The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")Hawthorne, Nathaniel
General
The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
It would be an instructive employment for a student of mankind,
perusing this volume carefully and comparing its records with men’s
perfected designs, as expressed in their deeds and daily life, to
ascertain how far the one accorded with the other. Undoubtedly, in most
cases, the correspondence would be found remote. The holy and generous
wish, that rises like incense from a pure heart towards heaven, often
lavishes its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times. The foul,
selfish, murderous wish, that steams forth from a corrupted heart,
often passes into the spiritual atmosphere without being concreted into
an earthly deed. Yet this volume is probably truer, as a representation
of the human heart, than is the living drama of action as it evolves
around us. There is more of good and more of evil in it; more redeeming
points of the bad and more errors of the virtuous; higher upsoarings,
and baser degradation of the soul; in short, a more perplexing
amalgamation of vice and virtue than we witness in the outward world.
Decency and external conscience often produce a far fairer outside than
is warranted by the stains within. And be it owned, oil the other hand,
that a man seldom repeats to his nearest friend, any more than he
realizes in act, the purest wishes, which, at some blessed time or
other, have arisen from the depths of his nature and witnessed for him
in this volume. Yet there is enough on every leaf to make the good man
shudder for his own wild and idle wishes, as well as for the sinner,
whose whole life is the incarnation of a wicked desire.
But again the door is opened, and we hear the tumultuous stir of the
world,—a deep and awful sound, expressing in another form some portion
of what is written in the volume that lies before the Man of
Intelligence. A grandfatherly personage tottered hastily into the
office, with such an earnestness in his infirm alacrity that his white
hair floated backward as he hurried up to the desk, while his dim eyes
caught a momentary lustre from his vehemence of purpose. This venerable
figure explained that he was in search of To-morrow.
“I have spent all my life in pursuit of it,” added the sage old
gentleman, “being assured that To-morrow has some vast benefit or other
in store for me. But I am now getting a little in years, and must make
haste; for, unless I overtake To-morrow soon, I begin to be afraid it
will finally escape me.”
“This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable friend,” said the Man of
Intelligence, “is a stray child of Time, and is flying from his father
into the region of the infinite. Continue your pursuit, and you will
doubtless come up with him; but as to the earthly gifts which you
expect, he has scattered them all among a throng of Yesterdays.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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