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the intelligence office from Moss's from an Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne this is the librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org recording by Wayne Cook grey figure with a pair of mysterious spectacles on his nose and a pen behind his ear was seated a desk in the corner of a Metropolitan office department was fitted up with a calendar and furnished with an open cabinet and a chair or two and simply businesslike style round the walls were stuck advertisements of articles lost articles wanted or articles to be disposed of in one way or another of which classes were comprehended nearly all the conveniences or otherwise the imagination of man is contrived the interior of the room was thrown into shadow partly by the tall edifices that rose on the opposite side of the street and partly by the immense show Bill's of blue and crimson paper that were expanded over each of the three windows undisturbed by the of feet rattle of wheels the hump of voices the shout of the city crier the scream of the Newsboys and other tokens of the multitudinous life that surged along in front of the office to figure at the desk pour diligently over a folio volume of ledger like size and aspect he looked like the spirit of a record the soul of his old great volume made visible in mortal shape but scarcely an instant elapsed without the appearance at the door of some individual from the busy population whose vicinity was manifested by so much buzz and clatter and outcry now it was a thriving mechanic in quest of a tenement that should come within his modern means of rent now a ruddy Irish girl from the banks of Killarney wandering from kitchen to kitchen of our land while her heart still hung in the peat smoke of her native cottage now a single gentleman looking out for economical board and now for this establishment offered an epitome of worldly pursuits it was a faded beauty inquiring for a lost bloom our Peter shamil for his lost shadow or an author of 10 years standing for his vanished reputation or a moody man for yesterday's sunshine at the next lifting of the latch there entered a person with his hat awry upon his head his clothes perversely ill-suited to his form his eyes staring and directions opposite to their intelligence and a certain odd unsuitable Ness providing his whole figure wherever he might chance to be whether in palace or cottage Church or market on land or sea or even at his own fireside he must have worn the characteristic expression of a man out of his right place this he inquired putting his question in the form of an assertion this is the Central Intelligence office even so answered the figure at the desk turning another leaf in his volume he then looked to the applicant in the face and said briefly your business I want said the latter with tremulous earnestness a place a place and of what nature asked the Intelligencer there are many vacant or soon to be so some of which will probably suit since they range from that of the footman up to a seat at the council board or in the cabinet or a throne or a presidential chair the stranger stood pondering before the desk with an unquiet dissatisfied air a dull vague pain of heart expressed by a slight contortion of the brow an earnestness of glance that asked and expected yet continually wavered as if distrusting in short he evidently wanted not in a physical or intellectual sense but with an urgent moral necessity that is the hardest of all things to satisfy since it knows not its own object I you mistake me said at length with a gesture of nervous impatience either of the places you mentioned indeed might answer my purpose or more probably none of them I want my place my own place my true place in the world my proper sphere my thing to do which nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry and which I have vainly sought all my lifetime whether it be a foot ceman studi or a king's is of little consequence so it be naturally mine can you help me here I will enter your application answered the intelligent sir at the same time writing a few lines in his volume but to undertake such a business I tell you frankly it's quite apart from the ground covered by my official duties ask for something specific and it may doubtless be negotiated for you on your compliance with the conditions but were I to go further I should have the whole population of the city upon my shoulders since far the greater proportion of them are more or less in your predicament the applicants sank into a fit of despondency and pass out of the door without again lifting his eyes and if he died of the disappointment he was probably buried in the wrong tomb it as much as the fatality of such people never deserts them and whether alive or dead they are invariably out of place almost immediately another foot was heard on the threshold a youth entered hastily and threw a glance around the office to ascertain whether the man of intelligence was alone then he approached close to the desk blushed like a maiden and seemed at a loss how to broach his business you come upon an affair of the heart said the official personnage looking into him through his mysterious spectacles stated him as few words as may be you are right replied the youth I have a heart to dispose of you seek in exchange said the Intelligencer foolish youth why not be contented with your own because exclaimed the young man losing his embarrassment and a passionate glow because my heart burns me with an intolerable fire it tortures me all day long with yearnings for a know not what and feverish throbbings and pangs of a vague sorrow and it awakens me in the nighttime with the quake when there is nothing to be feared I cannot endure it any longer it were wiser to throw away such a heart even it brings me nothing in return oh very well said the man of the office making an entering his volume your affair will be easily transacted this species of brokerage makes no inconsiderable part of my business and there is always a large assortment of the article to select from here if I mistake not comes a pretty fair sample even as he spoke the door was gently and slowly thrust ajar affording a glimpse of the slender figure of a young girl who as she timidly entered seemed to bring the light and cheerfulness of the outer atmosphere into the somewhat gloomy apartment we know not her errand there nor can one reveal whether the young man gave up his heart into her custody if so the arrangement was neither better nor worse than 99 cases out of a hundred whether the parallel sensibilities of a similar age importunate affections and the ease of satisfaction of characters not too deeply conscious of themselves supply the place of any profound err sympathy not always however was the agency of the passions and affections and office of so little trouble it happened rarely indeed in proportion to the cases that came under an ordinary rule but still it did happen that a heart was occasionally brought hither of exquisite material so delicately a tempered and so curiously wrought that no other heart could be found to match it it might always be considered a misfortune in a worldly point of view to be the possessor of such a diamond of the purest water since in any reasonable probability it could only be exchanged for an ordinary pebble or a bit of cunningly manufactured glass or at least for a jewel of Navy richness but ill set or with some fatal flaw or an earthy vein running through its central luster to choose another figure it is sad that hearts which have their wellspring in the infinite and contain in exhaustible sympathies should ever be doomed to pour themselves into shallow vessels and thus lavished their rich affections on the ground strange that the finer and deeper nature whether in man or woman while possessed of every other delicate instinct should so often lack that most invaluable one of preserving itself front-cam Tama nation with what is of a baser kind sometimes it is true the spiritual foundation is kept pure by a wisdom within itself and sparkles into the light of heaven without a strain from the earthly strata through which it had gushed upward and sometimes even here on earth the pure mingles with the pure and the inexhaustible is recompense with the infinite but these miracles though he should claim the credit of them are far beyond the scope of such a superficial agent in human affairs as the figure in the mysterious spectacles again the door was opened admitting the bustle of the city with a fresher reverberation into the intelligence office now enter demand of woebegone and downcast look it was such an aspect that if he had lost the very soul out of his body and had traversed all the world over searching in the dust of the highways and the shady footpaths and beneath the leaves of the forest and among the sands of the seashore in hopes to recover it again he had meant an anxious glance along the pavement of the street as he came hither word he looked also in the angle of the doorstep and upon the floor of the room and finally coming up to the man of intelligence he gazed through the inscrutable spectacles which the latter wore as if the lost treasure might be hidden within his eyes I have lost a precious jewel replied the unfortunate person the like of which is not to be found among any Prince's treasures while I possessed it the contemplation of it was my sole and sufficient happiness no price I should have purchased it of me but it has fallen from my bosom where I wore it into my careless wanderings about the city after causing the stranger to describe the marks of his lost jewel the telogen sir opened a drawer of the oaken cabinet which had been mentioned as forming a part of the furniture of the room here were deposited whatever articles had been picked up in the streets until the right owner should claim them it was a strange and heterogeneous collection not the least remarkable part of it was a great number of wedding rings each one of which had been riveted upon the finger with holy vows and all the misty potency that the most solemn rites could attain but had nevertheless proved too slippery for the wearer's villages the gold of some was worn thin betokening the attrition of years of wedlock others glittering from jeweler's shop must have been lost within the honeymoon there were ivory tablets the leaves scribbled over with sentiments that had been the deepest truths of the writers earlier years but which were now quite obliterated from his memory so scrupulously with articles preserved in this depository that do not even withered flowers were rejected white roses and blush roses and Moss roses fit emblems of virgin purity and shamefacedness which had been lost or flung away and trampled into the pollution of the streets locks of hair the golden and the glossy dark the long tresses of women and the crisp curls of man signified that lovers were now and then so heedless of the faith entrusted to them as to drop its symbol from the treasure place of the bosom many of these things were imbued with perfumes and and perhaps a sweet scent had departed from the lives of their former possessors ever since they had so willfully negligently lost them here were gold pencil cases little ruby hearts with golden arrows through them bosom pins pieces of coin and small articles of every description comprising nearly all that have been lost since a long time ago most of them doubtless had history and a meaning if there were time to search it out and room to tell it who ever has missed anything valuable whether out of his heart mind or pocket would do well to make inquiry at the Central Intelligence office and in the corner of one of the drawers of the oaken cabinet after considerable research was found a great pearl looking like the soul of celestial purity congealed and polished there is my jewel my fairy pearl cried the stranger almost beside himself with rapture it is mine given me this moment or I shall perish I perceive said the man of intelligence examining it more closely that this is the pearl of great price the very same entered the stranger judge then of my misery at loosening it out of my bosom I must not live without it an instant longer pardon me we join intelligence or calmly you ask what is beyond my duty this pearl as you may well know is held upon a peculiar tenure and having once let it escape from your keeping you have no greater claim to it nay not so great any other person I cannot give it back nor could the entreaties of the miserable man who saw before his eyes the jewel of his life without the power to reclaim it soften the heart of the stern being impassive to human sympathy though exercising such an apparent influence over human fortunes finally the loser of the inestimable pearl clutched his hands among his hair and read madly forth into the world which was affrighted at his desperate looks there passed him on the doorstep of fashionable young gentlemen whose business was to inquire for a damask rosebud the gift of his ladylove which he had lost out of his buttonhole within an hour after receiving it so various were the errands of those who visited the central office where all human wishes seemed to be made known and so far as destiny would allow negotiated to their fulfillment the next that entered was a man beyond the middle age marrying the luck of one who knew the world and his own course in it he had just alighted from a handsome private carriage which had orders to wait in the street while its owner transacted his business this person came up to the desk with a quick determined step and looked the intelligence her in the face with a resolute eye though at the same time some secret trouble gleamed from it in red and dusky light I have an estate to dispose of he said with a brevity that seemed characteristic describe it said the Intelligencer the applicant proceeded to give the boundaries of his property its nature comprising tillage pasture woodland and pleasure grounds in ample circuit together with a mansion house in the construction of which it had been his object to realize a castle in the air hardening its shadowy walls into granite and rendering as a visionary splendor perceptible to the awakened eye judging from his description it was beautiful enough to vanish like a dream yet substantial enough to endure for centuries he spoke to of the gorgeous furniture the refinements of upholstery and all the luxurious artifices that combine to render this a residence where life might flow onward in a stream of golden days undisturbed by the ruggedness which fate loves to fling into it I am a man of strong will said he in conclusion and at my first setting out in life as a poor unfriended youth a result to make myself the possessor of such a mansion and a state as this together with the abundant revenue necessary to uphold it I have succeeded to the extent of my utmost wish and this is the estate which I have now concluded to dispose of and your terms a seat eliten sir after taking down the particulars with which the stranger had supplied him easy abundantly easy answered the successful man smiling but with a stern and almost frightful contraction of the brow as if to quell an inward pang I have been engaged in various sorts of business distiller a traitor to Africa and East India merchants a speculator in the stocks and in the course of these affairs I have contracted an encumbrance of a certain nature the purchaser of the state shall merely be required to assume this burden to himself I understand you said the man of intelligence putting his PIN behind his ear I fear that no bargain can be negotiated on these conditions very probably the next possessor may acquire the estate with a similar encumbrance but it will be of his own contracting and will not lighten your burden in the least and I am to live on fiercely exclaimed the stranger with the dirt of these accursed acres in the granite of this infernal mansion crushing down my soul how if I should turn the edifice into an almshouse or a hospital or tear it down and build a church you can at least make the experiment said the Intellivision sir but the whole matter is one which you must settle for yourself the man of deplorable success withdrew and got into his coach which rattled off lightly over the wooden pavements though laden with the weight of much land a stately house and ponderous heaps of gold all compressed into an evil conscience there now appeared many applicants for places among the most noteworthy of whom was a small smoked dried figure who gave himself out to be one of the bad spirits that had waited upon Doctor Faustus in his laboratory he pretended to show a certificate of character which he averred had been given him by that famous no crime answer and counter signed by several masters whom he had subsequently served I am afraid my good friend observed an intelligence er that your chance of getting a service is but poor nowadays men act the evil spirit for themselves and their neighbors and play the part more effectually than ninety nine out of a hundred of your fraternity but just as the poor fiend was assuming a vaporous consistency being about to vanish through the floor and sad disappointment in chagrin the editor of a political newspaper chance to enter the office and quest of a scribbler of party paragraphs the former servant of dr. Faustus with some misgivings as to his sufficiency of venom was allowed to try his hand at this capacity next appeared likewise seeking a surface the mysterious man in red who had aided Bonaparte in his ascent to Imperial power he was examined as to his qualifications by an aspiring politician but finally rejected as lacking familiarity with the cunning tactics of the present-day people continued to succeed each other with as much briskness as if everybody turned aside out of the roar and torment of the city to record here some want or superfluity or desire some had goods or possessions of which they wish to negotiate the sale a China merchant had lost his health by long residence in that and wasty climate he had very liberally offered his disease and his wealth along with it to any physician who would rid him of both together a soldier offered his wreath of laurels for his good a leg as that which had had cost him on the battlefield one poor weary wretch desired nothing but to be accommodated with any credible way of laying down his life for misfortune and McCue nary troubles had so subdued his spirits that he could no longer conceive the possibility of happiness nor had the heart to try for it nevertheless happening to overhear some conversation in the intelligence office respecting wealth to be rapidly accumulated by a certain mode of speculation he resolved to live out this one other experiment of better fortune many persons desiring to exchange their youthful vices for others better suited to the gravity of advancing age a few we are glad to say made earnest efforts to exchange vice for virtue and hard as the bargain was succeeded in effecting it but it was remarkable that what all were the least willing to give up even on the most advantageous terms with habits the oddities the characteristic traits the little ridiculous indulgences simmer between faults and follies of which nobody put themselves that understand the fascination the great folio in which the man of intelligence recorded all these freaks of idle hearts and aspirations of deep hearts and desperate longings of miserable hearts and evil prayers of perverted hearts would be curious reading were it possible to obtain it for publication human character in its individual developments human nature in the mass may best be studied in its wishes and this was the record of them all there was an endless diversity of mode and circumstance yet withal such a similarity and the real groundwork that any one page of the volume whether written in the days before the flood or the yesterday that has just gone by or to be written on the morrow that is close at hand or a thousand ages hence might serve as a specimen of the whole not but that there were wild sally's of fantasy that could scarcely occur to more than one man's brain whether reasonable or lunatic the strangest wishes yet most incident to men who had gone deep into scientific pursuits and attained a high intellectual stage though not the loftiest were to contend with nature and wrest from her some secret or some power which he had seen fit to withhold for mortal grasp she loves to delude her aspiring students and mocked them with mysteries that seemed but just beyond their utmost reach to concoct new minerals to produce new forms of vegetable life to create an insect have nothing higher in the living scale as a sort of wish that has often reveled in the breasts of a man of science an astronomer who lived far more among the distant worlds of space that in this lower sphere recorded a wish to behold the opposite side of the Moon which unless the system of the firmament be reversed she can never turn toward the earth on the same page of the volume was written the wish of a little child to have the star for playthings the most ordinary wish that was written down with wearisome recurrence was of course for wealth wealth wealth in sums from few shillings up to an reckonings but in reality this often repeated expression covered as many different desires wealth is the golden essence of the outward world embodying almost everything that exists beyond the limits of the soul and therefore it is the natural yearning for the life in the midst of which we find ourselves and of which gold is the condition of enjoyment the man a bridge into this general wish here and there it is true the volume testified to some hearts perverted as to desire gold for its own sake many wished for power a strange desire indeed since it is but another form of slavery old people wish to the delights of youth a fop for a fashionable coat an idol reader for a new novel a versa fire for rhyme to some stubborn word a painter for tightens secretive coloring a prince for a cottage a republican for a kingdom and a palace a libertine for his neighbor's wife a man of palate for green peas and a poor man for a crust of bread the ambitious desires of public men elsewhere so craftily concealed were here expressed openly and boldly side by side with the unselfish wishes of the philanthropist for the welfare of the race so beautiful so comforting in contrast with the egotism that continually weighed self against the world and to the darker secrets of the book of wishes we will not penetrate it would be an instructive employment for a student of mankind pursuing 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 is sweet perfume on the blast of evil times the foul selfish murderous wish that stems forth from a corrupted heart often passes into the spiritual atmosphere without being completed into an earthly deed yet this volume is probably true as a representation of the human heart then 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 up soaring x' and baser degradation of the soul in short a more perplexing amalgamation of vice and virtue than we witnessed 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 rather 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 infer McCleary that his white hair floated backward as he hurried up to the desk while his dim eyes caught a momentary lustre from his violence of purpose this venerable figure explained that he was in search of tomorrow I have spent all my life in pursuit of it added the sage old gentleman being assured that tomorrow has some vast benefit or rather in store for me but I am now getting a little in years and must make haste for unless I overtake tomorrow soon I begin to be afraid it will finally escape me this fugitive tomorrow my venerable friend said the man of intelligence is a straight 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 would you expect he has scattered them all among throngs of yesterday's obliged to consent himself with his agna medical response the grand I heard hastened forth with a quick clatter of his staff upon the floor and as he disappeared a little boy scampered through the door and chase of a butterfly which had gone astray amid the barren sunshine of the city had the old gentleman been shrewd or he might have detected tomorrow under the semblance of that gaudy insect the golden butterfly glistened through the shadowy apartment and brushed its wings against the book of wishes and fluttered forth again with a child still in pursuit a man now entered in neglected attire with the aspect of a thinker but somewhat to rough hewn and brawny for a scholar his face was full of sturdy vigor with some fighter and keener attribute beneath though harsh at first it was tempered with a glow of a large warm heart which had force enough to heat his powerful intellect through and through he advanced to the Intelligencer and looked at him with a glance of such stern sincerity that perhaps few secrets were beyond its scope I seek for truth said he it is precisely the most rare pursuit that has ever come under my cognizance replied in Telford sir as he made the new inscription in his volume most men seek to impose some cunning falsehood upon themselves for truth but I can lend no help to your researches you must achieve the miracle for yourself at some fortunate moment you may find truth at your side or perhaps she may be mistily discerned for in advance or possibly behind you not behind me said to see her for I have left nothing on my track without a thorough investigation chief let's before me passing now through a naked solitude and now mingling with the throng of a popular assembly and now writing with the pen of a French philosopher and now standing on the altar of an old Cathedral in the guise of a Catholic priest performing the high mass Oh we research but I must not falter and surely my heart deep quest of truth shall avail at last he paused and fixed his eyes upon the Intelligencer with the depth of Investigation that seemed to hold commerce with the inner nature of this being holy regardless of his external development and what are you said he it will not satisfy me to point to this fantastic show of an intelligence office and this mockery of business tell me what is beneath it and what your real agency in life and your influence upon mankind yours is a mind answered the man of intelligence before which the forms and fantasies to conceal the inner idea from the multitude vanish at once and leave the naked reality beneath no then the secret my agency and worldly action my connection with the press and tumult and intermingling and development of human affairs is merely delusive the desire of man's heart does for him whatever I seem to do I have no Minister of action but the recording spirit what further secrets were then spoken remains a mystery it as much as the roar of the city and the bustle of human business and the outcry of the jostling masses the Russian tumult of man's life in its noisy and brief career arose so high that it drowned the words of these two talkers and whether they stood talking in the moon or in Vanity Fair or in a city of this actual world is more than I can say and of the intelligence office from masses from an Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne recording by Wayne cook