The Diving Bell Part 2

"I live like a king, and my wife like a queen; We wander where flowers are blooming and green, And then on the breast of the lily we lie, And list to the stream running merrily by.

XIII.

"With us you shall mingle in scenes of delight, All summer, all winter, from morn until night, And when 'neath the hills sinks the sun in the west, Your head on a pillow of roses shall rest.

XIV.

"When miserly bees shall return from their toils"-- He winked as he said it--"we'll feast on the spoils; I'll lighten their loads"--said the Bee, "So will I."

And the Spider said, "Well, if you live, you may try."

XV.

The Bee did not wait to be urged any more, But nodded his thanks, as he entered the door.

"Aha!" said the Spider, "I have you at last!"

And he seized the poor fellow, and tied him up fast.

XVI.

The Bee, when aware of his perilous state, Recovered his wit, though a moment too late.

"O treacherous Spider! for shame!" said he.

"Is it thus you betray a poor innocent Bee?"

XVII.

The cunning old rascal then laughed outright.

"My friend!" he said, grinning, "you're in a sad plight.

Ha! ha! what a dunce you must be to suppose That the heart of a Spider could pity your woes!

XVIII.

"I never could boast of much honor or shame, Though slightly acquainted with both by name; But I think if the Bees can a brother betray, We Spiders are quite as good people as they.

XIX.

"I guess you have lived long enough, little sinner, And, now, with your leave, I will eat you for dinner.

You'll make a good morsel, it must be confessed; And the world, very likely, will pardon the rest."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SPIDER'S TRIUMPH.]

MORAL.

This lesson for every one, little and great, Is taught in that vagabond's tragical fate: _Of him who is scheming your friend to ensnare, Unless you've a pa.s.sion for bleeding, beware_!

IV.

GENIUS IN THE BUD.

Genius, in its infancy, sometimes puts on a very funny face. The first efforts of a painter are generally rude enough. So are those of a poet, or any other artist. I have often wished I might see the first picture that such a man as t.i.tian, or Rubens, or Reynolds, or West, ever drew. It would interest me much, and, I suspect, would provoke a smile or two, at the expense of the young artists.

History does not often transmit such sketches to the world. But I wish it would. I wish the picture of the sheep that Giotto was sketching, when Cimabue, one of the greatest painters of his age, came across him, could be produced. I would go miles to see it. And I wish West's mother had carefully preserved, for some public gallery, the picture that her son Benjamin made of the little baby in the cradle. You have heard that story, I dare say.

Benjamin, you know, showed a taste for drawing and painting, when he was a very little boy. His early advantages were but few. But he made the most of these advantages; and the result was that he became one of the first painters of his day, and before he died, he was chosen President of the Royal Society in London. How do you think he made his colors? You will smile when you hear that they were formed with charcoal and chalk, with an occasional sprinkling of the juice of red berries. His brush was rather a rude one. It was made of the hair he pulled from the tail of p.u.s.s.y, the family cat. Poor old cat! she lost so much of her fur to supply the young artist with brushes, that the family began to feel a good deal of anxiety for her p.u.s.s.ys.h.i.+p. They thought her hair fell off by disease, until Benjamin, who was an honest boy, one day informed them of their mistake. What a pity that the world could not have the benefit of one of the pictures that West painted with his cat-tail brush.

And then, what a treat it would be, to get hold of the first rhymes that Watts and Pope ever made. I believe that Watts had been rhyming some time when he got a fatherly flogging for this exercise of his genius, and he sobbed out, between the blows,

"Dear father, do some pity take, And I will no more verses make."

That couplet was not his first one, by a good deal. The habit, it would seem, had taken a pretty strong hold of him, when the whipping drew that out of him.

It seems to me that the childhood and early youth of a genius are more interesting than any riper periods of his life; or rather, that they become so, when time and circ.u.mstances have developed what there was in the man, and when from the stand-point of his fame in manhood, we look back upon his early history. What small beginnings there have been to all the efforts of those who have made themselves masters of the particular art to which they have directed their attention.

I wonder what kind of a thing Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's first composition was. There must have been a first one; and, without doubt, it was a clumsy affair enough. If I were going to write his history, I would find those who knew him when he was a mere child, and I would pump from them as many anecdotes about his little scribblings as I possibly could, and I would print them, lots of them. I hardly think I could do the reader of his biography a better service.

I wonder what his first experience was with the editors. These editors, by the way, are often very troublesome to the young sprig of genius. Placed, as they are, at the door of the temple of fame, they often seem to the unfledged author the most disobliging, iron-hearted men in the world. He could walk right into the temple, and make himself perfectly at home there, if they would only open the door. So he fancies; and he wonders why the barbarians don't see the genius sticking out, when he comes along with his nicely-written verses, and why they don't just give him, at once, a ticket of admission to the honors of the world. "These editors are slow to perceive merit," he says to himself.

Your old friend Uncle Frank once set himself up for a genius. Don't laugh--pray, don't laugh. I was young then, and as green as a juvenile gosling. Age has branded into me a great many truths, which, somehow or other, were very slow in finding their way to my young mind. The notion that I am a genius does not haunt me now, and a great many years have pa.s.sed since such a vision flitted across my imagination.

But I will tell you how I was cooled off, once on a time, when I got into a raging fever of authors.h.i.+p, and was burning up with a desire to make an impression on the world. I had written some verses--written them with great care, and with ever so many additions, subtractions, and divisions. They were perfect, at last--that is, I could not make them any more perfect--and off they were posted to the editor of the village newspaper. I declare I don't remember what they were about.

But I dare say, they were "Lines" to somebody, or "Stanzas" to something; and I remember they were signed "Theodore Thinker," in a very large, and as I then thought, a very fair hand.

"Well, did the editor print them, Uncle Frank?"

Hold on, my dear fellow. You are quite too fast. As I said, when the lines to somebody or something were sent to the editor, I was in a perfect fever. I could hardly wait for Wednesday to come, the day on which the paper was to be issued--the paper which was to be the medium of the first acquaintance of my muse with "a discerning public."

"Well, how did you feel when the lines were printed?"

When they were printed! Alas, for my fame! they were not printed at all. The editor rejected them. "Theodore's lines," said he--the great clown! what did _he_ know about poetry?--"Theodore's lines have gone to the shades. They possessed some merit,"--_some_ merit! that's all he knows about poetry; the brute!--"but not enough to ent.i.tle them to a place. Still, whenever age and experience have sufficiently developed his genius,"--mark the smooth and oily manner in which the savage knocks a poor fellow down, and treads on his neck--"whenever age and experience have sufficiently developed his genius, we shall be happy to hear from him again."

If you can fancy how a man feels, when he is taken from an oven, pretty nearly hot enough to bake corn bread, and plunged into a very cold bath, indeed--say about forty degrees Fahrenheit--you can form some idea of my feelings when I read that paragraph in the editorial column, under the notice "To correspondents."

I am inclined to think there are a great many little folks climbing up the stairs of the stage of life, who verily believe that genius has got them by the hand, leading them along, but who, in fact, are not a little mistaken. It is rather important that one should know whether he has any genius or not; and if he has, in what particular direction he will be likely to distinguish himself.

I don't believe in the old-fas.h.i.+oned notion that people all come into the world with minds and tastes so unlike, that, if you educate one ever so carefully, he never will make a poet, or a painter, or a musician, as the case may be; while the other will be a master in one of these branches, with scarcely any instruction. But I do believe there is a great difference in natural capacities for a particular art; and that some persons learn that art easily, while others learn it with difficulty, and could, perhaps, never excel in it, if they should drive at it for a life-time.

Ralph Waldo, a boy who lived near our house, when I was a child, was the sport of all the neighborhood, on account of the high estimate in which he held his talent at drawing pictures. Now it so happened that Ralph's pictures, to say the least, were rather poor specimens of the art. Some of them, according to the best of my recollection, would never have suggested the particular animal or thing for which they were made, if they had not been labeled, or if Ralph had not called them by name.

Such dogs and cats, such horses and cows, such houses and trees, such men and women, were never seen since the world began, as those which figured on his slate. And yet he thought a great deal of his pictures. How happy it used to make him, when some of the boys in the neighborhood, perhaps purely out of sport, would say, "Come, Ralph, let's see you make a horse now." With what zeal he used to set himself about the task of making a horse. When it was done, and ready for exhibition, though it was a perfect scare-crow of a thing, he used to hold it up, with ever so much pride expressed in the rough features of his face, as if it were an effort worthy of being hung up in the Academy of Design, or the Gallery of Fine Arts.