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Page 9
"Yes; there is the proof of what you say," answered I, turning to
the observer; "but if only what is evil can feel the action of the
fire, then, surely, the conflagration has been of inestimable
utility. Yet, if I understand aright, you intimate a doubt whether
the world's expectation of benefit would be realized by it."
"Listen to the talk of these worthies," said he, pointing to a group
in front of the blazing pile; "possibly they may teach you something
useful, without intending it."
The persons whom he indicated consisted of that brutal and most
earthy figure who had stood forth so furiously in defence of the
gallows,--the hangman, in short,--together with the last thief and
the last murderer, all three of whom were clustered about the last
toper. The latter was liberally passing the brandy bottle, which he
had rescued from the general destruction of wines and spirits. This
little convivial party seemed at the lowest pitch of despondency, as
considering that the purified world must needs be utterly unlike the
sphere that they had hitherto known, and therefore but a strange and
desolate abode for gentlemen of their kidney.
"The best counsel for all of us is," remarked the hangman, "that,
as soon as we have finished the last drop of liquor, I help you, my
three friends, to a comfortable end upon the nearest tree, and then
hang myself on the same bough. This is no world for us any longer."
"Poh, poh, my good fellows!" said a dark-complexioned personage, who
now joined the group,--his complexion was indeed fearfully dark, and
his eyes glowed with a redder light than that of the bonfire; "be
not so cast down, my dear friends; you shall see good days yet.
There is one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into
the fire, and without which all the rest of the conflagration is
just nothing at all; yes, though they had burned the earth itself to
a cinder."
"And what may that be?" eagerly demanded the last murderer.
"What but the human heart itself?" said the dark-visaged stranger,
with a portentous grin. "And, unless they hit upon some method of
purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the
shapes of wrong and misery--the same old shapes or worse ones--which
they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes. I
have stood by this livelong night and laughed in my sleeve at the
whole business. O, take my word for it, it will be the old world
yet!"
This brief conversation supplied me with a theme for lengthened
thought. How sad a truth, if true it were, that man's age-long
endeavor for perfection had served only to render him the mockery of
the evil principle, from the fatal circumstance of an error at the
very root of the matter! The heart, the heart, there was the little
yet boundless sphere wherein existed the original wrong of which the
crime and misery of this outward world were merely types. Purify
that inward sphere, and the many shapes of evil that haunt the
outward, and which now seem almost our only realities, will turn to
shadowy phantoms and vanish of their own accord; but if we go no
deeper than the intellect, and strive, with merely that feeble
instrument, to discern and rectify what is wrong, our whole
accomplishment will be a dream, so unsubstantial that it matters
little whether the bonfire, which I have so faithfully described,
were what we choose to call a real event and a flame that would
scorch the finger, or only a phosphoric radiance and a parable of my
own brain.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, EARTH'S HOLOCAUST ***
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
**** This file should be named haw5810.txt or haw5810.zip ***
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VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, haw5810a.txt
This eBook was produced by David Widger [widger@cecomet.net]
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