The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Part 3

- So you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir, and yet not tell us your own creed!--said the divinity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which I liked him all the better.

- I have a creed,--I replied;--none better, and none shorter. It is told in two words,--the two first of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to DEFINE moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was what I intended to express: that the fluent, self-determining power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, condition. Organization may reduce the power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Education is only second to nature. Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, but "Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the prayer of Agur, and with good reason. If there is any improvement in modern theology, it is in getting out of the region of pure abstractions and taking these every-day working forces into account. The great theological question now heaving and throbbing in the minds of Christian men is this:- No, I wont talk about these things now. My remarks might be repeated, and it would give my friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I should be visited. Besides, what business has a mere boarder to be talking about such things at a breakfast- table? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and learned his alphabet out of a quarto "Concilium Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand theological lectures by men of various denominations; and it is not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit by this time to express an opinion on theological matters.

I know well enough that there are some of you who had a great deal rather see me stand on my head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to... . ,--on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent const.i.tuency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin?

- Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well enough, when I can. But then observe this: if the sense of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature, it is very well; but if that is all there is in a man, he had better have been an ape at once, and so have stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all. I have often heard the Professor talk about hysterics as being Nature's cleverest ill.u.s.tration of the reciprocal convertibility of the two states of which these acts are the manifestations; But you may see it every day in children; and if you want to choke with stifled tears at sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake play JESSE RURAL.

It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh WITH him just so long as he amuses them; but if he attempts to be serious, they must still have their laugh, and so they laugh AT him. There is in addition, however, a deeper reason for this than would at first appear. Do you know that you feel a little superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether by making faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or literary, for your royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right!--first-rate performance!--and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to talk down at him,--ah, that wasn't in the programme!

I have never forgotten what happened when Sydney Smith--who, as everybody knows, was an exceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch of him--ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even.--If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means to keep his wit in the background until after he had made a reputation by his more solid qualities. And so to an actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Logic afterwards, if you like; but don't think, as they say poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that you can do anything great with Macbeth's dagger after flouris.h.i.+ng about with Paul Pry's umbrella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men look upon all who challenge their attention,--for a while, at least,--as beggars, and nuisances? They always try to get off as cheaply as they can; and the cheapest of all things they can give a literary man--pardon the forlorn pleasantry!--is the FUNNY-bone. That is all very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and makes a good many angry, as I told you on a former occasion.

- Oh, indeed, no!--I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk which would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, ill.u.s.trated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call BLESSED! There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look forward, by banis.h.i.+ng all gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and all that he pa.s.ses) such a rayless and chilling look of recognition,--something as if he were one of Heaven's a.s.sessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met,--that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to play with it?

No, no!--give me a chance to talk to you, my fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can do it, as well as giving you some of my serious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne "EVERY MAN TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF."

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing in old friends.h.i.+ps, to every mind that is really moving onward. It is this: that one cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought tied to him, and look--I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compa.s.sion--to see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow! and we are das.h.i.+ng along with the white foam and bright sparkle at our bows;--the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the sentimental side of the matter; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love.

Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of movement by those with whom we have long been in the habit of comparing ourselves; and when they once become stationary, we can get our reckoning from them with painful accuracy. We see just what we were when they were our peers, and can strike the balance between that and whatever we may feel ourselves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and sailing in company for some distant region, we can get what we want out of it. There is one of our companions;--her streamers were torn into rags before she had got into the open sea, then by and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. But lo! at dawn she is still in sight,--it may be in advance of us. Some deep ocean-current has been moving her on, strong, but silent,--yes, stronger than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, towering in our pride, may never come.

So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old friends.h.i.+ps, because we cannot help inst.i.tuting comparisons between our present and former selves by the aid of those who were what we were, but are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. "Commencement day" always reminds me of the start for the "Derby," when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the season are brought up for trial. That day is the start, and life is the race. Here we are at Cambridge, and a cla.s.s is just "graduating." Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has paid forfeit; step out here into the gra.s.s back of the church; ah! there it is:- "HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT SOCII MOERENTES."

But this is the start, and here they are,--coats bright as silk, and manes as smooth as eau l.u.s.trale can make them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? and the old lady by him, and the three girls, what are they all covering their eyes for? Oh, that is THEIR colt which has just been trotted up on the stage. Do they really think those little thin legs can do anything in such a slas.h.i.+ng sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that comes to some of us when we begin to look through the silvered rings of the arcus senilis!

TEN YEARS GONE. First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Ca.s.sOCK, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. METEOR has pulled up.

TWENTY YEARS. Second corner turned. Ca.s.sOCK has dropped from the front, and JUDEX, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat,--five,--six,--how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see who is going to win,--perhaps.

THIRTY YEARS. Third corner turned. DIVES, bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast; is getting to be the favourite with many. But who is that other one that has been lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt ASTEROID, with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts; look out for him! The black "colt," as we used to call him, is in the background, taking it easily in a gentle trot. There is one they used to call THE FILLY, on account of a certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is not to be despised my boy!

FORTY YEARS. More dropping off,--but places much as before.

FIFTY YEARS. Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how!

- Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and a.n.a.logies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts were suggested to them by the simplest natural objects, such as a flower or a leaf; but I will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered sh.e.l.ls to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble ourselves about the distinction between this and the Paper Nautilus, the Argonauta of the ancients. The name applied to both shows that each has long been compared to a s.h.i.+p, as you may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the "Encyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these sh.e.l.ls, and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the sh.e.l.l, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

This is the s.h.i.+p of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main, - The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the s.h.i.+p of pearl! And every clambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing sh.e.l.l, Before thee lies revealed, - Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his l.u.s.trous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its s.h.i.+ning archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, n.o.bler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown sh.e.l.l by life's unresting sea!

CHAPTER V.

A lyric conception--my friend, the Poet, said--hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death. Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine,-- then a gasp and a great jump of the heart,--then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the head,--then a long sigh,--and the poem is written.

It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it so suddenly,-- I replied.

No,--said he,--far from it. I said written, but I did not say COPIED. Every such poem has a soul and a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that men read and publishers pay for. The soul of it is born in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to him a thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words,--words that have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have never been wedded until now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain; but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale with it. It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come cras.h.i.+ng into his brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences of a.s.sociation. No wonder the ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. G.o.ddess,--Muse,--divine afflatus,-- something outside always. I never wrote any verses worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth reading, I was only a medium.

[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you understand,-- telling them what this poet told me. The company listened rather attentively, I thought, considering the literary character of the remarks.]

The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if I ever read anything better than Pope's "Essay on Man"? Had I ever perused McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy,--his mother taught him to say many little pieces,--he remembered one beautiful hymn;--and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for his years, - "The s.p.a.cious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens," - He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum,--the Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sudden breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high- shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,--the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall. Bridget, const.i.tuted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when I saw the coa.r.s.e arm stretched by my shoulder arrested,--motionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't set the plate down while the old gentleman was speaking!

He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever WERE there, they ARE there still!

By and by we got talking again.--Does a poet love the verses written through him, do you think, Sir?--said the divinity-student.

So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal heat about them, I KNOW he loves them,--I answered. When they have had time to cool, he is more indifferent.

A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes,--said the young fellow whom they call John.

The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized female in black bombazine .--Buckwheat is skerce and high,--she remarked. [Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady,--pays nothing,--so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel boarders.]

I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again.--I don't think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state.

- You don't know what I mean by the GREEN STATE? Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they have been long kept and USED. Of the first, wine is the ill.u.s.trious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and used I will name three,--meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without complexion or flavor,--born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as pallida Mors herself. The fire is lighted in its central shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see,--as true in the fire of the meerschaum as in the suns.h.i.+ne of October! And then the c.u.mulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that hang around it as the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina!

[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for I DO NOT, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box- wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's "Triumph of Galatea." It came to me in an ancient s.h.a.green case,--how old it is I do not know,--but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. If you are curious, you shall see it any day. Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the CIGAR, so called, of the shops,--which to "draw" asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my ill.u.s.tration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me a.s.sure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.]

Violins, too,--the sweet old Amati!--the divine Stradivarius! Played on by ancient maestros until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the pa.s.sionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Pa.s.sed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his h.o.a.rd was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rus.h.i.+ng bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle dilettante who calmed it down with easy melodies until it answered him softly as in the days of the old maestros. And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled and faded on its strings.

Now I tell you a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;--the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,--its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate.

Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's hands? Now you know very well that there are no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to make them thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule which had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant.

Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a violin. The poet has forced all these words together, and fastened them, and they don't understand it at first. But let the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in the mind's m.u.f.fled whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit together in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a syllable without the whole world's crying out against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its hundredth birthday,--(Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,)--the sap is pretty well out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom Neaera cheated. - "Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno Inter minora sidera, c.u.m tu magnorum numen laesura deorum In verba jurabas mea."

Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead Latin phrases? Now I tell you that, every word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a certain succulence; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the "Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus that held those words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly judge of my performances, and that, if made of the true stuff, they will ring better after a while.

[There was silence for a brief s.p.a.ce, after my somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident a.n.a.logies. Presently A PERSON turned towards me--I do not choose to designate the individual--and said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good "sahtisfahction."--I had, up to this moment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually accompanied by a small pecuniary testimonial, have acquired a certain relish for this moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of enthusiasm. But as a reward for gratuitous services, I confess I thought it a little below that blood-heat standard which a man's breath ought to have, whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for a favorable opportunity, however, before making the remarks which follow.]

- There are single expressions, as I have told you already, that fix a man's position for you before you have done shaking hands with him. Allow me to expand a little. There are several things, very slight in themselves, yet implying other things not so unimportant. Thus, your French servant has devalise your premises and got caught. Excusez, says the sergent-de-ville, as he politely relieves him of his upper garments and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good shoulders enough,--a little marked,--traces of smallpox, perhaps,--but white..... Crac! from the sergent-de- ville's broad palm on the white shoulder! Now look! Vogue la galere! Out comes the big red V--mark of the hot iron;--he had blistered it out pretty nearly,--hadn't he?--the old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Ma.r.s.eilles! [Don't! What if he has got something like this?--n.o.body supposes I INVENTED such a story.]

My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females which I told you I had owned,--for, look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, I am one that has been driven in his "kerridge,"--not using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any battered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle WITH A POLE,--my man John, I say, was a retired soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many of Her Majesty's modest servants have done before and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really been in the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, "Strap!" If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes through his muscles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the place where the strap used to be.

[I was all the time preparing for my grand coup, you understand; but I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued,-- always in ill.u.s.tration of the general principle I had laid down.]

Yes, odd things come out in ways that n.o.body thinks of. There was a legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the English coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape of Saxons, who would not let them go,--on the contrary, insisted on their staying, and, to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or an Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his t.i.tle-page, and, having divested them of the one essential and perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest climates, nailed the same on the church-door as we do the banns of marriage, in terrorem.

[There was a laugh at this among some of the young folks; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw that "the water stood in her eyes," as it did in Christiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spider, and I fancied, but wasn't quite sure that the schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same conversation, as you remember.]

That sounds like a c.o.c.k-and-bull-story,--said the young fellow whom they call John. I abstained from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, and continued.

Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing and beautifying an old Saxon church in a certain English village, and among other things thought the doors should be attended to. One of them particularly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it were, and as if it would be all the better for sc.r.a.ping. There happened to be a microscopist in the village who had heard the old pirate story, and he took it into his head to examine the crust on this door. There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine historical doc.u.ment, of the Ziska drum-head pattern,--a real cutis humana, stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster, and the legend was true.

My friend, the Professor, settled an important historical and financial question once by the aid of an exceedingly minute fragment of a similar doc.u.ment. Behind the pane of plate-gla.s.s which bore his name and t.i.tle burned a modest lamp, signifying to the pa.s.sers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very natural under the circ.u.mstances, dashed his fist at the light and quenched the meek luminary,--breaking through the plate-gla.s.s, of course, to reach it. Now I don't want to go into minutiae at table, you know, but a naked hand can no more go through a pane of thick gla.s.s without leaving some of its cuticle, to say the least, behind it, than a b.u.t.terfly can go through a sausage-machine without looking the worse for it. The Professor gathered up the fragments of gla.s.s, and with them certain very minute but entirely satisfactory doc.u.ments which would have identified and hanged any rogue in Christendom who had parted with them.--The historical question, WHO DID IT? and the financial question, WHO PAID FOR IT? were both settled before the new lamp was lighted the next evening.

You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, may be reached by means of very insignificant premises. This is eminently true of manners and forms of speech; a movement or a phrase often tells you all you want to know about a person. Thus, "How's your health?" (commonly p.r.o.nounced haalth)--instead of, How do you do? or, How are you? Or calling your little dark entry a "hall," and your old rickety one- horse wagon a "kerridge." Or telling a person who has been trying to please you that he has given you pretty good "sahtisfahction." Or saying that you "remember of" such a thing, or that you have been "stoppin"' at Deacon Somebody's,--and other such expressions. One of my friends had a little marble statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house,--bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the house "if that was a statoo of her deceased infant?" What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in that brief question!

[Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness I smuggled in the particular offence which it was my object to hold up to my fellow-boarders, without too personal an attack on the individual at whose door it lay.]

That was an exceedingly dull person who made the remark, Ex pede Herculem. He might as well have said, "From a peck of apples you may judge of the barrel." Ex PEDE, to be sure! Read, instead, Ex ungue minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque patrem, matrem, avos et proavos, filios, nepotes et p.r.o.nepotes! Talk to me about your [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]! Tell me about Cuvier's getting up a megatherium from a tooth, or Aga.s.siz's drawing a portrait of an undiscovered fish from a single scale! As the "O" revealed Giotto,--as the one word "moi" betrayed the Stratford atte-Bowe-taught Anglais,--so all a man's antecedents and possibilities are summed up in a single utterance which gives at once the gauge of his education and his mental organization.

Possibilities, Sir?--said the divinity-student; can't a man who says Haow? arrive at distinction?

Sir,--I replied,--in a republic all things are possible. But the man WITH A FUTURE has almost of necessity sense enough to see that any odious trick of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn't Sydney Smith say that a public man in England never gets over a false quant.i.ty uttered in early life? OUR public men are in little danger of this fatal misstep, as few of them are in the habit of introducing Latin into their speeches,--for good and sufficient reasons. But they are bound to speak decent English,--unless, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows who have quite as many on their own, and a const.i.tuency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided they do not swear in their Presidential Messages.

However, it is not for me to talk. I have made mistakes enough in conversation and print. I never find them out until they are stereotyped, and then I think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I shall make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over, and remember them all before another. How one does tremble with rage at his own intense momentary stupidity about things he knows perfectly well, and to think how he lays himself open to the impertinences of the captatores verborum, those useful but humble scavengers of the language, whose business it is to pick up what might offend or injure, and remove it, hugging and feeding on it as they go! I don't want to speak too slightingly of these verbal critics;--how can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a difference between those clerical blunders which almost every man commits, knowing better, and that habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that wears silk or broadcloth.

[I write down the above remarks this morning, January 26th, making this record of the date that n.o.body may think it was written in wrath, on account of any particular grievance suffered from the invasion of any individual scarabaeus grammaticus.]

- I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they did not.

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone, which had lain, n.o.body knows how long, just where you found it, with the gra.s.s forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this time"? What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of gra.s.s flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or h.o.r.n.y-sh.e.l.led,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one of her flat- pattern five timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush round wildly, b.u.t.ting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by suns.h.i.+ne. NEXT YEAR you will find the gra.s.s growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the b.u.t.tercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified being.

- The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it rather strong on the b.u.t.terflies.

No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images,--the b.u.t.terfly as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The gra.s.s is human nature borne down and bleached of all its colour by it. The shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the suns.h.i.+ne. Then shall G.o.d's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and color--light upon the souls of men as the b.u.t.terfly, image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the sh.e.l.l that held a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted.

You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that dwells under it.

- Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very probably begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man can have that he has said something it was time to say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of one of his pamphlets. "I think I have not been attacked enough for it," he said;--"attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds."

- If a fellow attacked my opinions in print would I reply? Not I. Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called THE HYDROSTATIC PARADOX OF CONTROVERSY?

Don't know what that means?--Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way,--AND THE FOOLS KNOW IT.

- No, but I often read what they say about other people. There are about a dozen phrases which all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one, you get the whole lot.

What are they?--Oh, that depends a good deal on lat.i.tude and longitude. Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, ill.u.s.trious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization.

What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets?--Well, I should say a set of influences something like these: --1st. Relations.h.i.+ps, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oyster, in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criticism. I believe in the school, the college, and the clergy; but my sovereign logic, for regulating public opinion--which means commonly the opinion of half a dozen of the critical gentry--is the following MAJOR PROPOSITION. Oysters au naturel. Minor proposition. The same "scalloped." Conclusion. That--(here insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, brilliant,--and the rest.

- No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has oysters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a "spread" on linen, and the other on paper,--that is all. Don't you think you and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical line? I am sure I couldn't resist the softening influences of hospitality. I don't like to dine out, you know,--I dine so well at our own table, [our landlady looked radiant,] and the company is so pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the boarders]; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with such additions as that article of food requires to make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a string of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us,--not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest among the virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never be a critic, because I know I could not always tell it. I might write a criticism of a book that happened to please me; that is another matter.

- Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, and such others of tender age as you may tell it to.

When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold--TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns-- thus we learn--to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must ROLL, or n.o.body can do anything with it; and so the first with her coa.r.s.e rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood.

The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that she was pleased with this, and that she would read it to her little flock the next day. But she should tell the children, she said, that there were better reasons for truth than could be found in mere experience of its convenience and the inconvenience of lying.

Yes,--I said,--but education always begins through the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable,--afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity of the universe.

- Do I think that the particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the t.i.tle, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does any harm?--Why, no,--I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't really deceive people any more than the "Arabian Nights" or "Gulliver's Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile TOO carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers, the other day, which contains a number of improbabilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get it for you, if you would like to hear it.--Ah, this is it; it is headed "OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE.

"This island is now the property of the Stamford family,--having been won, it is said, in a raffle, by Sir--Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions (unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 'Notes and Queries.' This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently displays on its surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppressively hot, and the winters very probably cold; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these lat.i.tudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and thus the thermometer is rendered useless in winter.

The princ.i.p.al vegetable productions of the island are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper being very abundantly produced, a benevolent society was organized in London during the last century for supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received from Dr. D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oysters were of the kind called NATIVES in England, the natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct, refused to touch them, and confined themselves entirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were brought over. This information was received from one of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to be very skilful in the CUISINE peculiar to the island.

"During the season of gathering the pepper, the persons employed are subject to various incommodities, the chief of which is violent and long-continued sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the vehemence of these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of them are often driven backwards for great distances at immense speed, on the well-known principle of the aeolipile. Not being able to see where they are going, these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the PEPPER-FEVER as it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, who, it is well known, abstain from swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan Buddhists.

"The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches are well known to Europe and America under the familiar name of maccaroni. The smaller twigs are called vermicelli. They have a decided animal flavor, as may be observed in the soups containing them. Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly ferocious by being boiled. The government of the island, therefore, never allows a stick of it to be exported without being accompanied by a piston with which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out. These are commonly lost or stolen before the maccaroni arrives among us. It therefore always contains many of these insects, which, however, generally die of old age in the shops, so that accidents from this source are comparatively rare.

"The fruit of the bread-tree consists princ.i.p.ally of hot rolls. The b.u.t.tered-m.u.f.fin variety is supposed to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the hybrid in the shape of b.u.t.ter, just as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is commonly served up with cold" - - There,--I don't want to read any more of it. You see that many of these statements are highly improbable.--No, I shall not mention the paper.--No, neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the style of these popular writers. I think the fellow who wrote it must have been reading some of their stories, and got them mixed up with his history and geography. I don't suppose HE lies;--he sells it to the editor, who knows how many squares off "Sumatra" is. The editor, who sells it to the public--By the way, the papers have been very civil haven't they?--to the--the what d'ye call it?- -"Northern Magazine,"--isn't it?--got up by some of those Come- outers, down East, as an organ for their local peculiarities.

- The Professor has been to see me. Came in, glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. Said he had been with "the boys." On inquiry, found that "the boys," were certain baldish and grayish old gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various important stations of society. The Professor is one of the same set, but he always talks as if he had been out of college about ten years, whereas... [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the company understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He calls them sometimes "the boys," and sometimes "the old fellows." Call him by the latter t.i.tle, and see how he likes it.--Well, he came in last night glorious, as I was saying. Of course I don't mean vinously exalted; he drinks little wine on such occasions, and is well known to all the Peters and Patricks as the gentleman who always has indefinite quant.i.ties of black tea to kill any extra gla.s.s of red claret he may have swallowed. But the Professor says he always gets tipsy on old memories at these gatherings. He was, I forget how many years old when he went to the meeting; just turned of twenty now,--he said. He made various youthful proposals to me, including a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He had just learned a trick, he said, of one of "the boys," of getting a splendid ba.s.s out of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his hand. Offered to sing "The sky is bright," accompanying himself on the front-door, if I would go down and help in the chorus. Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, Congress-men, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better than famous, and famous too, poets by the half-dozen, singers with voices like angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers in the Commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists,--all forms of talent and knowledge he pretended were represented in that meeting. Then he began to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and maintained that he could "furnish out creation" in all its details from that set of his. He would like to have the whole boodle of them, (I remonstrated against this word, but the Professor said it was a diabolish good word, and he would have no other,) with their wives and children, s.h.i.+pwrecked on a remote island, just to see how splendidly they would reorganize society. They could build a city,--they have done it; make const.i.tutions and laws; establish churches and lyceums; teach and practise the healing art; instruct in every department; found observatories; create commerce and manufactures; write songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make instruments to accompany the songs with; lastly, publish a journal almost as good as the "Northern Magazine," edited by the Come- outers. There was nothing they were not up to, from a christening to a hanging; the last, to be sure, could never be called for, unless some stranger got in among them.

- I let the Professor talk as long as he liked; it didn't make much difference to me whether it was all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry and similar elements. All at once he jumped up and said, - Don't you want to hear what I just read to the boys?

I have had questions of a similar character asked me before, occasionally. A man of iron mould might perhaps say, No! I am not a man of iron mould, and said that I should be delighted.

The Professor then read--with that slightly sing-song cadence which is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses--the following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some impertinent young folks to that of the act of playing on the trombone. His eyesight was never better; I have his word for it.

MARE RUBRUM.

Flash out a stream of blood-red wine! - For I would drink to other days; And brighter shall their memory s.h.i.+ne, Seen flaming through its crimson blaze. The roses die, the summers fade; But every ghost of boyhood's dream By Nature's magic power is laid To sleep beneath this blood-red stream.

It filled the purple grapes that lay And drank the splendors of the sun Where the long summer's cloudless day Is mirrored in the broad Garonne; It pictures still the bacchant shapes That saw their h.o.a.rded sunlight shed, - The maidens dancing on the grapes, - Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.

Beneath these waves of crimson lie, In rosy fetters prisoned fast, Those flitting shapes that never die, The swift-winged visions of the past. Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, Each shadow rends its flowery chain, Springs in a bubble from its brim And walks the chambers of the brain.

Poor Beauty! time and fortune's wrong No form nor feature may withstand, - Thy wrecks are scattered all along, Like emptied sea-sh.e.l.ls on the sand; - Yet, sprinkled with this blus.h.i.+ng rain, The dust restores each blooming girl, As if the sea-sh.e.l.ls moved again Their glistening lips of pink and pearl.

Here lies the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest--their keen vibrations mute - The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell.

Here, clad in burning robes, are laid Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed; And here those cherished forms have strayed We miss awhile, and call them dead. What wizard fills the maddening gla.s.s What soil the enchanted cl.u.s.ters grew? That buried pa.s.sions wake and pa.s.s In beaded drops of fiery dew?