_OR THE CROWING OF THE NOBLE COCK BENEVENTANO_
In all parts of the world many high-spirited revolts from rascally
despotisms had of late been knocked on the head; many dreadful
casualties, by locomotive and steamer, had likewise knocked hundreds
of high-spirited travelers on the head (I lost a dear friend in one of
them); my own private affairs were also full of despotisms, casualties,
and knockings on the head, when early one morning in spring, being too
full of hypoes to sleep, I sallied out to walk on my hillside pasture.
It was a cool and misty, damp, disagreeable air. The country looked
underdone, its raw juices squirting out all round. I buttoned out
this squitchy air as well as I could with my lean, double-breasted
dress-coat--my overcoat being so long-skirted I only used it in my
wagon--and spitefully thrusting my crab-stick into the oozy sod, bent
my blue form to the steep ascent of the hill. This toiling posture
brought my head pretty well earthward, as if I were in the act of
butting it against the world. I marked the fact, but only grinned at it
with a ghastly grin.
All round me were tokens of a divided empire. The old grass and the
new grass were striving together. In the low wet swales the verdure
peeped out in vivid green; beyond, on the mountains, lay light patches
of snow, strangely relieved against their russet sides; all the humped
hills looked like brindled kine in the shivers. The woods were strewn
with dry dead boughs, snapped off by the riotous winds of March, while
the young trees skirting the woods were just beginning to show the
first yellowish tinge of the nascent spray.
I sat down for a moment on a great rotting log nigh the top of the
hill, my back to a heavy grove, my face presented toward a wide
sweeping circuit of mountains enclosing a rolling, diversified
country. Along the base of one long range of heights ran a lagging,
fever-and-agueish river, over which was a duplicate stream of dripping
mist, exactly corresponding in every meander with its parent water
below. Low down, here and there, shreds of vapor listlessly wandered
in the air, like abandoned or helmless nations or ships--or very soaky
towels hung on criss-cross clothes-lines to dry. Afar, over a distant
village lying in a bay of the plain formed by the mountains, there
rested a great flat canopy of haze, like a pall. It was the condensed
smoke of the chimneys, with the condensed, exhaled breath of the
villagers, prevented from dispersion by the imprisoning hills. It was
too heavy and lifeless to mount of itself; so there it lay, between the
village and the sky, doubtless hiding many a man with the mumps, and
many a queasy child.
My eye ranged over the capacious rolling country, and over the
mountains, and over the village, and over a farmhouse here and there,
and over woods, groves, streams, rocks, fells--and I thought to myself,
what a slight mark, after all, does man make on this huge great earth.
Yet the earth makes a mark on him. What a horrid accident was that
on the Ohio, where my good friend and thirty other good fellows were
sloped into eternity at the bidding of a thick-headed engineer, who
knew not a valve from a flue. And that crash on the railroad just
over yon mountains there, where two infatuate trains ran pell-mell
into each other, and climbed and clawed each other's backs; and one
locomotive was found fairly shelled like a chick, inside of a passenger
car in the antagonist train; and near a score of noble hearts, a bride
and her groom, and an innocent little infant, were all disembarked
into the grim hulk of Charon, who ferried them over, all baggageless,
to some clinkered iron-foundry country or other. Yet what's the use
of complaining? What justice of the peace will right this matter?
Yea, what's the use of bothering the very heavens about it? Don't the
heavens themselves ordain these things--else they could not happen?
A miserable world! Who would take the trouble to make a fortune in it,
when he knows not how long he can keep it, for the thousand villains
and asses who have the management of railroads and steamboats, and
innumerable other vital things in the world. If they would make me
Dictator in North America awhile I'd string them up! and hang, draw,
and quarter; fry, roast and boil; stew, grill, and devil them like so
many turkey-legs--the rascally numskulls of stokers; I'd set them to
stokering in Tartarus--I would!
Great improvements of the age! What! to call the facilitation of death
and murder an improvement! Who wants to travel so fast? My grandfather
did not, and he was no fool. Hark! here comes that old dragon
again--that gigantic gadfly of a Moloch--snort! puff! scream!--here
he comes straight-bent through these vernal woods, like the Asiatic
cholera cantering on a camel. Stand aside! Here he comes, the chartered
murderer! the death monopolizer! judge, jury, and hangman all together,
whose victims die always without benefit of clergy. For two hundred
and fifty miles that iron fiend goes yelling through the land, crying
"More! more! more!" Would fifty conspiring mountains fall atop of him!
and, while they were about it, would they would also fall atop of that
smaller dunning fiend, my creditor, who frightens the life out of me
more than any locomotive--a lantern-jawed rascal, who seems to run on a
railroad track too, and duns me even on Sunday, all the way to church
and back, and comes and sits in the same pew with me, and pretending to
be polite and hand me the prayer-book opened at the proper place, pokes
his pesky bill under my nose in the very midst of my devotions, and
so shoves himself between me and salvation; for how can one keep his
temper on such occasions?
I can't pay this horrid man; and yet they say money was never so
plentiful--a drug on the market; but blame me if I can get any of the
drug, though there never was a sick man more in need of that particular
sort of medicine. It's a lie; money ain't plenty--feel of my pocket.
Ha! here's a powder I was going to send to the sick baby in yonder
hovel, where the Irish ditcher lives. That baby has the scarlet fever.
They say the measles are rife in the country too, and the varioloid,
and the chicken-pox, and it's bad for teething children. And after all,
I suppose many of the poor little ones, after going through all this
trouble snap off short; and so they had the measles, mumps, croup,
scarlet-fever, chicken-pox, cholera-morbus, summer-complaint, and all
else, in vain! Ah! there's that twinge of the rheumatics in my right
shoulder. I got it one night on the North River, when, in a crowded
boat, I gave up my berth to a sick lady, and staid on deck till morning
in drizzling weather. There's the thanks one gets for charity! Twinge!
Shoot away, ye rheumatics! Ye couldn't lay on worse if I were some
villain who had murdered the lady instead of befriending her. Dyspepsia
too--I am troubled with that.
Hallo! here come the calves, the two-year-olds, just turned out of
the barn into the pasture, after six months of cold victuals. What a
miserable-looking set, to be sure! A breaking up of a hard winter,
that's certain; sharp bones sticking out like elbows; all quilted
with a strange stuff dried on their flanks like layers of pancakes.
Hair worn quite off too, here and there; and where it ain't pancaked,
or worn off, looks like the rubbed sides of mangy old hair-trunks.
In fact, they are not six two-year-olds, but six abominable old
hair-trunks wandering about here in this pasture.
Hark! By Jove, what's that? See! the very hair-trunks prick their ears
at it, and stand and gaze away down into the rolling country yonder.
Hark again! How clear! how musical! how prolonged! What a triumphant
thanksgiving of a cock-crow! "_Glory be to God in the highest!_" It
says those very words as plain as ever cock did in this world. Why,
why, I began to feel a little in sorts again. It ain't so very misty,
after all. The sun yonder is beginning to show himself; I feel warmer.
Hark! There again! Did ever such a blessed cock-crow so ring out over
the earth before! Clear, shrill, full of pluck, full of fire, full of
fun, full of glee. It plainly says--"_Never say die!_" My friends, it
is extraordinary, is it not?
Unwittingly, I found that I had been addressing the two-year-olds--the
calves--in my enthusiasm; which shows how one's true nature will
betray itself at times in the most unconscious way. For what a very
two-year-old, and calf, I had been to fall into the sulks, on a hilltop
too, when a cock down in the lowlands there, without discourse of
reason, and quite penniless in the world, and with death hanging over
him at any moment from his hungry master, sends up a cry like a very
laureate celebrating the glorious victory of New Orleans.
Hark! there it goes again! My friends, that must be a Shanghai; no
domestic-born cock could crow in such prodigious exulting strains.
Plainly, my friends, a Shanghai of the Emperor of China's breed.
But my friends the hair-trunks, fairly alarmed at last by such
clamorously-victorious tones, were now scampering off, with their
tails flirting in the air, and capering with their legs in clumsy
enough sort of style, sufficiently evincing that they had not freely
flourished them for the six months last past.
Hark! there again! Whose cock is that? Who in this region can afford
to buy such an extraordinary Shanghai? Bless me--it makes my blood
bound--I feel wild. What? jumping on this rotten old log here, to flap
my elbows and crow too? And just now in the doleful dumps. And all this
from the simple crow of a cock. Marvelous cock! But soft--this fellow
now crows most lustily; but it's only morning; let's see how he'll crow
about noon, and towards nightfall. Come to think of it, cocks crow most
lustily in the beginning of the day. Their pluck ain't lasting, after
all. Yes, yes; even cocks have to succumb to the universal spell of
tribulation: jubilant in the beginning, but down in the mouth at the
end.
... "_Of fine mornings,
We fine lusty cocks begin our crows in gladness;
But when the eve does come we don't crow quite so much,
For then cometh despondency and madness._"
The poet had this very Shanghai in mind when he wrote that. But stop.
There he rings out again, ten times richer, fuller, longer, more
obstreperously exulting than before! In fact, that bell ought to be
taken down, and this Shanghai put in its place. Such a crow would
jollify all London, from Mile-End (which is no end) to Primrose Hill
(where there ain't any primroses), and scatter the fog.
Well, I have an appetite for my breakfast this morning, if I have not
had it for a week before. I meant to have only tea and toast; but I'll
have coffee and eggs--no, brown stout and a beefsteak. I want something
hearty. Ah, here comes the down-train: white cars, flashing through
the trees like a vein of silver. How cheerfully the steam-pipe chirps!
Gay are the passengers. There waves a handkerchief--going down to the
city to eat oysters, and see their friends, and drop in at the circus.
Look at the mist yonder; what soft curls and undulations round the
hills, and the sun weaving his rays among them. See the azure smoke of
the village, like the azure tester over a bridal-bed. How bright the
country looks there where the river overflowed the meadows. The old
grass has to knock under to the new. Well, I feel the better for this
walk. Home now, and walk into that steak and crack that bottle of brown
stout; and by the time that's drank--a quart of stout--by that time, I
shall feel about as stout as Samson. Come to think of it, that dun may
call, though. I'll just visit the woods and cut a club. I'll club him,
by Jove, if he duns me this day.
Hark! there goes Shanghai again. Shanghai says, "Bravo!" Shanghai says,
"Club him!"
Oh, brave cock!
I felt in rare spirits the whole morning. The dun called about eleven.
I had the boy Jake send the dun up. I was reading _Tristram Shandy_,
and could not go down under the circumstances. The lean rascal (a
lean farmer, too--think of that!) entered, and found me seated in an
armchair, with my feet on the table, and the second bottle of brown
stout handy, and the book under eye.
"Sit down," said I, "I'll finish this chapter, and then attend to you.
Fine morning. Ha! ha!--this is a fine joke about my Uncle Toby and the
Widow Wadman! Ha! ha! ha! let me read this to you."
"I have no time; I've got my noon _chores_ to do."
"To the deuce with your _chores_!" said I. "Don't drop your old tobacco
about here, or I'll turn you out."
"Sir!"
"Let me read you this about the Widow Wadman. Said the Widow Wadman--"
"There's my bill, sir."
"Very good. Just twist it up, will you--it's about my smoking-time; and
hand a coal, will you, from the hearth yonder!"
"My bill, sir!" said the rascal, turning pale with rage and amazement
at my unwonted air (formerly I had always dodged him with a pale face),
but too prudent as yet to betray the extremity of his astonishment. "My
bill, sir"--and he stiffly poked it at me.
"My friend," said I, "what a charming morning! How sweet the country
looks! Pray, did you hear that extraordinary cock-crow this morning?
Take a glass of my stout!"
"_Yours?_ First pay your debts before you offer folks _your_ stout!"
"You think, then, that, properly speaking, I have no _stout_," said I,
deliberately rising. "I'll undeceive you. I'll show you stout of a
superior brand to Barclay and Perkins."
Without more ado, I seized that insolent dun by the slack of his
coat--(and, being a lean, shad-bellied wretch, there was plenty of
slack to it)--I seized him that way, tied him with a sailor-knot,
and, thrusting his bill between his teeth, introduced him to the open
country lying round about my place of abode.
"Jake," said I, "you'll find a sack of bluenosed potatoes lying under
the shed. Drag it here, and pelt this pauper away; he's been begging
pence of me, and I know he can work, but he's lazy. Pelt him away,
Jake!"
Bless my stars, what a crow! Shanghai sent up such a perfect pæan
and _laudamus_--such a trumpet blast of triumph, that my soul fairly
snorted in me. Duns!--I could have fought an army of them! Plainly,
Shanghai was of the opinion that duns only came into the world to be
kicked, hanged, bruised, battered, choked, walloped, hammered, drowned,
clubbed!
Returning indoors, when the exultation of my victory over the dun had a
little subsided, I fell to musing over the mysterious Shanghai. I had
no idea I would hear him so nigh my house. I wondered from what rich
gentleman's yard he crowed. Nor had he cut short his crows so easily as
I had supposed he would. This Shanghai crowed till midday, at least.
Would he keep a-crowing all day? I resolved to learn. Again I ascended
the hill. The whole country was now bathed in a rejoicing sunlight.
The warm verdure was bursting all round me. Teams were a-field. Birds,
newly arrived from the South, were blithely singing in the air. Even
the crows cawed with a certain unction, and seemed a shade or two less
black than usual.
Hark! there goes the cock! How shall I describe the crow of the
Shanghai at noontide! His sunrise crow was a whisper to it. It was
the loudest, longest and most strangely musical crow that ever amazed
mortal man. I had heard plenty of cock-crows before, and many fine
ones;--but this one! so smooth, and flutelike in its very clamor--so
self-possessed in its very rapture of exultation--so vast, mounting,
swelling, soaring, as if spurted out from a golden throat, thrown far
back. Nor did it sound like the foolish, vain-glorious crow of some
young sophomorean cock, who knew not the world, and was beginning life
in audacious gay spirits, because in wretched ignorance of what might
be to come. It was the crow of a cock who crowed not without advice;
the crow of a cock who knew a thing or two; the crow of a cock who had
fought the world and got the better of it and was resolved to crow,
though the earth should heave and the heavens should fall. It was a
wise crow; an invincible crow; a philosophic crow; a crow of all crows.
I returned home once more full of reinvigorated spirits, with a
dauntless sort of feeling. I thought over my debts and other troubles,
and over the unlucky risings of the poor oppressed peoples abroad, and
over the railroad and steamboat accidents, and over even the loss of
my dear friend, with a calm, good-natured rapture of defiance, which
astounded myself. I felt as though I could meet Death, and invite
him to dinner, and toast the Catacombs with him, in pure overflow of
self-reliance and a sense of universal security.
Toward evening I went up to the hill once more to find whether, indeed,
the glorious cock would prove game even from the rising of the sun
unto the going down thereof. Talk of Vespers or Curfew!--the evening
crow of the cock went out of his mighty throat all over the land and
inhabited it, like Xerxes from the East with his double-winged host. It
was miraculous. Bless me, what a crow! The cock went game to roost that
night, depend upon it, victorious over the entire day, and bequeathing
the echoes of his thousand crows to night.
After an unwontedly sound, refreshing sleep I rose early, feeling
like a carriage-spring--light--elliptical--airy--buoyant as
sturgeon-nose--and, like a foot-ball, bounded up the hill. Hark!
Shanghai was up before me. The early bird that caught the worm--crowing
like a bugle worked by an engine--lusty, loud, all jubilation. From
the scattered farmhouses a multitude of other cocks were crowing,
and replying to each other's crows. But they were as flageolets to a
trombone. Shanghai would suddenly break in, and overwhelm all their
crows with his one domineering blast. He seemed to have nothing to do
with any other concern. He replied to no other crow, but crowed solely
by himself, on his own account, in solitary scorn and independence.
Oh, brave cock!--oh, noble Shanghai!--oh, bird rightly offered up by
the invincible Socrates, in testimony of his final victory over life.
As I live, thought I, this blessed day, will I go and seek out the
Shanghai, and buy him, if I have to clap another mortgage on my land.
I listened attentively now, striving to mark from what direction the
crow came. But it so charged and replenished, and made bountiful and
overflowing all the air, that it was impossible to say from what
precise point the exultation came. All that I could decide upon was
this: the crow came from out of the east, and not from out of the west.
I then considered with myself how far a cock-crow might be heard. In
this still country, shut in, too, by mountains, sounds were audible at
great distances. Besides, the undulations of the land, the abuttings of
the mountains into the rolling hill and valley below, produced strange
echoes, and reverberations, and multiplications, and accumulations of
resonance, very remarkable to hear, and very puzzling to think of.
Where lurked this valiant Shanghai--this bird of cheerful Socrates--the
game-fowl Greek who died unappalled? Where lurked he? Oh, noble cock,
where are you? Crow once more, my Bantam! my princely, my imperial
Shanghai! my bird of the Emperor of China! Brother of the sun! Cousin
of great Jove! where are you?--one crow more, and tell me your number!
Hark! like a full orchestra of the cocks of all nations, forth burst
the crow. But where from? There it is; but where? There was no telling,
further than it came from out of the east.
After breakfast I took my stick and sallied down the road. There were
many gentlemen's seats dotting the neighboring country, and I made
no doubt that some of these opulent gentlemen had invested a hundred
dollar bill in some royal Shanghai recently imported in the ship Trade
Wind, or the ship White Squall, or the ship Sovereign of the Seas; for
it must needs have been a brave ship with a brave name which bore the
fortunes of so brave a cock. I resolved to walk the entire country, and
find this noble foreigner out; but thought it would not be amiss to
inquire on the way at the humblest homesteads, whether, peradventure,
they had heard of a lately-imported Shanghai belonging to any gentlemen
settlers from the city; for it was plain that no poor farmer, no poor
man of any sort, could own such an Oriental trophy--such a Great Bell
of St. Paul's swung in a cock's throat.