Tom Clark and His Wife. Paschal Beverly Randolph
foundations of a better faith!'
"As if a myriad voices chimed out my last syllable, there rang through the spacious halls and corridors of the Temple, the sublime word, 'Faith!' and instantly the bolts appeared to move within their iron wards. Continuing, I said: 'I have ever endeavored, save in one single instance, to foster, and in all cases have a spirit of forgiveness.'
"This time there was no mistake. The thousand bolts flew back, the ponderous brazen gate moved forward and back, like a vast curtain, as if swayed by a gentle wind; while a million silvery voices sang gloriously, 'In all cases have a spirit of forgiveness!'
"Joyously I tried again, intuition plainly telling me that only one thing more was necessary to end my lonely pilgrimage, and exalt me to the blessed companionship of the dear ones whom I so longed to join in their glory-walks adown the celestial glades and vistas of God's Garden of the Beatitudes. I spoke again:
"'I have fallen from man's esteem in pursuance of what appeared to be my duty. A new faith sprung up in the land, and unwise zealots brought shame and bitter reproach against and upon it. Lured by false reasoning, I yielded to the fascinations of a specious sophistry, and for awhile my soul languished under the iron bondage of a powerful and glittering falsehood. At length, seeing my errors, I strove to correct them, and to sift the chaff from the true and solid grain; but the people refused to believe me honest, and did not, would not understand me; but they insisted that in denouncing Error, I ignored the living truths of God's great economy; yet still I labored on, trying to correct my faults, and to cultivate the queen of human virtues, Charity!' Scarcely had this last word escaped my lips, than the massive portals flew wide open, disclosing to my enraptured gaze such a sight of supernal and celestial beauty, grandeur, and magnificence, as human language is totally inadequate to describe; for it was such, as it stood there revealed before my ravished soul; and I may not here reveal the wondrous things I saw and heard.... Lara, Lara, my beautiful one, the dear dead maiden of the long agone, stood before me, just within the lines of Paradise. She loved me still—aye, the dear maiden of my youth had not forgotten the lover of her early and her earthly days—
"'When I was a boy, and she was a girl,
In the city by the sea,'
ere the cruel Death had snatched her from my arms, and love, a long, long time ago; for the love of the Indian, as his hatred, survives the grave.... And she said, 'Paschal, my beloved—lone student of the weary world—I await thy entrance here. But thou mayest not enter now, because no hatred can live inside these gates of Bliss. Wear it out, discard it. Thou art yet incomplete, thy work is still unfinished. Thou hast found the keys! Go back to earth, and give them to thy fellow-men. Teach, first thyself, and then thy brethren, that Usefulness, Love, Labor, Forgiveness, Faith and Charity, are the only keys which are potent to cure all ill, and unbar the Gates of Glory.'
"'Lara! Beautiful Lara, I obey thee! Wait for me, love. I am coming soon!' I cried, as she slowly retreated, and the gate closed again. 'Not yet, not yet,' I cried, as with extended arms I implored the beauteous vision to remain—but a single instant longer. But she was gone. I fell to the ground in a swoon. When I awoke again, I found the night had grown two hours older than it was when I sat down in the chair in my little chamber in Bush street, the little chamber which I occupied in the goodly city of the Golden Gate."
Thus spake the Rosicrucian. We were all deeply moved at the recital, and one after the other we retired to our rooms, pondering on the story and its splendid moral. Next day we reached Acapulco, and not till we had left and were far on our way toward Panama, did we have an opportunity of listening to the sermon to the eloquent text I have just recounted.
At length he gave it, as nearly as it can possibly be reproduced, in the following words:
PART II.
THE DOUBLE DREAM.
——"and saw within the moonlight of his room——
An angel, writing in a book of gold."—Leigh Hunt.
"And so you like the text, do you? Very well, I will now see how much better you will be pleased with the sermon. Listen:
"'I cannot and will not stand this any longer. Here am I, yet a young man—in the very prime and heyday of life, and I do believe that I shall be a regular corpse in less than no time, if a change for the better don't very soon take place in my family; that's just as certain as "open and shut." She, ah, she, is killing me by inches—the vampire! Would that I had been thirty-five million of miles the other side of nowhere the day I married her. Don't I though, Betsey—Betsey Clark is killing me! No love, no kindness, not a soft look, never a gentle smile. Oh, don't I wish somebody's funeral was over; but not mine; for I feel quite capable of loving, of being happy yet, and of making somebody's daughter happy likewise. People may well say that marriage is a lottery—a great lottery; for, if there's one thing surer than another, then it is perfectly certain that I have drawn the very tallest kind of a blank; and hang me, if it wasn't for the disgrace of the thing, if I wouldn't run off and hitch myself for life to one of the Hottentots I have read about; for anything would be better than this misery, long strung out. Oh, don't I wish I was a Turk! When a fellow's a Turk he can have ever so many wives—and strangle all of 'em that don't suit him or come to Taw—as they ought to. Bully for the Turks! I wish I knew how to turn myself into one. If I did, I'd be the biggest kind of a Mohammedan afore mornin'!'
"Such was the substance of about the thousandth soliloquy on the same subject, to the same purport, delivered by Mr. Thomas W. Clark, during the last seven years of his wedded life.
"The gentleman named delivered himself of the contented and philanthropic speech just recited, on the morning of a fine day, just after the usual morning meal—and quarrel with his—wife, de jure—female attendant would better express the relation de facto. Mr. Clark was not yet aware that a woman is ever just what her husband's conduct makes her—a thing that some husbands besides himself have yet to learn.
"Every day this couple's food was seasoned with sundry and divers sorts of condiments other than those in the castor. There was a great deal of pickle from his side of the gay and festive board, in the shape of jealous, spiteful innuendoes; and from her side much delicate sauce piquante, in the form of sweet allusions to a former husband, whom she declared to have been 'the very best husband that was ever sent to'—a premature grave by a vixen—she might have added, truthfully, but did not, finishing the sentence with, 'to be loved by a tender, gentle wife'—like her! The lady had gotten bravely over all her amiable weaknesses long ago. Gentle! what are tigresses? Tender! what is a virago? So far the man. Now for his mate.
"Scarcely had her lord—'Mr. Thomas W.,' as she was wont to call him—gone out of the house, and slammed the door behind him, at the same time giving vent to the last bottleful of spleen distilled and concocted in his soul, than 'Mrs. Thomas W.,' or poor Betsey Clark, as I prefer to call her—for she was truly, really pitiable, for more reasons than one, but mainly because she had common sense and would not exercise it sufficiently to make the best of a bad bargain—threw herself upon the bed, where she cried a little, and raved a good deal, to the self-same tune as of yore. Getting tired of both these delightful occupations very soon, she varied them by striking an attitude before a portrait of the dear defunct—badly executed—the portrait, not the man—whose name she bore when she became Mistress Thomas W. This picture of a former husband Tom Clark had not had courage or sense enough to put his foot through, but did have bad taste sufficient to permit to hang up in the very room where he lived and ate, and where its beauties were duly and daily expatiated upon, and the virtues of its original lauded to the skies, of course to the intense delight of Mr. Clark.
"Madam had a tongue—a regular patent, venom-mounted, back-spring and double-actioned tongue, and, what is more,