Chapter XXXII: Letters

I. JOSEPH TO PHILIP.

CAMP ——, ARIZONA, October 19, 1868.

Since I wrote to you from Prescott, dear Philip, three months have
passed, and I have had no certain means of sending you another
letter. There was, first, Mr. Wilder's interest at ——, the place
hard to reach, and the business difficult to investigate. It was not
so easy, even with the help of your notes, to connect the geology of
books with the geology of nature; these rough hills don't at all
resemble the clean drawings of strata. However, I have learned all
the more rapidly by not assuming to know much, and the report I sent
contained a great deal more than my own personal experience. The
duty was irksome enough, at times; I have been tempted by the evil
spirits of ignorance, indolence, and weariness, and I verily believe
that the fear of failing to make good your guaranty for my capacity
was the spur which kept me from giving way. Now, habit is beginning
to help me, and, moreover, my own ambition has something to stand
on.

I had scarcely finished and forwarded my first superficial account
of the business as it appeared to me, when a chance suddenly offered
of joining a party of prospectors, some of whom I had already met:
as you know, we get acquainted in little time, and with no
introductions in these parts. They were bound, first, for some
little-known regions in Eastern Nevada, and then, passing a point
which Mr. Wilder wished me to visit (and which I could not have
reached so directly from any other quarter), they meant to finish
the journey at Austin. It was an opportunity I could not let go,
though I will admit to you, Philip, that I also hoped to overtake
the adventures, which had seemed to recede from me, rainbow-fashion,
as I went on.

Some of the party were old Rocky Mountain men, as wary as
courageous; yet we passed through one or two straits which tested
all their endurance and invention. I won't say how I stood the test;
perhaps I ought to be satisfied that I came through to the end, and
am now alive and cheerful. To be sure, there are many other ways of
measuring our strength. This experience wouldn't help me the least
in a discussion of principles, or in organizing any of the machinery
of society. It is rather like going back to the first ages of
mankind, and being tried in the struggle for existence. To me, that
is a great deal. I feel as if I had been taken out of civilization
and set back towards the beginning, in order to work my way up
again.

But what is the practical result of this journey? you will ask. I
can hardly tell, at present: if I were to state that I have been
acting on your system of life rather than my own,—that is, making
ventures without any certainty of the consequences,—I think you
would shake your head. Nevertheless, in these ten months of absence
I have come out of my old skin and am a livelier snake than you ever
knew me to be. No, I am wrong; it is hardly a venture after all, and
my self-glorification is out of place. I have the prospect of
winning a great deal where a very little has been staked, and the
most timid man in the world might readily go that far. Again you
will shake your head; you remember "The Amaranth." How I should like
to hear what has become of that fearful and wonderful speculation!

Pray give me news of Mr. Blessing. All those matters seem to lie so
far behind me, that they look differently to my eyes. Somehow, I
can't keep the old impressions; I even begin to forget them. You
said, Philip, that he was not intentionally dishonest, and something
tells me you are right. We learn men's characters rapidly in this
rough school, because we cannot get away from the close, rough,
naked contact. What surprises me is that the knowledge is not only
good for present and future use, but that I can take it with me into
my past life. One weakness is left, and you will understand it. I
blush to myself,—I am ashamed of my early innocence and ignorance.
This is wrong; yet, Philip, I seem to have been so unmanly,—at least
so unmasculine! I looked for love, and fidelity, and all the
virtues, on the surface of life; believed that a gentle tongue was
the sign of a tender heart; felt a wound when some strong and
positive, yet differently moulded being approached me! Now, here are
fellows prickly as a cactus, with something at the core as true and
tender as you will find in a woman's heart. They would stake their
lives for me sooner than some persons (whom we know) would lend me a
hundred dollars, without security! Even your speculator, whom I have
met in every form, is by no means the purely mercenary and dangerous
man I had supposed.

In short, Philip, I am on very good terms with human nature; the
other nature does not suit me so well. It is a grand thing to look
down into the cañon of the Colorado, or to see a range of perfectly
clear and shining snow-peaks across the dry sage-plains; but oh, for
one acre of our green meadows! I dreamed of them, and the
clover-fields, and the woods and running streams, through the
terrific heat of the Nevada deserts, until the tears came. It is
nearly a year since I left home: I should think it fifty years!

With this mail goes another report to Mr. Wilder. In three or four
months my task will be at an end, and I shall then be free to
return. Will you welcome the brown-faced, full bearded man, broad in
cheeks and shoulders, as you would the—but how did I use to look,
Philip? It was a younger brother you know; but he has bequeathed all
of his love, and more, to the older.

II. PHILIP TO JOSEPH.

COVENTRY FORGE; Christmas Day.

When Madeline hung a wreath of holly around your photograph this
morning, I said to it as I say now: "A merry Christmas, Joseph,
wherever you are!" It is a calm sunny day, and my view, as you know,
reaches much further through the leafless trees; but only the meadow
on the right is green. You, on the contrary, are enjoying something
as near to Paradise in color, and atmosphere, and temperature (if
you are, as I guess, in Southern California), as you will ever be
likely to see.

Yes, I will welcome the new man, although I shall see more of the
old one in him than you perhaps think,—nor would I have it
otherwise. We don't change the bases of our lives, after all: the
forces are differently combined, otherwise developed, but they hang,
I fancy, to the same roots. Nay, I'll leave preaching until I have
you again at the old fireside. You want news from home, and no
miserable little particular is unimportant. I've been there, and
know what kind of letters are welcome.

The neighborhood (I like to hover around a while, before alighting)
is still a land where all things always seem the same. The trains
run up and down our valley, carrying a little of the world boxed up
in shabby cars, but leaving no mark behind. In another year the
people will begin to visit the city more frequently; in still
another, the city people will find their way to us; in five years,
population will increase and property will rise in value. This is my
estimate, based on a plentiful experience.

Last week, Madeline and I attended the wedding of Elwood Withers. It
was at the Hopeton's, and had been postponed a week or two, on
account of the birth of a son to our good old business-friend. There
are two events for you! Elwood, who has developed, as I knew he
would, into an excellent director of men and material undertakings,
has an important contract on the new road to the coal regions. He
showed me the plans and figures the other day, and I see the
beginning of wealth in them. Lucy, who is a born lady, will save him
socially and intellectually. I have never seen a more justifiable
marriage. He was pale and happy, she sweetly serene and confident;
and the few words he said at the breakfast, in answer to the health
which Hopeton gave in his choice Vin d'Aï, made the unmarried ladies
envy the bride. Really and sincerely, I came away from the house
more of a Christian than I went.

You know all, dearest friend: was it not a test of my heart to see
that _she_ was intimately, fondly happy? It was hardly any more the
face I once knew. I felt the change in the touch of her hand. I
heard it in the first word she spoke. I did not dare to look into my
heart to see if something there were really dead, for the look would
have called the dead to life. I made one heroic effort, heaved a
stone over the place, and sealed it down forever. Then I felt your
arm on my shoulder, your hand on my breast. I was strong and joyous;
Lucy, I imagined, looked at me from time to time, but with a bright
face, as if she divined what I had done. Can she have ever suspected
the truth?

Time is a specific administered to us for all spiritual shocks; but
change of habit is better. Why may I not change in quiet as you in
action? It seams to me, sometimes, as I sit alone before the fire,
with the pipe-stem between my teeth, that each of us is going
backward through the other's experience. You will thus prove my
results as I prove yours. Then, parted as we are, I see our souls
lie open to each other in equal light and warmth, and feel that the
way to God lies through the love of man.

Two years ago, how all our lives were tangled! Now, with so little
agency of our own, how they are flowing into smoothness and grace!
Yours and mine are not yet complete, but they are no longer
distorted. One disturbing, yet most pitiable, nature has been
removed; Elwood, Lucy, the Hopetons, are happy; you and I are healed
of our impatience. Yes, there is something outside of our own wills
that works for or against us, as we may decide. If I once forgot
this, it is all the clearer now.

I have forgotten one other,—Mr. Blessing. The other day I visited
him in the city. I found him five blocks nearer the fashionable
quarter, in a larger house. He was elegantly dressed, and wore a
diamond on his bosom. He came to meet me with an open letter in his
hand.

"From Mrs. Spelter, my daughter," he said, waving it with a grand
air,—"an account of her presentation to the Emperor Napoleon. The
dress was—let me see—blue moiré and Chantilly lace; Eugénie was
quite struck with her figure and complexion."

"The world seems to treat you well," I suggested.

"Another turn of the wheel. However, it showed me what I am capable
of achieving, when a strong spur is applied. In this case the spur
was, as you probably guess, Mr. Held,—honor. Sir, I prevented a
cataclysm! You of course know the present quotations of the Amaranth
stock, but you can hardly be aware of my agency in the matter. When
I went to the Oil Region with the available remnant of funds, Kanuck
had fled. Although the merest tyro in geology, I selected a spot
back of the river-bluffs, in a hollow of the undulating table-land,
sunk a shaft, and—succeeded! It was what somebody calls an inspired
guess. I telegraphed instantly to a friend, and succeeded in
purchasing a moderate portion of the stock—not so much as I
desired—before its value was known. As for the result, _si
monumentum quaris, circumspice_!"

I wish I could give you an idea of the air with which he said this,
standing before me with his feet in position, and his arms thrown
out in the attitude of Ajax defying the lightning.

I ventured to inquire after your interest. "The shares are here,
sir, and safe," he said, "worth not a cent less than twenty-five
thousand dollars."

I urged him to sell them and deposit the money to your credit, but
this he refused to do without your authority. There was no
possibility of depreciation, he said: very well, if so, this is your
time to sell. Now, as I write, it occurs to me that the telegraph
may reach you. I close this, therefore, at once, and post over to
the office at Oakland.

Madeline says: "A merry Christmas from me!" It is fixed in her head
that you are still exposed to some mysterious danger. Come back,
shame her superstition, and make happy your

PHILIP.

III. JOSEPH TO PHILIP.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, 1869.

Philip, Philip, I have found your valley!

After my trip to Oregon, in March, I went southward, along the
western base of the Sierra Nevada, intending at first to cross the
range; but falling in with an old friend of yours, a man of the
mountains and the sea, of books and men, I kept company with him, on
and on, until the great wedges of snow lay behind us, and only a
long, low, winding pass divided us from the sands of the Colorado
Desert. From the mouth of this pass I looked on a hundred miles of
mountains; there were lakes glimmering below; there were groves of
ilex on the hillsides, an orchard of oranges, olives, and vines in
the hollow, millions of flowers hiding the earth, pure winds, fresh
waters, and remoteness from all conventional society. I have never
seen a landscape so broad, so bright, so beautiful!

Yes, but we will only go there on one of these idle epicurean
journeys of which we dream, and then to enjoy the wit and wisdom of
our generous friend, not to seek a refuge from the perversions of
the world! For I have learned another thing, Philip: the freedom we
craved is not a thing to be found in this or that place. Unless we
bring it with us, we shall not find it.

The news of the decline of the Amaranth stock, in your last, does
not surprise me. How fortunate that my telegraphic order arrived in
season! It was in Mr. Blessing's nature to hold on; but he will
surely have something left. I mean to invest half of the sum in his
wife's name, in any case; for the "prospecting" of which I wrote
you, last fall, was a piece of more than, ordinary luck. You must
have heard of White Pine, by this time. We were the discoverers, and
reaped a portion of the first harvest, which is never equal to the
second; but this way of getting wealth is so incredible to me, even
after I have it, that I almost fear the gold will turn into leaves
or pebbles, as in the fairy tales. I shall not tell you what my
share is: let me keep one secret,—nay, two,—to carry home!

More incredible than anything else is now the circumstance that we
are within a week of each other. This letter, I hope, will only
precede me by a fortnight. I have one or two last arrangements to
make, and then the locomotive will cross the continent too slowly
for my eager haste. Why should I deny it? I am homesick, body and
soul. Verily, if I were to meet Mr. Chaffinch in Montgomery Street,
I should fling myself upon his neck, before coming to my sober
senses. Even he is no longer an antipathy: I was absurd to make one
of him. I have but one left; and Eugénie's admiration of her figure
and complexion does not soften it in the least.

How happy Madeline's letter made me! After I wrote to her, I would
have recalled mine, at any price; for I had obeyed an impulse, and I
feared foolishly. What you said of her "superstition" might have
been just, I thought. But I believe that a true-hearted woman always
values impulses, because she is never at a loss to understand them.
So now I obey another, in sending the enclosed. Do you know that her
face is as clear in my memory as yours? and as—but why should I
write, when I shall so soon be with you?

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