Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales Part 4

I heard a great Italian Tenor sing in the Grand Opera, and Oh! how like the dew on the flowers is the memory of his song! He was playing the role of a broken-hearted lover in the opera of the "Bohemian Girl."

I can only repeat it as it impressed me--an humble young man from the mountains who never before had heard the _Grand Opera_:

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Sheet Music)]

"When ethaer-r-r leeps and ethaer-r-r hairts, Their-r-r tales auf luff sholl tell, In longwidge whose ex-cess impair-r-r-ts.

The power-r-r-r they feel so well, There-r-r-e may per-haps in-a such a s-c-e-n-e Some r-r-re-co-lec-tion be, Auf days thot haive as hop-py bean-- Then you'll-a r-r-r-re-mem-b-a-e-r-r-r me-e-e, Then you'll-a r-re-mem-b-a-e-r-r, You'll-a r-re-mem-ber a-me-e-e!!"

MUSIC.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The spirit of music, like an archangel, presides over mankind and the visible creation. Her afflatus, divinely sweet, divinely powerful, is breathed on every human heart, and inspires every soul to some n.o.bler sentiment, some higher thought, some greater action.

O music, sweetest, sublimest ideal of Omniscience, first-born of G.o.d, fairest and loftiest Seraph of the celestial hierarchy, Muse of the beautiful, daughter of the Universe!

In the morning of eternity, when the stars were young, her first grand oratorio burst upon raptured Deity, and thrilled the wondering angels; all heaven shouted; ten thousand times ten thousand jeweled harps, ten thousand times ten thousand angel tongues caught up the song; and ever since, through all the golden cycles, its breathing melodies, old as eternity, yet ever new as the flitting hours, have floated on the air of heaven. The Seraph stood, with outstretched wings, on the horizon of heaven--clothed in light, ablaze with gems; and with voice attuned, swept her burning harp strings, and lo! the blue infinite thrilled with her sweetest note. The trembling stars heard it, and flashed their joy from every flaming center. The wheeling orbs that course their paths of light were vibrant with the strain, and pealed it back into the glad ear of G.o.d. The far off milky way, bright gulf-stream of astral glories, spanning the ethereal deep, resounded with its harmonies, and the star-dust isles floating in that river of opal, re-echoed the happy chorus from every sparkling strand.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"THE PARADISE OF FOOLS."

Have you ever thought of the wealth that perished when paradise was lost? Have you ever thought of the glory of Eden, the first estate of man? I think it was the very dream of G.o.d, glowing with ineffable beauty. I think it was rimmed with blue mountains, from whose moss-covered cliffs leaped a thousand gla.s.sy streams that spread out in mid-air, like bridal veils, kissing a thousand rainbows from the sun.

I think it was an archipelago of gorgeous colors, flecked with green isles, where the grapevine staggered from tree to tree, as if drunk with the wine of its own purple cl.u.s.ters, where peach, and plum, and blood-red cherries, and every kind of berry, bent bough and bush, and shone like showered drops of ruby and of pearl. I think it was a wilderness of flowers, redolent of eternal spring and pulsing with bird-song, where dappled fawns played on banks of violets, where leopards, peaceful and tame, lounged in copses of magnolias, where harmless tigers lay on snowy beds of lilies, and lions, lazy and gentle, panted in jungles of roses. I think its billowy landscapes were festooned with tangling creepers, bright with perennial bloom, and curtained with sweet-scented groves, where the orange and the pomegranate hung like golden globes and ruddy moons. I think its air was softened with the dreamy haze of perpetual summer; and through its midst there flowed a translucent river, alternately gleaming in its suns.h.i.+ne and darkening in its shadows. And there, in some sweet, dusky bower, fresh from the hand of his Creator, slept Adam, the first of the human race; G.o.d-like in form and feature; G.o.d-like in all the attributes of mind and soul. No monarch ever slept on softer, sweeter couch, with richer curtains drawn about him. And as he slept, a face and form, half hidden, half revealed, red-lipped, rose-cheeked, white bosomed and with tresses of gold, smiled like an angel from the mirror of his dream; for a moment smiled, and so sweetly, that his heart almost forgot to beat.

And while yet this bright vision still haunted his slumber, with tenderest touch an unseen hand lay open the unconscious flesh in his side, and forth from the painless wound a faultless being sprang; a being pure and blithesome as the air; a sinless woman, G.o.d's first thought for the happiness of man. I think he wooed her at the waking of the morning. I think he wooed her at noon-tide, down by the riverside, or by the spring in the dell. I think he wooed her at twilight, when the moon silvered the palm tree's feathery plumes, and the stars looked down, and the nightingale sang. And wherever he wooed her, I think the grazing herds left sloping hill and peaceful vale, to listen to the wooing, and thence themselves, departed in pairs. The covies heard it and mated in the fields; the quail wooed his love in the wheat; the robin whistled to his love in the glen;

"The lark was so brim-full of gladness and love, The green fields below him--the blue sky above, That he sang, and he sang, and forever sang he: I love my Love, and my Love loves me."

Love songs bubbled from the mellow throats of mocking-birds and bobolinks; dove cooed love to dove; and I think the maiden monkey, fair "Juliet" of the House of Orang-outang, waited on her cocoanut balcony for the coming of her "Romeo," and thus plaintively sang:

[Ill.u.s.tration: JULIET.]

(Sung to the air of My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon.)

"My sweetheart's the lovely baboon, I'm going to marry him soon; 'Twould fill me with joy Just to kiss the dear boy, For his charms and his beauty No power can destroy."

"I'll sit in the light of the moon, And sing to my darling baboon, When I'm safe by his side And he calls me his bride; Oh! my Angel, my precious baboon!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMEO.]

All paradise was imbued with the spirit of love. Oh, that it could have remained so forever! There was not a painted cheek in Eden, nor a bald head, nor a false tooth, nor a bachelor. There was not a flounce, nor a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline.

Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in suns.h.i.+ne, Adam was clad in climate.

Every rich blessing within the gift of the Almighty Father was poured out from the cornucopia of heaven, into the lap of paradise. But it was a paradise of fools, because they stained it with disobedience and polluted it with sin. It was the paradise of fools because, in the exercise of their own G.o.d-given free agency, they tasted the forbidden fruit and fell from their glorious estate. Oh, what a fall was there! It was the fall of innocence and purity; it was the fall of happiness into the abyss of woe; it was the fall of life into the arms of death. It was like the fall of the wounded albatross, from the regions of light, into the sea; it was like the fall of a star from heaven to h.e.l.l. When the jasper gate forever closed behind the guilty pair, and the flaming sword of the Lord mounted guard over the barred portal, the whole life-current of the human race was s.h.i.+fted into another channel; s.h.i.+fted from the roses to the thorns; s.h.i.+fted from joy to sorrow, and it bore upon its dark and turbulent bosom, the wrecked hopes of all the ages.

I believe they lost intellectual powers which fallen man has never regained. Operating by the consent of natural laws, sinless man would have wrought endless miracles. The mind, winged like a seraph, and armed like a thunderbolt, would have breached the very citadel of knowledge and robbed it of its treasures. I think they lost a plane of being only a little lower than the angels. I believe they lost youth, beauty, and physical immortality. I believe they lost the virtues of heart and soul, and many of the magnificent powers of mind, which made them the images of G.o.d, and which would have even brushed aside the now impenetrable veil which hides from mortal eyes the face of Infinite Love; that Love which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling with eternal fires. But thank G.o.d, their fall was not like the remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank G.o.d, in this "night of death" hope _does_ see a star! It is the star of Bethlehem. Thank G.o.d, "listening Love" _does_ "hear the rustle of a wing!" It is the wing of the resurrection angel.

The memories and images of paradise lost have been impressed on every human heart, and every individual of the race has his own ideal of that paradise, from the cradle to the grave. But that ideal in so far as its realization in this world is concerned, is like the rainbow, an elusive phantom, ever in sight, never in reach, resting ever on the horizon of hope.

THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD.

I saw a blue-eyed child, with sunny curls, toddling on the lawn before the door of a happy home. He toddled under the trees, prattling to the birds and playing with the ripening apples that fell upon the ground.

He toddled among the roses and plucked their leaves as he would have plucked an angel's wing, strewing their glory upon the green gra.s.s at his feet. He chased the b.u.t.terflies from flower to flower, and shouted with glee as they eluded his grasp and sailed away on the summer air.

Here I thought his childish fancy had built a paradise and peopled it with dainty seraphim and made himself its Adam. He saw the suns.h.i.+ne of Eden glint on every leaf and beam in every petal. The flitting honey-bee, the wheeling June-bug, the fluttering breeze, the silvery pulse-beat of the das.h.i.+ng brook sounded in his ear notes of its swelling music. The iris-winged humming-bird, darting like a sunbeam, to kiss the pouting lips of the upturned flowers was, to him, the impersonation of its beauty. And I said: Truly, this is the nearest approach in this world, to the paradise of long ago. Then I saw him skulking like a cupid, in the shrubbery, his skirts bedraggled and soiled, his face downcast with guilt. He had stirred up the Mediterranean Sea in the slop bucket, and waded the Atlantic Ocean in a mud puddle. He had capsized the goslings, and s.h.i.+pwrecked the young ducks, and drowned the kitten which he imagined a whale, and I said: _There_ is the original Adam coming to the surface.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD.]

"Lo'd bless my soul! Jist look at dat chile!" shouted his dusky old nurse, as she lifted him, dripping, from the reeking pond. "What's you bin doin' in dat mud puddle? Look at dat face, an' dem hands an' close, all kivvered wid mud an' mulberry juice! You bettah not let yo' mammy see you while you's in dat fix. You's gwine to ketch it sho'. You's jist zackly like yo' fader--allers git'n into some sc.r.a.pe or nuddah, allers breakin' into some kind uv devilment--gwine to break into congrus some uv dese days sho'. Come along wid me dis instinct to de baff tub. I's a-gwine to dispurgate dem close an' 'lucidate some uv dat dirt off'n dat face uv yone, you triflin' rascal you!" And so saying, she carried him away, kicking and screaming like a young savage in open rebellion, and I said: _There_ is some more of the original Adam. Then I saw him come forth again, washed and combed, and dressed in spotless white, like a young b.u.t.terfly fresh from its chrysalis. And when he got a chance, I saw him slip on his tip-toes, into the pantry;

I heard the clink of gla.s.sware, As if a mouse were playing there,

among the jam pots and preserves. There two little dimpled hands made trip after trip to a rose-colored mouth, bearing burdens of mingling sweets that dripped from cheek, and chin, and waist, and skirt, and shoes, subduing the snowy white with the amber of the peach, and the purple of the raspberry, as he ate the forbidden fruit. Then I watched him glide into the drawing room. There was a crash and a thud in there, which quickly brought his frightened mother to the scene, only to find the young rascal standing there catching his breath, while streams of cold ink trickled down his drenched bosom. And as he wiped his inky face, which grew blacker with every wipe, the remainder of the ink was pouring from the bottle down on the carpet, and making a map of darkest Africa. Then the rear of a small skirt went up over a curly head and the avenging slipper, in lightning strokes, kept time to the music in the air. And I said: _There_ is "_Paradise Lost_." The sympathizing, half angry old nurse bore her weeping, sobbing charge to the nursery and there bound up his broken heart and soothed him to sleep with her old time lullaby:

[Ill.u.s.tration: PARADISE LOST.]

"Oh, don't you cry little baby, Oh, don't you cry no mo', For it hurts ol' mammy's feelin's fo' to heah you weepin' so.

Why don't da keep temptation frum de little han's an' feet?

What makes 'em 'buse de baby kaze de jam an' zarves am sweet?

Oh, de sorrow, tribulations, dat de joys of mortals break, Oh, it's heb'n when we slumber, it's trouble when we wake.

Oh, go to sleep my darlin', now close dem little eyes, An' dream uv de s.h.i.+nin' angels, an' de blessed paradise; Oh, dream uv de blood-red roses, an' de birds on snowy wing; Oh, dream uv de fallin' watahs an' de never endin' spring.

Oh, de roses, Oh, de rainbows, Oh, de music's gentle swell, In de dreamland uv little childun, whar de blessed sperrits dwell."

"Dar now, dar now, he's gone. Bless its little heart, da treats it like a dog." And then she tucked him away in the paradise of his childish slumber.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD BLACK "MAMMY."]

The day will come when the South will build a monument to the good old black mammy of the past for the lullabies she has sung.

I sometimes wish that childhood might last forever. That sweet fairy land on the frontier of life, whose skies are first lighted with the sunrise of the soul, and in whose bright-tinted jungles the lions, and leopards, and tigers of pa.s.sion still peacefully sleep. The world is disarmed by its innocence, the drawn bow is relaxed, and the arrow is returned to its quiver; the aegis of Heaven is above it, the outstretched wings of mercy, pity, and measureless love!