Orange Grove (Wall)/Chapter 1
A Tale of the Connecticut.
"And 'mid fair hills where cultivation smiles,
The Connecticut, white with sunlit sails,
Flows down and up with his unwearying tides."
Flow on gently, noble river, as thou hast done from the beginning, ever faithful keeper of the secrets entrusted to thy bosom! What tales could'st thou not tell us of human joy and human sorrow; of want, wretchedness and we; of tragedies that would chill the heart's warm life-blood at its source; and thank God for the blessed gift, thou could'st tell us also of human love, pure, deep, fervent as that ushered in on the first Christmas morn.
Beside thy still waters have lived and died earth's nameless heroes, saints and sages, pure and humble spirits that have won victories grander than were ever achieved on battle-field; from thy verdant banks the unlettered savage and the civilized Puritan have raised their daily orisons to God; and here also have wrestled in deadly conflict the vengeful ire of the Anglo-Saxon and the vengeful ire of the hunted Indian, as the native child of the forest vainly strove to defend his ancient home from the grasp, of his remorseless, but victorious foe.
But it is not of scenes like these we ask thy records now,—no thrilling tale of heroic deeds, startling adventure or disappointed love. It is the simple record of the human soul in common life, affected by no extraordinary incidents save such as fall to the lot of all.
Now that the age of Puritan bigotry has passed, one may breathe freely while treading the field of romance. Reverently let us judge those stern virtues whence superstition sprung as the natural reaction of the spiritual despotism that sent from the church the children of her own faith, to seek in austerity an antidote to the universal corruption from which they had fled. Shocked by the heartlessness of the forms they had been taught to regard as worship, and still more by the hypocrisy that enthroned itself in church and state as the supreme Head to which all must swear allegiance, they looked upon life as one sublime but awful reality, presenting no middle ground, aiming at one sole, absolute purpose, to escape the terrors of hell by obtaining the blessedness of heaven. For this should prayer and praise be raised, the ritual observed, and good works performed.
Whatever pertained to the pleasures of this life, aside from that one ultimate object, was considered too trivial, if not too sinful, to engage the attention of immortal beings, with such a momentous future before them. What were our earthly sufferings, either physical or mental, magnified to the extent of our imagination, compared to the miseries which one lost soul must endure through ages and ages of eternity, beyond what the imagination can conceive? The rigor with which they sought to enforce this idea fostered the very evils they sought to eradicate.
By separating the æsthetic from the moral and religious, by cultivating one faculty at the expense of another, and setting up their own standard as the infallible test for all, they ranged bigotry and superstition on the one side,—unrestrained vulgarity and licentiousness on the other. In banishing from their houses all fictitious works in order to avoid contamination with, what was low and sensual in them, they could not banish imagination nor repress the magnetism of human nature, which would find expression through such sources as the public patronage permitted. If denied access to the pure and virtuous, it would cater to the prejudices of the thoughtless and profane.
One of the greatest instrumentalities of moral and religious instruction exists under the name of fiction. Its office consists in bringing us to a more intimate acquaintance with human nature, not so much to philosophize upon it as to present it as it is, leaving the reader to draw his own inferences. It reveals the secret springs of human action, upon which, more than upon public deeds and military prowess hangs the fate of nations. By appealing directly to the feelings, the heart is touched when the intellect would never be reached by logic. A truth is often unconsciously imbibed under the gorgeous coloring of the imagination, when it would find no response if presented from the simple stand-point of right and duty. Jesus recognized this principle when he imparted his great lessons in the form of parables, to which the common people listened gladly.
The human soul is merely a repetition of itself in different combinations, under different circumstances. The child of to-day must pass through the same mental, moral and physical discipline to learn the use of his muscles, subdue his passions and train his intellect,—is guided by the same instinct to distinguish right from wrong, as in the days when Cain slew his brother, and sought to conceal his guilt by attempting to deceive his Maker.
In one sense there is no such thing as fiction. Every invention of the imagination has its prototype. Every recorded thought and act has come within the range of some one's experience. There is but one original Architect.
Could we read the inner life of the humblest individual, and compute the results by supplying the many little ifs which are not all the mere play of the imagination, we should have the material for a more wonderful romance than was ever published. Not alone in the dazzling theater of the world, nor in those individual convulsions that rouse every passion and set in motion every latent power of the soul, but in solitude and seclusion can we trace from phases of our own experience, how a word lightly spoken may stir the depths of a nature usually placid as the gentle summer breeze, so deeply as to reveal those stormy passions that agitate and upheave the foundations of society. The world is full of romance and our lives are full of plots. We naturally shrink from exposing to the cold criticism of the public, those hidden influences and inward experiences that contribute most powerfully to the formation of character, the benefit of which may be imparted under the combined imagery of fact and fancy.