Chapter XV

I found among the students many whom I had known at college slightly. They received me with the greatest kindness and cordiality. They knew enough of my struggles, and thought well enough of my good intentions, to do all they could to heal the wounds I had received. Beside, they knew they had misjudged me at college. I certainly had some good qualities; I was very sincere; spoke my sentiments, any thing that came into my head, right out, without regard to consequences. However imprudent such a course is, we cannot help liking a person who possesses a quality so rare. It was not a virtue in me, but I did it from a wild impulse, a recklessness of consequences; and finding that it gained me friends, and raised a good-natured laugh, I carried it to excess; criticizing my own faults, confessing every weakness, and telling people just what I thought of them.

I do not know when I have passed a more delightful evening than the first after my arrival in this place. With me were C——, and F——, and L——, and D——, all old friends, who had always clung to me, and predicted my reformation. We were all changed, as men always change after leaving college, and mingling in the world, and getting rid of the hateful jealousy, the struggle for rank, the boyish pride, and hot blood, which characterizes students at college, pitted against each other for the prize of parts. We sat together at a spot overlooking the finest landscape I know of. It was a calm summer evening, and the holy rest of nature poured quietness and complacency into our hearts. We silently regarded each other, and let fall the easy remark, each word opening to us the fact that we were different beings from what we were when we parted.

Men educated in the same way, do not talk in round sentences, like the characters in a novel. They interchange ideas by a word, a look, a smile, a gesture; even in silence they hold communion, in looking at a picture or a prospect. Observe how the Indians talk; this is a perfect instance of the near sympathy they have for one another. A shrug of the shoulder, a grunt, or a gesture, a movement of the head or hand, is sufficient to convey their meaning.

My friends saw that I had a good room; they let me into the habits of the place, and drew a fascinating picture of the life they led. I never was so happy. All the dark spots in my life vanished, and I looked only upon bright and joyous anticipations. I was away from scenes of hateful remembrance, and seemed to have began anew. I felt grateful for the chance that brought me there.

I do not intend to dwell long upon this law school; and I have introduced it more for the sake of showing the effect of character upon character, than any thing else, and to illustrate how our very best sympathies, unless properly guarded, may lead us into error.

Law was pursued in this institution with all the plan and regularity with which any school is conducted. Recitations were held every day, and the lessons marked out. I admire this way of getting into the dry details of an uninteresting profession by the beginner. By getting lessons, short lessons, every day, at the end of a few months the student finds himself the master of much information and technical knowledge which he never would have attained by himself, without the severest self-control and discipline.

It is every thing to the student at law to get a right start; to lay the foundation well for future reading and practice. Very many lawyers, particularly in the state of New-York, get a knowledge of their profession after they are admitted. The time of their clerkship is spent in copying legal instruments, and attending to the matter of practice, while principles, and the origin and reason of these forms and technicalities, are regarded with indifference. Surely, no man can be a good lawyer—useful, protecting the poor, and guarding the rights of the widow and the orphan, exposing crime and supporting straight-forwardness and virtue—who is not also a good scholar, a general reader, a nice observer, and sound reasoner. Certainly, a mere machine to hold a pen, and bully in pettifogging suits, cannot be this.

My friend C—— kept a friend's eye upon me, for he soon saw my failing; and so he dragged me to my duty by the gentle and strong persuasion of a friend; the kind and well-meant hint, more influential upon a generous mind than rivets of iron, or the severest authority. I was a good student here for three months. My self-satisfaction and confidence, my reasonings in my own favor, (most dangerous to our peace are such) put me off my guard, and—— But I will tell you.

I had frequently observed a tall, thin, pale, and very genteel young man passing the street. I had seen him once or twice at a law lecture. He evidently belonged to the school. I was surprised, too, that he seemed to know no one, and none of the students bowed to him, as they passed each other in the way. The first time I saw him, his back was toward me. He was elegantly, fastidiously dressed. His walk was very fine, and was the gait of a gentleman. I felt a strong interest to see his face; and when I came to look upon his pale, melancholy countenance, haggard with care and disappointment, I felt my heart lean toward him; I pitied him from the bottom of my soul.

I discovered that our study-rooms were contiguous, and determined to work myself, by some means, into an acquaintance with him. One night, as I was sitting late at my window, looking at the moon, and thinking of by-gone times, when I had one beside me to enjoy such scenes with, the sweetest and most melancholy voice met my ear I had ever heard. The song it sung was plaintive, and the sounds seemed like breathings out of the heart. This feast continued for hours. Now I could only hear a low chant, and then a wild burst of melody, that seemed to pierce the sky; varied again and again, with the most astonishing skill.

I found out, by some means, that the voice was that of Collins, the name of the young man whom I was so anxious to know.

I could not be satisfied, until I had his acquaintance. I wished to become his friend. I knew what it was to be wretched and lonely, and I felt criminal in neglecting him. I talked with particular friends about him, but they answered equivocally. 'They did not know why Collins did not associate more with them. His distance was his own work; he was a singular young man, and they believed he lived upon opium; that he was strange and eccentric, and chose to be alone.' C—— said: 'You had better let him alone; he can do you no good; his case is a hopeless one, and as for his melancholy, it is all fudge.' All I heard, only determined me to seek him out, and find what could occasion such habitual sadness.

Collins received my advances in a very gentlemanly way, though he showed no disposition to palm himself off upon me. He had been absent, until a short time before I saw him, from the school, and treated me as a new-comer; spoke very handsomely of the students, and seemed to know the character and course of every man in the institution. I was charmed with the elegance of his manners, the acuteness of his mind, and his general acquaintance with literature. He soon returned my civility, and we gradually became acquainted.

He pursued his usual habits without any secrecy, and apparently as if there was no harm in such courses. His mornings were usually spent in a deep sleep, more resembling a lethargy than refreshing rest, from which nothing could rouse him. He rose about mid-day and read until night, hardly taking any nourishment. At night he seemed to revel in a world of his own creation; he would sit for hours in one position, chanting low airs, his spirits kept alive by opium and worse stimulus. I never could discover the least mark of intoxication in Mr. Collins, as every body called him. His person was scrupulously neat, his dress always adjusted with the nicest regard to fashion and elegance. His language was at all times proper, and his sentiments refined. His mien was dignified and graceful. Had it not been for his haggard cheek, and the unnatural brightness of his eye, sensual indulgence would be the last vice one could have attributed to him.

The mind of this young man was radically wrong. He had no fixed principle, and if he did right, it was to be in good taste, not to be in opposition to error. Blackstone says, that 'to do right is only to pursue one's own substantial happiness;' and it may be said, that to do right, is to pursue good taste, elegance, refinement, true pleasure, and pure happiness.

Collins was unhappy; he hardly knew why. Possessed of a poetic temperament—nurtured in the lap of ease and wealth—every thing provided for him, he had never learned to think, to reason, but gave free scope to any impulse that came across him. Misfortune he could not bear, for he had never calculated for its inevitable coming; disappointment unmanned him, for he esteemed that wealth exempted him from the common lot of mortality. He had had an unfortunate attachment—as what young man has not?—and he thought he must be melancholy and wretched, to be Byronic and sentimental.

He was, as I found out upon a longer acquaintance, for my own foolish fancies made me singularly acute in tracing the rhapsodies of feeling in others, in a false and unnatural state of mind; a maniac, a madman, unsound. We are apt only to attach the name of madness to extravagant actions and incoherent words, but there is a madness which escapes the common eye—a madness of the soul, which as effectually destroys the balance and contracts the usefulness of man's life, as the wildest inconsistencies of conduct.

With every means of happiness within his reach, but for a strange and ridiculous fancy; with riches, the highest connexions, a fine person and good education, this young man indulged the idea that he was soon to die. It was impossible to shake off this illusion. Considering himself as doomed, he told me that he thought he was bound to make the most of the little time that remained for him, and he supported himself under this idea, so terrific to an ill-regulated mind, by opium, brandy, and any kind of stimulus.

Now his disease was this: Having taken by some accident this impression, he resorted to a bad remedy to drive it away. Each application only drove the poison still deeper into his system. He allowed himself no lucid interval. Could he have been prostrated by a fit of sickness, and placed under proper care, and recovered slowly from his disease, his mind might have been restored. But once in, he continued to weaken his strength by artificial stimulus, and his mind had no opportunity to resume its natural tone. The drunkard only can recover from his malady by going through the ordeal of a trial by water. He must expect to be prostrated. He must suffer intense agony for days, and perhaps weeks, but if he perseveres, his cure is certain.

Collins visited at some houses, and was caressed by a few, as 'a character.' He enjoyed the reputation of being an elegant scholar, among persons to whom he had never given the slightest evidence of scholarship, and who probably did not know what the classics were. This is very common. Who ever knew a case of a young man's throwing himself away, particularly if his connections are respectable, when it was not said: 'What a pity! He is the flower of the family; might be any thing, only——'

The ladies, dear souls! saw in him a desolated genius. It would be laughable to tell the thousand and one stories circulated about his love affair. They used to get him to sing his plaintive airs, and how it went to their hearts to hear the tones of a broken heart. He, under the influence of powerful doses of opium, enjoyed this. He yielded to the idea that he was what they thought him, and was happy in the luxury of wo. After one of these displays, he would ask me to relate to him what occurred the evening before, for he did not know, though all the time he appeared to the company as perfectly rational.

The students did not expose him, though they saw pretty nearly what he was. I, I cannot tell why, was with him constantly, and took pleasure in his society. It was something new to me, and gave me an opportunity of studying myself.

The example of this man constantly before me, the fact that I associated with him, contrary to the wishes of my friends, in the course of time alienated from me the good feeling of my former friends; or they felt bound to resent my neglect of them, by corresponding coldness. I did feel bitterly toward them, for their neglect of Collins, and always took his part; and when lightly spoken of, resented it as an insult to myself.

In this way, I lost the confidence and friendship of those men who could have still been, would I have permitted it, of inestimable advantage to me in healing my own distempered mind.

Collins and myself at last were constantly together, and each other's only companions. I gradually fell into his habits. Certain it is, that we enjoyed some Elysian hours. In the lonely still nights, when all else seemed lost in sleep, and the sound of labor broke not upon the ear to remind us that we were in a toiling world, we used to sally forth and wander through the meadows that skirt the river in this delightful region. Under the soothing influence of that drug, which creates first a heaven and then a hell, we talked and sang to the stars, and the beautiful earth, and the bright moon, and thought we were happy. A man must be far gone for this world, who goes straight about such an excitement of his system, when he knows, as we did, the agony that was to follow, after the charm had ceased. I was the greatest sufferer. My constitution was naturally strong; capable of great action and rëaction. While Collins was left in dull apathy and lethargy, I woke from the trance of joy to excessive nervous pain. My mind was filled with dismal images. I had horrid forebodings. My broken vows to my father—the probable misery I had caused her who really loved me—the days of quiet and peaceful happiness I might have enjoyed by a different course—my ruin—glimpses of what I am—all came to my mind, and inflicted the keenest torture. I lived over again all the pains I had ever suffered. It seemed as if miseries were accumulated to crush me. I meditated self-destruction. I prayed for death. This frame of mind would continue for days, during which time I kept my room, and lived upon the most simple diet. But when recovered in body and mind, and going out with strongest resolution, as I thought, some new temptation would assail me, and the same scene, the same agony, the same remorse, were acted over and over again; and what makes it more astonishing, there was a sincerity in this resistance, which repeated failure could not lead me to doubt.

My only object in forming this acquaintance, was pity for Collins' solitary state, and a desire to alleviate the pain he seemed to suffer. My motive, if I know my own heart, was good. Even believers in human depravity will give me credit for honesty of intention. 'The way to hell is paved with good intentions,' says the preacher. How true!

In one of my fits of voluntary seclusion, I read 'Hope Leslie.' Let me here give the evidence of my own experience in favor of that book. The study of the law was relinquished, and I read only works of feverish interest, when I read any thing. After the indulgence of irregular passions, every one who has suffered, knows that the mind is left in a flighty state; we have strange visions, and think strange thoughts; in short, we are quite poetic. Poetry, novels, music! how grateful they are! They lead us away from ourselves, and we are just unsound enough to yield entirely to the illusion. Under such circumstances, I read 'Hope Leslie.' I was a week about it, and I read all the time too. I was so enchanted with the book, that I consumed it as the child eats his sugar-plums, by little and little, to make it last the longer, dwelling over each passage; reading a scene, and then walking the room, and picturing out the lofty Indian, the heroic Magawisca, the generous youth, and the gentle mother. How I revelled! Beside, I felt strengthened and elevated by the high tone of moral sentiment contained in that work. It was the happiest week I ever lived, infinitely surpassing all possible reality.