III

The old Master was talking about a concert he had been to hear.--I don't

like your chopped music anyway. That woman--she had more sense in her

little finger than forty medical societies--Florence Nightingale--says

that the music you pour out is good for sick folks, and the music you

pound out isn't. Not that exactly, but something like it. I have been

to hear some music-pounding. It was a young woman, with as many white

muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it.

She--gave the music-stool a twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like

a whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as

if she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked

her wrists and her hands, to limber 'em, I suppose, and spread out her

fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the

key-board, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those

two hands of hers made a jump at the keys as if they were a couple of

tigers coming down on a flock of black and white sheep, and the piano

gave a great howl as if its tail had been trod on. Dead stop,--so still

you could hear your hair growing. Then another jump, and another howl,

as if the piano had two tails and you had trod on both of 'em at once,

and, then a grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down,

back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and

mice more than like anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing,

and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of

their wood and ivory anvils--don't talk to me, I know the difference

between a bullfrog and a woodthrush and--

Pop! went a small piece of artillery such as is made of a stick of elder

and carries a pellet of very moderate consistency. That Boy was in his

seat and looking demure enough, but there could be no question that he

was the artillery-man who had discharged the missile. The aim was not a

bad one, for it took the Master full in the forehead, and had the effect

of checking the flow of his eloquence. How the little monkey had learned

to time his interruptions I do not know, but I have observed more than

once before this, that the popgun would go off just at the moment when

some one of the company was getting too energetic or prolix. The Boy

isn't old enough to judge for himself when to intervene to change the

order of conversation; no, of course he isn't. Somebody must give him

a hint. Somebody.--Who is it? I suspect Dr. B. Franklin. He looks too

knowing. There is certainly a trick somewhere. Why, a day or two ago I

was myself discoursing, with considerable effect, as I thought, on some

of the new aspects of humanity, when I was struck full on the cheek by

one of these little pellets, and there was such a confounded laugh that

I had to wind up and leave off with a preposition instead of a good

mouthful of polysyllables. I have watched our young Doctor, however, and

have been entirely unable to detect any signs of communication between

him and this audacious child, who is like to become a power among us,

for that popgun is fatal to any talker who is hit by its pellet. I have

suspected a foot under the table as the prompter, but I have been unable

to detect the slightest movement or look as if he were making one,

on the part of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. I cannot help thinking of the

flappers in Swift's Laputa, only they gave one a hint when to speak and

another a hint to listen, whereas the popgun says unmistakably, “Shut

up!”

--I should be sorry to lose my confidence in Dr. B. Franklin, who seems

very much devoted to his business, and whom I mean to consult about

some small symptoms I have had lately. Perhaps it is coming to a new

boarding-house. The young people who come into Paris from the provinces

are very apt--so I have been told by one that knows--to have an attack

of typhoid fever a few weeks or months after their arrival. I have not

been long enough at this table to get well acclimated; perhaps that is

it. Boarding-House Fever. Something like horse-ail, very likely,--horses

get it, you know, when they are brought to city stables. A little “off

my feed,” as Hiram Woodruff would say. A queer discoloration about my

forehead. Query, a bump? Cannot remember any. Might have got it against

bedpost or something while asleep. Very unpleasant to look so. I wonder

how my portrait would look, if anybody should take it now! I hope not

quite so badly as one I saw the other day, which I took for the end man

of the Ethiopian Serenaders, or some traveller who had been exploring

the sources of the Niger, until I read the name at the bottom and found

it was a face I knew as well as my own.

I must consult somebody, and it is nothing more than fair to give our

young Doctor a chance. Here goes for Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

The young Doctor has a very small office and a very large sign, with a

transparency at night big enough for an oyster-shop. These young

doctors are particularly strong, as I understand, on what they call

diagnosis,--an excellent branch of the healing art, full of satisfaction

to the curious practitioner, who likes to give the right Latin name to

one's complaint; not quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it is not

so very much pleasanter to be bitten by a dog with a collar round his

neck telling you that he is called Snap or Teaser, than by a dog without

a collar. Sometimes, in fact, one would a little rather not know the

exact name of his complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure to look it

out in a medical dictionary, and then if he reads, This terrible disease

is attended with vast suffering and is inevitably mortal, or any such

statement, it is apt to affect him unpleasantly.

I confess to a little shakiness when I knocked at Dr. Benjamin's office

door. “Come in!” exclaimed Dr. B. F. in tones that sounded ominous and

sepulchral. And I went in.

I don't believe the chambers of the Inquisition ever presented a more

alarming array of implements for extracting a confession, than our young

Doctor's office did of instruments to make nature tell what was the

matter with a poor body.

There were Ophthalmoscopes and Rhinoscopes and Otoscopes and

Laryngoscopes and Stethoscopes; and Thermometers and Spirometers and

Dynamometers and Sphygmometers and Pleximeters; and Probes and Probangs

and all sorts of frightful inquisitive exploring contrivances;

and scales to weigh you in, and tests and balances and pumps and

electro-magnets and magneto-electric machines; in short, apparatus for

doing everything but turn you inside out.

Dr. Benjamin set me down before his one window and began looking at me

with such a superhuman air of sagacity, that I felt like one of those

open-breasted clocks which make no secret of their inside arrangements,

and almost thought he could see through me as one sees through a shrimp

or a jelly-fish. First he looked at the place inculpated, which had a

sort of greenish-brown color, with his naked eyes, with much corrugation

of forehead and fearful concentration of attention; then through

a pocket-glass which he carried. Then he drew back a space, for a

perspective view. Then he made me put out my tongue and laid a slip of

blue paper on it, which turned red and scared me a little. Next he took

my wrist; but instead of counting my pulse in the old-fashioned way,

he fastened a machine to it that marked all the beats on a sheet of

paper,--for all the world like a scale of the heights of mountains, say

from Mount Tom up to Chimborazo and then down again, and up again, and

so on. In the mean time he asked me all sorts of questions about myself

and all my relatives, whether we had been subject to this and that

malady, until I felt as if we must some of us have had more or less of

them, and could not feel quite sure whether Elephantiasis and Beriberi

and Progressive Locomotor Ataxy did not run in the family.

After all this overhauling of myself and my history, he paused and

looked puzzled. Something was suggested about what he called an

“exploratory puncture.” This I at once declined, with thanks. Suddenly a

thought struck him. He looked still more closely at the discoloration I

have spoken of.

--Looks like--I declare it reminds me of--very rare! very curious! It

would be strange if my first case--of this kind--should be one of our

boarders!

What kind of a case do you call it?--I said, with a sort of feeling that

he could inflict a severe or a light malady on me, as if he were a judge

passing sentence.

--The color reminds me,--said Dr. B. Franklin,--of what I have seen in a

case of Addison's Disease, Morbus Addisonii.

--But my habits are quite regular,--I said; for I remembered that the

distinguished essayist was too fond of his brandy and water, and

I confess that the thought was not pleasant to me of following Dr.

Johnson's advice, with the slight variation of giving my days and my

nights to trying on the favorite maladies of Addison.

--Temperance people are subject to it!--exclaimed Dr. Benjamin, almost

exultingly, I thought.

--But I had the impression that the author of the Spectator was

afflicted with a dropsy, or some such inflated malady, to which persons

of sedentary and bibacious habits are liable. [A literary swell,--I

thought to myself, but I did not say it. I felt too serious.]

--The author of the Spectator!--cried out Dr. Benjamin,--I mean the

celebrated Dr. Addison, inventor, I would say discoverer, of the

wonderful new disease called after him.

--And what may this valuable invention or discovery consist in?--I

asked, for I was curious to know the nature of the gift which this

benefactor of the race had bestowed upon us.

--A most interesting affection, and rare, too. Allow me to look closely

at that discoloration once more for a moment. Cutis cenea, bronze skin,

they call it sometimes--extraordinary pigmentation--a little more to

the light, if you please--ah! now I get the bronze coloring admirably,

beautifully! Would you have any objection to showing your case to the

Societies of Medical Improvement and Medical Observation?

[--My case! O dear!] May I ask if any vital organ is commonly involved

in this interesting complaint?--I said, faintly.

--Well, sir,--the young Doctor replied,--there is an organ which is

--sometimes--a little touched, I may say; a very curious and ingenious

little organ or pair of organs. Did you ever hear of the Capsulae,

Suprarenales?

--No,--said I,--is it a mortal complaint?--I ought to have known better

than to ask such a question, but I was getting nervous and thinking

about all sorts of horrid maladies people are liable to, with horrid

names to match.

--It is n't a complaint,--I mean they are not a complaint,--they are two

small organs, as I said, inside of you, and nobody knows what is the use

of them. The most curious thing is that when anything is the matter with

them you turn of the color of bronze. After all, I didn't mean to say I

believed it was Morbus Addisonii; I only thought of that when I saw the

discoloration.

So he gave me a recipe, which I took care to put where it could do no

hurt to anybody, and I paid him his fee (which he took with the air of a

man in the receipt of a great income) and said Good-morning.

--What in the name of a thousand diablos is the reason these confounded

doctors will mention their guesses about “a case,” as they call it, and

all its conceivable possibilities, out loud before their patients? I

don't suppose there is anything in all this nonsense about “Addison's

Disease,” but I wish he hadn't spoken of that very interesting ailment,

and I should feel a little easier if that discoloration would leave my

forehead. I will ask the Landlady about it,--these old women often

know more than the young doctors just come home with long names for

everything they don't know how to cure. But the name of this complaint

sets me thinking. Bronzed skin! What an odd idea! Wonder if it spreads

all over one. That would be picturesque and pleasant, now, wouldn't it?

To be made a living statue of,--nothing to do but strike an attitude.

Arm up--so--like the one in the Garden. John of Bologna's Mercury--thus

on one foot. Needy knife-grinder in the Tribune at Florence. No, not

“needy,” come to think of it. Marcus Aurelius on horseback. Query. Are

horses subject to the Morbus Addisonii? Advertise for a bronzed living

horse--Lyceum invitations and engagements--bronze versus brass.--What

's the use in being frightened? Bet it was a bump. Pretty certain I

bumped my forehead against something. Never heard of a bronzed man

before. Have seen white men, black men, red men, yellow men, two or

three blue men, stained with doctor's stuff; some green ones, from the

country; but never a bronzed man. Poh, poh! Sure it was a bump. Ask

Landlady to look at it.

--Landlady did look at it. Said it was a bump, and no mistake.

Recommended a piece of brown paper dipped in vinegar. Made the house

smell as if it were in quarantine for the plague from Smyrna, but

discoloration soon disappeared,--so I did not become a bronzed man after

all,--hope I never shall while I am alive. Should n't mind being done

in bronze after I was dead. On second thoughts not so clear about it,

remembering how some of them look that we have got stuck up in public;

think I had rather go down to posterity in an Ethiopian Minstrel

portrait, like our friend's the other day.

--You were kind enough to say, I remarked to the Master, that you read

my poems and liked them. Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me

what it is you like about them?

The Master harpooned a breakfast-roll and held it up before me.--Will

you tell me,--he said,--why you like that breakfast-roll?--I suppose he

thought that would stop my mouth in two senses. But he was mistaken.

--To be sure I will,--said I.--First, I like its mechanical

consistency; brittle externally,--that is for the teeth, which want

resistance to be overcome; soft, spongy, well tempered and flavored

internally, that is for the organ of taste; wholesome, nutritious,--that

is for the internal surfaces and the system generally.

--Good,--said the Master, and laughed a hearty terrestrial laugh.

I hope he will carry that faculty of an honest laugh with him wherever

he goes,--why shouldn't he? The “order of things,” as he calls it, from

which hilarity was excluded, would be crippled and one-sided enough. I

don't believe the human gamut will be cheated of a single note after

men have done breathing this fatal atmospheric mixture and die into the

ether of immortality!

I did n't say all that; if I had said it, it would have brought a pellet

from the popgun, I feel quite certain.

The Master went on after he had had out his laugh.--There is one thing

I am His Imperial Majesty about, and that is my likes and dislikes.

What if I do like your verses,--you can't help yourself. I don't doubt

somebody or other hates 'em and hates you and everything you do, or ever

did, or ever can do. He is all right; there is nothing you or I like

that somebody does n't hate. Was there ever anything wholesome that was

not poison to somebody? If you hate honey or cheese, or the products

of the dairy,--I know a family a good many of whose members can't touch

milk, butter, cheese, and the like, why, say so, but don't find fault

with the bees and the cows. Some are afraid of roses, and I have known

those who thought a pond-lily a disagreeable neighbor. That Boy will

give you the metaphysics of likes and dislikes. Look here,--you young

philosopher over there,--do you like candy?

That Boy.--You bet! Give me a stick and see if I don't.

And can you tell me why you like candy?

That Boy.--Because I do.

--There, now, that is the whole matter in a nutshell. Why do your teeth

like crackling crust, and your organs of taste like spongy crumb,

and your digestive contrivances take kindly to bread rather than

toadstools--

That Boy (thinking he was still being catechised).--Because they do.

Whereupon the Landlady said, Sh! and the Young Girl laughed, and the

Lady smiled; and Dr. Ben Franklin kicked him, moderately, under the

table, and the Astronomer looked up at the ceiling to see what had

happened, and the Member of the Haouse cried, Order! Order! and the

Salesman said, Shut up, cash-boy! and the rest of the boarders kept on

feeding; except the Master, who looked very hard but half approvingly

at the small intruder, who had come about as nearly right as most

professors would have done.

--You poets,--the Master said after this excitement had calmed down,

--you poets have one thing about you that is odd. You talk about

everything as if you knew more about it than the people whose business

it is to know all about it. I suppose you do a little of what we

teachers used to call “cramming” now and then?

--If you like your breakfast you must n't ask the cook too many

questions,--I answered.

--Oh, come now, don't be afraid of letting out your secrets. I have

a notion I can tell a poet that gets himself up just as I can tell a

make-believe old man on the stage by the line where the gray skullcap

joins the smooth forehead of the young fellow of seventy. You'll confess

to a rhyming dictionary anyhow, won't you?

--I would as lief use that as any other dictionary, but I don't want it.

When a word comes up fit to end a line with I can feel all the rhymes

in the language that are fit to go with it without naming them. I have

tried them all so many times, I know all the polygamous words and all

the monogamous ones, and all the unmarrying ones,--the whole lot that

have no mates,--as soon as I hear their names called. Sometimes I run

over a string of rhymes, but generally speaking it is strange what

a short list it is of those that are good for anything. That is the

pitiful side of all rhymed verse. Take two such words as home and world.

What can you do with chrome or loam or gnome or tome? You have dome,

foam, and roam, and not much more to use in your pome, as some of our

fellow-countrymen call it. As for world, you know that in all human

probability somebody or something will be hurled into it or out of it;

its clouds may be furled or its grass impearled; possibly something may

be whirled, or curled, or have swirled, one of Leigh Hunt's words, which

with lush, one of Keats's, is an important part of the stock in trade of

some dealers in rhyme.

--And how much do you versifiers know of all those arts and sciences you

refer to as if you were as familiar with them as a cobbler is with his

wax and lapstone?

--Enough not to make too many mistakes. The best way is to ask some

expert before one risks himself very far in illustrations from a branch

he does not know much about. Suppose, for instance, I wanted to use the

double star to illustrate anything, say the relation of two human souls

to each other, what would I--do? Why, I would ask our young friend

there to let me look at one of those loving celestial pairs through his

telescope, and I don't doubt he'd let me do so, and tell me their names

and all I wanted to know about them.

--I should be most happy to show any of the double stars or whatever

else there might be to see in the heavens to any of our friends at this

table,--the young man said, so cordially and kindly that it was a real

invitation.

--Show us the man in the moon,--said That Boy.--I should so like to

see a double star!--said Scheherezade, with a very pretty air of smiling

modesty.

--Will you go, if we make up a party?--I asked the Master.

--A cold in the head lasts me from three to five days,--answered

the Master.--I am not so very fond of being out in the dew like

Nebuchadnezzar: that will do for you young folks.

--I suppose I must be one of the young folks, not so young as our

Scheherezade, nor so old as the Capitalist,--young enough at any rate to

want to be of the party. So we agreed that on some fair night when the

Astronomer should tell us that there was to be a fine show in the skies,

we would make up a party and go to the Observatory. I asked the Scarabee

whether he would not like to make one of us.

--Out of the question, sir, out of the question. I am altogether too

much occupied with an important scientific investigation to devote any

considerable part of an evening to star-gazing.

--Oh, indeed,--said I,--and may I venture to ask on what particular

point you are engaged just at present?

-Certainly, sir, you may. It is, I suppose, as difficult and important

a matter to be investigated as often comes before a student of natural

history. I wish to settle the point once for all whether the Pediculus

Mellitae is or is not the larva of Meloe.

[--Now is n't this the drollest world to live in that one could imagine,

short of being in a fit of delirium tremens? Here is a fellow-creature

of mine and yours who is asked to see all the glories of the firmament

brought close to him, and he is too busy with a little unmentionable

parasite that infests the bristly surface of a bee to spare an hour or

two of a single evening for the splendors of the universe! I must get a

peep through that microscope of his and see the pediculus which occupies

a larger space in his mental vision than the midnight march of the solar

systems.--The creature, the human one, I mean, interests me.]

--I am very curious,--I said,--about that pediculus melittae,--(just as

if I knew a good deal about the little wretch and wanted to know more,

whereas I had never heard him spoken of before, to my knowledge,)--could

you let me have a sight of him in your microscope?

--You ought to have seen the way in which the poor dried-up little

Scarabee turned towards me. His eyes took on a really human look, and

I almost thought those antennae-like arms of his would have stretched

themselves out and embraced me. I don't believe any of the boarders

had ever shown any interest in--him, except the little monkey of a Boy,

since he had been in the house. It is not strange; he had not seemed to

me much like a human being, until all at once I touched the one point

where his vitality had concentrated itself, and he stood revealed a man

and a brother.

--Come in,--said he,--come in, right after breakfast, and you shall see

the animal that has convulsed the entomological world with questions as

to his nature and origin.

--So I went into the Scarabee's parlor, lodging-room, study, laboratory,

and museum,--a--single apartment applied to these various uses, you

understand.

--I wish I had time to have you show me all your treasures,--I said,

--but I am afraid I shall hardly be able to do more than look at the

bee-parasite. But what a superb butterfly you have in that case!

--Oh, yes, yes, well enough,--came from South America with the beetle

there; look at him! These Lepidoptera are for children to play with,

pretty to look at, so some think. Give me the Coleoptera, and the kings

of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepidoptera and Neuroptera for little

folks; Coleopteras for men, sir!

--The particular beetle he showed me in the case with the magnificent

butterfly was an odious black wretch that one would say, Ugh! at, and

kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. But he

looked at it as a coin-collector would look at a Pescennius Niger, if

the coins of that Emperor are as scarce as they used to be when I was

collecting half-penny tokens and pine-tree shillings and battered bits

of Roman brass with the head of Gallienus or some such old fellow on

them.

--A beauty!--he exclaimed,--and the only specimen of the kind in

this country, to the best of my belief. A unique, sir, and there is a

pleasure in exclusive possession. Not another beetle like that short of

South America, sir.

--I was glad to hear that there were no more like it in this

neighborhood, the present supply of cockroaches answering every purpose,

so far as I am concerned, that such an animal as this would be likely to

serve.

--Here are my bee-parasites,--said the Scarabee, showing me a box full

of glass slides, each with a specimen ready mounted for the microscope.

I was most struck with one little beast flattened out like a turtle,

semi-transparent, six-legged, as I remember him, and every leg

terminated by a single claw hooked like a lion's and as formidable for

the size of the creature as that of the royal beast.

--Lives on a bumblebee, does he?--I said. That's the way I call it.

Bumblebee or bumblybee and huckleberry. Humblebee and whortleberry for

people that say Woos-ses-ter and Nor-wich.

--The Scarabee did not smile; he took no interest in trivial matters

like this.

--Lives on a bumblebee. When you come to think of it, he must lead a

pleasant kind of life. Sails through the air without the trouble

of flying. Free pass everywhere that the bee goes. No fear of being

dislodged; look at those six grappling-hooks. Helps himself to such

juices of the bee as he likes best; the bee feeds on the choicest

vegetable nectars, and he feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or

in the perfumed pavilion of the fairest and sweetest flowers. Think what

tents the hollyhocks and the great lilies spread for him! And wherever

he travels a band of music goes with him, for this hum which wanders by

us is doubtless to him a vast and inspiring strain of melody.--I

thought all this, while the Scarabee supposed I was studying the minute

characters of the enigmatical specimen.

--I know what I consider your pediculus melittae, I said at length.

Do you think it really the larva of meloe?

--Oh, I don't know much about that, but I think he is the best cared

for, on the whole, of any animal that I know of; and if I wasn't a man

I believe I had rather be that little sybarite than anything that feasts

at the board of nature.

--The question is, whether he is the larva of meloe,--the Scarabee said,

as if he had not heard a word of what I had just been saying.---If I

live a few years longer it shall be settled, sir; and if my epitaph

can say honestly that I settled it, I shall be willing to trust my

posthumous fame to that achievement.

I said good morning to the specialist, and went off feeling not only

kindly, but respectfully towards him. He is an enthusiast, at any rate,

as “earnest” a man as any philanthropic reformer who, having passed his

life in worrying people out of their misdoings into good behavior, comes

at last to a state in which he is never contented except when he is

making somebody uncomfortable. He does certainly know one thing well,

very likely better than anybody in the world.

I find myself somewhat singularly placed at our table between a minute

philosopher who has concentrated all his faculties on a single subject,

and my friend who finds the present universe too restricted for his

intelligence. I would not give much to hear what the Scarabee says about

the old Master, for he does not pretend to form a judgment of anything

but beetles, but I should like to hear what the Master has to say about

the Scarabee. I waited after breakfast until he had gone, and then asked

the Master what he could make of our dried-up friend.

--Well,--he said,--I am hospitable enough in my feelings to him and all

his tribe. These specialists are the coral-insects that build up a reef.

By and by it will be an island, and for aught we know may grow into a

continent. But I don't want to be a coral-insect myself. I had rather be

a voyager that visits all the reefs and islands the creatures build,

and sails over the seas where they have as yet built up nothing. I am

a little afraid that science is breeding us down too fast into

coral-insects. A man like Newton or Leibnitz or Haller used to paint a

picture of outward or inward nature with a free hand, and stand back and

look at it as a whole and feel like an archangel; but nowadays you have

a Society, and they come together and make a great mosaic, each man

bringing his little bit and sticking it in its place, but so taken up

with his petty fragment that he never thinks of looking at the picture

the little bits make when they are put together. You can't get any talk

out of these specialists away from their own subjects, any more than you

can get help from a policeman outside of his own beat.

--Yes,--said I,--but why should n't we always set a man talking about

the thing he knows best?

--No doubt, no doubt, if you meet him once; but what are you going to do

with him if you meet him every day? I travel with a man and we want

to make change very often in paying bills. But every time I ask him to

change a pistareen, or give me two fo'pencehappennies for a ninepence,

or help me to make out two and thrippence (mark the old Master's

archaisms about the currency), what does the fellow do but put his hand

in his pocket and pull out an old Roman coin; I have no change, says he,

but this assarion of Diocletian. Mighty deal of good that'll do me!

--It isn't quite so handy as a few specimens of the modern currency

would be, but you can pump him on numismatics.

--To be sure, to be sure. I've pumped a thousand men of all they could

teach me, or at least all I could learn from 'em; and if it comes to

that, I never saw the man that couldn't teach me something. I can get

along with everybody in his place, though I think the place of some of

my friends is over there among the feeble-minded pupils, and I don't

believe there's one of them, I couldn't go to school to for half an hour

and be the wiser for it. But people you talk with every day have got

to have feeders for their minds, as much as the stream that turns

a millwheel has. It isn't one little rill that's going to keep the

float-boards turning round. Take a dozen of the brightest men you can

find in the brightest city, wherever that may be,--perhaps you and I

think we know,--and let 'em come together once a month, and you'll find

out in the course of a year or two the ones that have feeders from all

the hillsides. Your common talkers, that exchange the gossip of the day,

have no wheel in particular to turn, and the wash of the rain as it runs

down the street is enough for them.

--Do you mean you can always see the sources from which a man fills his

mind,--his feeders, as you call them?

-I don't go quite so far as that,--the Master said.--I've seen men

whose minds were always overflowing, and yet they did n't read much nor

go much into the world. Sometimes you'll find a bit of a pond-hole in a

pasture, and you'll plunge your walking-stick into it and think you

are going to touch bottom. But you find you are mistaken. Some of these

little stagnant pond-holes are a good deal deeper than you think; you

may tie a stone to a bed-cord and not get soundings in some of 'em. The

country boys will tell you they have no bottom, but that only means that

they are mighty deep; and so a good many stagnant, stupid-seeming

people are a great deal deeper than the length of your intellectual

walking-stick, I can tell you. There are hidden springs that keep the

little pond-holes full when the mountain brooks are all dried up. You

poets ought to know that.

--I can't help thinking you are more tolerant towards the specialists

than I thought at first, by the way you seemed to look at our dried-up

neighbor and his small pursuits.

--I don't like the word tolerant,--the Master said.--As long as

the Lord can tolerate me I think I can stand my fellow-creatures.

Philosophically, I love 'em all; empirically, I don't think I am very

fond of all of 'em. It depends on how you look at a man or a woman. Come

here, Youngster, will you? he said to That Boy.

The Boy was trying to catch a blue-bottle to add to his collection,

and was indisposed to give up the chase; but he presently saw that the

Master had taken out a small coin and laid it on the table, and felt

himself drawn in that direction.

Read that,--said the Master.

U-n-i-ni United States of America 5 cents.

The Master turned the coin over. Now read that.

In God is our t-r-u-s-t--trust. 1869.

--Is that the same piece of money as the other one?

--There ain't any other one,--said the Boy, there ain't but one, but

it's got two sides to it with different reading.

--That 's it, that 's it,--said the Master,--two sides to everybody, as

there are to that piece of money. I've seen an old woman that wouldn't

fetch five cents if you should put her up for sale at public auction;

and yet come to read the other side of her, she had a trust in God

Almighty that was like the bow anchor of a three-decker. It's faith in

something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking

at. I don't think your ant-eating specialist, with his sharp nose and

pin-head eyes, is the best every-day companion; but any man who knows

one thing well is worth listening to for once; and if you are of the

large-brained variety of the race, and want to fill out your programme

of the Order of Things in a systematic and exhaustive way, and get all

the half-notes and flats and sharps of humanity into your scale, you'd a

great deal better shut your front door and open your two side ones

when you come across a fellow that has made a real business of doing

anything.

--That Boy stood all this time looking hard at the five-cent piece.

--Take it,--said the Master, with a good-natured smile.

--The Boy made a snatch at it and was off for the purpose of investing

it.

--A child naturally snaps at a thing as a dog does at his meat,--said

the Master.--If you think of it, we've all been quadrupeds. A child

that can only crawl has all the instincts of a four-footed beast. It

carries things in its mouth just as cats and dogs do. I've seen the

little brutes do it over and over again. I suppose a good many children

would stay quadrupeds all their lives, if they didn't learn the trick of

walking on their hind legs from seeing all the grown people walking in

that way.

--Do you accept Mr. Darwin's notions about the origin of the race?--said

I.

The Master looked at me with that twinkle in his eye which means that he

is going to parry a question.

--Better stick to Blair's Chronology; that settles it. Adam and Eve,

created Friday, October 28th, B. C. 4004. You've been in a ship for a

good while, and here comes Mr. Darwin on deck with an armful of sticks

and says, “Let's build a raft, and trust ourselves to that.”

If your ship springs a leak, what would you do?

He looked me straight in the eyes for about half a minute.--If I heard

the pumps going, I'd look and see whether they were gaining on the leak

or not. If they were gaining I'd stay where I was.--Go and find out

what's the matter with that young woman.

I had noticed that the Young Girl--the storywriter, our Scheherezade, as

I called her--looked as if she had been crying or lying awake half the

night. I found on asking her,--for she is an honest little body and is

disposed to be confidential with me for some reason or other,--that she

had been doing both.

--And what was the matter now, I questioned her in a semi-paternal kind

of way, as soon as I got a chance for a few quiet words with her.

She was engaged to write a serial story, it seems, and had only got as

far as the second number, and some critic had been jumping upon it, she

said, and grinding his heel into it, till she couldn't bear to look at

it. He said she did not write half so well as half a dozen other young

women. She did n't write half so well as she used to write herself. She

hadn't any characters and she had n't any incidents. Then he went

to work to show how her story was coming out, trying to anticipate

everything she could make of it, so that her readers should have nothing

to look forward to, and he should have credit for his sagacity in

guessing, which was nothing so very wonderful, she seemed to think.

Things she had merely hinted and left the reader to infer, he told right

out in the bluntest and coarsest way. It had taken all the life out of

her, she said. It was just as if at a dinner-party one of the guests

should take a spoonful of soup and get up and say to the company, “Poor

stuff, poor stuff; you won't get anything better; let's go somewhere

else where things are fit to eat.”

What do you read such things for, my dear? said I.

The film glistened in her eyes at the strange sound of those two soft

words; she had not heard such very often, I am afraid.

--I know I am a foolish creature to read them, she answered,--but I

can't help it; somebody always sends me everything that will make me

wretched to read, and so I sit down and read it, and ache all over for

my pains, and lie awake all night.

--She smiled faintly as she said this, for she saw the sub-ridiculous

side of it, but the film glittered still in her eyes. There are a good

many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are

the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples. “Somebody always sends

her everything that will make her wretched.” Who can those creatures be

who cut out the offensive paragraph and send it anonymously to us, who

mail the newspaper which has the article we had much better not have

seen, who take care that we shall know everything which can, by any

possibility, help to make us discontented with ourselves and a little

less light-hearted than we were before we had been fools enough to

open their incendiary packages? I don't like to say it to myself, but I

cannot help suspecting, in this instance, the doubtful-looking personage

who sits on my left, beyond the Scarabee. I have some reason to think

that he has made advances to the Young Girl which were not favorably

received, to state the case in moderate terms, and it may be that he is

taking his revenge in cutting up the poor girl's story. I know this very

well, that some personal pique or favoritism is at the bottom of half

the praise and dispraise which pretend to be so very ingenuous and

discriminating. (Of course I have been thinking all this time and

telling you what I thought.)

--What you want is encouragement, my dear, said I,--I know that as well,

as you. I don't think the fellows that write such criticisms as you

tell me of want to correct your faults. I don't mean to say that you can

learn nothing from them, because they are not all fools by any means,

and they will often pick out your weak points with a malignant sagacity,

as a pettifogging lawyer will frequently find a real flaw in trying to

get at everything he can quibble about. But is there nobody who will

praise you generously when you do well,--nobody that will lend you a

hand now while you want it,--or must they all wait until you have made

yourself a name among strangers, and then all at once find out that you

have something in you? Oh,--said the girl, and the bright film gathered

too fast for her young eyes to hold much longer,--I ought not to be

ungrateful! I have found the kindest friend in the world. Have you ever

heard the Lady--the one that I sit next to at the table--say anything

about me?

I have not really made her acquaintance, I said. She seems to me a

little distant in her manners and I have respected her pretty evident

liking for keeping mostly to herself.

--Oh, but when you once do know her! I don't believe I could write

stories all the time as I do, if she didn't ask me up to her chamber,

and let me read them to her. Do you know, I can make her laugh and cry,

reading my poor stories? And sometimes, when I feel as if I had written

out all there is in me, and want to lie down and go to sleep and never

wake up except in a world where there are no weekly papers,--when

everything goes wrong, like a car off the track,--she takes hold and

sets me on the rails again all right.

--How does she go to work to help you?

--Why, she listens to my stories, to begin with, as if she really liked

to hear them. And then you know I am dreadfully troubled now and then

with some of my characters, and can't think how to get rid of them. And

she'll say, perhaps, Don't shoot your villain this time, you've shot

three or four already in the last six weeks; let his mare stumble and

throw him and break his neck. Or she'll give me a hint about some new

way for my lover to make a declaration. She must have had a good many

offers, it's my belief, for she has told me a dozen different ways for

me to use in my stories. And whenever I read a story to her, she always

laughs and cries in the right places; and that's such a comfort, for

there are some people that think everything pitiable is so funny,

and will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkle--you've seen Mr.

Jefferson, haven't you?--is breaking your heart for you if you have

one. Sometimes she takes a poem I have written and reads it to me so

beautifully, that I fall in love with it, and sometimes she sets my

verses to music and sings them to me.

--You have a laugh together sometimes, do you?

--Indeed we do. I write for what they call the “Comic Department” of

the paper now and then. If I did not get so tired of story-telling, I

suppose I should be gayer than I am; but as it is, we two get a little

fun out of my comic pieces. I begin them half-crying sometimes, but

after they are done they amuse me. I don't suppose my comic pieces are

very laughable; at any rate the man who makes a business of writing me

down says the last one I wrote is very melancholy reading, and that if

it was only a little better perhaps some bereaved person might pick out

a line or two that would do to put on a gravestone.

--Well, that is hard, I must confess. Do let me see those lines which

excite such sad emotions.

--Will you read them very good-naturedly? If you will, I will get the

paper that has “Aunt Tabitha.” That is the one the fault-finder said

produced such deep depression of feeling. It was written for the “Comic

Department.” Perhaps it will make you cry, but it was n't meant to.

--I will finish my report this time with our Scheherezade's poem, hoping

that--any critic who deals with it will treat it with the courtesy due

to all a young lady's literary efforts.