第5章 INTRODUCTION(4)

The second Portfolio is closed and laid away.Perhaps it was hardly worth while to provide and open a new one;but here it lies before me,and I hope I may find something between its covers which will justify me in coming once more before my old friends.But before Iopen it I want to claim a little further indulgence.

There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer,Imight say to almost every human being.No matter what his culture or ignorance,no matter what his pursuit,no matter what his character,the subject I refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think,and,if opportunity is offered,to talk.On this he is eloquent,if on nothing else.The slow of speech becomes fluent;the torpid listener becomes electric with vivacity,and alive all over with interest.

The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude.

He is accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor,who has a subscription book in his pocket,prepares his victim for the depressing disclosure of his real errand.He is not unacquainted with the conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting stranger,who,having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in the cars,or of having his pocket picked at the station,finds himself without the means of reaching that distant home where affluence waits for him with its luxurious welcome,but to whom for the moment the loan of some five and twenty dollars would be a convenience and a favor for which his heart would ache with gratitude during the brief interval between the loan and its repayment.

I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages in my own history,and more especially to some of the recent experiences through which I have been passing.

What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as if it were his private correspondent?There are at least three sufficient reasons:first,if he has a story to tell that everybody wants to hear,--if be has been shipwrecked,or has been in a battle,or has witnessed any interesting event,and can tell anything new about it;secondly,if he can put in fitting words any common experiences not already well told,so that readers will say,"Why,yes!I have had that sensation,thought,emotion,a hundred times,but I never heard it spoken of before,and I never saw any mention of it in print;"and thirdly,anything one likes,provided he can so tell it as to make it interesting.

I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself claim any general attention.My first pages relate the effect of a certain literary experience upon myself,--a series of partial metempsychoses of which I have been the subject.Next follows a brief tribute to the memory of a very dear and renowned friend from whom I have recently been parted.The rest of the Introduction will be consecrated to the memory of my birthplace.

I have just finished a Memoir,which will appear soon after this page is written,and will have been the subject of criticism long before it is in the reader's hands.The experience of thinking another man's thoughts continuously for a long time;of living one's self into another man's life for a month,or a year,or more,is a very curious one.No matter how much superior to the biographer his subject may be,the man who writes the life feels himself,in a certain sense,on the level of the person whose life he is writing.

One cannot fight over the battles of Marengo or Austerlitz with Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had a fractional claim to the victory,so real seems the transfer of his personality into that of the conqueror while he reads.Still more must this identification of "subject"and "object"take place when one is writing of a person whose studies or occupations are not unlike his own.

Here are some of my metempsychoses:

Ten years ago I wrote what I called A Memorial Outline of a remarkable student of nature.He was a born observer,and such are far from common.He was also a man of great enthusiasm and unwearying industry.His quick eye detected what others passed by without notice:the Indian relic,where another would see only pebbles and fragments;the rare mollusk,or reptile,which his companion would poke with his cane,never suspecting that there was a prize at the end of it.Getting his single facts together with marvellous sagacity and long-breathed patience,he arranged them,classified them,described them,studied them in their relations,and before those around him were aware of it the collector was an accomplished naturalist.When--he died his collections remained,and they still remain,as his record in the hieratic language of science.

In writing this memoir the spirit of his quiet pursuits,the even temper they bred in him,gained possession of my own mind,so that Iseemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed spectacles,and to move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had myself prepared and arranged its specimens.I felt wise with his wisdom,fair-minded with his calm impartiality;it seemed as if for the time his placid,observant,inquiring,keen-sighted nature "slid into my soul,"and if I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected to see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was sketching.