Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

THE BAPTIST BAXXiiH A MiMSOBS A.H» LSSSBSASaY HWSFAJFtt. BY JAS. N. ELLS 4 CO. VOL. IV. @ta gaplfet gmiw, DEVOTED TO RELIGION AND LITERATURE, Is published every Saturday, at Atlanta, Georgia, at the subscription price of three dollars per year. JAMES N. ELLS & CO., Proprietors. Jas. N. Ells. S. D. Niles. A. K. Seago. [From Sharpe's London Magazine.’} MY GHOST. A BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE STORY. I AM not superstitious. Whatever lean ings I may have had in the days of my youth towards spiritualities and mysticali ties, and absurdities of that nature, I am now practical enough—a man of middle age, a married man. Still, as I write the heading of this page, a thrill shivers through me; and as my wife (bending-over me) reads the same, 1 feel her little hand trem ble sympathetically upon my shoulder. —■ She knows the story, and I know the story; and the story is true ! On this cold winter night, when the wind is rushing with shrieks against the window, like some hopeless ghost begging to be let in ; when the snow stands adrift under the hedge where the dead child was found, and under the churchyard wall, where the va grant who died in the work-house was bu ried yesterday, stands adrift like a spectre —the more horrible that it is motionless; when the furniture is cracking in the room, and the curtains stir tremulously about the window, and the whole house shakes, and the latchless attic-door creaks continuously on its rusty hinge—to-night, though my wife is beside me, and I can almost hear the low breathing of our baby in the room above, and can catch sounds of Christmas merriment from my household servants in I the kitchen—to-night I will toll you this , said true story of my earlier life, the histo ry of “My Ghost! ” ' I was scarcely nineteen; I was reading ' for Cambridge. These were the circum stances: The place was Ventnor, in the Isle ' of Wight. At Ventnor I fell in love —this confession is foolish, no doubt. All boys ’ of scarcely nineteen do fall in love, reading * diligently, in the pages of fair living faces some scraps of knowledge whereby they matriculate as sons of the universal Alma ’ Mater. “The hard grained Muses of the cube and square” hold Aphrodite (the Ura nian particularly) in holy horror; but, nev ertheless, she will rise from the troubled seas of young souls: the Muses have no chance against her. One day, according to my custom, I sauntered into the Landslip —that curious little bit of chaos which, if it were only a larger scale, would be sublime. I bad with me a volume of Shelley, (I liked Shelley in those unpractical days, and thought I understood him,) my pipe, and my sketch-book —pleasant companions all, ' on a glorious July morning; there being a ‘ cool, steady breeze out, and above a blue , sky, looking bluer by contrast against a J Hock of fleecy clouds which pastured on it ‘ far over the sea. Through the hazel thick-p et by a tangled path, jumping a mimic ra vine, climbing a few rock steps, and so to a 1 higher level—a little terrace of emerald velvet-grass, shut in on one side by over- 1 hanging rocks; open on the other, .and " overlooking a gradual declivity bristling with miniature crags and precipices, waving ‘ and rustling with tiny forests of hajel.— Bex ond a distant hillock, which rose again'' from the bottom of this declivity, gleamed the Channel. As 1 threw myself upon«*fie grass, its level cut against the sea, emerald green against steel-blue. I never saw such green grass anywhere else: it looked as ifi it were a special dancing place of the fairies, whither they flocked in such multitudes that their rings were inscribed one within the other, and so covered the whole turf. 1 lighted my pipe; Shelley opened of him self at the “ Witch of Atlas; ” and 1 lay , gazing idly on the emerald green and the dashing steel-blue, and the sheep-clouds sleeping on the steep of the sky, with the line running in my head : ‘•And universal Pan, tis said, was there:” And universal Pan, tis said, was there. I was too idle to think of sketching, I was too idle to read. Oh ! that luxurious idle ness of the days before I became practical ! What can be the good of staring up into a void of sky ? Do you suppose it was made to be looked at ? 1 watched a hawk quiv-| ering on such rapid wings that he seemed motionless: he swooped half way down to earth, and then rose again, poising over ex aclly the same spot. Three rooks crossed the sky, and forthwith proclaimed battle with the hawk, chasing him hither and thith er with hoarse warcries. A steamer came In sight on the strip of sea. casting a long horizontal line of smoke behind it,as straight as if it had been ruled. There was a rustle in the grass close to me: a golden, dark spotted snake glided along, leaving the grass-blades trembling in his wake. My pipe was out: I turned for my tobacco pouch to refill it, when there was a voice—' “Oh ! don’t move, please • ” I thought the snake had spoken : but no, it was n»t the serpent; it was Eve. There, seated in the hollow between two of the over-slanting rocks, “ half light, half shade.” like Tennyson’s “Gardener’s Daughter,”) ATLANTA, GEORGIA, FEBRUARY 28, 1863. was a lady—no, not a lady ; a little girl— no, sarcely that: *a young lady, we will say. She was drawing, and had evidently been quietly putting me in as afore-ground figure to her sketch when I had moved, and startled the sketcher into that strange ex clamation : “ Oh ! don’t move, please ! ” She instantly apologized —“ I beg your pardon, I am sure! ” and then laughed a little laugh at the absurdity of the scene. — She half-rose, blushing and smiling and apologizing; while I, with bashful volubili ty besought that she would continue her sketch, resuming my former position as nearly as I could. “ Is that right ? ” “Your head a little higher, if you please. Thank you.” There was silence again. My back was towards the lady, as it had been at first.— I felt uncomfortably angular, and had a nervous twitching in my legs. I longed to look over my shoulder, that I might realize and verify my momentary vision. A tiny figure dressed in white; a small, thin face, almost lost between two torrents of brown hair w hich swept dow n from a brown gipsy hat; eyes of the first magnitude, and a blush rose-red. The moments passed slowly by. 1 My vision was getting more and more in distinct. Was the hair brown? What 1 was the expression of the eyes? Was she ; a girl or a woman? This last question puzzled me the most. She was too self possessed for the one, too frank for the i other. She was very quiet. Why should 1 we not talk ? She had seemed to have a ‘ pleasant voice; I was not sure that she 1 had ; but I could satisfy myself on that | point; I would speak to her. < “I hope I have not spoiled your draw- < ing.” No answer. “Tell me vhen 1 may . move.” No answer. j 1 was silent, having some misgivings.— i There was no sound but the sawing of the 1 grasshoppers, and the faint rustling of the i hazel-bushes lower down. < “May I move now?” I asked, waited a j moment, and then sprang to my feet. The i little lady had disappeared. The grass I was slightly pressed where she had sat; I other sign of her there was none ! \ This was my first sight of Daisy Main- i waring. Os this little Hower, whom I thus t saw bedded in the emerald-grass, 1 soon t learned more, much more than was good > for my subsequent peace of mind. Three i days after, she and her father came to call I on the clergyman with whom I was read- i ing. I recognized her at once, chiefly by < her luxuriant hair. She evidently recog- 1 nized me too, but would not acknowledge ; that she did so. Impelled by that bashful ( impudence which often dares more than ] settled nonchalance, I said suddenly as 1 stood beside her: “ Did you finish your sketch?” j The blush rushed to her face; she ti died ; out a trebled laugh, and answered : “ 1 was < ashamed of myself, and so I ran away.” i A strange little person was this Daisy i Mainwaring: not a child, and yet scarcely f a woman, having all the frank innocence r and unspoiled originality of the child, with j the gravity and self-possession of the mat- I ron. 1 learned what she was, little by lit- i tie. She startled me often, outraged all my < preconceptions, following an orbit of her t own which I could not at all calculate.— < Iler inexplicability lay in this: that she was « herself. She had not been moulded into the conventional pattern: her natural an- < gles and erratic curves had not been press- i ed and tortured into the conventional line i of beauty. It takes one’s breath when un- g taught nature dares to appear openly in the t : midst ot this artistic world. She was not ’ beautiful : thin and small, with a chjld-face, s always drooping, it seemed, under then weight of her brown hair; eyes which de-h lied you, their language was one that had . i died out of the earth long ago; but this lan ! , guage I learned, and could at length read them. She was as .variable as an Aprill day, abandoning herself to joy or grief like . a child, and for causes unimaginable to any but hersclt. she always needed a strong, tender hand to guide and quiet her. This I need endeared her t<> me most. Iler edu-i cation and manner of life had been unlike that of girls generally. Her mother died when she was very young, and she was an only child. Her father was a literary man —a laborious student, shut up always in a fog of psychological problems and meta physical enigmas. Margaret had never left him; had never been to school, had never had any feminine home-companionship ex icept that of the one servant. Iler father; had educated her : and this education had been a kind of compromise between coming out of his fog to her and taking her into the fog to himself. He had experimentalized on her as psychologists must, and xx here he i should have taught had often questioned, guessing at the riddles of human nature in her as if she had been a Sphinx. The effect of this education was that she was’ ignorant of most things whien girls usually know, and had acquired an amount of heterogene ous erudition which would have puzzled J most men. She had jead numberless I strange, heavy, antique books, which seem ed to lie as a weight upon her, and from which she had gathered dialecticAl subtle ties and mystical beliefs which frightened one. Ever since she was a child she had | begun to be her father’s amanuensis, and HIS BANNER OVER US IS LOVE. now this labor of love had increased until it fell somewhat heavily on her. It was not the brown hair alone that weighed down the weary little head. Some such anomaly as I have tried to sketch was this Daisy Mainwaring, and with her I fell in love. We soon became great friends. One good influence at least of her education was that she had none of that silly prudery which most young ladies affect towards young gentlemen. She liked me, and when I used to go into their lodg ings towards the afternoon, to drag out the old man and her for a walk, would rise from her writing, run to me, and put her little ink-stained fingers in mine, saying: “Oh ! I am so glad you have come!” Then, her father would take the spectacles from his dim abstracted eyes, and put his book un der his arm : her brown hat was in a mo ment tied over her brown hair, and we sal lied forth for the Landslip. Arrived there the old man was soon absorbed in his book and Margaret and I, having chosen an effec tive “ bit” of scenery, sat down to sketch. She drew very incorrectly, but had an eye for color and an intuitive perception of the spirit of nature, which was marvelous.— Solemnly the little face used to peer over my shoulder as I altered her outlines; and then she w-ould dash away at the color with a success of effect which made me half-en vious. Our sketch finished, we talked—in what manner rested with her. Sometimes she was so childishly wild and mischievous that she had macle me angry. She teased “papa” until he came out of his fog; she teased me, blurred my wet sketch, hid my pipe; then climbed up inaccessible rocks or crept through the hazel-thickets which closed behind her and swallowed her up. At other times she would be silent and grave, and then pour out a torrent of small imaginary troubles, looking most disconso lately at the past and the future, prophesy ing eVils and wretchedness, accusing herself of unheard-of crimes and selfishness.— Again, she would start some airy supernat ural theory, enforcing it by keen arrows of borrowed dialectic, which sounded strange ly enough in her treble voice. Thus she would talk of preexistence, and argue that in dreams came our reminiscences thereof; that sleep was the intermediate state be tween life and death ; that birth and death were the same—mere gateways leading into a new state of life, and so would fall to wondering how far it was possible to retroject ourselves again through these gates, to reenter the world before this life, to reenter this world after death. Thus again, she would retail to me Berkley’s doctrine of Idealism, colored by her own poetic imagination, and would prove that 1 who sat beside her did not exist, save as an impresion on her mind ; that the grass around us was not really emerald-green, did not wave and tremble in the wind, was not grass at all: in fact, was nothing. In the truth of which theory, modified, 1 agreed ; for was I not addicted to Shelley ? The old man, hearing metaphysical words and idioms, would arouse himself from his book, and we would find his spectacles fixed upon us. He regarded us purely in a psy chological light, and would busy himself a moment in noting the effect.we had on each other—how each acted sympathetically on each. Those were happy days. Even with my good wife seated near to me by the roaring winter-fire, I can not help looking back with a reprehensible fondness on those idle summer-days. Still, I can remember that they were not altogether happy. There was a certain Sir Hercules Lowther, a huge stolid young gentleman, of whom I was at that time very jealous. lie was an old friend of the Mainwarings; had known them in London long before I had known them ; was a sort of benefactor to them, in that he was assisting the father pecuniarily in the bringing out of a grand psychologi cal history which had been the work of his lite. This Lowther was the very antithesis of Margaret; large in body, small in mind; -low, both corporeally and mentally; and yet for Margaret he had a decided and un mistakable liking. To my discomfort, I found him often in the Mainwaring lodg ings when I made my daily visit there.— Sometimes he would even accompany us to the Landslip, speaking little, but watch . ing Daisy with wide, wondering eves, pav | ing her clumsy attentions and helping her i awkwardly. I felt she could not like this I man; and yet, had she not often told me I j that we in this world—imperfect—soughd out that which was unlike ourselves to per-j feet our own imperfection? What if this' stolid mass ot flesh and muscle was the make-weight to sober down Daisy to a proper earthliness? L his Lowther was gall and wormwood to me; the more espe cially that I saw that Margaret knew her power over him, and rejoiced in it. What u oman has not a touch of coquetry in her ? Would not the lack of it unsex them ? If they were not gifted by nature with this desire q/ pleasing, where would be their magical power ever us men? Daisy, with all her innocence—her innocence by no means less immaculate thereby soon learned her power over Lowther, and over me; and used that power, sometimes ty rannically . However, before the summer was over, Margaret and I were engaged. I had no ' jealousy of Lowther then, but pitied him sincerely. Happy times those ! My dear little wife that was to be grew daily more womanly and natural; her childish wilful ness and petulance became softened and harmonized by love, her fragmentary* ab stract speculations gravitated towards a concrete centre, and so xvidened and puri fied our affection. Mr. Mainwaring was i surprised at the turn which our “acting sympathetically each on each” had taken. There was little difficulty in arranging the matter on this side. Aly wordly prospects were moderately good ; sufficiently so if he had been urgent on that point, which he was not. I firmly believe he looked on the projected marriage as a foolish and incon sequent conclusion to his psychological theory of our mutual attraction. On an other side the difficulty was much greater. I was an only son, as Daisy was an only daughter—l had but one parent, as she had; but mine was a mother. To my mother I wrote about my engagement — foolish, fervid letters, which made the affair look more boyishly romantic than it really was. However, the engagement w y as made, and to it she acceded perforce, giving her consent in cold and sarcastic phrases, and hinting vaguely at cunning fascinations and artful entrapments. I told Margaret noth ing of this. If it chilled me in one way, it but served to make my affection for her the warmer and more tender. Sir Hercules Lowther, with his large estates, would have been a much richer quarry to fly at than myself. She had given up him for me. I had no doubt of her, and I was sure that it would be the same with my mother when she came to see and know her. Autumn came; the last roses died out of the gardens; the leaves of the sumach be gan to turn blood-red ; our green platform in the Landslip had become sere and yellow under her harvest-suns. The time had come when I was to leave Ventnor for Cambridge. I walked with Daisy to our first try sting place for the last time. She was grave and sad, and then broke out into one of her old . fits of misery, which I had not heard for a long time. She threw herself on the sod den grass, and hid her little face on my knees. She foreboded all kinds of evil.— We should never see each other other any more; I should die; I should cease to love her. She ended with childish sobs as if her heart would break. I stroked her luxuri ant hair, and chided and soothed her. Then she seated herself quietly at my feet, and after a long silence began to speculate dreamily on what we should do during the separation. We weie to think of each oth er at a certain time every day; we were always to think of each other at night be fore we went to sleep, and so try to dream of each other. It was not impossible, she thought, that in dreams we might actually meet. Such things had been; why should they not be now ? The old philosophers could separate their souls from their bodies by intense thought. She believed firmly it might be done. Again, there , were strange sympathies often between twin brothers —each knew when the other was ill—each felt the joy or the sorrow of the other. We loved each other better than twin-brothers did, why should it not bo the same with us ? She was sure she would know if I were ill; she w ould feel happy when I was happy, sad when I was sad. — Supposing she was to die suddenly, would it be possible for her to come to me to say good-bye, or to summon me to her death bed? If either of us died, would it be pos sible for the dead to come and see the liv ing?—to make its presence known?—to appear visibly as it used to be in the flesh? Agreements had been made between dear friends that the one who died first should come from the future world and visit the other: would I make this agreement with her? She was pertinacious on this point; she would have this agreement made. To satisfy her I acceded, and ratified the prom ise with a kiss. This seemed to comfort her, and I scolded her for her foolishness. It had been arranged that she was to come and stay with my mother during the Christ mas vacation. There were but two months , of separation, and I talked to her of this, • and tried to cheer her with the prospect of so soon meeting again. Still this our last | meeting in the old place was very ( sad—as different from the first as was the . yellow from the green grass, the gray sky j | from the blue, the bitter east wind from the soft west. « * * * « D;<isy came to us at Christmas, and that Christmas saw the end of our engagement. It is useless to detail all the petty words and doings which Jed to this rupture. My mother is dead, (God rest her soul I) and ; the wrong that she did was done for love of me. She would have been jealous of any one whom I loved better than herself —for whom I meditated leaving her; and to Daisy she had taken a strong dislike be fore she even saw her. They were the op posites of each other, and could no more sympathize than fire could mingle with wa-1 ter. My mother was of cold temperament, precisely bred, looking upon surface prop-i erties as vital matters; never suffering & wave of passion or strong feeling to disturb : the visible level of her nature, proud of her' TERMS — Three Dollars a-year. > good blood and of her competent wealth. Daisy was what I have sketched her; and, moreover, she was poor, and neither knew nor cared about her pedigree. My moth er’s orthodoxy was shocked at her rambling speculations; it was a sin, she thought, for an y g’ r l to have a deep thought beyond her catechism, her creed, and the established interpretations thereof. She was shocked at her undisguised fondness for me: when Daisy on my first arrival ran up to me and hung about my neck, my mother blushed scarlet. I had dreaded their coming to gether, and the event I soon saw would prove worse than my forebodings. The first symptom of my mother’s aversion was a rigid silence about Margaret, when alone with me: then came the old hints’about cunning entrapments, and, in addition, allu sions to want of modesty and religion; then plainer sayings; and the issue was hard words between mother and son, and consequent quarrel and estrangement. “ Your mother does not like me,” said my poor little betrothed to me continually, and looked in my face with her solemn eyes, and lead the truth there, though my lips evaded it. It was soon plain enough. Greater familiarity emboldened my moth er’s tongue, and cruel inuendos and relent less sarcasms became broader day by day. My mother is dead, (God rest her soul.') and I w T ill write no more of this, for I can not write forgivingly even now. One morning my darling came to me and said quietly, “You shall not marry me;” and then she threw herself into my arms and kissed me passionately, and she was gone. I stormed and raged in vain. That episode of my life was over. O, Daisy ! Daisy ! if hearts do bleed—do, in their agony, wring forth bitter tears of blood—then my heart bled when I lost you ! “Did I cry out ‘Daisy’? No, wife, you have fallen asleep over your work and dreamed it. Do not come to look over me. You shall read the story - when it is finished.” ♦ ****** I sowed a plentiful crop of wild oats at Cambridge, which bore their mingled pro duce of good and ill. When I came home after degree, for a week, before I set off" for Italy, I was much more cynical and stoical than in the days of my matriculation. The old heart-wounds had cicatrized long ago, and the heart had become more callous in the cicatrization. It would have taken much to make me fall in love now, and if I had done so I should have stifled the weak ness before I had confessed it even to. my self. That past quarrel was made up be tween my mother and me; but we general ly, by mutual consent, fenced round that ugly pit with a wall of silence. I had lost all sight of the Mainwarings ; I never heard their name, never suffered myself to think about them. Only in my dreams little Daisy would sometimes rise up, her head drooping beneath the w eight of brown hair, and her solemn eyes fixed always tenderly on mine. Lowther had been my fellow collegian ; but he, the rich man, did not stay to take his degree as I did, to whom the prestige of that ceremony would be serviceable at the Bar. So of Lowther I had lost sight also, for a year or more. On the last morning of my sojourn at home before my departure, 1 sat reading my letters at the breakfast table —reading aloud a scrap here and there which I thought might interest my mother. Suddenly I be came silent, as in a letter from a college friend I came upon this passage : “ You re member old Lowther. Did you ever think it possible that that stolid Hercules would would find hisOmphale? Yet nonetheless found she is, and Hercules is a slave, and only all his wealth will ransom him. He is going to be married. The affair is to come off immediately. Omphale is not precisely a queen; in fact is a poor little milliner, or a governess, or something of that sort; her name ; s Affth. waring. Peo ple talk with horror about the mesalliance. Ido not see it in that light. A man might do worse than marry a milliner. You see I am reading for ordination, and so getting I moral.” I turned white, and gasped for breath.— j The old wound burnt like fire, and throbbed i as if the cicatrice would break. ( “ What is the matter ? ” said my mother. “There is bad news.” A.ll my cynicism rose to help me. “Not lat all so,” I said. “ You remember a little i person whom you never would call Daisy ? Well, the said little person is about to be married to a friend of mine. It is a good match. The pearl is a pearl of great price, and has sold itself for fifteen thousand per annum.” Shame on me for that sentence; but all my old jealousy had sprung up within, more acrid than it had ever been before. “And who is the purchaser ?’’asked my mother, in a low voice, but flushing to her ; temples. The wall of silence was down, and the air from the pit was unwholesome with fire-damp. I read her face. As the I old love had awakened in my breast, so the old fear had awakened in hers. She guess ed what my pale face meant, and I knew I the meaning of the flush on hers. She : should not read my weakness thus. [CONCLUDED ON ZOURTH PAGE.] NO. 15.