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 crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those parallel
ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their
regular sequences of association. No wonder the ancients made the
poetical impulse wholly external. Μηνιν αειδε θεά.
Goddess,—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 spacious 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, constituted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a
plate heaped with something upon the table, when I saw the coarse 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 illustrious 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 sunshine of October! And then the cumulative 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 shagreen
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 illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your
life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure 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 passionate, young enthusiast, who
made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and
scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from
his dying hand to the cold _virtuoso_, who let it slumber in its case for
a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more
and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing
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 muffled 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 Neæra
cheated.—
“Nox erat, et cœlo fulgebat Luna sereno
Inter minora sidera,
Cum tu magnorum numen læsura 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 space, after my somewhat elaborate
exposition of these self-evident analogies. 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 _dévalisé_ 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 galère_! 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 Marseilles! [Don’t! What if he has
got something like this?—nobody 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
illustration of the general principle I had laid down.]
Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody 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 title-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 cock-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 scraping. 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 document, 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
document. Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name and title
burned a modest lamp, signifying to the passers-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 circumstances,
dashed his fist at the light and quenched the meek luminary,—breaking
through the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don’t want to go
into _minutiæ_ at table, you know, but a naked hand can no more go
through a pane of thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle, to say
the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a sausage-machine
without looking the worse for it. The Professor gathered up the
fragments of glass, and with them certain very minute but entirely
satisfactory documents 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 pronounced
_haälth_)—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 æsthetic 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 pronepotes_! Talk to me about your δὸς
ποῠ στῶ! Tell me about Cuvier’s getting up a megatherium from a tooth,
or Agassiz’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
_Haöw_? 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 quantity 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 constituency 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 nobody may think it was written in wrath, on
account of any particular grievance suffered from the invasion of any
individual _scarabæus 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, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the
grass 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 grass flattened down, colorless,
matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous
crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or
horny-shelled,—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 larvæ, 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, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in
a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by
sunshine. _Next year_ you will find the grass growing tall and green
where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had
his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup 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 butterflies.
No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images,—the butterfly as
well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass 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
sunshine. Then shall God’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 butterfly, image of the
beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell 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 latitude 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, illustrious 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. Relationships,
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
nobody can do anything with it; and so the first with her coarse 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 title, “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
latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and thus the
thermometer is rendered useless in winter.
“The principal 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 principally of hot rolls. The
buttered-muffin 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 butter, 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 title, 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
quantities of black tea to kill any extra glass 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 bass 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, shipwrecked
on a remote island, just to see how splendidly they would reorganize
society. They could build a city,—they have done it; make constitutions
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 shine,
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 hoarded 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-shells on the sand;—
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain,
The dust restores each blooming girl,
As if the sea-shells 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 glass
What soil the enchanted clusters grew?
That buried passions wake and pass
In beaded drops of fiery dew?
Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine,—
Our hearts can boast a warmer grow,
Filled from a vantage more divine,—
Calmed, but not chilled by winter’s snow!
To-night the palest wave we sip
Rich as the priceless draught shall be
That wet the bride of Cana’s lip,—
The wedding wine of Galilee!