-gone days. I looked on it with interest, but without slightest rec- ognition of it as of concern to myself. I did think, however, as the man put the tooth back in a box filled with malodorous specimens of similar character, that while this being a first tooth which had been replaced by a better and bigger was without use to me, yet there was a kind of pity for the tooth that it should so long have been denied its right of transmigration by reason of being kept in a box instead of in the earth."