Passages from an Old Volume of Life | Page 5

the romance of the past grew pale before
the red light of the terrible present. Meeting the same author not long
afterwards, he confessed that he had laid down his pen at the same time
that we had closed his book. He could not write about the sixteenth
century any more than we could read about it, while the nineteenth was
in the very agony and bloody sweat of its great sacrifice.
Another most eminent scholar told us in all simplicity that he had fallen
into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic dispatches
over and over again in different papers, as if they were new, until he
felt as if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, and does
not often do it still, now that the first flush of the fever is over? Another
person always goes through the side streets on his way for the noon
extra,--he is so afraid somebody will meet him and tell the news he
wishes to read, first on the bulletin- board, and then in the great capitals
and leaded type of the newspaper.
When any startling piece of war-news comes, it keeps repeating itself

in our minds in spite of all we can do. The same trains of thought go
tramping round in circle through the brain, like the supernumeraries
that make up the grand army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes
round through the brain a thousand times in a day, it will have worn as
deep a track as one which has passed through it once a week for twenty
years. This accounts for the ages we seem to have lived since the
twelfth of April last, and, to state it more generally, for that ex post
facto operation of a great calamity, or any very powerful impression,
which we once illustrated by the image of a stain spreading backwards
from the leaf of life open before as through all those which we have
already turned.
Blessed are those who can sleep quietly in times like these! Yet, not
wholly blessed, either; for what is more painful than the awaking from
peaceful unconsciousness to a sense that there is something wrong, we
cannot at first think what,--and then groping our way about through the
twilight of our thoughts until we come full upon the misery, which, like
some evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but which sits waiting for
us on its perch by our pillow in the gray of the morning?
The converse of this is perhaps still more painful. Many have the
feeling in their waking hours that the trouble they are aching with is,
after all, only a dream,--if they will rub their eyes briskly enough and
shake themselves, they will awake out of it, and find all their supposed
grief is unreal. This attempt to cajole ourselves out of an ugly fact
always reminds us of those unhappy flies who have been indulging in
the dangerous sweets of the paper prepared for their especial use.
Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well,--at least, he suspects
himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,--let us just rub our fore-feet
together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs his hands,
and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar twisting
movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not quite right yet.
Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought to be. Let us settle
that where it should be, and then we shall certainly be in good trim
again. So he pulls his head about as an old lady adjusts her cap, and
passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten washing herself. Poor fellow! It

is not a fancy, but a fact, that he has to deal with. If he could read the
letters at the head of the sheet, he would see they were Fly-Paper.--So
with us, when, in our waking misery, we try to think we dream!
Perhaps very young persons may not understand this; as we grow older,
our waking and dreaming life run more and more into each other.
Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the breaking up of
old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be
had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must go
out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner nap or
evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand on
ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine
right of its telegraphic dispatches.
War is a very old story, but it is a