Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865

But admit all that is claimed. Admit that increasing intelligence has changed the average of man's life from the twenty-five years of the seventeenth century to the thirty-five of the eighteenth or the forty-five years of the nineteenth century. Admit, too, that the best educated men of this generation will live five or ten years more than the least educated men. Ought we to be satisfied with things as they are? Should we not look for more than the forty or fifty years of human life? Assuredly. But it is not our superfluous sainthood which is destroying life. It is not that we have too much saintliness, but too little, too limited wisdom, too narrow intelligence, too small an endowment of virtue and conscience. It is our fierce absorption in outward plans which plants anxieties like thorns in the heart. It is out sloth and gluttony which eat out vitality. It is our unbridled appetites and passions which burn like a consuming fire in our breasts. It is our unwise exposure which saps the strength and gives energy and force to latent disease. These, tenfold more than any intense application of the brain to its legitimate work, limit and destroy human life. The truly cultivated mind tends to give just aims, moderate desires, and good habits.

Ay, and when the true sainthood shall possess and rule humanity,—when the fields of knowledge with their wholesome fruits shall tempt every foot away from the forbidden paths of vice and sensual indulgence,—when a wise intelligence shall cool the hot passions which dry up the refreshing fountains of peace and joy in the heart,—when a heavenly wisdom shall lift us above any bondage to this world's fortunes, and when a good conscience and a lofty trust shall forbid us to be slaves to any occupation lower than the highest,—when we stand erect and free, clothed with a real saintliness,—then the years of our life may increase, and man may go down to his grave "in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season."

Meanwhile we must stand firmly on this assertion, that, the more of mental and moral sainthood our people achieve, the more that sainthood will write fair inscriptions on their bodies, will shine out in intelligence in their faces, will exhibit itself in graceful form and motion, and thus add to the deeper and more lasting virtues physical power, a body which shall be at once a good servant and the proper representative of a refined and elevated soul.

Mr. Ducklow had scarcely turned the corner of the street, when, looking anxiously in the direction of his homestead, he saw a column of smoke. It was directly over the spot where he knew his house to be situated. He guessed at a glance what had happened. The frightful catastrophe he foreboded had befallen. Taddy had set the house afire.

"Them bonds! them bonds!" he exclaimed, distractedly. He did not think so much of the house: house and furniture were insured; if they were burned, the inconvenience would be great indeed, and at any other time the thought of such an event would have been a sufficient cause for trepidation,—but now his chief, his only anxiety was the bonds. They were not insured. They would be a dead loss. And what added sharpness to his pangs, they would be a loss which he must keep a secret, as he had kept their existence a secret,—a loss which he could not confess, and of which he could not complain. Had he not just given his neighbors to understand that he held no such property? And his wife,—was she not at that very moment, if not serving up a lie on the subject, at least paring the truth very thin indeed?

"A man would think," observed Ferring, "that Ducklow had some o' them bonds on his hands, and got scaret, he took such a sudden start. He has, hasn't he, Mrs. Ducklow?"

"Has what?" said Mrs. Ducklow, pretending ignorance.

"Some o' them cowpon bonds. I ruther guess he's got some."

"You mean Gov'ment bonds? Ducklow got some? 'Ta'n't at all likely he'd spec'late in them, without saying something to me about it! No, he couldn't have any without my knowing it, I'm sure!"

How demure, how innocent she looked, plying her knitting-needles, and stopping to take up a stitch! How little at that moment she knew of Ducklow's trouble, and its terrible cause!

Ducklow's first impulse was to drive on and endeavor at all hazards to snatch the bonds from the flames. His next was, to return and alarm his neighbors, and obtain their assistance. But a minute's delay might be fatal; so he drove on, screaming "Fire! fire!" at the top of his voice.

But the old mare was a slow-footed animal; and Ducklow had no whip. He reached forward and struck her with the reins.

"Git up! git up!—Fire! fire!" screamed Ducklow. "Oh, them bonds! them bonds! Why didn't I give the money to Reuben? Fire! fire! fire!"

By dint of screaming and slapping, he urged her from a trot into a gallop, which was scarcely an improvement as to speed, and certainly not as to grace. It was like the gallop of an old cow. "Why don't ye go 'long!" he cried despairingly.

Slap, slap! He knocked his own hat off with the loose ends of the reins. It fell under the wheels. He cast one look behind, to satisfy himself that it had been very thoroughly run over and crushed into the dirt, and left it to its fate.

Slap, slap! "Fire, fire!" Canter, canter, canter! Neighbors looked out of their windows, and, recognizing Ducklow's wagon and old mare in such an astonishing plight, and Ducklow himself, without his hat, rising from his seat, and reaching forward in wild attitudes, brandishing the reins, at the same time rending the azure with yells, thought he must be insane.

He drove to the top of the hill, and looking beyond, in expectation of seeing his house wrapped in flames, discovered that the smoke proceeded from a brush-heap which his neighbor Atkins was burning in a field near by.

The revulsion of feeling that ensued was almost too much for the excitable Ducklow. His strength went out of him. For a little while there seemed to be nothing left of him but tremor and cold sweat. Difficult as it had been to get the old mare in motion, it was now even more difficult to stop her.

"Why! what has got into Ducklow's old mare? She's running away with him! Who ever heard of such a thing!" And Atkins, watching the ludicrous spectacle from his field, became almost as weak from laughter as Ducklow was from the effects of fear.