Part 2 — THE DREAM OF MEHEMET.

AN APOLOGUE.

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BY RICHARD PENN SMITH.

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Thus spoke the gray-haired dervise. Selim was left to my care; his dying parents bequeathed him an ample fortune, and their example of virtue and affection. Such was his inheritance.

He was a dreamy boy, in whose soul the opposite passions reveled. Gentle as the dove, yet, under aggression, fierce as the tiger. He loved as angels love; hated as fiends hate. Framed as delicately as the gazelle, yet every sinew was endowed with the tenacity of steel. At the age of manhood, I, his old preceptor, bowed to the superior endowments of my pupil, but knew not the fountain of his knowledge.

I have said he was a dreamy boy, yet he had made the broad pages of nature his book of knowledge, even while dreaming. The fertile earth presented her abundant lap overflowing with fruit to delight his palate; the flowers peered in his face with their variegated eyes, and sent forth their incense, even while he trod upon them. The cadence of the waterfall, the low twittering of the wearied bird as it flitted to its fledglings in the nest, and the murmuring of the passing breeze as it struggled through the grove, were to him a lullaby that charmed to sleep as the angels sleep. Nature was his mother, and she nursed him with play-things as her child.

I have seen him by the small streams composing songs to the music that the dimpled waters babbled, until his rosy cheeks dimpled and laughed in concert with the rippling brook, as if it were a thing of life, rejoicing in its existence, as his own pure heart rejoiced. They laughed and babbled together.

On the wood-clad mountains, at midnight, when the elements battled, I have seen him straining his feeble voice to sound the master-key that attunes to universal harmony; and having caught it, he would spring like the antelope to a lofty waterfall to discover the same note there; and then turn up his bright face to the stars that smiled upon him, and laugh, expecting to hear them respond to his note as they revolved on their eternal axes. His dark eyes smiled, and the conscious stars smiled back in the heaven of his dark eyes, which danced with delight in the diamond rays of the stars.

Flowers were books to him, and from every leaf he read wisdom fragrant with truth. He cultivated them as a father would his last child. The little birds were his companions, and every morning he joined their concert until the tiny minstrels seemed to imagine that he was the leader of their orchestra. All nature was to him one mighty minister, bestowing all, while he asked from nature no more than the blessed privilege of imitating her, by bestowing on his fellow man all in return. He had a dog, whose former owner had thrown into a stream to drown as worthless. Selim swam and saved the ill-looking cur, who followed him ever after until it appeared that instinct trod close upon the heel of reason. Selim in his turn, while bathing, became exhausted, and sinking beneath the stream, the dog plunged in and saved his dying master. Was this instinct or reason? It matters not, but Selim perceived that the Prophet had made his humanity toward a friendless dog the means of prolonging his own existence here. Despise not little things, cried Mehemet, for the smallest is of magnitude in the sight of the Prophet. A straw may break the back of the overburthened; one word may consign a man to poverty or prosperity, one deed to hell or heaven.

Selim’s wants were few, his fortune ample, which he bestowed upon the deserving with as liberal a hand as it had been bestowed upon himself. Still he labored in the pursuit he had adopted, not for self-aggrandizement, but to assist others; and he knew not why man should be a sluggard while all nature is incessantly at work. The bee and ant work in their season—and even the spider too.

His garden blossomed as Eden, and the flowers offered up their grateful incense even as they faded and died upon the universal altar of Nature’s God. His aviary from morn until night was vocal, and when the flaming chariot of the bright eye of day was whirled by fiery-footed steeds over the eastern hills, I have seen him with his flute, surrounded by nature’s tiny choristers pouring forth their matins until some note in the universal harmony touched the heart of his poor shaggy cur who sported around and tried to bark in unison. Then Selim laughed outright, and the birds stopped their hymns, and seemed to laugh with Selim, and the poor dog slunk away abashed, and slyly laughed at his miserable failure.

He married the dark-eyed Biribi. Selim was a poet; his soul reveled alike in tempest or sunshine, and his voice was as musical as the wings of the bee when he distills honey. He possessed the sweets of the bee, and his sting also. Biribi was abjectly poor, but in Selim’s eyes as full of truth and as beautiful as the houries. He exclaimed, I will raise poverty above oppression, and place virtue where all her handmaids may minister to her enjoyment. Alas! it was but a young poet’s dream—and such dreams are too frequently disturbed by palpable agony. Thus spoke Mehemet.

He had a friend who was his fellow-student while under my charge. Selim loved him as a brother, and when he married he requested Zadak to dwell with him. Neither house, garden, nor fields could be more beautiful, while his flocks and herds were nature’s ornaments. Such was Selim’s Eden.

Zadak borrowed a portion of his fortune, which he squandered; but the poor boy simply replied, “no matter, we require but little, and enough still remains to make us happy. Thank the Prophet for that which we still possess, and repine not for that which we have lost. We can labor with our fellow-men.”

Biribi became estranged from the pure being who fancied he had made in her bosom a nest for his dove-like heart to sing in. He awoke from a dream of repose to battle with the tempest. Zadak had betrayed him, and the gentle spirit of my boy was crushed between the sledge and the anvil; but the eternal fire that burnt within him, burst forth in one mighty blaze as the sledge fell; and even the sledge and the anvil rejoiced at the fire they had elicited from his heart’s blood.

What was to be done? The question was soon settled. The dove had winged its way to heaven, but left the tiger on earth to punish the injuries done to the dove. Selim slew Zadak, and then walked to the tribunal to receive his sentence, knowing that an act that was approved by the immutable principle of eternal justice in heaven, would be pronounced a damning crime by drones who are fed to dole out punishment for breaking the conventional rules by which fools and knaves are linked together on earth. He confessed all before man as he had already confessed before God. Ignominious death was his sentence in the eye of his fellow-creature; but God changed his sentence to that of eternal life; he died of a broken-heart, and escaped man’s justice, tempered with degradation, and flew to the limpid and overflowing fountain—the bosom of his Creator for justice—knowing it to be a principle of eternity, and not of time.

I buried him beneath a cluster of trees, where he had pursued his studies. He had no mourners except myself and his dog. The grave of the rich man is seldom bedewed by the tears of his heirs; while the poor hard-working man may have many sincere mourners, provided they depended upon his daily labor for their bread. It was spring-time; I planted flowers from his garden over his grave, and placed his aviary among the trees. The birds sang and the flowers smiled as if he were still with them. One morning I missed his dog, and searched for him until the impulse of nature guided my footsteps to the boy’s grave. The dog was there, pillowed on a cluster of fragrant flowers—dying; big tears stood in his leadened eyes, while the little birds from the blooming trees, warbled his requiem. They knew the dog, and he knew the birds even while dying. The flowers were bedewed with his tears, and I buried him beside his master, beneath the flowers.

Autumn came; the little birds had taken wing; the grove was no longer vocal; the flowers had faded, and their fragrance had passed away. Well, I exclaimed, the rosy-fingered spring will return, leading the birds back to warble as usual, and the flowers will revive with their former fragrance and beauty? “And is my boy dead?” my soul shrieked. “No!” replied a voice, kindly, and it seemed to me as if the lips were smiling as the judgment passed the lips, “the boy is not dead, but sleepeth, awaiting his spring-time, when the birds will sing, and the flowers bloom for him again, and bloom for eternity.” Thus spoke the dervise, and his old frame chuckled with delight, for he was confident of the fulfillment of the promise.

I reposed by his grave, said Mehemet, and had a vision, which was this. His grave opened, and he arose more beautiful than when in the bloom of manhood. There was a bright star just over his heart, and methought it was composed of the tears his dying dog had shed upon his grave, and I smiled in my sleep at the fantastic thought. The flowers sent forth their incense, and myriads of birds, as he ascended from his tomb, fluttered about him, leading the way, warbling their anthems; the gay flowers smiled at heaven, as if they were the eyes of the teeming earth, laughing their gratitude. The features of Selim became more benign as he ascended; the songs of the birds more seraphic, and the fragrance of the flowers more refreshing.

Suddenly a cloud of inky darkness covered the face of the earth. Two ghastly figures emerged from it, with uplifted eyes, that were rayless, and supplicating hands that trembled with terror. Oh! what must that man be, exclaimed Mehemet, who trembles before the All-merciful, even while supplicating mercy! Selim cast a look of compassion upon the guilty pair, and tried to tear the star from his bosom to throw to them, but the more he strove, the brighter the star became—it illuminated his ascending spirit—and finding his efforts fruitless, he raised his radiant face toward the boundless blue canopy, cheered onward by the hymns of his little choristers through regions of light, and the teeming earth smiled as she poured forth her grateful incense, as if jealous that the disembodied spirit might forget the fragrance of this world while reveling in the atmosphere of heaven.

I heard a shriek of despair, and turning to the sea of darkness which was fearfully troubled, I beheld the guilty pair, desperately struggling in their agony against the angry billows. They struggled in vain. With a fiendlike shriek they disappeared, and sunk through a rayless abyss of doom, without even the tear of a dog to bewail their destiny. Selim soared upward, and still more effulgent became the heavens as he ascended. There was one mighty strain of seraphic music that filled the universe; the blue arch opened, from which issued a stream of light strong enough to restore vision to the rayless eyes of the ancient dead; then I awoke as I beheld Selim enter the eternal portals.

This, continued the old man, may be but a dream at present, but the time will come when it must be verified. He then slowly tottered to his cell to dream out the remnant of his existence.