"Visions And Dreams"

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Title:     "Visions And Dreams"
Author: Robert L. Taylor [More Titles by Taylor]

The infinite wisdom of Almighty God has made a plane of intelligence, and a horizon of happiness, for every being in the universe, from the butterfly to the archangel. And every plane has its own horizon, narrowest and darkest on the lowest level, but broad as the universe on the highest. Man stands on that wondrous plane where mortality and immortality meet. Below him is animal life, lighted only by the dim lamp of instinct; above him is spiritual life, illuminated by the light of reason and the glory of God. Below him is this old material world of rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; above him is the mysterious world of the imagination whose rivers are dreams, whose continents are visions of beauty, and upon whose shadowy shores the surfs of phantom seas forever break.

We hear the song of the cricket on the hearth, and the joyous hum of the bees among the poppies; we hear the light-winged lark gladden the morning with her song, and the silver-throated thrush warble in the tree-top. What are these, and all the sweet melodies we hear, but echoes from the realm of visions and dreams?

The humming-bird, that swift fairy of the rainbow, fluttering down from the land of the sun when June scatters her roses northward, and poising on wings that never weary, kisses the nectar from the waiting flowers; how bright and beautiful is the horizon of his little life! How sweet is the dream of the covert in the deep mountain gorge, to the trembling, panting deer in his flight before the hunter's horn and the yelping hounds! How dear to the heart of the weary ox is the vision of green fields and splashing waters! And down on the farm, when the cows come home at sunset, fragrant with the breath of clover blossoms, how rich is the feast of happiness when the frolicsome calf bounds forward to the flowing udder, and with his walling eyes reflecting whole acres of "calf heaven" and his little tail wiggling in speechless bliss, he draws his evening meal from nature's commissariat. The snail lolls in his shell and thinks himself a king in the grandest palace in the world. And how brilliant is the horizon of the firefly when he winks his "other eye!"

The red worm delves in the sod and dines on clay; he makes no after-dinner speeches; he never responds to a toast; but silently revels on in his dark banquet halls under the dank violets or in the rich mould by the river. But the red worm never reaches the goal of his visions and dreams until he is triumphantly impaled on the fishhook of the barefooted boy,

Who sees other visions and dreams other dreams,
Of fluttering suckers in shining streams.

And Oh, there is no thrill half so rapturous to the barefooted boy as the thrill of a nibble! Two darkies sat on a rock on the bank of a river, fishing. One was an old darkey; the other was a boy. The boy got a nibble, his foot slipped, and he fell headlong into the surging waters and began to float out to the middle of the stream, sinking, and rising, and struggling, and crying for help. The old man hesitated on the rock for a moment; then he plunged in after the drowning boy, and after a desperate struggle, landed his companion safely on shore. A passer-by ran up to the old darkey and patted him on the shoulder and said: "Old man, that was a noble deed in you, to risk your life that way to save that good-for-nothing boy." "Yes boss," mumbled the old man, "I was obleeged ter save dat nigger, he had all de bate in his pocket!"

 

THE HAPPY LONG AGO.

Not long ago I wandered back to the scenes of my boyhood, on my father's old plantation on the bank of the river, in the beautiful land of my native mountains. I rambled again in the pathless woods with my rifle on my shoulder. I sat on the old familiar logs amid the falling leaves of autumn and heard the squirrels bark and shake the branches as they jumped from tree to tree. I heard the katydid sing, and the whip-poor-will, and the deep basso-profundo of the bullfrog on the bank of the pond. I heard the drumming of a pheasant and the hoot of a wise old owl away over in "Sleepy Hollow." I heard the tinkling of bells on the distant hills, sweetly mingling with the happy chorus of the song birds in their evening serenade. Every living creature seemed to be chanting a hymn of praise to its God; and as I sat there and listened to the weird, wild harmonies, a vision of the past opened before me. I thought I was a boy again, and played around the cabins of the old time darkies, and heard them laugh and sing and tell their stories as they used to long ago. My hair stood on ends again (I was afflicted with hair when I was a boy), and the chills played up and down my back when I remembered old Uncle Rufus' story of the panthers. He said: "Many years ago, Mas. Jeems was a-gwine along de path by de graveyard late in de evenin', an' bless de Lo'd, all of a sudden he looked up, an' dar was a painter crouchin' down befo' 'im, a-pattin' de ground wid his tail, an' ready to spring. Mas. Jeems wheeled to run, an' bless de Lo'd, dar was annudder painter, crouchin' an' pattin' de groun' wid his tail, in de path behind him, an' ready to spring. An' boaf ov dem painters sprung at de same time, right toards Mas. Jeemses head; Mas. Jeems jumped to one side. An' dem painters come to-gedder in de air. An' da was a-gwine so fast, an' da struck each udder wid sitch turble ambition dat instid ov comin' down, da went up. An' bless de Lo'd, Mas. Jeems stood dar an' watched dem painters go on up, an' up, an' up, till da went clean out o' sight a-fightin'. An' bless de Lo'd, de hair was a-fallin' for three days. Which fulfills de words ob de scripchah whar it reads, 'De young men shall dream dreams, an' de ol' men shall see visions.'"

[Illustration: THE MUSIC OF THE OLD PLANTATION.]

I remembered the tale Uncle Solomon used to tell about the first convention that was ever held in the world. He said: "It wuz a convenchun ov de animils. Bruder Fox wuz dar, an' Brudder Wolf, an' Brudder Rabbit, an' all de rest ov de animil kingdom wuz geddered togedder fur to settle some questions concarnin' de happiness ov de animil kingdom. De first question dat riz befo' de convenchun wuz, how da should vote. Brudder Coon, he took de floah an' moved dat de convenchun vote by raisin' der tails; whereupon Brudder Possum riz wid a grin ov disgust, an' said: 'Mr. Chaiahman, I's unanimous opposed to dat motion: Brudder Coon wants dis couvenchun to vote by raisin' der tails, kase Brudder Coon's got a ring striped an' streaked tail, an' wants to show it befo' de convenchun. Brudder Coon knows dat de 'possum is afflicted wid an ole black rusty tail, an I consider dat moshun an insult to de 'possum race; an' besides dat, Mr. Chaiahman, if you passes dis moshun for to vote by raisin yo' tails, de Billy-Goat's already voted!'"

I sometimes think that Uncle Solomon's homely story of the goat would be a splendid illustration of some of our modern politicians. It is difficult to tell which side of the question they are on.

[Illustration: THE HAPPY LONG AGO.]

I remembered the yarn Uncle Yaddie once spun at the expense of Uncle Rastus. Rastus looked sour and said: "You bettah not go too fur; I'll tell about dem watermillions what disappeared frum Mas. Landon's watermillion patch." But Uncle Yaddie was undismayed by the threatened attack upon his own record, and said: "Some time ago Rastus concluded to go into de egg bizness, an' he prayed to de Lo'd to send him some hens, but somehow or nudder de hens never come; an' den he prayed to de Lo'd to send him after de hens, an' lo! an' behold! nex' mornin' his lot wus full ov chickens. Rastus fixed de nestiz, an' waited, an' waited fur de hens to lay, but somehow or nudder de hens wouldn't lay dat summer at all; an' Rastus kep git'n madder an' madder, till one day de ole rooster hopped up on de porch an begun to flop his wings an' crow. Rastus looked at him sideways, an' muttered, 'Yes! floppin' yo' wings an' crowin' aroun' heah like an ole fool, an' you caint lay a egg to save yo' life!'"

The darkies fell over in the floor, and every body laughed except Rastus. But to appease his wrath, Uncle Yaddie rolled out a big "watermillion" from under the bed, which lighted up the face of the frowning old Rastus with smiles, and as the luscious red pulp melted away in his mouth, he cut the "pigeon wing" in the middle of the floor, and sang like a mocking bird:

"Oh, de honeymoon am sweet,
De chicken am good,
De 'possum, it am very very fine,
But give me, O, give me,
Oh, how I wish you would!
Dat watermillion hanging' on de vine!"

Then old Uncle Newt rosined his bow, and the welkin rang with the music of the fiddle.

There I sat in the old familiar woods and dreamed of the happy long ago, until a gang of blackbirds, spluttering in a neighboring treetop woke me. And when I rose from the log and threw myself into the shape of an interrogation point, and touched the trigger, at the crack of my rifle old bullfrogg shot into the pond; the hoot-owl "scooted" into his castle in the trunk of an old hollow tree; the blackbirds cut the "asymptote of a hyperbolical curve" in the air; the squirrel fell to the ground at my feet, with a bullet through his brain, and there was silence--silence in the frog pond; silence in the trees; silence in "Sleepy Hollow;" silence all around me.

I shouldered my rifle and wended my way back to the old homestead on the bank of the river and silence was there. The voices of the happy long ago were hushed. The old time darkies were sleeping on the hill, close by the spot where my father sleeps. The moss-covered bucket was gone from the well. The old barn sheds had "creeled." The old house where I was born was silent and deserted.

As I looked upon these scenes of my earliest recollection, I was softened and subdued into a sweet pensive sorrow, which only the happiest and holiest associations of by-gone years can call into being. There are times in our lives when grief lies heaviest on the soul; when memory weeps; when gathering clouds of mournful melancholy pour out their floods and drown the heart in tears.

Oh, beautiful isle of memory, lighted by the morning star of life! where the roses bloom by the door, where the robins sing among the apple blossoms, where bright waters ripple in eternal melody! There are echoes of songs that are sung no more; tender words spoken by lips that are dust; blessings from hearts that are still. There's a useless cradle, and a broken doll; a sunny tress, and an empty garment folded away; there's a lock of silvered hair, and an unforgotten prayer, and mother is sleeping there!

 

DREAMS OF THE YEARS TO COME.

[Illustration: AMBITION'S DREAM.]

There, under the shade of the sycamores, on my father's old farm, I used to dream of the years to come. I looked through a vista blooming with pleasures, fruiting with achievements, and beautiful as the cloud-isles of the sunset. The siren, ambition, sat beside me and fired my young heart with her prophetic song. She dazzled me, and charmed me, and soothed me, into sweet fantastic reveries. She touched me and bade me look into the wondrous future. The bow of promise spanned it. Hope was enthroned there and smiled like an angel of light. Under that shining arch lay the goal of my fondest aspirations. Visions of wealth, and of laurels, and of applauding thousands, crowded the horizon of my dream. I saw the capitol of the Republic, that white-columned pantheon of liberty, lifting its magnificent pile from the midst of the palaces, and parks, the statues, and monuments, of the most beautiful city in the world. Infatuated with this vision of earthly glory, I bade adieu to home and its dreams, seized the standard of a great political party, and rushed into the turmoil and tumult of the heated campaign. Unable to bear the armor of a Saul, I went forth to do battle armed with a fiddle, a pair of saddlebags, a plug horse, and the eternal truth. There was the din of conflict by day on the hustings; there was the sound of revelry by night in the cabins. The mid-night stars twinkled to the music of the merry fiddle, and the hills resounded with the clatter of dwindling shoe soles, as the mountain lads and lassies danced the hours away in the good old time Virginia reel. I rode among the mountain fastnesses like the "Knight of the woeful figure," mounted on my prancing "Rozenante," everywhere charging the windmill of the opposing party, and wherever I drew rein the mountaineers swarmed from far and near to witness the bloodless battle of the contending candidates in the arena of joint discussion. My learned competitor, bearing the shield of "protection to American labor," and armed to the teeth with mighty argument, hurled himself upon me with the fury of a lion. His blows descended like thunderbolts, and the welkin rang with cheers when his lance went shivering to the center. His logic was appalling, his imagery was sublime. His tropes and similes flashed like the drawn blades of charging cavalry, and with a flourish of trumpets, his grand effort culminated in a splendid tribute to the Republic, crowned with Goldsmith's beautiful metaphor:

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;
Though 'round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

I received the charge of the enemy "with poised lance, and visor down." I deluged the tall cliff under a flood of "mountain eloquence" which poured from my patriotic lips like molasses pouring from the bung-hole of the universe. I mounted the American eagle and soared among the stars. I scraped the skies and cut the black illimitable far out beyond the orbit of Uranus, and I reached the climax of my triumphant flight with a hyperbole that eclipsed Goldsmith's metaphor, unthroned the foe, and left him stunned upon the field. Thus I soared:

"I stood upon the sea shore, and with a frail reed in my hand, I wrote in the sand, 'My Country, I love thee;' a mad wave came rushing by and wiped out the fair impression. Cruel wave, treacherous sand, frail reed; I said, 'I hate ye I'll trust ye no more, but with a giant's arm, I'll reach to the coast of Norway, and pluck its tallest pine, and dip it in the crater of Vesuvius, and write upon the burnished heavens; 'My Country, I love thee! And I'd like to see any durned wave rub that out!!'"

Between the long intervals of argument my speech grinned with anecdotes like a basketfull of 'possum heads. The fiddle played its part, the people did the rest, and I carved upon the tombstone of the demolished Knight these tender words:

"Tread softly 'round this sacred heap,
It guards ambition's restless sleep;
Whose greed for place ne'er did forsake him,
Don't mention office, or you'll wake him!"

I reached the goal of my visions and dreams under that collossal dome whose splendors are shadowed in the broad river that flows by the shrine of Mt. Vernon. I sat amid the confusion and uproar of the parliamentary struggles of the lower branch of the Congress of the United States. "Sunset" Cox, with his beams of wit and humor, convulsed the house and shook the gallaries. Alexander Stephens, one of the last tottering monuments of the glory of the Old South, still lingering on the floor, where, in by-gone years the battles of his vigorous manhood were fought. I saw in the Senate an assemblage of the grandest men since the days of Webster and Clay. Conkling, the intellectual Titan, the Apollo of manly form and grace, thundered there. The "Plumed Knight," that grand incarnation of mind and magnetism, was at the zenith of his glory. Edmunds, and Zack Chandler, and the brilliant and learned Jurist, Mat. Carpenter, were there. Thurman the "noblest Roman of them all" was there with his famous bandana handkerchief. The immortal Ben Hill, the idol of the South, and Lamar, the gifted orator and highest type of Southern chivalry were there. Garland, and Morgan, and Harris, and Coke, were there; and Beck with his sledge-hammer intellect. It was an arena of opposing gladiators more magnificent and majestic than was ever witnessed in the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. There were giants in the Senate in those days, and when they clashed shields and measured swords in debate, the capitol trembled and the nation thrilled in every nerve.

But how like the ocean's ebb and flow are the restless tides of politics! These scenes of grandeur and glory soon dissolved from my view like a dream. I "saved the country" for only two short years. My competitor proved a lively corpse. He burst forth from the tomb like a locust from its shell, and came buzzing to the national capital with "war on his wings." I went buzzing back to the mountains to dream again under the sycamores; and there a new ambition was kindled in my soul. A new vision opened before me. I saw another capitol rise on the bank of the Cumberland, overshadowing the tomb of Polk and close by the Hermitage where reposes the sacred dust of Andrew Jackson. And I thought if I could only reach the exalted position of Governor of the old "Volunteer State" I would then have gained the sum of life's honors and happiness. But lo! another son of my father and mother was dreaming there under the same old sycamore. We had dreamed together in the same trundle-bed and often kicked each other out. Together we had seen visions of pumpkin pie and pulled hair for the biggest slice. Together we had smoked the first cigar and together learned to play the fiddle. But now the dreams of our manhood clashed. Relentless fate had decreed that "York" must contend with "Lancaster" in the "War of the Roses." And with flushed cheeks and throbbing hearts we eagerly entered the field; his shield bearing the red rose, mine the white. It was a contest of principles, free from the wormwood and gall of personalities, and when the multitude of partisans gathered at the hustings, a white rose on every Democratic bosom, a red rose on every Republican breast, in the midst of a wilderness of flowers there was many a tilt and many a loud huzzah. But when the clouds of war had cleared away, I looked upon the drooping red rose on the bosom of the vanquished Knight, and thought of the first speech my mother ever taught me:

"Man's a vapor full of woes,
Cuts a caper--down he goes!"

The white rose triumphed. But the shadow is fairer than the substance. The pathway of ambition is marked at every mile with the grave of some sweet pleasure slain by the hand of sacrifice. It bristles with thorns planted by the fingers of envy and hate, and as we climb the rugged heights, behind us lie our bloody footprints, before us tower still greater heights, scarred by tempests and wrapped in eternal snow. Like the edelweiss of the Alps, ambition's pleasures bloom in the chill air of perpetual frost, and he who reaches the summit will look down with longing eyes, on the humbler plain of life below and wish his feet had never wandered from its warmer sunshine and sweeter flowers.

 

FROM THE CAVE-MAN TO THE "KISS-O-PHONE."

But let us not forget that it is better for us, and better for the world, that we dream, and that we tread the thorny paths, and climb the weary steeps, and leave our bloody tracks behind in the pursuit of our dreams. For in their extravagant conceptions lie the germs of human government, and invention, and discovery; and from their mysterious vagaries spring the motive power of the world's progress. Our civilization is the evolution of dreams. The rude tribes of primeval men dwelt in caves until some unwashed savage dreamed that damp caverns and unholy smells were not in accord with the principles of hygiene. It dawned upon his mighty intellect that one flat stone would lie on top of another, and that a little mud, aided by Sir Isaac Newton's law of gravitation, would hold them together, and that walls could be built in the form of a quadrangle. Here was the birth of architecture. And thus, from the magical dreams of this unmausoleumed barbarian was evolved the home, the best and sweetest evolution of man's civilisation.

John Howard Payne touched the tenderest chord that vibrates in the great heart of all humankind when he gave to immortality his song of "Home, Sweet Home;" and thank God, the grand mansions and palaces of the rich do not hold all the happiness and nobility of this world. There are millions of humble cottages where virtue resides in the warmth and purity of vestal fires, and where contentment dwells like perpetual summer.

The antediluvians plowed with a forked stick, with one prong for the beam and the other for the scratcher; and the plow boy and his sleepy ox had no choice of prongs to hitch to. It was all the same to Adam whether "Buck" was yoked to the beam or the scratcher. But some noble Cincinnatus dreamed of the burnished plowshare; genius wrought his dream into steel and now the polished Oliver Chill slices the earth like a hot knife plowing a field of Jersey butter, and the modern gang plow, bearing upon its wheels the gloved and umbrella'd leader of the Populist Party, plows up the whole face of the earth in a single day.

What a wonderful workshop is the brain of man! Its noiseless machinery cuts, and carves, and moulds, in the imponderable material of ideas. It works its endless miracles through the brawny arm of labor, and the deft fingers of skill, and the world moves forward by its magic. Aladdin rubbed his lamp and the shadowy genii of fable performed impossible wonders. The dreamer of to-day rubs his fingers through his hair and the genii of his intellect work miracles which eclipse the most extravagant fantasies of the "Arabian Nights."

A dreamer saw the imprisoned vapor throw open the lid of a teakettle, and lo! a steam engine came puffing from his brain. And now many a huge monster of Corliss, beautiful as a vision of Archimedes and smooth in movement as a wheeling planet, sends its thrill of life and power through mammoth plants of humming machinery. The fiery courser of the steel-bound track shoots over hill and plain, like a mid-night meteor through the fields of heaven, outstripping the wind.

A dreamer carried about in his brain a great Leviathan. It was launched upon the billows, and like some collossal swan the palatial steamship now sweeps in majesty through the blue wastes of old ocean.

Six hundred years before Christ, some old Greek discovered electricity by rubbing a piece of amber, and unable to grasp the mystery, he called it soul. His discovery slept for more than two thousand years until it awoke in the dreams of Galvani, and Volta, and Benjamin Franklin. In the morning of the nineteenth century the sculptor and scientist, Morse, saw in his dreams, phantom lightnings leap across continents, and oceans, and felt the pulse of thunder beat as it came bounding over threads of iron that girdled the earth. In each throb he read a human thought. The electric telegraph emerged from his brain, like Minerva from the brow of Jove, and the world received a fresh baptism of light and glory.

In a few more years we will step over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater wonders will the dreamers yet unfold? It may be that another magician, greater even than Edison, the "Wizzard of Menloe Park," will rise up and coax the very laws of nature into easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the "electro-scoot," and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they started! I think a new discovery will be made by which the young man of the future may stand at his "kiss-o-phone" in New York, and kiss his sweetheart in Chicago with all the delightful sensations of the "aforesaid and the same." I think some Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and by an ultimate concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the future to carry a year's provisions in his vest pocket. The sucking dude will store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A train load of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box, and a thousand fat Texas cattle in an oyster can. Power will be condensed from a forty horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will fight with chain lightning, and the battlefield will become so hot and unhealthy that,

"He who fights and runs away
Will never fight another day."

Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the aluminium wings of the swift Pegassus of the air the light-hearted society girl will sail among the stars, and

"Behind some dark cloud, where no one's allowed,
Make love to the man in the moon."

The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be bald headed; the women will run the Government--and then I think the end of time will be near at hand.

 

DREAMS.

I heard a song of love, and tenderness, and sadness, and beauty, sweeter than the song of a nightingale. It was breathed from the soul of Robert Burns. I heard a song of deepest passion surging like the tempest-tossed waves of the sea. It was the restless spirit of Lord Byron.

I heard a mournful melody of despairing love, full of that wild, mad, hopeless longing of a bereaved soul which the mid-night raven mocked at with that bitterest of all words--"Nevermore!" It was the weird threnody of the brilliant, but ill-starred Poe, who, like a meteor, blazed but for a moment, dazzling a hemisphere, and then went out forever in the darkness of death.

Then I was exalted, and lifted into the serene sunlight of peace, as I listened to the spirit of faith, pouring out in the songs of our own immortal Longfellow.

With Milton I walked the scented isles of long lost Paradise, and caught the odor of its bloom, and the swell of its music. He led me through its rose brakes, and under the vermilion and flame of its orchids and honeysuckles, down to the margin of the limpid river, where the water lilies slept in fadeless beauty, and the lotus nodded to the rippling waves; and there, under a bridal arch of orange blossoms, cordoned by palms and many-colored flowers, I saw a vision of bliss and beauty from which Satan turned away with an envy that stabbed him with pangs unfelt before in hell! It was earth's first vision of wedded love.

But the horizon of Shakespeare was broader than them all. There is no depth which he has not sounded, no height which he has not measured. He walked in the gardens of the intellectual gods and gathered sweets for the soul from a thousand unwithering flowers. He caught music from the spheres, and beauty from ten thousand fields of light. His brain was a mighty loom. His genius gathered and classified, his imagination spun and wove; the flying shuttle of his fancy delivered to the warp of wisdom and philosophy the shining threads spun from the fibres of human hearts and human experience; and with his wondrous woof of pictured tapestries, he clothed all thought in the bridal robes of immortality. His mind was a resistless flood that deluged the world of literature with its glory. The succeeding poets are but survivors as by the ark, and, like the ancient dove, they gather and weave into garlands only the "flotsam" of beauty which floats on the bosom of the Shakespearean flood.

Oh, Shakespeare, archangel of poetry! The light from thy wings drowns the stars and flashes thy glory on the civilizations of the whole world!

"Unwearied, unfettered, unwatched, unconfined,
Be my spirit like thee, in the world of the mind;
No leaning for earth e'er to weary its flight;
But fresh as thy pinions in regions of light."

All honor to the poets and philosophers and painters and sculptors and musicians of the world! They are its honeybees; its songbirds; its carrier doves, its ministering angels.

 

VISIONS OF DEPARTED GLORY.

I walked with Gibbon and Hume, through the sombre halls of the past, and caught visions of the glory of the classic Republics and Empires that flourished long ago, and whose very dust is still eloquent with the story of departed greatness. The spirit of genius lingers there still like the fragrance of roses faded and gone.

I thought I heard the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer, rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing like an oracle in his academic shades.

The canvas spoke and the marble breathed when Apelles painted and Phidias carved.

I stood with Michael Angelo and saw him chisel his dreams from the marble.

I saw Raphael spread his visions of beauty in immortal colors.

I sat under the spirit of Paganini's power. The flow of his melody turned the very air into music. I thought I was in the presence of Divinity as I listened to the warbles, and murmurs, and the ebb and flow of the silver tides, from his violin. And I said: Music is the dearest gift of God to man. The sea, the forest, the field, and the meadow, are the very fountain heads of music.

I believe that Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all the great masters, caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians. I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the rolling billows of the angry ocean.

 

NATURE'S MUSICIANS.

I sat on the grassy brink of a mountain stream in the gathering twilight of evening. The shadowy woodlands around me became a great theatre. The greensward before me was its stage.

The tinkling bell of a passing herd rang up the curtain, and I sat there all alone in the hush of the dying day and listened to a concert of nature's musicians who sing as God hath taught them to sing. The first singer that entered my stage was Signor Grasshopper. He mounted a mullein leaf and sang, and sang, and sang, until Professor Turkey Gobbler slipped up behind him with open mouth, and Signor Grasshopper vanished from the footlights forevermore. And as Professor Turkey Gobbler strutted off my stage with a merry gobble, the orchestra opened before me with a flourish of trumpets. The katydid led off with a trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E. flat cornet; the bumblebee played on his violoncello, and the jay-bird, laughed with his piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum, and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole's leading violin. But it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I saw a youth standing there in the shadows with his arm around "something" and holding his sweetheart's hand in his. He bent forward; lip met lip, and there was an explosion like the squeak of a new boot. The lassie vanished into the cottage; the lad vanished over the hill, and as he vanished he swung his hat in the shadows, and sang back to her his happy love song.

[Illustration: LOVE AMONG THE HOLLYHOCKS.]

Did you never hear a mountain love song? This is the song he sang:

"Oh, when she saw me coming she rung her hands and cried,
She said I was the prettiest thing that ever lived or died.
Oh, run along home Miss Nancy, get along home Miss Nancy,
Run along home Miss Nancy, down in Rockinham."

The birds inclined their heads to listen to his song as it died away on the drowsy summer air.

That night I slept in a mansion; but I "closed my eyes on garnished rooms to dream of meadows and clover blooms," and love among the hollyhocks. And while I dreamed I was serenaded by a band of mosquitoes. This is the song they sang:

"Hush my dear, lie still and slumber;
Holy angels guard thy bed;
Heavenly 'skeeters without number
Buzzing 'round your old bald head!!!"

 

PREACHER'S PARADISE.

There is no land on earth which has produced such quaint and curious characters as the great mountainous regions of the South, and yet no country has produced nobler or brainier men.

When I was a barefooted boy my grandfather's old grist mill was the Mecca of the mountaineers. They gathered there on the rainy days to talk politics and religion, and to drink "mountain" dew and fight. Adam Wheezer was a tall, spindle-shanked old settler as dark as an Indian, and he wore a broad, hungry grin that always grew broader at the sight of a fat sheep. The most prominent trait of Adam's character, next to his love of mutton, was his bravery. He stood in the mill one day with his empty sack under his arm, as usual, when Bert Lynch, the bully of the mountains, with an eye like a game rooster's, walked up to him and said: "Adam, you've bin a-slanderin' of me, an' I'm a-gwine to give you a thrashin'." He seized Adam by the throat and backed him under the meal spout. Adam opened his mouth to squall and it spouted meal like a whale. He made a surge for breath and liberty and tossed Bert away like a feather. Then he shot out of the mill door like a rocket, leaving his old battered plug hat and one prong of his coat tail in the hands of the enemy. He ran through the creek and knocked it dry as he went. He made a bee line for my grandfather's house, a quarter of a mile away, on the hill. He burst into the sitting-room, covered with meal and panting like a bellowsed horse, frightening my grandmother almost into hysterics. The old lady screamed and shouted: "What in the world is the matter, Adam?" Adam replied: "That there durned Bert Lynch is down yander a-tryin' to raise a fuss with me."

But every dog has his day. Brother Billy Patterson preached from the door of the mill on the following Sunday. It was his first sermon in that "neck of the woods," and he began his ministrations with a powerful discourse, hurling his anathemas against Satan and sin and every kind of wickedness. He denounced whiskey. He branded the bully as a brute and a moral coward, and personated Bert, having witnessed his battle with Adam. This was too much for the champion. He resolved to "thrash" Brother Patterson, and in a few days they met at the mill. Bert squared himself and said: "Parson, you had your turn last Sunday; it's mine to-day. Pull off that broadcloth an' take your medicine. I'm a-gwine to suck the marrow out'n them ole bones o' yourn." The pious preacher plead for peace, but without avail. At last he said: "Then, if nothing but a fight will satisfy you, will you allow me to kneel down and say my prayer before we fight?" "O yes, that's all right parson," said Bert. "But cut yer prayer short, for I'm a-gwine to give you a good sound thrashin'."

The preacher knelt and thus began to pray: "Oh Lord, Thou knowest that when I killed Bill Cummings, and John Brown, and Jerry Smith, and Levi Bottles, that I did it in self defense. Thou knowest, Oh Lord, that when I cut the heart out of young Sliger, and strewed the ground with the brains of Paddy Miles, that it was forced upon me, and that I did it in great agony of soul. And now, Oh Lord, I am about to be forced to put in his coffin, this poor miserable wretch, who has attacked me here to-day. Oh Lord, have mercy upon his soul and take care of his helpless widow and orphans when he is gone!"

And he arose whetting his knife on his shoe-sole, singing:

"Hark, from the tomb a doleful sound,
Mine ears attend the cry."

But when he looked around, Bert was gone. There was nothing in sight but a little cloud of dust far up the road, following in the wake of the vanishing champion.

 

BROTHER ESTEP AND THE TRUMPET.

During the great revival which followed Brother Patterson's first sermon and effective prayer, the hour for the old-fashioned Methodist love feast arrived. Old Brother Estep, in his enthusiasm on such occasions sometimes "stretched his blanket." It was his glory to get up a sensation among the brethren. He rose and said: "Bretheren, while I was a-walkin' in my gyardin late yisterday evenin', a-meditatin' on the final eend of the world, I looked up, an' I seed Gabrael raise his silver trumpet, which was about fifty foot long, to his blazin' lips, an' I hearn him give it a toot that knocked me into the fence corner an' shuck the very taters out'n the ground."

"Tut, tut," said the old parson, "don't talk that way in this meeting; we all know you didn't hear Gabrael blow his trumpet." The old man's wife jumped to her feet to help her husband out, and said: "Now parson, you set down there. Don't you dispute John's word that-away--He mout a-hearn a toot or two."

 

"WAMPER-JAW" AT THE JOLLIFICATION.

The sideboard of those good old times would have thrown the prohibition candidate of to-day into spasms. It sparkled with cut glass decanters full of the juices of corn, and rye, and apple. The old Squire of the mill "Deestrict" had as many sweet, buzzing friends as any flower garden or cider press in Christendom. The most industrious bee that sucked at the Squire's sideboard was old "Wamper-jaw." His mouth reached from ear to ear, and was inlaid with huge gums as red as vermilion; and when he laughed it had the appearance of lightning. On the triumphant day of the Squire's re-election to his great office, when everything was lovely and "the goose hung high," he was surrounded by a large crowd of his fellow citizens, and Thomas Jefferson, in his palmiest days, never looked grander than did the Squire on this occasion. He was attired in his best suit of homespun, the choicest product of his wife's dye pot. His immense vest with its broad luminous stripes, checked the rotundity of his ample stomach like the lines of latitude and longitude, and resembled a half finished map of the United States. His blue jeans coat covered his body as the waters cover the face of the great deep, and its huge collar encircled the back of his head like the belts of light around a planet.

The Squire was regaling his friends with his latest side-splitting jokes. Old "Wamper-jaw" threw himself back in his chair and exploded with peal after peal of laughter. But suddenly he looked around and said: "Gen-tul-men, my jaw's flew out'n jint!"

His comrades seized him and pulled him all over the yard trying to get it back. Finally old "Wamper-jaw" mounted his mule, and with pounding heels, rode, like Tam O'Shanter, to the nearest doctor who lived two miles away. The doctor gave his jaw a mysterious yank and it popped back into socket. "Wamper-jaw" rushed back to join in the festivities at the Squire's. The glasses were filled again; another side-splitting joke was told, another peal of laughter went 'round, when "Wamper-jaw" threw his hand to his face and said: "Gen-tul-men, she's out agin!!!" There was another hasty ride for the doctor. But in the years that followed; "Wamper-jaw" was never known to laugh aloud. On the most hilarious occasions he merely showed his gums.

[Illustration: "WAMPER-JAW."]

 

THE TINTINNABULATION OF THE DINNER BELLS.

How many millions dream on the lowest planes of life! How few ever reach the highest and like stars of the first magnitude, shed their light upon the pathway of the marching centuries! What multitudes there are whose horizons are lighted with visions and dreams of the flesh pots and soup bowls,--whose Fallstaffian aspirations never rise above the fat things of this earth, and whose ear flaps are forever inclined forward, listening for the dinner bells!

"The bells, bells, bells!
What a world of pleasure their harmony foretells!
The bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells!
The tintinnabulation of the dinner bells!"

In my native mountains there once lived one of these old gluttonous dreamers. I think he was the champion eater of the world. Many a time I have seen him at my grandfather's table, and the viands and battercakes vanished "like the baseless fabric of a vision,"--he left not "a wreck behind." But one day, in the voracity of his shark-like appetite, he unfortunately undertook too large a contract for the retirement of an immense slice of ham. It scraped its way down his rebellious esophagus for about two inches, and lodged as tightly as a bullet in a rusty gun. His prodigious Adam's apple suddenly shot up to his chin; his eyes protruded, and his purple neck craned and shortened by turns, like a trombone in full blast. He scrambled from the table and pranced about the room like a horse with blind staggers. My grandfather sprang at him and dealt him blow after blow in the back, which sounded like the blows of a mallet on a dry hide; but the ham wouldn't budge. The old man ran out into the yard and seized a plank about three feet long, and rushed into the room with it drawn.

"Now William," said he, "get down on your all-fours." William got down. "Now William, when I hit, you swallow." He hit, and it popped like a Winchester rifle.

William shot into the corner of the room like a shell from a mortar, but in a moment he was seated at his place at the table again, with a broad grin on his face. "Is it down William?" shouted the old man. "Yes, Mr. Haynes, the durned thing's gone,--please pass the ham."

[Illustration: "WHEN I HIT, YOU SWALLOW."]

I thought how vividly that old glutton illustrated the fools who, in their effort to gulp down the sensual pleasures of this world, choke the soul, and nothing but the clap-board of hard experience, well laid on, can dislodge the ham, and restore the equilibrium.

 

PHANTOMS OF THE WINE CUP.

A little below the glutton lies the plane of the drunkard whose visions and dreams are bounded by the horizon of a still tub. "A little wine for the stomach's sake is good," but in the trembling hand of a drunkard, every crimson drop that glows in the cup is crushed from the roses that once bloomed on the cheeks of some helpless woman. Every phantom of beauty that dances in it is a devil; and yet, millions quaff, and with a hideous laugh, go staggering to the grave.

 

THE MISSING LINK.

A little below the plane of the drunkard is the dude, that missing link between monkey and man, whose dream of happiness is a single eye-glass, a kangaroo strut, and three hours of conversation without a sensible sentence; whose only conception of life is to splurge, and flirt, and spend his father's fortune.

"Out of the fullness of his heart his mouth singeth:"

"I'm a dandy; I'm a swell.
Just from college, can't you tell?
I'm the beau of every belle;
I'm the swellest of the swell.

I'm the King of all the balls,
I'm a Prince in banquet halls.
My daddy's rich, they know it well,
I'm the swellest of the swell."

 

NIGHTMARE.

Unhappily for us all, in the world of visions and dreams, there is a dark side to human life. Here have been dreamed out all the crimes which have steeped our race in shame since the expulsion from Eden, and all the wars that have cursed mankind since the birth of history. Alexander the Great was a monster whose sword drank the blood of a conquered world. Julius Cæsar marched his invincible armies, like juggernauts, over the necks of fallen nations. Napoleon Bonaparte rose with the morning of the nineteenth century, and stood, like some frightful comet, on its troubled horizon. Distraught with the dream of conquest and empire, he hovered like a god on the verge of battle. Kings and emperors stood aghast. The sun of Austerlitz was the rising sun of his glory and power, but it went down, veiled in the dark clouds of Waterloo, and Napoleon the Great, uncrowned, unthroned, and stunned by the dreadful shock that annihilated the Grand Army and the Old Guard, "wandered aimlessly about on the lost field," in the gloom that palled a fallen empire, as Hugo describes him, "the somnambulist of a vast, shattered dream."

 

INFIDELITY.

It is in the desert of evil, where virtue trembles to tread, where hope falters, and where faith is crucified, that the infidel dreams. To him, all there is of heaven is bounded by this little span of life; all there is of pleasure and love is circumscribed by a few fleeting years; all there is of beauty is mortal; all there is of intelligence and wisdom is in the human brain; all there is of mystery and infinity is fathomable by human reason, and all there is of virtue is measured by the relations of man to man. To him, all must end in the "tongueless silence of the dreamless dust," and all that lies beyond the grave is a voiceless shore and a starless sky. To him, there are no prints of deathless feet on its echoless sands, no thrill of immortal music in its joyless air.

He has lost his God, and like some fallen seraph flying in rayless night, he gropes his way on flagging pinions, searching for light where darkness reigns, for life where Death is King.

 

THE DREAM OF GOD.

I have wondered a thousand times, if an infidel ever looked through a telescope. The universe is the dream of God, and the heavens declare His glory. There is our mighty sun, robed in the brightness of his eternal fires, and with his planets forever wheeling around him. Yonder is Mercury, and Venus, and there is Mars, the ruddy globe, whose poles are white with snow, and whose other zones seem dotted with seas and continents. Who knows but that his roseate color is only the blush of his flowers? Who knows but that Mars may now be a paradise inhabited by a blessed race, unsullied by sin, untouched by death? There is the giant orb of Jupiter, the champion of the skies, belted and sashed with vapor and clouds; and Saturn, haloed with bands of light and jeweled with eight ruddy moons; and there is Uranus, another stupendous world, speeding on in the prodigious circle of his tireless journey around the sun. And yet another orbit cuts the outer rim of our system; and on its gloomy pathway, the lonely Neptune walks the cold, dim solitudes of space. In the immeasurable depths beyond appear millions of suns, so distant that their light could not reach us in a thousand years. There, spangling the curtains of the black profound, shine the constellations that sparkle like the crown jewels of God. There are double, and triple, and quadruple suns of different colors, commingling their gorgeous hues and flaming like archangels on the frontier of stellar space. If we look beyond the most distant star, the black walls are flecked with innumerable patches of filmy light like the dewy gossamers of the spider's loom that dot our fields at morn. What beautiful forms we trace among those phantoms of light! circles, and elipses, and crowns, and shields, and spiral wreaths of palest silver. And what are they? Did I say phantoms of light? The telescope resolves them into millions of suns, standing out from the oceans of white hot matter that contain the germs of countless systems yet to be. And so far removed from us are these suns, that the light which comes to us from them to-night has been speeding on its way for more than two million years.

What is that white belt we call the milky way, which spans the heavens and sparkles like a Sahara of diamonds? It is a river of stars: it is a gulf stream of suns; and if each of these suns holds in his grasp a mighty system of planets, as ours does, how many multiplied millions of worlds like our own are now circling in that innumerable concourse?

Oh, where are the bounds of this divine conception! Where ends this dream of God? And is there no life and intelligence in all this throng of spheres? Are there no sails on those far away summer seas, no wings to cleave those crystal airs, no forms divine to walk those radiant fields? Are there no eyes to see those floods of light, no hearts to share with ours that love which holds all these mighty orbs in place?

It cannot be, it cannot be! Surely there is a God! If there is not, life is a dream, human experience is a phantom, and the universe is a flaunting lie!

[The end]
Robert L. Taylor's short story: "Visions And Dreams"

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