Not very far from that you will find a fair mound, of dimensions fit to hold a well-grown man.I will not tell you the inscription upon the stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish you to be sure of the resting-place of one who could not bear to think that he should be known as a cripple among the dead, after being pointed at so long among the living.There is one sign, it is true, by which, if you have been a sagacious reader of these papers, you will at once know it; but I fear you read carelessly, and must study them more diligently before you will detect the hint to which I allude.
The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to lie, among the old names and the old bones of the old Boston people.At the foot of his resting-place is the river, alive with the wings and antennae of its colossal water-insects; over opposite are the great war-ships, and the heavy guns, which, when they roar, shake the soil in which he lies; and in the steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are the sweet chimes which are the Boston boy's Ranz des Vaches, whose echoes follow him all the world over.
In Pace!
I, told you a good while ago that the Little Gentleman could not do a better thing than to leave all his money, whatever it might be, to the young girl who has since that established such a claim upon him.
He did not, however.A considerable bequest to one of our public institutions keeps his name in grateful remembrance.The telescope through which he was fond of watching the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which had been the source of such odd fancies on my part, is now the property of a Western College.You smile as you think of my taking it for a fleshless human figure, when I saw its tube pointing to the sky, and thought it was an arm, under the white drapery thrown over it for protection.So do I smile now; I belong to the numerous class who are prophets after the fact, and hold my nightmares very cheap by daylightI have received many letters of inquiry as to the sound resembling a woman's voice, which occasioned me so many perplexities.Some thought there was no question that he had a second apartment, in which he had made an asylum for a deranged female relative.Others were of opinion that he was, as I once suggested, a "Bluebeard" with patriarchal tendencies, and I have even been censured for introducing so Oriental an element into my record of boarding-house experience.
Come in and see me, the Professor, some evening when I have nothing else to do, and ask me to play you Tartini's Devil's Sonata on that extraordinary instrument in my possession, well known to amateurs as one of the masterpieces of Joseph Guarnerius.The vox humana of the great Haerlem organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the organ of the Cambridge chapel might be mistaken in some of its tones for a human voice; but I think you never heard anything come so near the cry of a prima donna as the A string and the E string of this instrument.A single fact will illustrate the resemblance.I was executing some tours de force upon it one evening, when the policeman of our district rang the bell sharply, and asked what was the matter in the house.He had heard a woman's screams,--he was sure of it.I had to make the instrument sing before his eyes before he could be satisfied that he had not heard the cries of a woman.The instrument was bequeathed to me by the Little Gentleman.
Whether it had anything to do with the sounds I heard coming from his chamber, you can form your own opinion;--I have no other conjecture to offer.It is not true that a second apartment with a secret entrance was found; and the story of the veiled lady is the invention of one of the Reporters.
Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he died a Catholic.
She had seen the crucifix, and believed that he prayed on his knees before it.The last circumstance is very probably true; indeed, there was a spot worn on the carpet just before this cabinet which might be thus accounted for.Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, should not love to look on that divine image of blameless suffering, I cannot see; on the contrary, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world that he should.But there are those who want to make private property of everything, and can't make up their minds that people who don't think as they do should claim any interest in that infinite compassion expressed in the central figure of the Christendom which includes us all.
The divinity-student expressed a hope before the boarders that he should meet him in heaven.--The question is, whether he'll meet you,--said the young fellow John, rather smartly.The divinity-student had n't thought of that.
However, he is a worthy young man, and I trust I have shown him in a kindly and respectful light.He will get a parish by-and-by; and, as he is about to marry the sister of an old friend,--the Schoolmistress, whom some of us remember,--and as all sorts of expensive accidents happen to young married ministers, he will be under bonds to the amount of his salary, which means starvation, if they are forfeited, to think all his days as he thought when he was settled,--unless the majority of his people change with him or in advance of him.A hard ease, to which nothing could reconcile a man, except that the faithful discharge of daily duties in his personal relations with his parishioners will make him useful enough in his way, though as a thinker he may cease to exist before he has reached middle age.
