Back again!--A turtle--which means a tortoise--is fond of his shell;
but if you put a live coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the
boys say.
It is a libel on the turtle. He grows to his shell, and his shell is
in his body as much as his body is in his shell.--I don't think
there is one of our boarders quite so testudineous as I am. Nothing
but a combination of motives, more peremptory than the coal on the
turtle's back, could have got me to leave the shelter of my carapace;
and after memorable interviews, and kindest hospitalities, and grand
sights, and huge influx of patriotic pride,--for every American owns
all America,--
"Creation's heir,--the world, the world is"
his, if anybody's,--I come back with the feeling which a boned turkey
might experience, if, retaining his consciousness, he were allowed to
resume his skeleton.
Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recumbent Cleopatra, and Dying
Warrior, whose classic outlines (reproduced in the calcined mineral
of Lutetia) crown my loaded shelves! Welcome, ye triumphs of
pictorial art (repeated by the magic graver) that look down upon me
from the walls of my sacred cell! Vesalius, as Titian drew him,
high-fronted, still-eyed, thick-bearded, with signet-ring, as beseems
a gentleman, with book and carelessly-held eyeglass, marking him a
scholar; thou, too, Jan Kuyper, commonly called Jan Praktiseer, old
man of a century and seven years besides, father of twenty sons and
two daughters, cut in copper by Houbraken, bought from a portfolio on
one of the Paris quais; and ye Three Trees of Rembrandt, black in
shadow against the blaze of light; and thou Rosy Cottager of Sir
Joshua, roses hinted by the peppery burin of Bartolozzi; ye, too, of
lower grades in nature, yet not unlovely for unrenowned, Young Bull
of Paulus Potter, and sleeping Cat of Cornelius Visscher; welcome
once more to my eyes! The old books look out from the shelves, and I
seem to read on their backs something asides their titles,--a kind of
solemn greeting. The crimson carpet flushes warm under my feet. The
arm-chair hugs me; the swivel-chair spins round with me, as if it
were giddy with pleasure; the vast recumbent fauteuil stretches
itself out under my weight, as one joyous with food and wine
stretches in after-dinner laughter.
The boarders were pleased to say that they were glad to get me back.
One of them ventured a compliment, namely,--that I talked as if I
believed what I said.--This was apparently considered something
unusual, by its being mentioned.
One who means to talk with entire sincerity,--I said,--always feels
himself in danger of two things, namely,--an affectation of
bluntness, like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and
actual rudeness. What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger,
is to get and to give as much of the best and most real life that
belongs to the two talkers as the time will let him. Life is short,
and conversation apt to run to mere words. Mr. Hue I think it is,
who tells us some very good stories about the way in which two
Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up a long talk without saying a
word which has any meaning in it. Something like this is
occasionally heard on this side of the Great Wall. The best Chinese
talkers I know are some pretty women whom I meet from time to time.
Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery
glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de
Dantzic; their accents flowing on in a soft ripple,--never a wave,
and never a calm; words nicely fitted, but never a colored phrase or
a highly-flavored epithet; they turn air into syllables so
gracefully, that we find meaning for the music they make as we find
faces in the coals and fairy palaces in the clouds. There is
something very odd, though, about this mechanical talk.
You have sometimes been in a train on the railroad when the engine
was detached a long way from the station you were approaching? Well,
you have noticed how quietly and rapidly the cars kept on, just as if
the locomotive were drawing them? Indeed, you would not have
suspected that you were travelling on the strength of a dead fact, if
you had not seen the engine running away from you on a side-track.
Upon my conscience, I believe some of these pretty women detach their
minds entirely, sometimes, from their talk,--and, what is more, that
we never know the difference. Their lips let off the fluty syllables
just as their fingers would sprinkle the music-drops from their
pianos; unconscious habit turns the phrase of thought into words just
as it does that of music into notes.--Well, they govern the world
for all that, these sweet-lipped women,--because beauty is the index
of a larger fact than wisdom.
--The Bombazine wanted an explanation.
Madam,--said I,--wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is
the promise of the future.
--All this, however, is not what I was going to say. Here am I,
suppose, seated--we will say at a dinner-table--alongside of an
intelligent Englishman. We look in each other's faces,--we exchange
a dozen words. One thing is settled: we mean not to offend each
other,--to be perfectly courteous,--more than courteous; for we are
the entertainer and the entertained, and cherish particularly amiable
feelings, to each other. The claret is good; and if our blood
reddens a little with its warm crimson, we are none the less kind for
it.
I don't think people that talk over their victuals are like to say
anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with
strong drink before they begin jabberin'.
The Bombazine uttered this with a sugary sourness, as if the words
had been steeped in a solution of acetate of lead.--The boys of my
time used to call a hit like this a "side-winder."
--I must finish this woman.--
Madam,--I said,--the Great Teacher seems to have been fond of talking
as he sat at meat. Because this was a good while ago, in a far-off
place, you forget what the true fact of it was,--that those were real
dinners, where people were hungry and thirsty, and where you met a
very miscellaneous company. Probably there was a great deal of loose
talk among the guests; at any rate, there was always wine, we may
believe.
Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or disadvantages of wine,--
and I for one, except for certain particular ends, believe in water,
and, I blush to say it, in black tea,--there is no doubt about its
being the grand specific against dull dinners. A score of people
come together in all moods of mind and body. The problem is, in the
space of one hour, more or less, to bring them all into the same
condition of slightly exalted life. Food alone is enough for one
person, perhaps,--talk, alone, for another; but the grand equalizer
and fraternizer, which works up the radiators to their maximum
radiation, and the absorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now
just where it was when
The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed,
--when six great vessels containing water, the whole amounting to
more than a hogshead-full, were changed into the best of wine. I
once wrote a song about wine, in which I spoke so warmly of it, that
I was afraid some would think it was written inter pocula; whereas it
was composed in the bosom of my family, under the most tranquillizing
domestic influences.
--The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous.--Can
you tell me,--he said,--who wrote a song for a temperance celebration
once, of which the following is a verse?
Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair
The joys of the banquet to chasten and share!
Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine,
And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine!
I did,--I answered.--What are you going to do about it?--I will tell
you another line I wrote long ago:--
Don't be "consistent,"--but be simply true.
The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that
the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with
many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about
them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to
grind us down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to resist
this grinding-down action.--Now give me a chance. Better eternal
and universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made
wives and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they
should have honored, as they came reeling home from their debauches!
Yet better even excess than lying and hypocrisy; and if wine is upon
all our tables, let us praise it for its color and fragrance and
social tendency, so far as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the
closet and pretend not to know the use of a wine-glass at a public
dinner! I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be
true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try
to be "consistent." But a great many things we say can be made to
appear contradictory, simply because they are partial views of a
truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a front view of a face
and its profile often do.
Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have great respect, for I
owe him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he
has often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend
the "Autocrat,"--which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by
omitting the very word which gives it its significance,--the word
fluid, intended to typify the mobility of the restricted will,--holds
it up, I say, as if it attacked the reality of the self-determining
principle, instead of illustrating its limitations by an image. Now
I will not explain any farther, still less defend, and least of all
attack, but simply quote a few lines from one of my friend's poems,
printed more than ten years ago, and ask the distinguished gentleman
where he has ever asserted more strongly or absolutely the
independent will of the "subcreative centre," as my heretical friend
has elsewhere called man.
--Thought, conscience, will, to make them all thy own
He rent a pillar from the eternal throne!
--Made in His image, thou must nobly dare
The thorny crown of sovereignty to share.
--Think not too meanly of thy low estate;
Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create!
If he will look a little closely, he will see that the profile and
the full-face views of the will are both true and perfectly
consistent!
Now let us come back, after this long digression, to the conversation
with the intelligent Englishman. We begin skirmishing with a few
light ideas,--testing for thoughts,--as our electro-chemical friend,
De Sauty, if there were such a person, would test for his current;
trying a little litmus-paper for acids, and then a slip of turmeric-
paper for alkalies, as chemists do with unknown compounds; flinging
the lead, and looking at the shells and sands it brings up to find
out whether we are like to keep in shallow water, or shall have to
drop the deep-sea line;--in short, seeing what we have to deal with.
If the Englishman gets his H's pretty well placed, he comes from one
of the higher grades of the British social order, and we shall find
him a good companion.
But, after all, here is a great fact between us. We belong to two
different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us,
we are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe, without any hole in the wall
to talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior
fellow, incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I
would let out the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World
folks. They are children to us in certain points of view. They are
playing with toys we have done with for whole-generations.
--------
FOOTNOTE:
The more I have observed and reflected, the more limited seems to me
the field of action of the human will. Every act of choice involves a
special relation between the ego and the conditions before it. But
no man knows what forces are at work in the determination of his ego.
The bias which decides his choice between two or more motives may
come from some unsuspected ancestral source, of which he knows
nothing at all. He is automatic in virtue of that hidden spring of
reflex action, all the time having the feeling that he is self-
determining. The Story of Elsie Yenner, written-soon after this book
was published, illustrates the direction in which my thought was
moving. 'The imaginary subject of the story obeyed her will, but her
will Obeyed the mysterious antenatal poisoning influence.
--------
That silly little drum they are always beating on, and the trumpet
and the feather they make so much noise and cut such a figure with,
we have not quite outgrown, but play with much less seriously and
constantly than they do. Then there is a whole museum of wigs, and
masks, and lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and grimaces, and phrases,
which we laugh at honestly, without affectation, that are still used
in the Old-World puppet-shows. I don't think we on our part ever
understand the Englishman's concentrated loyalty and specialized
reverence. But then we do think more of a man, as such, (barring
some little difficulties about race and complexion which the
Englishman will touch us on presently,) than any people that ever
lived did think of him. Our reverence is a great deal wider, if it
is less intense. We have caste among us, to some extent; it is true;
but there is never a collar on the American wolf-dog such as you
often see on the English mastiff, notwithstanding his robust, hearty
individuality.
This confronting of two civilizations is always a grand sensation to
me; it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans
swim into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to
let out the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming
to take a personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so
much as when he talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the
Peruvians. Then you get the real British flavor, which the
cosmopolite Englishman loses.
How much better this thorough interpenetration of ideas than a barren
interchange of courtesies, or a bush-fighting argument, in which each
man tries to cover as much of himself and expose as much of his
opponent as the tangled thicket of the disputed ground will let him!
---My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at least three deep. I
follow a slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current
of my own beneath it. Under both runs obscurely a consciousness
belonging to a third train of reflections, independent of the two
others. I will try to write out a Mental movement in three parts.
A.---First voice, or Mental Soprano,--thought follows a woman
talking.
B.--Second voice, or Mental Barytone,--my running accompaniment.
C.--Third voice, or Mental Basso,--low grumble of importunate self-
repeating idea.
A.--White lace, three skirts, looped with flowers, wreath of apple-
blossoms, gold bracelets, diamond pin and ear-rings, the most
delicious berthe you ever saw, white satin slippers-
B.--Deuse take her! What a fool she is! Hear her chatter! (Look
out of window just here.--Two pages and a half of description, if it
were all written out, in one tenth of a second.)--Go ahead, old lady!
(Eye catches picture over fireplace.) There's that infernal family
nose! Came over in the "Mayflower" on the first old fool's face.
Why don't they wear a ring in it?
C.--You 'll be late at lecture,--late at lecture,--late,--late-
I observe that a deep layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt
through the superincumbent strata, thus:--The usual single or double
currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with
them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,--
Oh, there! I knew there was something troubling me,--and the thought
which had been working through comes up to the surface clear,
definite, and articulates itself,--a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or
an unpleasant recollection.
The inner world of thought and the outer world of events are alike in
this, that they are both brimful. There is no space between
consecutive thoughts, or between the never-ending series of actions.
All pack tight, and mould their surfaces against each other, so that
in the long run there is a wonderful average uniformity in the forms
of both thoughts and actions, just as you find that cylinders crowded
all become hexagonal prisms, and spheres pressed together are formed
into regular polyhedra.
Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and
no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by
him. So, to carry out, with another comparison, my remark about the
layers of thought, we may consider the mind as it moves among
thoughts or events, like a circus-rider whirling round with a great
troop of horses. He can mount a fact or an idea, and guide it more
or less completely, but he cannot stop it. So, as I said in another
way at the beginning, he can stride two or three thoughts at once,
but not break their steady walk, trot, or gallop. He can only take
his foot from the saddle of one thought and put it on that of
another.
--What is the saddle of a thought? Why, a word, of course.--Twenty
years after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to
you through the press, as if it had been steadily galloping round and
round all that time without a rider.
The will does not act in the interspaces of thought, for there are no
such interspaces, but simply steps from the back of one moving
thought upon that of another.
--I should like to ask,--said the divinity-student,--since we are
getting into metaphysics, how you can admit space, if all things are
in contact, and how you can admit time, if it is always now to
something?
--I thought it best not to hear this question.
--I wonder if you know this class of philosophers in books or
elsewhere. One of them makes his bow to the public, and exhibits an
unfortunate truth bandaged up so that it cannot stir hand or foot,--
as helpless, apparently, and unable to take care of itself, as an
Egyptian mummy. He then proceeds, with the air and method of a
master, to take off the bandages. Nothing can be neater than the way
in which he does it. But as he takes off layer after layer, the
truth seems to grow smaller and smaller, and some of its outlines
begin to look like something we have seen before. At last, when he
has got them all off, and the truth struts out naked, we recognize it
as a diminutive and familiar acquaintance whom we have known in the
streets all our lives. The fact is, the philosopher has coaxed the
truth into his study and put all those bandages on; or course it is
not very hard for him to take them off. Still, a great many people
like to watch the process,--he does it so neatly!
Dear! dear! I am ashamed to write and talk, sometimes, when I see
how those functions of the large-brained, thumb-opposing plantigrade
are abused by my fellow-vertebrates,--perhaps by myself. How they
spar for wind, instead of hitting from the shoulder!
--The young fellow called John arose and placed himself in a neat
fighting attitude.--Fetch on the fellah that makes them long words!
--he said,--and planted a straight hit with the right fist in the
concave palm of the left hand with a click like a cup and ball.--You
small boy there, hurry up that "Webster's Unabridged!"
The little gentleman with the malformation, before described, shocked
the propriety of the breakfast-table by a loud utterance of three
words, of which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the
first was an emphatic monosyllable.--Beg pardon,--he added,--forgot
myself. But let us have an English dictionary, if we are to have
any. I don't believe in clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I
put a weathercock on my house, Sir, I want it to tell which way the
wind blows up aloft,--off from the prairies to the ocean, or off from
the ocean to the prairies, or any way it wants to blow! I don't want
a weathercock with a winch in an old gentleman's study that he can
take hold of and turn, so that the vane shall point west when the
great wind overhead is blowing east with all its might, Sir! Wait
till we give you a dictionary; Sir! It takes Boston to do that
thing, Sir!
--Some folks think water can't run down-hill anywhere out of Boston,
--remarked the Koh-i-noor.
I don't know what some folks think so well as I know what some fools
say,--rejoined the Little Gentleman.--If importing most dry goods
made the best scholars, I dare say you would know where to look for
'em.--Mr. Webster could n't spell, Sir, or would n't spell, Sir,--at
any rate, he did n't spell; and the end of it was a fight between the
owners of some copyrights and the dignity of this noble language
which we have inherited from our English fathers. Language!--the
blood of the soul, Sir! into which our thoughts run and out of which
they grow! We know what a word is worth here in Boston. Young Sam
Adams got up on the stage at Commencement, out at Cambridge there,
with his gown on, the Governor and Council looking on in the name of
his Majesty, King George the Second, and the girls looking down out
of the galleries, and taught people how to spell a word that was n't
in the Colonial dictionaries ! R-e, re, s-i-s, sis, t-a-n-c-e,
tance, Resistance! That was in '43, and it was a good many years
before the Boston boys began spelling it with their muskets;--but
when they did begin, they spelt it so loud that the old bedridden
women in the English almshouses heard every syllable! Yes, yes,
yes,--it was a good while before those other two Boston boys got the
class so far along that it could spell those two hard words,
Independence and Union! I tell you what, Sir, there are a thousand
lives, aye, sometimes a million, go to get a new word into a language
that is worth speaking. We know what language means too well here in
Boston to play tricks with it. We never make a new word til we have
made a new thing or a new thought, Sir! then we shaped the new mould
of this continent, we had to make a few. When, by God's permission,
we abrogated the primal curse of maternity, we had to make a word or
two. The cutwater of this great Leviathan clipper, the OCCIDENTAL,--
this thirty-wasted wind-and-steam wave-crusher,--must throw a little
spray over the human vocabulary as it splits the waters of a new
world's destiny!
He rose as he spoke, until his stature seemed to swell into the fair
human proportions. His feet must have been on the upper round of his
high chair; that was the only way I could account for it.
Puts her through fast-rate,--said the young fellow whom the boarders
call John.
The venerable and kind-looking old gentleman who sits opposite said
he remembered Sam Adams as Governor. An old man in a brown coat.
Saw him take the Chair on Boston Common. Was a boy then, and
remembers sitting on the fence in front of the old Hancock house.
Recollects he had a glazed 'lectionbun, and sat eating it and looking
down on to the Common. Lalocks flowered late that year, and he got a
great bunch off from the bushes in the Hancock front-yard.
Them 'lection-buns are no go,--said the young man John, so called.
--I know the trick. Give a fellah a fo'penny bun in the mornin', an'
he downs the whole of it. In about an hour it swells up in his
stomach as big as a football, and his feedin' 's spilt for that day.
That's the way to stop off a young one from eatin' up all the
'lection dinner.
Salem! Salem! not Boston,--shouted the little man.
But the Koh-i-noor laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy
Benjamin Franklin looked sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the
bun-experiment as a part of his past personal history.
The Little Gentleman was holding a fork in his left hand. He stabbed
a boulder of home-made bread with it, mechanically, and looked at it
as if it ought to shriek. It did not,--but he sat as if watching it.
--Language is a solemn thing,--I said.--It grows out of life,--out
of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every
language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is
enshrined. Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp
angles of its cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time?
Let me tell you what comes of meddling with things that can take care
of themselves.--A friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was
a boy,--a "bull's eye," with a loose silver case that came off like
an oyster-shell from its contents; you know them,--the cases that you
hang on your thumb, while the core, or the real watch, lies in your
hand as naked as a peeled apple. Well, he began with taking off the
case, and so on from one liberty to another, until he got it fairly
open, and there were the works, as good as if they were alive,--
crown-wheel, balance-wheel, and all the rest. All right except one
thing,--there was a confounded little hair had got tangled round the
balance-wheel. So my young Solomon got a pair of tweezers, and
caught hold of the hair very nicely, and pulled it right out, without
touching any of the wheels,--when,--buzzzZZZ! and the watch had done
up twenty-four hours in double magnetic-telegraph time!--The English
language was wound up to run some thousands of years, I trust; but if
everybody is to be pulling at everything he thinks is a hair, our
grandchildren will have to make the discovery that it is a hair-
spring, and the old Anglo-Norman soul's-timekeeper will run down, as
so many other dialects have done before it. I can't stand this
meddling any better than you, Sir. But we have a great deal to be
proud of in the lifelong labors of that old lexicographer, and we
must n't be ungrateful. Besides, don't let us deceive ourselves,--
the war of the dictionaries is only a disguised rivalry of cities,
colleges, and especially of publishers. After all, it is likely that
the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and
dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like,
and harrow it afterwards, if you can,--but the moon will still lead
the tides, and the winds will form their surface.
--Do you know Richardson's Dictionary?--I said to my neighbor the
divinity-student.
Haow?--said the divinity-student.--He colored, as he noticed on my
face a twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the
mouth, (zygomaticus major,) and which I could not hold back from
making a little movement on its own account.
It was too late.--A country-boy, lassoed when he was a half-grown
colt. Just as good as a city-boy, and in some ways, perhaps,
better,--but caught a little too old not to carry some marks of his
earlier ways of life. Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue
half their lives, return to the language of their childhood in their
dying hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large
libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes
let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken
since that time,--but it lay there under all their culture. That is
one way you may know the country-boys after they have grown rich or
celebrated; another is by the odd old family names, particularly
those of the Hebrew prophets, which the good old people have saddled
them with.
--Boston has enough of England about it to make a good English
dictionary,--said that fresh-looking youth whom I have mentioned as
sitting at the right upper corner of the table.
I turned and looked him full in the face,--for the pure, manly
intonations arrested me. The voice was youthful, but full of
character.--I suppose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in
the matter of voice.--Hear this.
Not long after the American Revolution, a young lady was sitting in
her father's chaise in a street of this town of Boston. She
overheard a little girl talking or singing, and was mightily taken
with the tones of her voice. Nothing would satisfy her but she must
have that little girl come and live in her father's house. So the
child came, being then nine years old. Until her marriage she
remained under the same roof with the young lady. Her children
became successively inmates of the lady's dwelling; and now, seventy
years, or thereabouts, since the young lady heard the child singing,
one of that child's children and one of her grandchildren are with
her in that home, where she, no longer young, except in heart, passes
her peaceful days.--Three generations linked together by so light a
breath of accident!
I liked--the sound of this youth's voice, I said, and his look when I
came to observe him a little more closely. His complexion had
something better than the bloom and freshness which had first
attracted me;--it had that diffused tone which is a sure index of
wholesome, lusty life. A fine liberal style of nature seemed to be:
hair crisped, moustache springing thick and dark, head firmly
planted, lips finished, as is commonly sees them in gentlemen's
families, a pupil well contracted, and a mouth that opened frankly
with a white flash of teeth that looked as if they could serve him as
they say Ethan Allen's used to serve their owner,--to draw nails
with. This is the kind of fellow to walk a frigate's deck and bowl
his broadsides into the "Gadlant Thudnder-bomb," or any forty-port-
holed adventurer who would like to exchange a few tons of iron
compliments.--I don't know what put this into my head, for it was
not till some time afterward I learned the young fellow had been in
the naval school at Annapolis. Something had happened to change his
plan of life, and he was now studying engineering and architecture in
Boston.
When the youth made the short remark which drew my attention to him,
the little deformed gentleman turned round and took a long look at
him.
Good for the Boston boy!--he said.
I am not a Boston boy,--said the youth, smiling,--I am a Marylander.
I don't care where you come from,--we'll make a Boston man of you,--
said the little gentleman. Pray, what part of Maryland did you come
from, and how shall I call you?
The poor youth had to speak pretty loud, as he was at the right upper
corner of the table, and the little gentleman next the lower left-
hand corner. His face flushed a little, but he answered pleasantly,
telling who he was, as if the little man's infirmity gave him a right
to ask any questions he wanted to.
Here is the place for you to sit,--said the little gentleman,
pointing to the vacant chair next his own, at the corner.
You're go'n' to have a young lady next you, if you wait till to-
morrow,--said the landlady to him.
He did not reply, but I had a fancy that he changed color. It can't
be that he has susceptibilities with reference to a contingent young
lady! It can't be that he has had experiences which make him
sensitive! Nature could not be quite so cruel as to set a heart
throbbing in that poor little cage of ribs! There is no use in
wasting notes of admiration. I must ask the landlady about him.
These are some of the facts she furnished.--Has not been long with
her. Brought a sight of furniture,--could n't hardly get some of it
upstairs. Has n't seemed particularly attentive to the ladies. The
Bombazine (whom she calls Cousin something or other) has tried to
enter into conversation with him, but retired with the impression
that he was indifferent to ladies' society. Paid his bill the other
day without saying a word about it. Paid it in gold,--had a great
heap of twenty-dollar pieces. Hires her best room. Thinks he is a
very nice little man, but lives dreadful lonely up in his chamber.
Wants the care of some capable nuss. Never pitied anybody more in
her life--never see a more interestin' person.
--My intention was, when I began making these notes, to let them
consist principally of conversations between myself and the other
boarders. So they will, very probably; but my curiosity is excited
about this little boarder of ours, and my reader must not be
disappointed, if I sometimes interrupt a discussion to give an
account of whatever fact or traits I may discover about him. It so
happens that his room is next to mine, and I have the opportunity of
observing many of his ways without any active movements of curiosity.
That his room contains heavy furniture, that he is a restless little
body and is apt to be up late, that he talks to himself, and keeps
mainly to himself, is nearly all I have yet found out.
One curious circumstance happened lately which I mention without
drawing an absolute inference. Being at the studio of a sculptor
with whom I am acquainted, the other day, I saw a remarkable cast of
a left arm. On my asking where the model came from, he said it was
taken direct from the arm of a deformed person, who had employed one
of the Italian moulders to make the cast. It was a curious case, it
should seem, of one beautiful limb upon a frame otherwise singularly
imperfect--I have repeatedly noticed this little gentleman's use of
his left arm. Can he have furnished the model I saw at the
sculptor's?
--So we are to have a new boarder to-morrow. I hope there will be
something pretty and pleasing about her. A woman with a creamy
voice, and finished in alto rilievo, would be a variety in the
boarding-house,--a little more marrow and a little less sinew than
our landlady and her daughter and the bombazine-clad female, all of
whom are of the turkey-drumstick style of organization. I don't mean
that these are our only female companions; but the rest being
conversational non-combatants, mostly still, sad feeders, who take in
their food as locomotives take in wood and water, and then wither
away from the table like blossoms that never came to fruit, I have
not yet referred to them as individuals.
I wonder what kind of young person we shall see in that empty chair
to-morrow!
--I read this song to the boarders after breakfast the other morning.
It was written for our fellows;--you know who they are, of course.
THE BOYS.
Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?
If there has, take him out, without making a noise!
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!
Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night!
We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?
He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door!--
"Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! white, if we please;
Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!
Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!
Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake;
We want some new garlands for those we have shed,
And these are white roses in place of the red!
We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told.
Of talking (in public) as if we were old;
That boy we call Doctor, (1) and this we call Judge (2)--
It's a neat little fiction,--of course it's all fudge.
That fellow's the Speaker, (3)--the one on the right;
Mr. Mayor, (4) my young one, how are you to-night?
That's our "Member of Congress,"(5) we say when we chaff;
There's the "Reverend" (6) What's his name?--don't make me laugh!
That boy with the grave mathematical look(7)
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too.
There's a boy,--we pretend,--with a three-decker-brain
That could harness a team with a logical chain:
When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
We called him "The Justice,"--but now he's "The Squire."(1)
And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,(2)
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith,
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,
--Just read on his medal,--"My country,--of thee!"
You hear that boy laughing?--you think he's all fun,
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!(3)
Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,--
And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?
Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!
1 Francis Thomas.
2 George Tyler Bigelow.
3 Francis Boardman Crowninshield.
4 G. W. Richardson.
5 George Thomas Davis.
6 James Freeman Clarke.
7 Benjamin Peirce. |
