The Secret Story

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

[While the anonymity of the Club must be strictly kept, the Editors think that the readers of The Secret Story may like to know that it has been written by one of the oldest and most truly original of our American writers of fiction.]

How beautiful, how true, that quiet talk of “Vision” in the May number of these pages. That talk brings out my little hidden story which has been growing for so many years.

I remember a small boy, the one I knew best of all. On a day of the springtime he was on the grass in a meadow by the river. His friend was with him, and there was a blue sky and white clouds overhead. The gentle breeze, the soft susurrus of the flowing stream, and the shining of the sun, became to him very beautiful, and he was suddenly conscious of a happiness beyond these, and of which he could not speak, and which he did not in the least degree know about or understand. It was nothing; it was formless as the viewless air. And yet it made his whole life broader and brighter, as it lingered with him for hours, slowly fading out in the joys of a strong, vigorous boyhood, with constant outdoor activity.

A few years later the visitation came again. It was by a waterfall. The summer day was bright as before. The nameless joy, coming so without cause or explanation, led the youth to wonder what this light might mean. It lingered for a day, and then slowly melted into the cool gray gloom of an energetic, toiling life of constant occupation.

And as time has gone by, at intervals of years this visitation has come again and again, and it has been the same silent joy under all kinds of outward experience and circumstances. And it ever leaves the life it visits broader, happier, and more beautiful than it finds it. In the wilderness, in the years of lonely living, it has come with peculiar power; in the days of toiling in crowded assemblies in the cities it has come, and the little boy, after so many years, still wonders and questions what it is. He has never mentioned it, or discussed the question with any one. He finds a few timid allusions to it in a very private journal kept in the time of his college experience. Aside from these hidden hints, no light of day has ever fallen upon this secret story. The boy always had an Achates. In his childhood and youth there were no secrets between him and this second self of his. From babyhood each read absolutely the thoughts and feelings of the other. And yet Achates never knew this secret history. That sense of happiness was nearer than Achates.

This one I have named Achates came to see me not long ago. He had been three years in the Civil War, and since that time in business, and had reared a family. I did not recognize him at first, and he did not know me. There were too many years between us, — since we had parted in wartime. But we spent days together. We went down by the river, and the two little boys of so long ago came out of their hiding. The intervening time rolled away. The war and the family were gone, and we were two children, the very same as ever. The flaws of temper, the quick turns of yielding and resisting, and all the peculiarities, were so childish and so accurately the same that we were startled, shocked, amused, and driven to the conclusion that we were not a day older in our essential selves than we had been in the earliest hours of our acquaintance. And yet with all this I did not venture to ask Achates whether he had thought or known of the dream, the vision, the visitation, that had so shaped my life and made it what it is.

The little boy still questions what it was that came to him so naturally that bright day in the meadow. He questions and he muses with no better wisdom than at first. But in that secret chamber where the little chap has lived so long, and where the “I myself within me" has wondered at the man who has slowly enveloped him and grown up around him, and whom he yet knows to be but dust and ashes, — in that calm retreat a guess has long been recorded. The little chap has even dropped into poetry about it. I find the secret lines in that same hidden journal of which mention has been made. Without copying the timid lines, I may give their purport, and thereby suggest a solution of the mystery.

After questioning:—

The suggestion reads: —

The boy has not gone beyond this. He has been willing to assume that the great and gentle Spirit has used means. He has not thought it necessary to make biological insinuations. He has not cross-examined the molecules, nor suspected them of deceit or evil intentions of any kind whatever. On the other hand, he has been deeply grateful for the hours of vision that have been given him. He has known at such times that he has news, glorious news, of events happening he knows not where ; and there is a joy of friendship, which he feels, but comprehends not. The sunlight, the sky, the lands, and the seas have become very beautiful. All the world and the life are full of light. In the lapse of hours or days this passes, but a vague consciousness remains of a lingering power which guides in the long journey. The little chap has read with reverence the history of Jacob and the Angels, the account of little Samuel, and the long line of sacred story which ever has been, is now, and ever shall be, the hope and the light of all the earth. He has read with confidence of the dreams and premonitions of Abraham Lincoln. He has questioned the records of the Society of Psychical Research, and has considered the probable extent of those subliminal possessions, now so often mentioned. Through all this, his own hidden story has remained the same. That joy which came so quietly and so long ago has not departed. In the midst of a busy life, below the eager career, this hidden story goes on and on, unchanging in its character, through its long, intermittent history.

It is very true that it has been found possible, in every age and every land, to treat the story of the hidden life with derision. But it is equally true, always, that the story-teller can smile at Satan’s rage, and it is often seen that he can face a frowning world.

When the little story-telling traveler packs up and gets ready to leave, and bids farewell to Dust-and-Ashes, who has so long enveloped him, and to this beautiful world, it is understood that he sometimes casts a longing, lingering look behind: but it is also understood by those who have vision, and so can watch him and know that his eye is not dimmed nor his force abated, that he quickly turns from the backward view, when he is leaving this world, and with glad alacrity hastens on his journey home.