It pleased me in the winter months to think that the worn-out limbs, the old scarred face of Lois rested, slept: crumbled into fresh atoms, woke at last with a strange sentience, and, when God smiled permission through the summer sun, flashed forth in a wild ecstasy of the true beauty that she loved so well. In no questioning, sad pallor of sombre leaves or gray lichens: throbbed out rather in answering crimsons, in lilies, white, exultant in a chordant life!
Yet, more than this: I strive to grope, with dull, earthy sense, at her freed life in that earnest land where souls forget to hunger or to hope, and learn to be. And so thinking, the certainty of her aim and work and love yonder comes with a new, vital reality, beside which the story of the yet living men and women of whom I have told you grows vague and incomplete, like an unguessed riddle. I have no key to solve it with,no right to solve it. Let me lay the pen abruptly down.
My story is coarse, unended, a mere groping hint? It has no conduit of Gods justice running through it, awarding good and ill? It lacks determined concord, and a certain yea and nay? I know: it is a story of To-Day. The Old Year is on us yet. Poor faithful old Knowles will tell you that it is a dark day: that now, as eighteen hundred years ago, the Helper stands unwelcome in the world: that the air is filled with the cry of the slave, and of nations going down into darkness, their message untold, their work undone: that your own heart, as well as the great humanity, asks, even now, an unrendered justice. Does he utter all the problem of To-Day? I think, not all: yet let it be. Other hands are strong to show you how, in the very instant peril of this hour, is lifted clearer into view the eternal, hopeful prophecy; may tell you that the slumbering heaven and the unquiet earth are instinct with it; that the unanswered prayer of your own life should teach it to you; that in that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history of America we find the quiet surety that the To-Morrow of the world is near at hand.
For me, I have no prophetic insight, as I said before: the homely things of every day wear their old faces. This moment, the evening air thrills with a purple of which no painter has caught the tint, no poet the meaning; not a face passes me in the street on which some human voice has not the charm to call out love or power: the Helper yet waits amongst us; surely, this Old Year you despise holds beauty, work, content yet unmastered. Child-souls, you tell me, like that of Lois, may find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work of each moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beauty and joy: we who are wiser laugh at them. It may be: yet I say unto you, their angels only do always behold the face of my Father in the New Year.
MOUNTAIN PICTURES
I.
FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET
Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil
Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by!
And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail,
Uplift against the blue walls of the sky
Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave
Its golden net-work in your belting woods,
Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,
And on your kingly brows at morn and eve
Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive
Haply the secret of your calm and strength,
Your unforgotten beauty interfuse
My common life, your glorious shapes and hues
And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding come,
Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in billowy length
From the sea-level of my lowland home!
They rise before me! Last nights thunder-gust
Roared not in vain: for, where its lightnings thrust
Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so near,
Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear,
I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear,
The loose rocks fall, the steps of browsing deer.
The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls
And splintered on the rocks their spears of rain
Have set in play a thousand waterfalls,
Making the dusk and silence of the woods
Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods
And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams,
While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams
Sing to the freshened meadow-lands again.
So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats
The land with hail and fire may pass away
With its spent thunders at the break of day,
Like last nights clouds, and leave, as it retreats,
A greener earth and fairer sky behind,
Blown crystal-clear by Freedoms Northern wind!
THE USE OF THE RIFLE
In no branch of manufacture has human ingenuity been taxed more vigorously, for the attainment of the highest possible point of perfection, than in that of rifled guns for the use of the troops, on whose capacity for the destruction of their opponents the throne of the tyrant or the liberty of the people may be dependent. Nations, companies, and individuals have expended years of time and millions of money in testing every conceivable contrivance which offered a hope of improvement in precision, force, facility of loading or firing, or any of the minute details which contribute to render the weapon more serviceable.
And yet, at this day, not only are the troops of different nations armed with rifles differing in size, weight, calibre, and degree of twist, requiring different instruction in their use, and shooting projectiles of widely different pattern, but scarcely any two gun-makers will be found to agree in all the details requisite to the construction of the most serviceable weapon. The reason for this diversity lies in the fact, that perfection in any one of its requirements can be attained only by the sacrifice of some portion at least of its other elements, and the point at which the balance should be fixed is a sliding scale covering as wide a range as that of the mental and physical differences of the men on whom the decision rests.
The objects to be attained are, precision and force at long ranges, facility of loading and firing, and such simplicity and strength in the general construction as to allow the least possible chance of derangement or mistake in the management, at the moment when such error might cost the owner his life. And in addition to these points it is required that the weight shall not exceed the amount which a man of the average strength needed for a soldier can manipulate and carry on the march without over-fatigue.
It will be seen that we have awarded the first place on the list of requisites to precision and force at long ranges; and we presume it is unnecessary to enter into any explanation of the obvious primary necessity for the attainment of those qualities. We find, however, that our progress towards perfection in this direction cannot proceed beyond a certain point, except at the cost of other qualities, which cannot be sacrificed with impunity.
Regarding it as a settled point that any recoil of the gun is just so much taken from the initial velocity of the ball, (and if any one doubts it, let him try the experiment of throwing a stone, and stepping backwards at the moment of propulsion,) it is obvious, that, for the attainment of the longest range, such a preponderance of weight in the gun over that of the projectile is necessary as to secure the least possible recoil, and this point seems to have been fixed by our best gun-makers at the ratio of five hundred to one, which would require a gun weighing nearly sixteen pounds to carry a half-ounce ball or shot. We use the word ball from habit, meaning, merely, the projectile, which will probably never again resume its spherical shape in actual service. We conceive the perfection of precision and range in rifle-practice to have been attained in the American target-ride, carrying a slug or cone of one ounce weight,the gun itself weighing not less than thirty pounds,and provided with a telescope-sight, and Clarks patent muzzle. At three-quarters of a mile this weapon may be said to be entirely trustworthy for an object of the size of a man, and to have force enough at that distance to disable three men. But it is obvious that such weight and such equipments as are required for it must render it utterly useless for ordinary field-service. It becomes, in fact, a species of light artillery, and as such we are firm in the conviction that it is destined to establish for itself a reputation which will render it henceforth a necessity in the composition of an army.