THE DREGS IN LEATHERBACKS' TEA-CUP.
We have an earlier tea this evening than usual, for we have a literary
friend who comes about this time of the week, and he must go home to retire
about eight o'clock. His nervous system is so weak that he must get three
or four hours sleep before midnight; otherwise he is next day so cross and
censorious he scalps every author he can lay his hand on. As he put his
hand on the table with an indelible blot of ink on his thumb and two
fingers, which blot he had not been able to wash off, I said, "Well, my old
friend Leatherbacks, what books have you been reading to-day?"
He replied, "I have been reading 'Men and Things.' Some books touch only
the head and make us think; other books touch only the heart and make us
feel; here and there one touches us under the fifth rib and makes us laugh;
but the book on 'Men and Things,' by the Rev. Dr. C.S. Henry, touched me
all over. I have felt better ever since. I have not seen the author but
once since the old university days, when he lectured us and pruned us and
advised us and did us more good than almost any other instructor we ever
had. Oh, those were grand days! No better than the present, for life grows
brighter to me all the time; but we shall not forget the quaint, strong,
brusque professor who so unceremoniously smashed things which he did not
like, and shook, the class with merriment or indignation. The widest awake
professorial room in the land was Dr. Henry's, in the New York University.
But the participators in those scenes are all scattered. I know the
whereabouts of but three or four. So we meet for a little while on earth,
and then we separate. There must be a better place somewhere ahead of us.
"I have also been looking over a book that overhauls the theology and moral
character of Abraham Lincoln. This is the only kind of slander that is
safe. I have read all the stuff for the last three years published about
Abraham Lincoln's unfair courtships and blank infidelity. The protracted
discussion has made only one impression upon me, and that is this: How safe
it is to slander a dead man! You may say what you will in print about him,
he brings no rebutting evidence. I have heard that ghosts do a great many
things, but I never heard of one as printing a book or editing a newspaper
to vindicate himself. Look out how you vilify a living man, for he may
respond with pen, or tongue, or cowhide; but only get a man thoroughly dead
(that is, so certified by the coroner) and have a good, heavy tombstone put
on the top of him, and then you may say what you will with impunity.
"But I have read somewhere in an old book that there is a day coming when
all wrongs will be righted; and I should not wonder if then the dead were
vindicated, and all the swine who have uprooted graveyards should, like
their ancestors of Gadara, run down a steep place into the sea and get
choked. The fact that there are now alive men so debauched of mind and soul
that they rejoice in mauling the reputation of those who spent their lives
in illustrious achievement for God and their country, and then died as
martyrs for their principles, makes me believe in eternal damnation."
With this last sentence my friend Leatherbacks gave a violent gesture that
upset his cup and left the table-cloth sopping wet.
"By the way," said he, "have you heard that Odger is coming?"
"What!" said I. He continued without looking up, for he was at that moment
running his knife, not over-sharp, through a lamb-chop made out of old
sheep. (Wife, we will have to change our butcher!) He continued with a
severity perhaps partly caused by the obstinacy of the meat: "I see in the
'Pall-Mall Budget' the startling intelligence that Mr. Odger is coming to
the United States on a lecturing expedition. Our American newspapers do not
seem, as yet, to have got hold of this news, but the tidings will soon fly,
and great excitement may be expected to follow."
Some unwise person might ask the foolish question, "Who is Odger?" I hope,
however, that such inquiry will not be made, for I would be compelled to
say that I do not know. Whether he is a clergyman or a reformer, or an
author, or all these in one, we cannot say. Suffice it he is a foreigner,
and that is enough to make us all go wild. A foreigner does not need more
than half as much brain or heart to do twice as well as an American, either
at preaching or lecturing. There is for many Americans a bewitchment in a
foreign brogue. I do not know but that he may have dined with the queen, or
have a few drops of lordly blood distributed through his arteries.
I notice, however, that much of this charm has been broken. I used to think
that all English lords were talented, till I heard one of them make the
only poor speech that was made at the opening meeting of the Evangelical
Alliance. Our lecturing committees would not pay very large prices next
year for Mr. Bradlaugh and Edmund Yates. Indeed, we expect that the time
will soon come when the same kind of balances will weigh Englishmen,
Scotchmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen and Americans.
If a man can do anything well, he will be acceptable without reference to
whether he was born by the Clyde, the Thames, the Seine, or the Hudson. But
until those scales be lifted it is sufficient to announce the joyful
tidings that "Odger is coming."