[The “Atlantic” obeys the moon, and its LUNIVERSARY has come round again.
I have gathered up some hasty notes of my remarks made since the last
high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please to remember this is
_talk_; just as easy and just as formal as I choose to make it.]
—I never saw an author in my life—saving, perhaps, one—that did not purr
as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat, (_Felis Catus_, LINN.,) on
having his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand.
But let me give you a caution. Be very careful how you tell an author he
is _droll_. Ten to one he will hate you; and if he does, be sure he can
do you a mischief, and very probably will. Say you _cried_ over his
romance or his verses, and he will love you and send you a copy. You can
laugh over that as much as you like—in private.
—Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny?—Why, there are
obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The clown knows very well
that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in
the black cloak and plumed hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows
that his place is at the tail of a procession.
If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time to tell it.
There is a perfect consciousness in every form of wit—using that term in
its general sense—that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete
view of whatever it touches. It throws a single ray, separated from the
rest,—red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade,—upon an object; never
white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects
from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair
daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much
shallower trick in mental optics throwing the _shadows_ of two objects so
that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special
effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light
of truth.—Will you allow me to pursue this subject a little further?
[They didn’t allow me at that time, for somebody happened to scrape the
floor with his chair just then; which accidental sound, as all must have
noticed, has the instantaneous effect that the cutting of the yellow hair
by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke the charm, and that breakfast
was over.]
—Don’t flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say
disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you
come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy
become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend
to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they are ready enough to
tell them. Good-breeding _never_ forgets that _amour-propre_ is
universal. When you read the story of the Archbishop and Gil Blas, you
may laugh, if you will, at the poor old man’s delusion; but don’t forget
that the youth was the greater fool of the two, and that his master
served such a booby rightly in turning him out of doors.
—You need not get up a rebellion against what I say, if you find
everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can’t possibly mistake
a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an
introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On
examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from
D’Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the little
great man, who had once belabored me in his feeble way. But one can
generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not
worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory. I doubt the entire
novelty of my remarks just made on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am
not conscious of any larceny.
Neither make too much of flaws and occasional overstatements. Some
persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated
propositions, is all that conversation admits. This is precisely as if a
musician should insist on having nothing but perfect chords and simple
melodies,—no diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on any
account. Now it is fair to say, that, just as music must have all these,
so conversation must have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its
exaggerated truths. It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and
admits the ideal element as much as pictures or statues. One man who is
a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of
_esprit_.—“Yes,” you say, “but who wants to hear fanciful people’s
nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!”—Certainly, if
a man is too fond of paradox,—if he is flighty and empty,—if, instead of
striking those fifths and sevenths, those harmonious discords, often so
much better than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought,—if,
instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact into him
like a stiletto. But remember that talking is one of the fine arts,—the
noblest, the most important, and the most difficult,—and that its fluent
harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note.
Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative,
which lets out the most of each talker’s results of thought, is commonly
the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the best,
for two persons talking together to make the most of each other’s
thoughts, there are so many of them.
[The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.]
When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural
enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and
misapprehension.
[Our landlady turned pale;—no doubt she thought there was a screw loose
in my intellects,—and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A
severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted
by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the
professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain
lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and
somewhat rasping _voce di petto_, to Falstaff’s nine men in buckram.
Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I
should seize the carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as
it were carelessly.]
I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here, that
there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as
taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.
Three Johns.
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John’s ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.
3. Thomas’s ideal John; never the real John, nor John’s John, but often
very unlike either.
Three Thomas.
1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas’s ideal Thomas.
3. John’s ideal Thomas.
* * * * *
Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a
platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the
conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and
ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift
of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives
himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point
of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful
rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas’s attitude in the
conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and
stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows,
that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him,
or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons
engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important,
philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person.
No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them
talking and listening all at the same time.
[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a
young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table.
A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to
boarding-houses, was on its way to me _viâ_ this unlettered Johannes. He
appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there
was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical
inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten the
peaches.]
[Picture: The Young Fellow called John]
—The opinions of relatives as to a man’s powers are very commonly of
little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their own flesh
and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely
to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering
like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the
_breaking_ of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste
colors,—ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or,
if you prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacob’s garden of that most
gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in
shop-windows. It is a surprise,—there is nothing to account for it. All
at once we find that twice two make _five_. Nature is fond of what are
called “gift-enterprises.” This little book of life which she has given
into the hands of its joint possessors is commonly one of the old
story-books bound over again. Only once in a great while there is a
stately poem in it, or its leaves are illuminated with the glories of
art, or they enfold a draft for untold values signed by the million-fold
millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are commonly the first to
find the “gift” that came with the little book.
It may be questioned whether anything can be conscious of its own flavor.
Whether the musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently
silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of any personal
peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his own voice; many men
do not know their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle’s famous
“Characteristics” article; allow for exaggerations, and there is a great
deal in his doctrine of the self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes
under the great law just stated. This incapacity of knowing its own
traits is often found in the family as well as in the individual. So
never mind what your cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the
rest, say about that fine poem you have written, but send it
(postage-paid) to the editors, if there are any, of the
“Atlantic,”—which, by the way, is not so called because it is _a notion_,
as some dull wits wish they had said, but are too late.
—Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with
it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts
are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a
bullying habit of mind;—not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and
smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the
Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the
most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his
“mug.” Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical
sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up
against it, it never yields a hair’s breadth; everything must go to
pieces that comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows
being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should
tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking. So
of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts of
external nature; only in a less degree. Every probability—and most of
our common, working beliefs are probabilities—is provided with _buffers_
at both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions clashing against
it; but scientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, no
possibility of yielding. All this must react on the minds which handle
these forms of truth.
—Oh, you need net tell me that Messrs. A. and B. are the most gracious,
unassuming people in the world, and yet preëminent in the ranges of
science I am referring to. I know that as well as you. But mark this
which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to
project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts
which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this
day forward. A rash man, once visiting a certain noted institution at
South Boston, ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a rational
being. An old woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School
contradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker
to disprove it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization,
notwithstanding.
[—It is my desire to be useful to those with whom I am associated in my
daily relations. I not unfrequently practise the divine art of music in
company with our landlady’s daughter, who, as I mentioned before, is the
owner of an accordion. Having myself a well-marked barytone voice of
more than half an octave in compass, I sometimes add my vocal powers to
her execution of
“Thou, thou reign’st in this bosom.”
not, however, unless her mother or some other discreet female is present,
to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of
interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B.
F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous
abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience, adopted by some of his
betters. My acquaintance with the French language is very imperfect, I
having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which is awkward, as B. F.
devotes himself to it with the peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher.
The boy, I think, is doing well, between us, notwithstanding. The
following is an _uncorrected_ French exercise, written by this young
gentleman. His mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities;
though, being unacquainted with the French language, her judgment cannot
be considered final.
LE RAT DES SALONS À LECTURE.
CE rat çi est un animal fort singulier. Il a deux pattes de derrière
sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il fait usage
pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noire pour le plupart,
et porte un cerele blanchâtre autour de son cou. On le trouve tous
les jours aux dits salons, on il demeure, digere, s’il y a do quoi
dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, dort, et renfle
quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de lire. On ne sait pas s’il
a une autre gite que çelà. Il a l’air d’une bête très stupide, mais
il est d’une sagacité et d’une vitesse extraordinaire quand il s’agit
de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne sait pas pourquoi il lit,
parcequ’il ne parait pas avoir des idées. Il vocalise rarement, mais
en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers. Il porte un crayon
dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec lequel il fait des marques
sur les bords des journaux et des livres, semblable aux suivans:
!!!—Bah! Pooh! Il ne faut pas cependant les prendre pour des signes
d’intelligence. Il ne vole pas, ordinairement; il fait rarement même
des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son chapeau
a toujours un caractère specifique. On ne sait pas au juste ce dont
il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier était d’avis que c’etait de l’odeur du
cuir des reliures; ce qu’on dit d’être une nourriture animale fort
saine, et peu chère. Il vit bien longtems. Enfin il meure, en
laissant à ses héritiers une carte du Salon à Lecture on il avait
existé pendant sa vie. On pretend qu’il revient toutes les nuits,
après la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir, dit on, à minuit,
dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, et ayant à sa
main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des caractères
inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le
spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Professeurs de Cambridge
sont des imbeçiles qui ne savent rien du tout, du tout.
I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be
touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that he is
acquiring a knowledge of zoölogy at the same time that he is learning
French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances will find it
profitable to their children, and an economical mode of instruction, to
set them to revising and amending this boy’s exercise. The passage was
originally taken from the “Histoire Naturelle des Bêtes Ruminans et
Rongeurs, Bipèdes et Autres,” lately published in Paris. This was
translated into English and published in London. It was republished at
Great Pedlington, with notes and additions by the American editor. The
notes consist of an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and a reference (p.
127th) to another book “edited” by the same hand. The additions consist
of the editor’s name on the title-page and back, with a complete and
authentic list of said editor’s honorary titles in the first of these
localities. Our boy translated the translation back into French. This
may be compared with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Division X,
of the Public Library of this metropolis.]
—Some of you boarders ask me from time to time why I don’t write a story,
or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering each one of
you separately, I will thank you to step up into the wholesale department
for a few moments, where I deal in answers by the piece and by the bale.
That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for _one_
novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me a cherished
belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that many persons
cannot write more than one novel,—that all after that are likely to be
failures.—Life is so much more tremendous a thing in its heights and
depths than any transcript of it can be, that all records of human
experience are as so many bound _herbaria_ to the innumerable glowing,
glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking,
life-giving, death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and the
prairies. All we can do with books of human experience is to make them
alive again with something borrowed from our own lives. We can make a
book alive for us just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or in
form to our own experience. Now an author’s first novel is naturally
drawn, to a great extent, from his personal experiences; that is, is a
literal copy of nature under various slight disguises. But the moment
the author gets out of his personality, he must have the creative power,
as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to tell a living
story; and this is rare.
Besides, there is great danger that a man’s first life-story shall clean
him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives, though their
stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a few
golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Oftentimes a single
_cradling_ gets them all, and after that the poor man’s labor is only
rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an
individual of the human family, could write one novel or story at any
rate, if I would.
—Why don’t I, then?—Well, there are several reasons against it. In the
first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is
the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme and the
harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of
imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart
laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo
of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under
the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a
broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she
unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable—in the opinion of
the ladies.
Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends. I should
like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am afraid all my
friends would not bear showing up very well; for they have an average
share of the common weakness of humanity, which I am pretty certain would
come out. Of all that have told stories among us there is hardly one I
can recall who has not drawn too faithfully some living portrait that
might better have been spared.
Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull to
write such a story as I should wish to write.
And finally, I think it very likely I _shall_ write a story one of these
days. Don’t be surprised at any time, if you see me coming out with “The
Schoolmistress,” or “The Old Gentleman Opposite.” [_Our_ schoolmistress
and _our_ old gentleman that sits opposite had left the table before I
said this.] I want my glory for writing the same discounted now, on the
spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready. How many people
live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!
—I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being too dull
to write a good story. I don’t pretend to know what you meant by it, but
I take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter prove of value to
some among you.—When one of us who has been led by native vanity or
senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed of talent
arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull,
it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can
enter a mortal’s mind. All our failures, our shortcomings, our strange
disappointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our bruised
shoulders, and fall, like Christian’s pack, at the feet of that
Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of high
intelligence,—with which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere of
being.
—How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, “I hate books!”
A gentleman,—singularly free from affectations,—not learned, of course,
but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better than learning,—by
no means dull, in the sense of knowledge of the world and society, but
certainly not clever either in the arts or sciences,—his company is
pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognize in him inferiority of
literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character and
fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I
think there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark
to keep their place, that really “hate books,” but never had the wit to
find it out, or the manliness to own it. [_Entre nous_, I always read
with a mark.]
We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an “intellectual man”
was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of
book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if he is actually so
compounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong solution of
books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot
water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If _I_ were a prince, I would
hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep all the
leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion would do for me
without the vegetable fibre. You understand me; I would have a person
whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me
whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quick-witted,
out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf
full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all
useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels,
and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new
costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink,
and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is
in what he says; delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns,
and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he
is as tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius,—that
is, of a new influx of truth or beauty,—as a nun over her missal. In
short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to make a
living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal compartment on
life’s chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of
a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of course take—to wife. For
all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in the
plebeian, but expressive phrase, “put him through” all the material part
of life; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that,
just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked,—with the privilege of
shutting it off at will.
A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a harp, with about a
dozen ringing intelligences, each answering to some chord of the
macrocosm. They do well to dine together once in a while. A
dinner-party made up of such elements is the last triumph of civilization
over barbarism. Nature and art combine to charm the senses; the
equatorial zone of the system is soothed by well-studied artifices; the
faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural attitudes; you see
wisdom in slippers and science in a short jacket.
The whole force of conversation depends on how much you can take for
granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short
of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull
apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands
well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six
moves;—White looks,—nods;—the game is over. Just so in talking with
first-rate men; especially when they are good-natured and expansive, as
they are apt to be at table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees into
things without opening them,—that glorious license, which, having shut
the door and driven the reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth,
majestic virgin! to get off from her pedestal and drop her academic
poses, and take a festive garland and the vacant place on the _medius
lectus_,—that carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments,
large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bomb-shells from professional
mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored fire, and
the mischief-making rain of _bon-bons_ pelting everybody that shows
himself,—the picture of a truly intellectual banquet is one which the old
Divinities might well have attempted to reproduce in their—
—“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the young fellow whom they call John,—“that is from
one of your lectures!”
I know it, I replied,—I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it.
“The trail of the serpent is over them all!”
All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and grooves
in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually sliding. Did
you never, in riding through the woods of a still June evening, suddenly
feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or
two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in
cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay,—where the Provincial
blue-noses are in the habit of beating the “Metropolitan”
boat-clubs,—find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream,
a gratuitous warm-bath a little underdone, through which your glistening
shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of
full-sea temperature? Just so, in talking with any of the characters
above referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the
style of the conversation. The lack-lustre eye rayless as a
Beacon-Street door-plate in August, all at once fills with light; the
face flings itself wide open like the church-portals when the bride and
bridegroom enter; the little man grows in stature before your eyes, like
the small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet dreaded of early
childhood; you were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile,—you have a
giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before you!—Nothing but a streak out of
a fifty-dollar lecture.—As when, at some unlooked-for moment, the mighty
fountain-column springs into the air before the astonished
passer-by,—silver-footed, diamond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed,—from the
bosom of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batrachians at
home, and the epigrams of a less amiable and less elevated order of
_reptilia_ in other latitudes.
—Who was that person that was so abused some time since for saying that
in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go with the higher?
No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in India,—a white,
superior “Caucasian” race, against a dark-skinned, inferior, but still
“Caucasian” race,—and where are English and American sympathies? We
can’t stop to settle all the doubtful questions; all we know is, that the
brute nature is sure to come out most strongly in the lower race, and it
is the general law that the human side of humanity should treat the
brutal side as it does the same nature in the inferior animals,—tame it
or crush it. The India mail brings stories of women and children
outraged and murdered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the
babe-killers. England takes down the Map of the World, which she has
girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus: [DELPHI] _Dele_. The
civilized world says, Amen.
—Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly, that I
should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them and dilute
it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old college themes and water my
remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their _melas
oinos_,—that black sweet, syrupy wine (?) which they used to alloy with
three parts or more of the flowing stream. [Could it have been
_melasses_, as Webster and his provincials spell it,—or _Molossa’s_, as
dear old smattering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton
Mather, has it in the “Magnalia”? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries
who make barn-door-fowl flights of learning in “Notes and Queries!”—ye
Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable triremes I, too, ascend
the stream of time, while other hands tug at the oars!—ye Amines of
parasitical literature, who pick up your grains of native-grown food with
a bodkin, having gorged upon less honest fare, until, like the great
minds Goethe speaks of, you have “made a Golgotha” of your pages!—ponder
thereon!]
—Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses. You
will understand by the title that they are written in an imaginary
character. I don’t doubt they will fit some family-man well enough. I
send it forth as “Oak Hall” projects a coat, on _a priori_ grounds of
conviction that it will suit somebody. There is no loftier illustration
of faith than this. It believes that a soul has been clad in flesh; that
tender parents have fed and nurtured it; that its mysterious _compages_
or frame-work has survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature
of maturity; that the Man, now self-determining, has given in his
adhesion to the traditions and habits of the race in favor of artificial
clothing; that he will, having all the world to choose from, select the
very locality where this audacious generalization has been acted upon.
It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and trusts that Nature
will model a material shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every
seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration.—Now hear the verses.
THE OLD MAN DREAMS.
O for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I’d rather laugh a bright-haired boy
Than reign a gray-beard king!
Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning’s crown!
Tear out life’s wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!
One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood’s fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!
—My listening angel heard the prayer,
And calmly smiling, said,
“If I but touch thy silvered hair,
Thy hasty wish hath sped.
“But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?”
—Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I’ll take—my—precious wife!
—The angel took a sapphire pen
And wrote in rainbow dew,
“The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too!”
—“And is there nothing yet unsaid
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!”
Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
I could not bear to leave them all;
I’ll take—my—girl—and—boys!
The smiling angel dropped his pen,—
“Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!”
And so I laughed,—my laughter woke
The household with its noise,—
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the gray-haired boys.