VERY person's feelings have a front-door and side-door by which they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. Some keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some, bolted, —with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in; and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its threshold. This front-door leads into a passage which opens into an ante-room, and this into the interior apartments. The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers. There is almost always at least one key to this side-door, This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none is given with it! Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the side-door. The fact of possessing one renders those even who are dear to you very terrible at times. You can keep the world out from your front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the sidedoor, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones,-touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found. A delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities! From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of the taste are struck with a crushing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses. A few exercises on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them No stranger can get a great many notes 44 COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION. of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,-parent, child, brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to whom you give a sidedoor key; too many have them already. Down on the sharp-horned ledges, Woodsy and wild and lonesome, East and west and north and south; Only the village of fishers Down at the river's mouth; Only here and there a clearing, With its farm-house rude and new, And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, Where the scanty harvest grew. No shout of home-bound reapers, No vintage-song he heard, And on the green no dancing feet The merry violin stirred. Small heed had the careless cobbler What sorrow of heart was theirs Who travailed in pain with the births of God, And planted a state with prayers,— Hunting of witches and warlocks, Smiting the heathen horde,One hand on the mason's trowel, And one on the soldier's sword! But give him his ale and cider, Give him his pipe and song, Or the balance of right and wrong. |