Fennarf, and his very soul jumped for joy.
"'Merry Christmas!' he shouted, violently shaking the hand of the
now bewildered old gentleman with the plum nose.
"Then, on he darted toward his house. It was lighted up in every
window. There was music in the house, too, and dancing. In he flew,
with a delightful presentiment of what was going on. Sure enough,
his daughter Alexandra had come home, with her husband the potboy,
and a score of friends, and all hands were hard at a cotillon.
"'Father, forgive us!' screamed Alexandra.
"'Your pariental blessing,' suggested the potboy with much feeling.
"'Support them for life,' murmured the friends.
"'My children,' said Mr. R. Fennarf, rubbing his back, 'you must
forgive _me_. Henceforth we live together, and celebrate every
coming Christmas-eve by meeting all our friends again, as now. I am
a new man from this time forth; for on this very night I have
learned a great and useful lesson.'
"Then all was jollity again, and the potboy, notwithstanding the
shortness of his legs, danced like a veritable Christy minstrel.
"Meantime, a certain retired hackney-coachman in the company, who
had attentively noted the reconciliation of father and daughter,
called the former into a corner of the room, and said very gravely
to him:
"'You said you had learned a lesson to-night?'
"'Yes.'
"'What is it?' asked the hackney-coachman.
"'It is,' said Mr. R. Fennarf, with solemnity, 'that no man need go
out of his own country to be kicked!'"
As Captain Bob Shorty finished reading, he looked about him for the
first time, and lo! all the Mackerel chieftains were slumbering, with
their chins upon their breasts.
And now, my boy, as the New Year rolls in, let me tender you the
compliments of the season, and sign myself,
Yours for festivity,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER CIV.
EXPLAINING, IN A LUCID AND PERFECTLY SATISFACTORY MANNER, THE
POWERFUL INACTIVITY OF THAT PORTION OF THE VENERATED MACKEREL
BRIGADE RESIDING BEFORE THE ANCIENT CITY OF PARIS, AND PRESENTING
CERTAIN GENIAL DETAILS OF A RECENT FESTIVE CONGLOMERATION.
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 6th, 1865.
Methinks, my boy, that I see you sagely assuming a pair of massive
ears, a pair of silver spectacles, and a blue cotton umbrella, for the
purpose of accurately personating the celebrated Public Sentiment, and,
in that gifted character, peremptorily requiring me to explain the
present use of the venerable Mackerel Brigade!
Mastering for a moment the noble rage of the unimperilled patriot at a
request so vulgarly practical, I sternly refer you to the latest able
articles in all our exciting and learned morning journals; wherein you
will be taught that such portion of the aged Mackerel organization as
has of late years invested Paris is in reality the gorgeous Pivot
around which revolve all the other brass buttons of ultimate national
triumph. And is not each editor of these excellent and sanguine morning
journals well qualified by his military genius to represent a General
Ism, oh?
But perhaps, my boy, you fail to find ocular demonstration in that
illumination. It is barely possible that you refuse to acknowledge
optical conviction in a lucidity of that description. It may be that
your cornea lacks ability to transmit a specific image in that
polarization of prismatics. It strikes me as not improbable that
you--can't see it in that light.
Then come with me to the Mackerel camp before Paris, and mark where the
antique Brigade is sitting-up with the expiring Confederacy. Observe
how each morning's sun is reflected from the gleaming spectacles of the
venerable military organization; while occasional rains make those same
innumerable glasses resemble fairy lakes with dead fish in them. Note
with what a respectable air of a reliable family physician each
patriarchal warrior exhumes, from somewhere down his leg, the massive
gold watch which he has been induced to buy for $10 of one of those
national benefactors in jewelry who advertise affectionately in our
more parental weekly journals of romance--and remarks, oracularly:
"It being exactly three o'clock by this here nineteen-carat repeater,
that air Confederacy has got just one hour less to live."
The fact, my boy, that this timely observation would apply with about
equal accuracy to the whole human family, need not deter your insidious
self from answering in the affirmative, when I ask you, calmly, if it
does not seem that a military organization of such intellect, _must_ be
engaged in some unspeakably profound scheme of victory, even though to
the uneducated eye it may present somewhat the aspect of a muddy old
gentleman with his head against a stone-wall?
And this business of showing the possible identity of apparent
dead-pause with actual velocity, reminds me of a chap I once knew in
the Sixth Ward. He was a cast-iron chap, my boy, whose most powerful
conception of enterprise in trade was vividly associated with the duty
of being forever in his shirt-sleeves; and he kept a hardware shop at
which the economical women of America could get such bargains in
flat-irons and door-plates, as were a temptation to marry none but the
most impoverished young men.
Many customers had this very practical hardware chap, and one of them
was an aged file in a broad-brimmed hat, blue spectacles, and a silk
umbrella, who had about him that air of Philadelphia which at once
suggests an equal admixture of chronic slumber and profundity. Being a
widower and a happy man, it was the daily custom of this aged file to
spend several hours of intellectual refreshment in the hardware shop,
smiling benignantly upon the ancient maidens who came thither to buy
curling-tongs, and enlivening the soul of the cast-iron chap with fine,
laborious treatises on the general idiocy of popular perception.
"I tell you, my child," this aged file would remark, polishing his
spectacles with a red silk handkerchief,--"I tell you, the popular
perception wants nicety; wants delicacy; wants capacity to distinguish
between the noisy, bustling style of operation by which it loves to be
deceived,--_Populus vult decipi_,--and the silent, almost imperceptible
agencies through which all really great results are accomplished."
Having heard this chaste sentiment repeated daily for about three
years, my boy, the very practical hardware chap began to find his
nature growing embittered, and resolved to do something desperate. So,
one morning, after listening quietly to the essay of the aged file, and
refusing to tell a small boot-blacking child of six years old the
lowest price for one of Jones's Patent steam-ploughs, this cast-iron
chap suddenly removed his hands from around an object on the counter,
which he had, apparently, been attempting to conceal, and revealed to
view a boy's lignum-vitae peg-top, which stood seemingly exactly
balanced on its steel tip.
"Who would think now," said he, reflectively, "that it could be turning
all the time?"
The aged file advanced his blue spectacles to the very verge of the
top, and says he:
"Well, now, it's wonderful, an't it? Any one would think, to look at
that simple toy, that it stood perfectly still; and yet its velocity of
movement must be prodigious. Go into yonder street," exclaimed the aged
file, dropping his umbrella in the excitement of the moment,--"go into
yonder street and bring in any man you please, and that man could swear
that this top is not spinning at all. And why? Simply because the
velocity of this top, being several millions of revolutions per minute,
is greater than his ignorant eye can comprehend. Upon my soul!"
ejaculated the aged file, bending once more to the top, with great
enthusiasm, "upon my soul! it's wonderful."
Over the counter came the hardware chap, with one bound, and says he:
"Why, you durned old fool, _the top an't moving at all_!"
And sure enough, the very practical cast-iron chap had just stuck the
top up with his hand, in order to bring the popular perception theory
of the aged file to grief.
Ordinary persons, my boy, observing the Mackerel Brigade any time these
three years, might think it was not moving at all; but we know its
General to be the Top of the heap, and we know that he is making
revolutions--in the whole art of war.
Let, then, the venerable and strategical Mackerel Brigade strike off
impressions of itself in the mud before Paris; while the conic section,
under Colonel Wobert Wobinson, walks calmly through the depths of
storied Accomac; while Captain Samyule Sa-mith and the Anatomical
Cavalry prosecute Confederate railroad researches, and Rear Admiral
Head's iron-plated squadron keeps watch and fishes for bass near the
captured Fort Piano, on Duck Lake. For the present, be mine the
pleasanter duty of imperfectly reporting that stately Ball at the
Patent Office, which clinched the re-inauguration of our Honest Abe,
and was attended by none of the old aristocracy of the capital, save
those who had received invitations.
The old aristocracy of the capital, my boy, having been accustomed only
to association with the ministers from combined Europe, and the
chivalry who had, now and then, a nice wife or daughter to sell, could
not be expected to countenance a plebeian carnival for which they had
not received invitations. They could not be expected so soon to forget
those elegant family entertainments of the olden time, when the
hospitable board, with its green covering, groaned under the weight of
gold and silver; when, instead of salads and pates in crockery
platters, the plates were of delicately enamelled pasteboard,
containing from one to ten diamonds each, or, perhaps, a king or queen
served up cold with mint sauce.
The Old Aristocracy! lineal descendants of the British cavaliers! I
should weep, my boy, over their possible extinction forever, were it
not that the assiduity of the London Prisoners' Aid Society, in sending
ticket-of-leave men to New York, promises to keep the species going.
Behold me, at the proper hour, suspended between the shoulders of three
or four fat citizens of America in the entrance-hall, and being thus
borne into the festive scene like a being too delicate to walk. This,
too, at the expense of only the linen "duster" which I had donned to
preserve my broadcloth from the dust in the dancing room, and which I
had the satisfaction of seeing distributed in ribbons around the necks
and bodies of a score of my neighbors, like so many charms to keep off
enchantments. The crowd, the management, and the number of guests with
umbrellas and top-boots, were all the subjects of ill-disguised sneers
among the old aristocracy of the capital who had not received
invitations.
And now I emerge into fountains of satin and mechlin cascades, with
numerous citizens of America up to their waists in the surf, and
looking about as comfortable as though bathing at Newport in full
dress. Yonder stands our Honest Abe, in sombre costume, like a funeral
procession standing on end to let something pass under it.
Leaning thoughtfully against the wall, my boy, I was gazing
meditatively upon this scene, and thinking how many of these fair
beings would be destroyed by railroad accidents on the way to their
homes in other cities--I was thinking of this, my boy, when I heard a
voice saying:
"How powerful is human instink! let a fire-bell ring, and at least half
of these manly beings would make a bust for the street to join their
native fire departmink. Let the hall-bell ring, and nearly all these
fair petticoats would involuntarily rush to 'tend the door. Such is
human instink."
Like one in a dream, I turned me where I stood and beheld the form of
Captain Villiam Brown, his left hand upon his hip and his right
caressing the neck of a small case-bottle in his bosom. I eyed him
pleasantly a moment, and, said I:
"Well met, my Union Blucher!"
"Ah!" says Villiam, pensively, "how powerful is Human Instink!"
"Explain, my Blue and Gold."
"Human Instink," says Villiam, softly, "is an involuntary tendency to
our normal condition."
"Ahem," said I, sagely, "that sounds like Seward."
"Come with me," says Villiam, gravely, "and I will show you the power
of Human Instink."
He led me quietly, my boy, to a corner of the great room, where the
guests were nearly all males, and suddenly roared out this
extraordinary question:
"Say, Johnny-y-y, how's yer do-o-org?"
The magical sound caught them unprepared, my boy, and before there was
time to remember where they were, they unanimously responded with:
"Bully!"
"Ah!" says Villiam, "that's Instink. They all were fellow-firemen last
year, and remember the language of the Departmink."
Deeply impressed with a sense of that subtle sympathy with early usages
which never leaves a man in life, I again let the hero of a hundred
battles lead the way to another corner, where fifty fair ones stood
apart in a cluster, waiting for their escorts. Then it was that Captain
Villiam Brown suddenly assumed an air of unspeakable abstraction, and
commenced humming the tune of the song:
"Bridget, tend the airy bell,
Don't you hear it tinkle?
Butcher's brought the bacon home,--
Cook it in a twinkle."
Without at all thinking or knowing why they were doing so, my boy,
two-thirds of those fair ones took up the tune at the first note and
hummed it through!
"The fair sect," says Villiam, cautiously, "once heard its mother sing
that song, as she had learned it in her native palace; and has the
Instink to remember it."
Thus, taking new and beautiful lessons in the ever-fresh volume of
animate nature, we sauntered into the ballroom, where our Honest Abe
and his lady were viewing the performances from a pair of handsome
elevated chairs. Ay, sir: handsome (!) chairs; and that, too, when many
an honest poor man in the land has not a single chair with a gilt back
to rest upon. Thus are we drifting toward (start not!)--yes sir and
madam, toward--Royalty!! Thus, too, are we incurring the highest scorn
of the old aristocracy of the capital who had not received invitations.
There was dancing of the ordinary sort in plenty; many solid men of
Boston of the oldest age going to the verge of apoplexy in their
efforts at double-shuffle; but how can description do justice to the
Honorable Gentleman from the Sixth Ward, who performed the celebrated
Conflagration Hornpipe!
First, the Honorable Gentleman threw his whole weight upon his left
leg, elevated one ear as though intently listening, and tapped
distinctly upon the floor with his right heel the number of the
district. Then came a confused scuffling, first upon one foot and then
upon the other, to represent the hurry and excitement of getting the
machine out of the house and whirling her to the scene of the
conflagration. The next figure, performed alternately upon the toe,
heel, and side of the shoe, was an imitation of the noble machine in
motion; the whole winding up with the Honorable Gentleman's seizing his
partner around the waist and plunging into a polka, symbolizing the
gallant fireman's rescue of a consuming female from a sixth-story
window.
This beautiful dance, my boy, was considered an unanswerable argument
in favor of a Volunteer Fire Department; but its finishing effect was
somewhat marred by a piercing note from the famous night-key bugle of
the Mackerel Brass Band: who, in an enfeebled state of mind, was found
wandering about the palace a trifle intoxicated, and received prompt
direction to the apartments of Detective Baker.
After witnessing, also, the noted walk-around known as the Revenue
Stamp, we joined the march for supper, and I sweetly expressed to
Captain Villiam Brown my fear of being crowded from the eatables.
"Oh!" says Villiam, catching his case-bottle just in time to save it
from sliding through his ruffles to the floor; "I shall work upon human
Instink."
Here, this ornament of our National Mackerel organization inserted an
elbow under the right ear of a fair being in blue just before us, and
says she:
"I don't admire to see you men treating ladies in that manner. The
ideor!"
"Ah, Mrs. Nubbins," says Villiam, pleasantly, "when your father, the
milkman, used to serve our house, I"--
"Here--you can pass, sir," said the fair being in blue; and Captain
Villiam Brown walked forward deliberately upon the trailing skirts of a
beauteous object in pink.
"You're tearing my things--creature!"
"Ah!" says Villiam, abstractedly, to me, "you don't remember stand
Number Twelve, Fulton Market, where Miss Poodlem's grandmother used
to"--
"There's plenty of room here, sir," observed the beauteous object in
pink, and Captain Villiam Brown accidentally brushed against a
beatitude in white.
"Plebeian!"
"My fren," says Villiam, as though he and I were entirely alone
together on a desert island, "when old Binks gave up the soap-boiling
business last fall, and came to"--
"Did you wish to pass, sir?" said the beatitude in white; and we soon
found ourselves beside the banquet board, where all went merry as a
fire-bell.
Then did we gorge ourselves, my boy, like the very First Families under
similar circumstances; revelling in such salads as were known to the
ancients just before the breaking out of the Asiatic cholera, and
paying general attention to a bill of fare which was heartily despised
by the old aristocracy of the capital who had received no invitations.
It was past midnight when we retreated to a double-bedded room at
Willard's, and as Captain Villiam Brown took his goblet of final soda,
he gracefully tipped my glass, and says he:
"I propose a sentimink."
Villiam raised the Falernian nectar aloft, gazed solemnly at me, and
says he:
"Human Instink!"
Let us believe, my boy, that the instincts of those who come to the
higher social surface in this, our trying time of war, are, by their
own purity from anything actually malignant, sure indications that the
nation's heart is good to the very bottom. Let us believe that the
pride of Ascent, vain-glorious as it may seem, is nobler in raising the
public laugh than is the tyrannical pride of Descent, which too often
forces the public tear. Let us believe that, in the course of time,
when the soft white hand of Peace shall have thrown a wreath of flowers
across the muzzles of our guns, these unaccustomed tradesmen-courtiers
who now throng the halls of our upright First Citizen and Friend will
prove the sound ancestral stock of a race of brave gentlemen and women
fair, to defend and adorn our Republican Court.
Yours, blithely,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER CV.
BEING OUR CORRESPONDENT'S LAST EFFORT PRIOR TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF
A NEW MACKEREL CAMPAIGN; INTRODUCING A METRICAL PICTURE OF THE MOST
REMARKABLE SINGLE COMBAT ON RECORD; AND SHOWING HOW THE ROMANCE OF
WOMAN'S SENSITIVE SOUL CAN BE CRUSHED BY THE THING CALLED MAN.
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 12th, 1865.
This sagacious business of writing national military history once a
week, my boy, has at times presented itself to my mind as a public
obligation nearly equal in steady mutual delight to the wholesome
occupation of organ-grinding. Mark the Italian nobleman who discourses
mercenary twangs beneath your window, and you shall find him a person
of severe and gloomy visage,--a figure with an expression of being
weighed down to the very earth by a something heavier than the mere
mahogany box of shrieks out of which he grinds popular misery by the
block. Not that he has a distaste for music, my boy; not that he was
the less enthusiastic at that past period "when music, heavenly maid,
was young" to him; but because the daily recurrence to his ears of
precisely the same sounds for ten years, has a horribly depressing
effect of unmitigated sameness; and music has become to him an ancient
maiden of exasperating pertinacity. It quite affects me, my boy, when I
see one of those melancholy sons of song carrying a regularly organized
monkey around with him; for it is evident he finds in such
companionship a certain relief from the anguish of monotony. Guided by
the example, I sometimes get a Brigadier to keep me company also, and
you can hardly imagine how often I am saved from gloom by the amusement
I experience in seeing his shrewd imitation of a real soldier.
But even this resource may fail; for there are periods when such
imitations are very bad indeed; and then the mind of the wearied
scribe, like that of my departed friend, the Arkansaw Nightingale, may
at any moment expire for want of food. Shall I ever forget the time, my
boy, when the Nightingale came to Washington, as President of the
Arkansaw Tract Society, for the express purpose of protesting against
the war, and procuring a fresh glass of the same he had last time?
"This war," says he, waiting for it to grow cooler, and thoughtfully
contemplating the reflection of himself in the bowl of a spoon,--"this
war, if it goes on, wont never shet pan till the hair's rubbed off the
hull country, and the 'Merican Eagle wont hev enough feathers in his
tail to oil a watch-spring. Tell you! stranger, it'll be wuss than
Tuscaloosa Sam's last tackle; and that wasn't slow."
"What was that?" says I.
"What!" says the Nightingale, stirring in a little sugar, "did you
never hearn tell of Tuscaloosa's last? Then here's the screed done into
music under my pen and seal; and as it an't quite as long's the hundred
nineteenth psalm, you don't want a chair to hear it."
Whereupon the Arkansaw Nightingale whipt from some obscure rear pocket
a remarkable handful of written paper, and proceeded to excite me with
"A GREAT FIT.
"There was a man in Arkansaw
As let his passions rise,
And not unfrequently picked out
Some other varmint's eyes.
"His name was Tuscaloosa Sam,
And often he would say,
'There's not a cuss in Arkansaw
I can't whip any day.'
"One morn, a stranger passin' by,
Heard Sammy talkin' so,
When down he scrambled from his hoss,
And off his coat did go.
"He sorter kinder shut one eye,
And spit into his hand,
And put his ugly head one side,
And twitched his trowsers' band.
"'My boy,' says he, 'it's my belief,
Whomever you may be,
That I kin make you screech, and smell
Pertikler agony.'
"'I'm thar,' says Tuscaloosa Sam,
And chucked his hat away;
'I'm thar,' says he, and buttoned up
As far as buttons may.
"He thundered on the stranger's mug,
The stranger pounded he;
And oh! the way them critters fit
Was beautiful to see.
"They clinched like two rampageous bears,
And then went down a bit;
They swore a stream of six-inch oaths
And fit, and fit, and fit.
"When Sam would try to work away,
And on his pegs to git,
The stranger'd pull him back; and so,
They fit, and fit, and fit!
"Then like a pair of lobsters, both
Upon the ground were knit,
And yet the varmints used their teeth,
And fit, and fit, and fit!!
"The sun of noon was high above,
And hot enough to split,
But only riled the fellers more,
That fit, and fit, and fit!!!
"The stranger snapped at Sammy's nose,
And shortened it a bit;
And then they both swore awful hard,
And fit, and fit, and fit!!!!
"The mud it flew, the sky grew dark,
And all the litenins lit;
But still them critters rolled about,
And fit, and fit, and fit!!!!!
"First Sam on top, then t'other chap;
When one would make a hit,
The other'd smell the grass; and so,
They fit, and fit, and fit!!!!!!
"The night came on, the stars shone out
As bright as wimmen's wit;
And still them fellers swore and gouged,
And fit, and fit, and fit!!!!!!!
"The neighbors heard the noise they made,
And thought an earthquake lit;
Yet all the while 'twas him and Sam
As fit, and fit, and fit!!!!!!!!
"For miles around the noise was heard;
Folks couldn't sleep a bit,
Because them two rantankerous chaps
Still fit, and fit, and fit!!!!!!!!!
"But jist at cock-crow, suddently,
There came an awful pause,
And I and my old man run out
To ascertain the cause.
"The sun was rising in the yeast,
And lit the hull concern;
But not a sign of either chap
Was found at any turn.
"Yet, in the region where they fit,
We found, to our surprise,
One pint of buttons, two big knives,
Some whiskers, and four eyes!"
There's dramatic genius for you, my boy, and you will join me in
raining a pint or so of tears in memory of one who perished because his
mind had nothing to feed upon, and who left his bottle very empty.