Quam erit (vel esset) tui mortui reminisse!
“Alas! how much less the delight of thy living presence
Than will (or would) be that of remembering thee when thou hast
left us!”
I want to stop here--I the Poet--and put in a few reflections of my own,
suggested by what I have been giving the reader from the Master's Book,
and in a similar vein.
--How few things there are that do not change their whole aspect in
the course of a single generation! The landscape around us is wholly
different. Even the outlines of the hills that surround us are changed
by the creeping of the villages with their spires and school-houses
up their sides. The sky remains the same, and the ocean. A few old
churchyards look very much as they used to, except, of course, in
Boston, where the gravestones have been rooted up and planted in rows
with walks between them, to the utter disgrace and ruin of our most
venerated cemeteries. The Registry of Deeds and the Probate Office show
us the same old folios, where we can read our grandfather's title to his
estate (if we had a grandfather and he happened to own anything) and see
how many pots and kettles there were in his kitchen by the inventory of
his personal property.
Among living people none remain so long unchanged as the actors. I can
see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw
smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations
of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt,
but the same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the
circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston
Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I
can see Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same parts I saw her in under Louis
Philippe, and be charmed by the same grace and vivacity which delighted
my grandmother (if she was in Paris, and went to see her in the part of
Fanchon toute seule at the Theatre des Capucines) in the days when the
great Napoleon was still only First Consul.
The graveyard and the stage are pretty much the only places where you
can expect to find your friends--as you left them, five and twenty or
fifty years ago. I have noticed, I may add, that old theatre-goers bring
back the past with their stories more vividly than men with any other
experiences. There were two old New-Yorkers that I used to love to sit
talking with about the stage. One was a scholar and a writer of note; a
pleasant old gentleman, with the fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid.
The other not less noted in his way, deep in local lore, large-brained,
full-blooded, of somewhat perturbing and tumultuous presence. It was
good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser
stars of those earlier constellations. Better still to breakfast with
old Samuel Rogers, as some of my readers have done more than once, and
hear him answer to the question who was the best actor he remembered, “I
think, on the whole, Garrick.”
If we did but know how to question these charming old people before
it is too late! About ten years, more or less, after the generation
in advance of our own has all died off, it occurs to us all at once,
“There! I can ask my old friend what he knows of that picture, which
must be a Copley; of that house and its legends about which there is
such a mystery. He (or she) must know all about that.” Too late! Too
late!
Still, now and then one saves a reminiscence that means a good deal
by means of a casual question. I asked the first of those two old
New-Yorkers the following question: “Who, on the whole, seemed to you
the most considerable person you ever met?”
Now it must be remembered that this was a man who had lived in a city
that calls itself the metropolis, one who had been a member of the
State and the National Legislature, who had come in contact with men
of letters and men of business, with politicians and members of all the
professions, during a long and distinguished public career. I paused
for his answer with no little curiosity. Would it be one of the great
Ex-Presidents whose names were known to, all the world? Would it be
the silver-tongued orator of Kentucky or the “God-like” champion of the
Constitution, our New-England Jupiter Capitolinus? Who would it be?
“Take it altogether,” he answered, very deliberately, “I should say
Colonel Elisha Williams was the most notable personage that I have met
with.”
--Colonel Elisha Williams! And who might he be, forsooth? A gentleman of
singular distinction, you may be well assured, even though you are
not familiar with his name; but as I am not writing a biographical
dictionary, I shall leave it to my reader to find out who and what he
was.
--One would like to live long enough to witness certain things which
will no doubt come to pass by and by. I remember that when one of our
good kindhearted old millionnaires was growing very infirm, his limbs
failing him, and his trunk getting packed with the infirmities which
mean that one is bound on a long journey, he said very simply and
sweetly, “I don't care about living a great deal longer, but I should
like to live long enough to find out how much old (a many-millioned
fellow-citizen) is worth.” And without committing myself on the
longevity-question, I confess I should like to live long enough to see a
few things happen that are like to come, sooner or later.
I want to hold the skull of Abraham in my hand. They will go through
the cave of Machpelah at Hebron, I feel sure, in the course of a few
generations at the furthest, and as Dr. Robinson knows of nothing
which should lead us to question the correctness of the tradition
which regards this as the place of sepulture of Abraham and the other
patriarchs, there is no reason why we may not find his mummied body in
perfect preservation, if he was embalmed after the Egyptian fashion. I
suppose the tomb of David will be explored by a commission in due time,
and I should like to see the phrenological developments of that great
king and divine singer and warm-blooded man. If, as seems probable, the
anthropological section of society manages to get round the curse that
protects the bones of Shakespeare, I should like to see the dome which
rounded itself over his imperial brain. Not that I am what is called a
phrenologist, but I am curious as to the physical developments of these
fellow-mortals of mine, and a little in want of a sensation.
I should like to live long enough to see the course of the Tiber turned,
and the bottom of the river thoroughly dredged. I wonder if they would
find the seven-branched golden candlestick brought from Jerusalem by
Titus, and said to have been dropped from the Milvian bridge. I
have often thought of going fishing for it some year when I wanted
a vacation, as some of my friends used to go to Ireland to fish for
salmon. There was an attempt of that kind, I think, a few years ago.
We all know how it looks well enough, from the figure of it on the Arch
of Titus, but I should like to “heft” it in my own hand, and carry it
home and shine it up (excuse my colloquialisms), and sit down and look
at it, and think and think and think until the Temple of Solomon
built up its walls of hewn stone and its roofs of cedar around me as
noiselessly as when it rose, and “there was neither hammer nor axe nor
any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building.”
All this, you will remember, Beloved, is a digression on my own account,
and I return to the old Master whom I left smiling at his own alteration
of Shenstone's celebrated inscription. He now begin reading again:
--I want it to be understood that I consider that a certain number
of persons are at liberty to dislike me peremptorily, without showing
cause, and that they give no offence whatever in so doing.
If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this sentiment towards myself
on the part of others, I should not feel at liberty to indulge my
own aversions. I try to cultivate a Christian feeling to all my
fellow-creatures, but inasmuch as I must also respect truth and honesty,
I confess to myself a certain number of inalienable dislikes and
prejudices, some of which may possibly be shared by others. Some of
these are purely instinctive, for others I can assign a reason. Our
likes and dislikes play so important a part in the Order of Things that
it is well to see on what they are founded.
There are persons I meet occasionally who are too intelligent by half
for my liking. They know my thoughts beforehand, and tell me what I was
going to say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, and a
good deal besides; have read all the books I have read, and in later
editions; have had all the experiences I have been through, and
more-too. In my private opinion every mother's son of them will lie at
any time rather than confess ignorance.
--I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a large
excess of vitality; great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers,
who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal
spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself, and
enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished by
these great lusty, noisy creatures,--and feel as if I were a mute at a
funeral when they get into full blast.
--I cannot get along much better with those drooping, languid people,
whose vitality falls short as much as that of the others is in excess. I
have not life enough for two; I wish I had. It is not very enlivening
to meet a fellow-creature whose expression and accents say, “You are the
hair that breaks the camel's back of my endurance, you are the last drop
that makes my cup of woe run over”; persons whose heads drop on one side
like those of toothless infants, whose voices recall the tones in which
our old snuffling choir used to wail out the verses of:
“Life is the time to serve the Lord.”
--There is another style which does not captivate me. I recognize an
attempt at the grand manner now and then, in persons who are well enough
in their way, but of no particular importance, socially or otherwise.
Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the
bottom of it, and it survives all the advantages that used to set
it off. I like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respect the
high-born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked in their
shirt-sleeves for the last two generations full as much as I ought
to. But grand pere oblige; a person with a known grandfather is too
distinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. The few Royal Princes
I have happened to know were very easy people to get along with, and
had not half the social knee-action I have often seen in the collapsed
dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in my earlier years.
--My heart does not warm as it should do towards the persons, not
intimates, who are always too glad to see me when we meet by accident,
and discover all at once that they have a vast deal to unbosom
themselves of to me.
--There is one blameless person whom I cannot love and have no excuse
for hating. It is the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensive
to me, whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. I
suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding its
own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once with
its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the
Mississippi for diluting with its limpid, but insipid current the rich
reminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream has
wandered. I will not compare myself, to the clear or the turbid current,
but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in
for a corner confluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as myself until
I can get away from him.
--These antipathies are at least weaknesses; they may be sins in the eye
of the Recording Angel. I often reproach myself with my wrong-doings. I
should like sometimes to thank Heaven for saving me from some kinds of
transgression, and even for granting me some qualities that if I dared I
should be disposed to call virtues. I should do so, I suppose, if I did
not remember the story of the Pharisee. That ought not to hinder me. The
parable was told to illustrate a single virtue, humility, and the most
unwarranted inferences have been drawn from it as to the whole character
of the two parties. It seems not at all unlikely, but rather probable,
that the Pharisee was a fairer dealer, a better husband, and a more
charitable person than the Publican, whose name has come down to us
“linked with one virtue,” but who may have been guilty, for aught that
appears to the contrary, of “a thousand crimes.” Remember how we limit
the application of other parables. The lord, it will be recollected,
commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely. His shrewdness
was held up as an example, but after all he was a miserable swindler,
and deserved the state-prison as much as many of our financial
operators. The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is a perpetual
warning against spiritual pride. But it must not frighten any one of us
out of being thankful that he is not, like this or that neighbor,
under bondage to strong drink or opium, that he is not an Erie-Railroad
Manager, and that his head rests in virtuous calm on his own pillow. If
he prays in the morning to be kept out of temptation as well as for his
daily bread, shall he not return thanks at night that he has not fallen
into sin as well as that his stomach has been filled? I do not think the
poor Pharisee has ever had fair play, and I am afraid a good many people
sin with the comforting, half-latent intention of smiting their breasts
afterwards and repeating the prayer of the Publican.
(Sensation.)
This little movement which I have thus indicated seemed to give the
Master new confidence in his audience. He turned over several pages
until he came to a part of the interleaved volume where we could all
see he had written in a passage of new matter in red ink as of special
interest.
--I told you, he said, in Latin, and I repeat it in English, that I have
freed my soul in these pages,--I have spoken my mind. I have read you a
few extracts, most of them of rather slight texture, and some of them,
you perhaps thought, whimsical. But I meant, if I thought you were in
the right mood for listening to it, to read you some paragraphs which
give in small compass the pith, the marrow, of all that my experience
has taught me. Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious
one. I took it early, as we all do, and have treated it all along with
the best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as I could find
no radical cure for its evils, and have so far managed to keep pretty
comfortable under it.
It is a great thing for a man to put the whole meaning of his life into
a few paragraphs, if he does it so that others can make anything out of
it. If he conveys his wisdom after the fashion of the old alchemists, he
may as well let it alone. He must talk in very plain words, and that is
what I have done. You want to know what a certain number of scores of
years have taught me that I think best worth telling. If I had half a
dozen square inches of paper, and one penful of ink, and five minutes to
use them in for the instruction of those who come after me, what should
I put down in writing? That is the question.
Perhaps I should be wiser if I refused to attempt any such brief
statement of the most valuable lesson that life has taught me. I am by
no means sure that I had not better draw my pen through the page that
holds the quintessence of my vital experiences, and leave those who wish
to know what it is to distil to themselves from my many printed pages.
But I have excited your curiosity, and I see that you are impatient to
hear what the wisdom, or the folly, it may be, of a life shows for, when
it is crowded into a few lines as the fragrance of a gardenful of roses
is concentrated in a few drops of perfume.
--By this time I confess I was myself a little excited. What was he
going to tell us? The Young Astronomer looked upon him with an eye as
clear and steady and brilliant as the evening star, but I could see that
he too was a little nervous, wondering what would come next.
The old Master adjusted his large round spectacles, and began:
--It has cost me fifty years to find my place in the Order of Things. I
had explored all the sciences; I had studied the literature of all ages;
I had travelled in many lands; I had learned how to follow the working
of thought in men and of sentiment and instinct in women. I had
examined for myself all the religions that could make out any claim for
themselves. I had fasted and prayed with the monks of a lonely convent;
I had mingled with the crowds that shouted glory at camp-meetings; I had
listened to the threats of Calvinists and the promises of Universalists;
I had been a devout attendant on a Jewish Synagogue; I was in
correspondence with an intelligent Buddhist; and I met frequently with
the inner circle of Rationalists, who believed in the persistence of
Force, and the identity of alimentary substances with virtue, and were
reconstructing the universe on this basis, with absolute exclusion of
all Supernumeraries. In these pursuits I had passed the larger part of
my half-century of existence, as yet with little satisfaction. It was
on the morning of my fiftieth birthday that the solution of the great
problem I had sought so long came to me as a simple formula, with a few
grand but obvious inferences. I will repeat the substance of this final
intuition:
The one central fact an the Order of Things which solves all questions
is:
At this moment we were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It
was most inopportune, for he was on the point of the great disclosure,
but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which
we had heard was that of one of the softer-footed sex, he chose to rise
from his chair and admit his visitor.
This visitor was our Landlady. She was dressed with more than usual
nicety, and her countenance showed clearly that she came charged with an
important communication.
--I did n't low there was company with you, said the Landlady,--but it's
jest as well. I've got something to tell my boarders that I don't want
to tell them, and if I must do it, I may as well tell you all at once
as one to a time. I 'm agoing to give up keeping boarders at the end of
this year,--I mean come the end of December.
She took out a white handkerchief, at hand in expectation of what was
to happen, and pressed it to her eyes. There was an interval of
silence. The Master closed his book and laid it on the table. The Young
Astronomer did not look as much surprised as I should have expected. I
was completely taken aback,--I had not thought of such a sudden breaking
up of our little circle.
When the Landlady had recovered her composure, she began again:
The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own,
--one she has bought back again, for it used to belong to her folks.
It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front windows all
day long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doos n't make any
difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was doing as
well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from her that
wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's lady. I've
knowed what it was to have women-boarders that find fault,--there's
some of 'em would quarrel with me and everybody at my table; they would
quarrel with the Angel Gabriel if he lived in the house with 'em, and
scold at him and tell him he was always dropping his feathers round, if
they could n't find anything else to bring up against him.
Two other boarders of mine has given me notice that they was expecting
to leave come the first of January. I could fill up their places easy
enough, for ever since that first book was wrote that called people's
attention to my boarding-house, I've had more wanting to come than I
wanted to keep.
But I'm getting along in life, and I ain't quite so rugged as I used
to be. My daughter is well settled and my son is making his own living.
I've done a good deal of hard work in my time, and I feel as if I had a
right to a little rest. There's nobody knows what a woman that has the
charge of a family goes through, but God Almighty that made her. I've
done my best for them that I loved, and for them that was under my roof.
My husband and my children was well cared for when they lived, and he
and them little ones that I buried has white marble head-stones and
foot-stones, and an iron fence round the lot, and a place left for me
betwixt him and the....
Some has always been good to me,--some has made it a little of a strain
to me to get along. When a woman's back aches with overworking herself
to keep her house in shape, and a dozen mouths are opening at her three
times a day, like them little young birds that split their heads open
so you can a'most see into their empty stomachs, and one wants this and
another wants that, and provisions is dear and rent is high, and nobody
to look to,--then a sharp word cuts, I tell you, and a hard look goes
right to your heart. I've seen a boarder make a face at what I set
before him, when I had tried to suit him jest as well as I knew how, and
I haven't cared to eat a thing myself all the rest of that day, and I've
laid awake without a wink of sleep all night. And then when you come
down the next morning all the boarders stare at you and wonder what
makes you so low-spirited, and why you don't look as happy and talk
as cheerful as one of them rich ladies that has dinner-parties, where
they've nothing to do but give a few orders, and somebody comes and
cooks their dinner, and somebody else comes and puts flowers on the
table, and a lot of men dressed up like ministers come and wait on
everybody, as attentive as undertakers at a funeral.
And that reminds me to tell you that I'm agoing to live with my
daughter. Her husband's a very nice man, and when he isn't following a
corpse, he's as good company as if he was a member of the city council.
My son, he's agoing into business with the old Doctor he studied with,
and he's agoing to board with me at my daughter's for a while,--I
suppose he'll be getting a wife before long. [This with a pointed look
at our young friend, the Astronomer.]
It is n't but a little while longer that we are going to be together,
and I want to say to you gentlemen, as I mean to say to the others and
as I have said to our two ladies, that I feel more obligated to, you for
the way you 've treated me than I know very well how to put into words.
Boarders sometimes expect too much of the ladies that provides for them.
Some days the meals are better than other days; it can't help being so.
Sometimes the provision-market is n't well supplied, sometimes the
fire in the cooking-stove does n't burn so well as it does other
days; sometimes the cook is n't so lucky as she might be. And there is
boarders who is always laying in wait for the days when the meals is not
quite so good as they commonly be, to pick a quarrel with the one that
is trying to serve them so as that they shall be satisfied. But you've
all been good and kind to me. I suppose I'm not quite so spry and
quick-sighted as I was a dozen years ago, when my boarder wrote that
first book so many have asked me about. But--now I'm going to stop
taking boarders. I don't believe you'll think much about what I did n't
do,--because I couldn't,--but remember that at any rate I tried honestly
to serve you. I hope God will bless all that set at my table, old and
young, rich and poor, merried and single, and single that hopes soon to
be merried. My husband that's dead and gone always believed that we all
get to heaven sooner or later,--and sence I've grown older and buried so
many that I've loved I've come to feel that perhaps I should meet all of
them that I've known here--or at least as many of 'em as I wanted
to--in a better world. And though I don't calculate there is any
boarding-houses in heaven, I hope I shall some time or other meet them
that has set round my table one year after another, all together, where
there is no fault-finding with the food and no occasion for it,--and if
I do meet them and you there--or anywhere,--if there is anything I can
do for you....
.... Poor dear soul! Her ideas had got a little mixed, and her heart was
overflowing, and the white handkerchief closed the scene with its timely
and greatly needed service.
--What a pity, I have often thought, that she came in just at that
precise moment! For the old Master was on the point of telling us, and
through one of us the reading world,--I mean that fraction of it which
has reached this point of the record,--at any rate, of telling you,
Beloved, through my pen, his solution of a great problem we all have to
deal with. We were some weeks longer together, but he never offered to
continue his reading. At length I ventured to give him a hint that our
young friend and myself would both of us be greatly gratified if he
would begin reading from his unpublished page where he had left off.
--No, sir,--he said,--better not, better not. That which means so much
to me, the writer, might be a disappointment, or at least a puzzle, to
you, the listener. Besides, if you'll take my printed book and be at
the trouble of thinking over what it says, and put that with what you've
heard me say, and then make those comments and reflections which will
be suggested to a mind in so many respects like mine as is your
own,--excuse my good opinion of myself.
(It is a high compliment to me, I replied) you will perhaps find you
have the elements of the formula and its consequences which I was about
to read you. It's quite as well to crack your own filberts as to borrow
the use of other people's teeth. I think we will wait awhile before we
pour out the Elixir Vitae.
--To tell the honest truth, I suspect the Master has found out that his
formula does not hold water quite so perfectly as he was thinking, so
long as he kept it to himself, and never thought of imparting it to
anybody else. The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity
it seems to shrink towards mediocrity, as I have noticed that a great
pumpkin, the wonder of a village, seemed to lose at least a third of
its dimensions between the field where it grew and the cattle-show
fair-table, where it took its place with other enormous pumpkins from
other wondering villages. But however that maybe, I shall always regret
that I had not the opportunity of judging for myself how completely the
Master's formula, which, for him, at least, seemed to have solved the
great problem, would have accomplished that desirable end for me.
The Landlady's announcement of her intention to give up keeping boarders
was heard with regret by all who met around her table. The Member of the
Haouse inquired of me whether I could tell him if the Lamb Tahvern was
kept well abaout these times. He knew that members from his place used
to stop there, but he hadn't heerd much abaout it of late years. I had
to inform him that that fold of rural innocence had long ceased offering
its hospitalities to the legislative, flock. He found refuge at last,
I have learned, in a great public house in the northern section of the
city, where, as he said, the folks all went up stairs in a rat-trap,
and the last I heard of him was looking out of his somewhat elevated
attic-window in a northwesterly direction in hopes that he might perhaps
get a sight of the Grand Monadnock, a mountain in New Hampshire which I
have myself seen from the top of Bunker Hill Monument.
The Member of the Haouse seems to have been more in a hurry to find
a new resting-place than the other boarders. By the first of January,
however, our whole company was scattered, never to meet again around the
board where we had been so long together.
The Lady moved to the house where she had passed many of her prosperous
years. It had been occupied by a rich family who had taken it nearly as
it stood, and as the pictures had been dusted regularly, and the books
had never been handled, she found everything in many respects as she had
left it, and in some points improved, for the rich people did not know
what else to do, and so they spent money without stint on their house
and its adornments, by all of which she could not help profiting. I do
not choose to give the street and number of the house where she lives,
but a-great many poor people know very well where it is, and as a matter
of course the rich ones roll up to her door in their carriages by the
dozen every fine Monday while anybody is in town.
It is whispered that our two young folks are to be married before
another season, and that the Lady has asked them to come and stay with
her for a while. Our Scheherezade is to write no more stories. It is
astonishing to see what a change for the better in her aspect a few
weeks of brain-rest and heart's ease have wrought in her. I doubt very
much whether she ever returns to literary labor. The work itself was
almost heart-breaking, but the effect upon her of the sneers and cynical
insolences of the literary rough who came at her in mask and brass
knuckles was to give her what I fear will be a lifelong disgust against
any writing for the public, especially in any of the periodicals. I am
not sorry that she should stop writing, but I am sorry that she should
have been silenced in such a rude way. I doubt, too, whether the Young
Astronomer will pass the rest of his life in hunting for comets and
planets. I think he has found an attraction that will call him down from
the celestial luminaries to a light not less pure and far less remote.
And I am inclined to believe that the best answer to many of those
questions which have haunted him and found expression in his verse
will be reached by a very different channel from that of lonely
contemplation, the duties, the cares, the responsible realities of a
life drawn out of itself by the power of newly awakened instincts and
affections. The double star was prophetic,--I thought it would be.
The Register of Deeds is understood to have been very handsomely treated
by the boarder who owes her good fortune to his sagacity and activity.
He has engaged apartments at a very genteel boarding-house not far from
the one where we have all been living. The Salesman found it a simple
matter to transfer himself to an establishment over the way; he had very
little to move, and required very small accommodations.
The Capitalist, however, seems to have felt it impossible to move
without ridding himself of a part at--least of his encumbrances. The
community was startled by the announcement that a citizen who did
not wish his name to be known had made a free gift of a large sum of
money--it was in tens of thousands--to an institution of long standing
and high character in the city of which he was a quiet resident.
The source of such a gift could not long be kept secret. It, was our
economical, not to say parsimonious Capitalist who had done this noble
act, and the poor man had to skulk through back streets and keep out of
sight, as if he were a show character in a travelling caravan, to avoid
the acknowledgments of his liberality, which met him on every hand and
put him fairly out of countenance.
That Boy has gone, in virtue of a special invitation, to make a visit of
indefinite length at the house of the father of the older boy, whom
we know by the name of Johnny. Of course he is having a good time, for
Johnny's father is full of fun, and tells first-rate stories, and if
neither of the boys gets his brains kicked out by the pony, or blows
himself up with gunpowder, or breaks through the ice and gets drowned,
they will have a fine time of it this winter.
The Scarabee could not bear to remove his collections, and the old
Master was equally unwilling to disturb his books. It was arranged,
therefore, that they should keep their apartments until the new tenant
should come into the house, when, if they were satisfied with her
management, they would continue as her boarders.
The last time I saw the Scarabee he was still at work on the meloe
question. He expressed himself very pleasantly towards all of us, his
fellow-boarders, and spoke of the kindness and consideration with which
the Landlady had treated him when he had been straitened at times for
want of means. Especially he seemed to be interested in our young couple
who were soon to be united. His tired old eyes glistened as he asked
about them,--could it be that their little romance recalled some early
vision of his own? However that may be, he got up presently and went
to a little box in which, as he said, he kept some choice specimens. He
brought to me in his hand something which glittered. It was an exquisite
diamond beetle.
--If you could get that to her,--he said,--they tell me that ladies
sometimes wear them in their hair. If they are out of fashion, she can
keep it till after they're married, and then perhaps after a while there
may be--you know--you know what I mean--there may be larvae, that 's
what I 'm thinking there may be, and they 'll like to look at it.
--As he got out the word larvae, a faint sense of the ridiculous seemed
to take hold of the Scarabee, and for the first and only time during my
acquaintance with him a slight attempt at a smile showed itself on his
features. It was barely perceptible and gone almost as soon as seen, yet
I am pleased to put it on record that on one occasion at least in his
life the Scarabee smiled.
The old Master keeps adding notes and reflections and new suggestions to
his interleaved volume, but I doubt if he ever gives them to the public.
The study he has proposed to himself does not grow easier the longer
it is pursued. The whole Order of Things can hardly be completely
unravelled in any single person's lifetime, and I suspect he will have
to adjourn the final stage of his investigations to that more luminous
realm where the Landlady hopes to rejoin the company of boarders who are
nevermore to meet around her cheerful and well-ordered table.
The curtain has now fallen, and I show myself a moment before it to
thank my audience and say farewell. The second comer is commonly less
welcome than the first, and the third makes but a rash venture. I hope
I have not wholly disappointed those who have been so kind to my
predecessors.
To you, Beloved, who have never failed to cut the leaves which hold my
record, who have never nodded over its pages, who have never hesitated
in your allegiance, who have greeted me with unfailing smiles and part
from me with unfeigned regrets, to you I look my last adieu as I bow
myself out of sight, trusting my poor efforts to your always kind
remembrance.