Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of
the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into mistakes of this
kind. They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount
importance. Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of
life. They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and
appropriating to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as
gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors.
With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the
public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall
and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately
in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man
himself. Behold, therefore, a palace! Its splendid halls and suites of
spacious apartments are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles;
its windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine through
the most transparent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and
its ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome--through which, from
the central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no
obstructing medium between--surmounts the whole. With what fairer and
nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character? Ah!
but in some low and obscure nook,--some narrow closet on the
ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted, and the key flung away,--or
beneath the marble pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the
richest pattern of mosaic-work above,--may lie a corpse, half decayed,
and still decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all through the
palace! The inhabitant will not be conscious of it, for it has long
been his daily breath! Neither will the visitors, for they smell only
the rich odors which the master sedulously scatters through the palace,
and the incense which they bring, and delight to burn before him! Now
and then, perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye the
whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the hidden nook, the
bolted closet, with the cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door, or
the deadly hole under the pavement, and the decaying corpse within.
Here, then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man's character, and
of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life. And,
beneath the show of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant water, foul
with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged with blood,--that secret
abomination, above which, possibly, he may say his prayers, without
remembering it,--is this man's miserable soul!
To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to Judge Pyncheon.
We might say (without in the least imputing crime to a personage of his
eminent respectability) that there was enough of splendid rubbish in
his life to cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience
than the Judge was ever troubled with. The purity of his judicial
character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of his public service
in subsequent capacities; his devotedness to his party, and the rigid
consistency with which he had adhered to its principles, or, at all
events, kept pace with its organized movements; his remarkable zeal as
president of a Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer
of a widow's and orphan's fund; his benefits to horticulture, by
producing two much esteemed varieties of the pear and to agriculture,
through the agency of the famous Pyncheon bull; the cleanliness of his
moral deportment, for a great many years past; the severity with which
he had frowned upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated
son, delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour of
the young man's life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces
at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause; his
confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to five diurnal
glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the
polish of his boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the
square and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material,
and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equipment; the
scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, in the street, by a
bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and
sundry of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad
benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden the whole
world,--what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a
portrait made up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what he
beheld in the looking-glass. This admirably arranged life was what he
was conscious of in the progress of every day. Then might not he claim
to be its result and sum, and say to himself and the community, "Behold
Judge Pyncheon there"?