Philadelphia, November 1850
GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK
Philadelphia, November 1850
THE OLD HOUSE BY THE GREEN
BY ALFRED B. STREET.
THERE was an old house standing on the west of the village-green that had been entirely deserted for the last six years. Its owner had wrecked his fortunes in a lot of wild land by the Willewemoc, and, smitten by the Texas fever, had written in chalk G. T. T. on his front door, and "taken the slide." He hadn't been there more than a month before the real Texas fever seized him on the hot sands of Galveston, and deposited him safe and sound in a six feet sand pit. Alas, poor Yorick! or poor "Rush," which was the name of the Texas victim.
Wanting a room for a law-office, and also other rooms for the storage of some grain, lumber, and what not (which I had taken on an execution against some unfortunate debtor), I made a visit to this house one day for the purpose of hiring it, should it prove suitable.
It was a soft, delicious, Claude afternoon, with the sunshine toned down to almost a silver tint, and the near landscape "glimpsing" out of a veil woven of mist and sun, that I turned my steps towards the old house. It was with somewhat of a misgiving that I did so, for, reader, the house had lately acquired the reputation amongst the village boys of being haunted. I can't say I believed the story, but still I felt a little nervous about exploring the recesses of the old lonely building. Shaking off my fears, however, I approached the door steps. The aspect of ruin here was deplorable.
The weather had evidently been too much for the poor stoop. There was only one step remaining. The aperture within, boxed up so long, looked grim. Two or three long grass-blades, pale from pining for the light, had struggled up, and a nettle, which had crept under from the grassy margin outside, had found itself constrained to grow, and had stretched out two great horny leaves like the wings of a dying bat. It had evidently long been gasping for fresh air, and the crumbling away of the "stoop," which was of recent occurrence, had revived its crawling life. The abyss underneath looked like the abode of the toad and snake, and turning away my gaze I tried the front door. Merely to see what noises the knocker would produce, I lifted the carved brass, shaped in the form of a spread eagle. The blow sounded through the deserted house as if the solitude brooding within had answered. The great echoes clattered about like some being suddenly awakened from sleep, and flying from room to room in affright. At last the rattling sound ceased, and lifting the door-latch, I entered. The door opened into a narrow hall, dark and mouldy, and before me was another door, with two others at each hand. Choosing the former, I turned it on its hinges, and found a flight of stairs descending into the cellar. I went down, and found myself in damp darkness. All was blank gloom around me. At length my eye became accustomed to the blackness, and, gradually, outlines of objects commenced creeping into sight. This was caused by a pale, spectral light that stole through a narrow, long aperture in the walls, to admit the air. The shape of an old recess to hold wood first glimmered on my view. Then a broken-legged buck and the remains of a rusty saw appeared. A shapeless heap, emitting a dull glimmer, then caught my eye, littering a nook, which soon resolved itself into a collection of fractured bottles. A large hammer, lying on its side in the middle of the earthen floor, next appeared. All told of desertion and dreariness, and I ascended the stairs, after glancing at the ceiling, which appeared to be composed of huge, rough rafters, crossing and recrossing like an enormous web. I ascended the creaking stairs, and, pushing open the door again, found myself in the hall. I then entered at one of the doors before noticed. It led me into a large, naked apartment, evidently one of the sitting-rooms. A golden eye of sunshine glowed in the middle of one of the closed window-shutters, occasioned by the dropping out of a knot-hole, shrunken from long dryness, admitting a long, hazy ray, that shot directly across the room, and dashed itself against the opposite wall. Three or four other misty, quivering beams darted through narrow clefts and crevices in the shutters, some splintering on the dusty floor, and some splashing, like the first, against the wall. A large blue-bottle fly, revived by the struggling sun, was buzzing around, now up to the ceiling, now against the panes, which tinkled as if smitten by a hail-stone, awakening, by the sound of its angry chirp, an echo like the drone of a bag-pipe. It was evidently endeavoring to break prison, and taste the misty sweetness of the day without. On the dusty window-sills were troops of its kindred, lying dead on their backs, with their slender black legs pointing upward, famine being legibly written on their dry, attenuated bodies, and a large humble-bee was lying on a stripe of red ribbon as on a state-bed, with three or four horse-flies around it, as if a king had expired there, surrounded by his attendants. Tired of the monotony of this room, I left it, and entered the door opposite. This ushered me into a room which had in it considerable furniture. There was a rag-carpet on the floor, darned so as almost to conceal the original coloring and pattern of the fabric. A yellow chair, kneeling from the effect of a fractured limb, was by the wall, under the closed window, and an old wornout buffet or sideboard was ranged at one side. One window was half exposed to the light, occasioned by the moiety of its shutter having fallen from its worm-eaten hinge, admitting a quantity of light and disclosing a portion of the village-green, and the upper windows of St. John's store, opposite. The hearth, heaped with cinders and ashes, gaped on one side, full of touching memories - memories of fireside delights and fireside faces, now, alas, vanished forever. Alas! poor Texas-smitten Rush, how often hast thou seated thyself by the sparkling fire, with thy household around thee, and with the winter wind wailing without, in strong contrast to the innocent peace within, hast felt the sweet content of home joys, and the soft happines which nestles only under the happy roof-tree. Thy golden days of prosperity were around thee then, and the world was bright, Ah, how different from that bleak time when the night came, and the rain beat upon thee, and the green paradise of home withered around thee! Ah, how different when the deep bell tolled its quivering music over the village-green, telling thee to come forth and lay the dead in the last home of our race! Thy long-suffering wife and thy bright-haired boy (ah, poor Rush!) side by side were they borne from thy house, thy dark, gloomy, dreary house, and side by side were they deposited in the tomb. Thou went a stricken man, poor Rush, and we all felt for thee! And when thou didst wend thy way to that land of hope, many were the good wishes breathed for thy welfare. Death hath now stricken thee, and thy grave is far from thy once happy roof-tree, and the sylvan graveyard where thy long-suffering wife and bright-haired boy sleep the last sleep of mortality. But enough of this. I shut to the door softly, and left the old carpet and the fractured chair and the mouldering buffet. I left the darkened hearth. The room was full of sad recollections, and I left them there.
Stumbling through the hall, I at last reached the stairs, and ascended. These stairs were in the craziest state imaginable. Each one clattered out a different note to the touch of my foot. One groaned a guttural bass, another squeaked a shrill treble, another led off in a tenor - this, as usual, carried the air - and every fifth one droned out a nasal counter. A perfect tune was played by the time I reached the last step. A sort of corridor now met my eyes, with four rooms opening around. These were doubtless bed-rooms. I opened the door of one. Sure enough - one of the sleeping apartments of the poor, vanished household. A quantity of straw glistened, bright and yellow, in one corner; in the other, a single downy feather alone remained. That little, fragile, soft, white, delicate thing, surviving the many hearts that composed the circle of this stricken and desolate roof-tree - how touching, how sad, how full of heart-searching truth! Man is of all God's works the most perfect, and yet how perishing! "He springeth up, as it were, as a flower, and at noon he is cut down and withereth!" God of our race! how poor and weak we are in thy sight, and yet to what a destiny, if we spend our lives aright, have thy mercy and loving kindness made us the heirs! An eternal heaven in thy sacred presence. Consoling thought! And shall we see thy face, and wear wings and touch harps, and kneel with angels before thy glorious throne? Yes, the answer comes, if we wash away our sins in thy blood, thou Lamb of God, and take upon us "the yoke," which is "easy," and "the burden," which is "light." Yes, if we walk in the "path which is set before us," bright with "the light which shineth to the perfect day." Oh, happy thought! oh, consoling promise!
I left the corridor and turned my face up to the steps leading evidently to the garret. By this time the gradually decreasing light warned me that the day was nigh done. I knew not what splendor I had lost in this house from the sunset, which was doubtless a beautiful one, as these Claude days generally steep themselves in brightness toward their close, but comforted myself with the reflection that I could gaze at the moon as long as I listed, from the garret windows. And authors, as all the world knows, have a peculiar penchant for "garrets." Did not the immortal Johnson, that leviathan of the "ocean deeps" of literature, write his "Rasselas" in one? And did not "poor Goldy" live nearly all his life in another? Did not the illustrious Beranger spend his youth in one, with his sweet, bashful Lisette, when she used to "blind the window with her shawl!" Ah, rogue Beranger! ah, saucy rogue!
But why garrets and authors, in despite of these examples, should be synonymous words, I am at a loss to understand. Or, in other words, why literature and poverty and misery should be inseparably blended, I cannot tell. In my case, it has not been so. Literature has been to me a guardian angel. In my youth, she was a "hovering seraph, girt with golden wings," the golden wings of hope. The misty future was painted by her magic into a gorgeous architecture, like a sunset heaven, when the pomp of sunshine and the splendor of crimson and purple cloud are woven and intermingled. Literature placed in my hand the humble pen, and bade me write. I wrote what I felt, and my pen ran like a steed of the desert over the smooth, white, pearly paper, whilst my brain glowed like the sun at noontide, and my veins throbbed as if lightning was darting through their sinuosities. In the depths of my sorrow, literature cheered me. She smoothed my path, she plucked the thorns from my pillow, she gave me home and freinds, and station and regard. She clove for me a way through the rock of this world's success, and made me - me, the poor, obscure, humble, shrinking, modest boy, a man! And gold, even gold, she has not withheld. It is true she has not, like the Roman soldiery, thrown upon me a golden shield, which as frequently crushes as adorns, but she has given me reasonable, just compensation. And when my foot has been aweary, and my eye dazzled and my head burning with the heat of the desert-path, which once I trod in the days of my youth, she, the bright angel, like the Saviour-bird in that grand poem of Southey's, "Thalaba," stretched over me her green wings, softening the sunshine into a tender glow, steeping my foot in sweet shadow, and cooling my throbbing temples with the delicious fanning of those same emerald pinions. Honor, then, to literature! She is "my ribbon, my star!" and to her will I cling. Ay, "until death doth us part!"
First, however, I took a survey of the room. There was one window, as before observed, with all the lower panes out. A huge, mottled spider had woven his gray net athwart the upper panes, in which it had managed to catch all the floating specks of dust, causing it to look like a woven loom. In the midst of his fortress, he lay coiled up like a dark lump, evidently on the watch for some adventurous fly. As I glanced over it, sure enough, a blue bottle buzzed past me, and was caught in an instant in the slimy, furzy snare. The spider darted like thought upon him, striking first one sharp claw and then another into its writhing body, the wings all the time vibrating like a low wind. At last the whizzing wings were fettered, and the poor victim gave up the ghost. I turned my gaze around once more. A battered fiddle stood against a worm-eaten beam, and a bow with one string was lying prone beside it. A number of chairs afflected with the rickets stood and reclined around in the easiest positions that their dislocated limbs could assume. All was ruin, wreck, and desolation. I must not forget a broken bottle or two, or a large demijohn lying perdu in a dusty nook.
Whilst I was taking this inventory of my garret, suddenly, I heard a loud whizzing, and, looking in the direction of the sound, I saw a tremendous hornet, of the true, fierce yellow breed, shooting through one of the open panes straight into the room. He was evidently very angry and wolfish for a fight. Here and there did he dart, now and then striking his head against a beam or the ceiling, growing more wrathy at every blow he experienced. As he went along like a famished panther, I heard him sing, with the braying of a trumpet-
And, suiting the action to the word, he darted straight at my forehead. I ducked, involuntarily, and the fierce demon whizzed past me with such venom that his impetus carried him clean through the pane. I looked out and saw him, as if disgusted with my cowardice, buzzing swiftly towards the old dilapadated barn near by, as if to carry
"Nest inthe barn"
in fierce triumph.I had hardly congratulated myself on my escape from the blow of the yellow bully, before I heard a second buzz, and, looking again, I saw a great wasp coming through the pane. He carried his long shanks below him like the parachute to a balloon, whilst his waist, small as Miss K.'s (the belle of Saratoga), seemed as if it would break asunder. He, too, seemed inflamed with spite against poor me, and he approached like a winged fury. Without my preliminary words, he darted at my face, and a sting, like the prick of a pin, smarted on my cheek. I aimed a blow at the dark fiend and struck him at my feet, and saw him crawl off with trailing wing to a dark corner of the garret. I retreated to an opposite nook and prepared for another encounter; but there I saw a little firefly, which had wandered from the green, frightened to death, and saying plainly, with his green, translucent, throbbing light-
"Oh, don't kill me, good friend! for I'm the summer light of the twilight, kindling up the blossoms and making the greensward sparkle for the feet of the fairies. Don't kill me, then, good friend, now don't!"
Scorning such "small deer," I turned away and looked out of the window.
Ah, the yellow moon!
Deliciously glowed the golden beauty - deliciously in the middle of the sky. I spoke to the golden beauty:
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I was thus apostrophising the golden beauty, when I heard a loud knock, apparently from the hammer, proceeding from the cellar. Instantly, at the sound, the fiddle started and placed itself in a slanting attitude, the bow stood up and worked itself on one leg towards the fiddle, and then laid itself transversely along the strings. A second blow sounded, and a sawing commenced of most dolorous music. The chairs made a bow to each other, the bottles commenced curtseying, and the demijohn waddled out of its nook and began. Then struck up the weird and witchlike dance. The hammer struck its blows like the poundings of a bass drum; the fiddle squeaked away, and the waltz went spinning around the dusky and partly moonlit garret like circles in the water. My head commenced swimming. My feet began to stir, and I launched away in the weird and witchlike dance. The garret echoed to the patter of our feet, and the very moonlight undulated in waves of melody. My breath began to ooze away, my limbs trembled, and my feet fairly ached with my exertions; and I was on the point of deserting the dance, when the knocking ceased, the fiddle rocked away to its nook, the bow fell off and lay prone beside it, and the chairs scuttled off to their respective positions. I turned, I ran from the garret, and, hurrying down stairs, burst open the front door, and found myself on the green margin of the village street that stretched itself to the stoop.
This was the last time that I entered the old house by the green. It is now demolished, and a beautiful lawn with a graceful roll extends from the top of the orchard above to the village street, carpeted with grass and purple blossoms of the clover. Naught now remains to tell where stood, in its dark and weather-stained colors, "THE OLD HOUSE BY THE GREEN."
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