I want to lie still,--he said,--after I am put to bed upon the hill
yonder. Can't you have a great stone laid over me, as they did over the
first settlers in the old burying-ground at Dorchester, so as to keep
the wolves from digging them up? I never slept easy over the sod;--I
should like to lie quiet under it. And besides,--he said, in a kind of
scared whisper,--I don't want to have my bones stared at, as my body has
been. I don't doubt I was a remarkable case; but, for God's sake, oh,
for God's sake, don't let 'em make a show of the cage I have been shut
up in and looked through the bars of for so many years.
I have heard it said that the art of healing makes men hard-hearted and
indifferent to human suffering. I am willing to own that there is
often a professional hardness in surgeons, just as there is in
theologians,--only much less in degree than in these last. It does not
commonly improve the sympathies of a man to be in the habit of thrusting
knives into his fellow-creatures and burning them with red-hot irons,
any more than it improves them to hold the blinding-white cantery of
Gehenna by its cool handle and score and crisp young souls with it
until they are scorched into the belief of--Transubstantiation or the
Immaculate Conception. And, to say the plain truth, I think there are
a good many coarse people in both callings. A delicate nature will
not commonly choose a pursuit which implies the habitual infliction of
suffering, so readily as some gentler office. Yet, while I am writing
this paragraph, there passes by my window, on his daily errand of duty,
not seeing me, though I catch a glimpse of his manly features through
the oval glass of his chaise, as he drives by, a surgeon of skill and
standing, so friendly, so modest, so tenderhearted in all his ways,
that, if he had not approved himself at once adroit and firm, one would
have said he was of too kindly a mould to be the minister of pain, even
if he were saving pain.
You may be sure that some men, even among those who have chosen the task
of pruning their fellow-creatures, grow more and more thoughtful and
truly compassionate in the midst of their cruel experience. They become
less nervous, but more sympathetic. They have a truer sensibility for
others' pain, the more they study pain and disease in the light of
science. I have said this without claiming any special growth in
humanity for myself, though I do hope I grow tenderer in my feelings
as I grow older. At any rate, this was not a time in which professional
habits could keep down certain instincts of older date than these.
This poor little man's appeal to my humanity against the supposed
rapacity of Science, which he feared would have her “specimen,” if his
ghost should walk restlessly a thousand years, waiting for his bones
to be laid in the dust, touched my heart. But I felt bound to speak
cheerily.
--We won't die yet awhile, if we can help it,--I said,--and I trust we
can help it. But don't be afraid; if I live longest, I will see that
your resting place is kept sacred till the dandelions and buttercups
blow over you.
He seemed to have got his wits together by this time, and to have a
vague consciousness that he might have been saying more than he meant
for anybody's ears.--I have been talking a little wild, Sir, eh? he
said.--There is a great buzzing in my head with those drops of yours,
and I doubt if my tongue has not been a little looser than I would have
it, Sir. But I don't much want to live, Sir; that's the truth of the
matter, and it does rather please me to think that fifty years from now
nobody will know that the place where I lie does n't hold as stout and
straight a man as the best of 'em that stretch out as if they were proud
of the room they take. You may get me well, if you can, Sir, if you
think it worth while to try; but I tell you there has been no time for
this many a year when the smell of fresh earth was not sweeter to me
than all the flowers that grow out of it. There's no anodyne like your
good clean gravel, Sir. But if you can keep me about awhile, and it
amuses you to try, you may show your skill upon me, if you like. There
is a pleasure or two that I love the daylight for, and I think the night
is not far off, at best.--I believe I shall sleep now; you may leave me,
and come, if you like, in the morning.
Before I passed out, I took one more glance round the apartment. The
beautiful face of the portrait looked at me, as portraits often do, with
a frightful kind of intelligence in its eyes. The drapery fluttered on
the still outstretched arm of the tall object near the window;--a crack
of this was open, no doubt, and some breath of wind stirred the hanging
folds. In my excited state, I seemed to see something ominous in that
arm pointing to the heavens. I thought of the figures in the Dance of
Death at Basle, and that other on the panels of the covered Bridge at
Lucerne, and it seemed to me that the grim mask who mingles with every
crowd and glides over every threshold was pointing the sick man to his
far home, and would soon stretch out his bony hand and lead him or drag
him on the unmeasured journey towards it.
The fancy had possession of me, and I shivered again as when I first
entered the chamber. The picture and the shrouded shape; I saw only
these two objects. They were enough. The house was deadly still, and the
night-wind, blowing through an open window, struck me as from a field of
ice, at the moment I passed into the creaking corridor. As I turned into
the common passage, a white figure, holding a lamp, stood full before
me. I thought at first it was one of those images made to stand in
niches and hold a light in their hands. But the illusion was momentary,
and my eyes speedily recovered from the shock of the bright flame and
snowy drapery to see that the figure was a breathing one. It was Iris,
in one of her statue-trances. She had come down, whether sleeping or
waking, I knew not at first, led by an instinct that told her she was
wanted,--or, possibly, having overheard and interpreted the sound of our
movements,--or, it may be, having learned from the servant that there
was trouble which might ask for a woman's hand. I sometimes think women
have a sixth sense, which tells them that others, whom they cannot see
or hear, are in suffering. How surely we find them at the bedside of the
dying! How strongly does Nature plead for them, that we should draw our
first breath in their arms, as we sigh away our last upon their faithful
breasts!
With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, clad as the starlight
knew her, and the morning when she rose from slumber, save that she had
twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone before
me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of waxtaper, and in the other
a silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had been a
figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of propriety
then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out of. She had
been “warned in a dream,” doubtless suggested by her waking knowledge
and the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was nothing
more natural than that she should have risen and girdled her waist, and
lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with “Ex dono pupillorum”
on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through all
her childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the
bedside,--a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing
whither her feet were leading her, and with wide blank eyes seeing
nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.--Well, I must wake her
from her slumber or trance.--I called her name, but she did not heed my
voice.
The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl
before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I
should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose
perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovers, in
memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and
would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise
me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always
from that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in the glory of
youth and the splendor of beauty, “My lips have touched those roses
and made their sweetness mine forever”? You think my cheek was flushed,
perhaps, and my eyes were glittering with this midnight flash of
opportunity. On the contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale, and
I know that I trembled. Ah, it is the pale passions that are the
fiercest,--it is the violence of the chill that gives the measure of the
fever! The fighting-boy of our school always turned white when he went
out to a pitched battle with the bully of some neighboring village; but
we knew what his bloodless cheeks meant,--the blood was all in his stout
heart,--he was a slight boy, and there was not enough to redden his face
and fill his heart both at once.
Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the
internal conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than
juvenile and something less than senile, as to whether he should be
guilty of an impropriety, and, if he were, whether he would get caught
in his indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of
Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and
put it into the head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria, or
Eugenie, would do as much by him, if she happened to pass him when he
was asleep. And have we ever forgotten that the fresh cheek of the young
John Milton tingled under the lips of some high-born Italian beauty,
who, I believe, did not think to leave her card by the side of the
slumbering youth, but has bequeathed the memory of her pretty deed to
all coming time? The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon,
but its echo lasts a deal longer.
There is one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of
mind suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an
enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance
slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had
made up my mind what I was going to do about it.
When I remember how charmingly she looked, I don't blame myself at
all for being tempted; but if I had been fool enough to yield to the
impulse, I should certainly have been ashamed to tell of it. She did not
know what to make of it, finding herself there alone, in such guise, and
me staring at her. She looked down at her white robe and bare feet, and
colored,--then at the goblet she held in her hand, then at the taper;
and at last her thoughts seemed to clear up.
I know it all,--she said.--He is going to die, and I must go and sit by
him. Nobody will care for him as I shall, and I have nobody else to care
for.
I assured her that nothing was needed for him that night but rest, and
persuaded her that the excitement of her presence could only do harm.
Let him sleep, and he would very probably awake better in the morning.
There was nothing to be said, for I spoke with authority; and the young
girl glided away with noiseless step and sought her own chamber.
The tremor passed away from my limbs, and the blood began to burn in my
cheeks. The beautiful image which had so bewitched me faded gradually
from my imagination, and I returned to the still perplexing mysteries of
my little neighbor's chamber.
All was still there now. No plaintive sounds, no monotonous murmurs,
no shutting of windows and doors at strange hours, as if something
or somebody were coming in or going out, or there was something to be
hidden in those dark mahogany presses. Is there an inner apartment that
I have not seen? The way in which the house is built might admit of it.
As I thought it over, I at once imagined a Bluebeard's chamber. Suppose,
for instance, that the narrow bookshelves to the right are really only a
masked door, such as we remember leading to the private study of one
of our most distinguished townsmen, who loved to steal away from his
stately library to that little silent cell. If this were lighted
from above, a person or persons might pass their days there without
attracting attention from the household, and wander where they pleased
at night,--to Copp's-Hill burial-ground, if they liked,--I said to
myself, laughing, and pulling the bed-clothes over my head. There is
no logic in superstitious-fancies any more than in dreams. A she-ghost
wouldn't want an inner chamber to herself. A live woman, with a valuable
soprano voice, wouldn't start off at night to sprain her ankles over the
old graves of the North-End cemetery.
It is all very easy for you, middle-aged reader, sitting over this page
in the broad daylight, to call me by all manner of asinine and anserine
unchristian names, because I had these fancies running through my
head. I don't care much for your abuse. The question is not, what it
is reasonable for a man to think about, but what he actually does think
about, in the dark, and when he is alone, and his whole body seems but
one great nerve of hearing, and he sees the phosphorescent flashes of
his own eyeballs as they turn suddenly in the direction of the last
strange noise,--what he actually does think about, as he lies and
recalls all the wild stories his head is full of, his fancy hinting the
most alarming conjectures to account for the simplest facts about him,
his common-sense laughing them to scorn the next minute, but his mind
still returning to them, under one shape or another, until he gets very
nervous and foolish, and remembers how pleasant it used to be to have
his mother come and tuck him up and go and sit within call, so that she
could hear him at any minute, if he got very much scared and wanted her.
Old babies that we are!
Daylight will clear up all that lamp-light has left doubtful. I longed
for the morning to come, for I was more curious than ever. So, between
my fancies and anticipations, I had but a poor night of it, and came
down tired to the breakfast-table. My visit was not to be made until
after this morning hour; there was nothing urgent, so the servant was
ordered to tell me.
It was the first breakfast at which the high chair at the side of Iris
had been unoccupied.--You might jest as well take away that chair,--said
our landlady,--he'll never want it again. He acts like a man that 's
struck with death, 'n' I don't believe he 'll ever come out of his
chamber till he 's laid out and brought down a corpse.--These good women
do put things so plainly! There were two or three words in her short
remark that always sober people, and suggest silence or brief moral
reflections.
--Life is dreadful uncerting,--said the Poor Relation,--and pulled in
her social tentacles to concentrate her thoughts on this fact of human
history.
--If there was anything a fellah could do,--said the young man John, so
called,--a fellah 'd like the chance o' helpin' a little cripple like
that. He looks as if he couldn't turn over any handier than a turtle
that's laid on his back; and I guess there a'n't many people that know
how to lift better than I do. Ask him if he don't want any watchers. I
don't mind settin' up any more 'n a cat-owl. I was up all night twice
last month.
[My private opinion is, that there was no small amount of punch absorbed
on those two occasions, which I think I heard of at the time];--but the
offer is a kind one, and it is n't fair to question how he would like
sitting up without the punch and the company and the songs and smoking.
He means what he says, and it would be a more considerable achievement
for him to sit quietly all night by a sick man than for a good many
other people. I tell you this odd thing: there are a good many persons,
who, through the habit of making other folks uncomfortable, by finding
fault with all their cheerful enjoyments, at last get up a kind
of hostility to comfort in general, even in their own persons. The
correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves
as we hate our neighbors. Look at old misers; first they starve their
dependants, and then themselves. So I think it more for a lively young
fellow to be ready to play nurse than for one of those useful but
forlorn martyrs who have taken a spite against themselves and love to
gratify it by fasting and watching.
--The time came at last for me to make my visit. I found Iris sitting
by the Little Gentleman's pillow. To my disappointment, the room was
darkened. He did not like the light, and would have the shutters kept
nearly closed. It was good enough for me; what business had I to be
indulging my curiosity, when I had nothing to do but to exercise such
skill as I possessed for the benefit of my patient? There was not much
to be said or done in such a case; but I spoke as encouragingly as I
could, as I think we are always bound to do. He did not seem to pay any
very anxious attention, but the poor girl listened as if her own life
and more than her own life were depending on the words I uttered. She
followed me out of the room, when I had got through my visit.
How long?--she said.
Uncertain. Any time; to-day,--next week, next month,--I answered.--One
of those cases where the issue is not doubtful, but may be sudden or
slow.
The women of the house were kind, as women always are in trouble. But
Iris pretended that nobody could spare the time as well as she, and kept
her place, hour after hour, until the landlady insisted that she'd be
killin' herself, if she begun at that rate, 'n' haf to give up, if she
didn't want to be clean beat out in less 'n a week.
At the table we were graver than common. The high chair was set back
against the wall, and a gap left between that of the young girl and
her nearest neighbor's on the right. But the next morning, to our great
surprise, that good-looking young Marylander had very quietly moved his
own chair to the vacant place. I thought he was creeping down that way,
but I was not prepared for a leap spanning such a tremendous parenthesis
of boarders as this change of position included. There was no denying
that the youth and maiden were a handsome pair, as they sat side by
side. But whatever the young girl may have thought of her new neighbor
she never seemed for a moment to forget the poor little friend who had
been taken from her side. There are women, and even girls, with whom it
is of no use to talk. One might as well reason with a bee as to the form
of his cell, or with an oriole as to the construction of his swinging
nest, as try to stir these creatures from their own way of doing their
own work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by
any special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a
nurse. She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter.
And it so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance
to carry through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful
pleasures, which she had chosen as her share in the household where
accident had thrown her. She had that genius of ministration which is
the special province of certain women, marked even among their helpful
sisters by a soft, low voice, a quiet footfall, a light hand, a cheering
smile, and a ready self-surrender to the objects of their care, which
such trifles as their own food, sleep, or habits of any kind never
presume to interfere with. Day after day, and too often through the long
watches of the night, she kept her place by the pillow.
That girl will kill herself over me, Sir,--said the poor Little
Gentleman to me, one day,--she will kill herself, Sir, if you don't
call in all the resources of your art to get me off as soon as may be. I
shall wear her out, Sir, with sitting in this close chamber and watching
when she ought to be sleeping, if you leave me to the care of Nature
without dosing me.
This was rather strange pleasantry, under the circumstances. But there
are certain persons whose existence is so out of parallel with the
larger laws in the midst of which it is moving, that life becomes to
them as death and death as life.--How am I getting along?--he said,
another morning. He lifted his shrivelled hand, with the death's-head
ring on it, and looked at it with a sad sort of complacency. By this one
movement, which I have seen repeatedly of late, I know that his thoughts
have gone before to another condition, and that he is, as it were,
looking back on the infirmities of the body as accidents of the past.
For, when he was well, one might see him often looking at the
handsome hand with the flaming jewel on one of its fingers. The single
well-shaped limb was the source of that pleasure which in some form or
other Nature almost always grants to her least richly endowed children.
Handsome hair, eyes, complexion, feature, form, hand, foot, pleasant
voice, strength, grace, agility, intelligence,--how few there are that
have not just enough of one at least of these gifts to show them that
the good Mother, busy with her millions of children, has not quite
forgotten them! But now he was thinking of that other state, where, free
from all mortal impediments, the memory of his sorrowful burden
should be only as that of the case he has shed to the insect whose
“deep-damasked wings” beat off the golden dust of the lily-anthers, as
he flutters in the ecstasy of his new life over their full-blown summer
glories.
No human being can rest for any time in a state of equilibrium, where
the desire to live and that to depart just balance each other. If one
has a house, which he has lived and always means to live in, he pleases
himself with the thought of all the conveniences it offers him, and
thinks little of its wants and imperfections. But once having made up
his mind to move to a better, every incommodity starts out upon him,
until the very ground-plan of it seems to have changed in his mind,
and his thoughts and affections, each one of them packing up its little
bundle of circumstances, have quitted their several chambers and nooks
and migrated to the new home, long before its apartments are ready to
receive their coming tenant. It is so with the body. Most persons have
died before they expire,--died to all earthly longings, so that the
last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already
deserted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity with which the great
majority of dying persons await this locking of those gates of life
through which its airy angels have been going and coming, from the
moment of the first cry, is familiar to those who have been often
called upon to witness the last period of life. Almost always there is a
preparation made by Nature for unearthing a soul, just as on the smaller
scale there is for the removal of a milktooth. The roots which hold
human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted from its place.
Some of the dying are weary and want rest, the idea of which is almost
inseparable in the universal mind from death. Some are in pain, and want
to be rid of it, even though the anodyne be dropped, as in the
legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel. Some are stupid, mercifully
narcotized that they may go to sleep without long tossing about. And
some are strong in faith and hope, so that, as they draw near the next
world, they would fair hurry toward it, as the caravan moves faster over
the sands when the foremost travellers send word along the file that
water is in sight. Though each little party that follows in a foot-track
of its own will have it that the water to which others think they are
hastening is a mirage, not the less has it been true in all ages and for
human beings of every creed which recognized a future, that those who
have fallen worn out by their march through the Desert have dreamed at
least of a River of Life, and thought they heard its murmurs as they lay
dying.
The change from the clinging to the present to the welcoming of the
future comes very soon, for the most part, after all hope of life is
extinguished, provided this be left in good degree to Nature, and not
insolently and cruelly forced upon those who are attacked by illness,
on the strength of that odious foreknowledge often imparted by science,
before the white fruit whose core is ashes, and which we call death,
has set beneath the pallid and drooping flower of sickness. There is a
singular sagacity very often shown in a patient's estimate of his own
vital force. His physician knows the state of his material frame well
enough, perhaps,--that this or that organ is more or less impaired or
disintegrated; but the patient has a sense that he can hold out so much
longer,--sometimes that he must and will live for a while, though by the
logic of disease he ought to die without any delay.
The Little Gentleman continued to fail, until it became plain that his
remaining days were few. I told the household what to expect. There was
a good deal of kind feeling expressed among the boarders, in various
modes, according to their characters and style of sympathy. The
landlady was urgent that he should try a certain nostrum which had saved
somebody's life in jest sech a case. The Poor Relation wanted me to
carry, as from her, a copy of “Allein's Alarm,” etc. I objected to the
title, reminding her that it offended people of old, so that more than
twice as many of the book were sold when they changed the name to “A
Sure Guide to Heaven.” The good old gentleman whom I have mentioned
before has come to the time of life when many old men cry easily, and
forget their tears as children do.--He was a worthy gentleman,--he
said,--a very worthy gentleman, but unfortunate,--very unfortunate.
Sadly deformed about the spine and the feet. Had an impression that the
late Lord Byron had some malformation of this kind. Had heerd there was
something the matter with the ankle-j'ints of that nobleman, but he was
a man of talents. This gentleman seemed to be a man of talents.
Could not always agree with his statements,--thought he was a little
over-partial to this city, and had some free opinions; but was sorry
to lose him,--and if--there was anything--he--could--. In the midst of
these kind expressions, the gentleman with the diamond, the Koh-i-noor,
as we called him, asked, in a very unpleasant sort of way, how the old
boy was likely to cut up,--meaning what money our friend was going to
leave behind.
The young fellow John spoke up, to the effect that this was a diabolish
snobby question, when a man was dying and not dead.--To this the
Koh-i-noor replied, by asking if the other meant to insult him. Whereto
the young man John rejoined that he had no particul'r intentions one way
or t'other.-The Kohi-noor then suggested the young man's stepping out
into the yard, that he, the speaker, might “slap his chops.”--Let 'em
alone, said young Maryland,--it 'll soon be over, and they won't hurt
each other much.--So they went out.
The Koh-i-noor entertained the very common idea, that, when one quarrels
with another, the simple thing to do is to knock the man down, and there
is the end of it. Now those who have watched such encounters are aware
of two things: first, that it is not so easy to knock a man down as it
is to talk about it; secondly, that, if you do happen to knock a man
down, there is a very good chance that he will be angry, and get up and
give you a thrashing.
So the Koh-i-noor thought he would begin, as soon as they got into the
yard, by knocking his man down, and with this intention swung his arm
round after the fashion of rustics and those unskilled in the noble art,
expecting the young fellow John to drop when his fist, having completed
a quarter of a circle, should come in contact with the side of that
young man's head. Unfortunately for this theory, it happens that a blow
struck out straight is as much shorter, and therefore as much quicker
than the rustic's swinging blow, as the radius is shorter than the
quarter of a circle. The mathematical and mechanical corollary was, that
the Koh-i-noor felt something hard bring up suddenly against his right
eye, which something he could have sworn was a paving-stone, judging by
his sensations; and as this threw his person somewhat backwards, and the
young man John jerked his own head back a little, the swinging blow had
nothing to stop it; and as the Jewel staggered between the hit he got
and the blow he missed, he tripped and “went to grass,” so far as the
back-yard of our boardinghouse was provided with that vegetable. It was
a signal illustration of that fatal mistake, so frequent in young and
ardent natures with inconspicuous calves and negative pectorals, that
they can settle most little quarrels on the spot by “knocking the man
down.”
We are in the habit of handling our faces so carefully, that a heavy
blow, taking effect on that portion of the surface, produces a most
unpleasant surprise, which is accompanied with odd sensations, as
of seeing sparks, and a kind of electrical or ozone-like odor,
half-sulphurous in character, and which has given rise to a very vulgar
and profane threat sometimes heard from the lips of bullies. A person
not used to pugilistic gestures does not instantly recover from this
surprise. The Koh-i-noor exasperated by his failure, and still a little
confused by the smart hit he had received, but furious, and confident
of victory over a young fellow a good deal lighter than himself, made
a desperate rush to bear down all before him and finish the contest
at once. That is the way all angry greenhorns and incompetent persons
attempt to settle matters. It does n't do, if the other fellow is only
cool, moderately quick, and has a very little science. It didn't do this
time; for, as the assailant rushed in with his arms flying everywhere,
like the vans of a windmill, he ran a prominent feature of his face
against a fist which was travelling in the other direction, and
immediately after struck the knuckles of the young man's other fist a
severe blow with the part of his person known as the epigastrium to one
branch of science and the bread-basket to another. This second round
closed the battle. The Koh-i-noor had got enough, which in such cases
is more than as good as a feast. The young fellow asked him if he was
satisfied, and held out his hand. But the other sulked, and muttered
something about revenge.--Jest as ye like,--said the young man
John.--Clap a slice o' raw beefsteak on to that mouse o' yours 'n' 't'll
take down the swellin'. (Mouse is a technical term for a bluish, oblong,
rounded elevation occasioned by running one's forehead or eyebrow
against another's knuckles.) The young fellow was particularly pleased
that he had had an opportunity of trying his proficiency in the art of
self-defence without the gloves. The Koh-i-noor did not favor us with
his company for a day or two, being confined to his chamber, it was
said, by a slight feverish, attack. He was chop-fallen always after
this, and got negligent in his person. The impression must have been
a deep one; for it was observed, that, when he came down again, his
moustache and whiskers had turned visibly white about the roots. In
short, it disgraced him, and rendered still more conspicuous a tendency
to drinking, of which he had been for some time suspected. This, and the
disgust which a young lady naturally feels at hearing that her lover
has been “licked by a fellah not half his size,” induced the landlady's
daughter to take that decided step which produced a change in the
programme of her career I may hereafter allude to.
I never thought he would come to good, when I heard him attempting
to sneer at an unoffending city so respectable as Boston. After a
man begins to attack the State-House, when he gets bitter about the
Frog-Pond, you may be sure there is not much left of him. Poor Edgar Poe
died in the hospital soon after he got into this way of talking; and
so sure as you find an unfortunate fellow reduced to this pass, you had
better begin praying for him, and stop lending him money, for he is
on his last legs. Remember poor Edgar! He is dead and gone; but the
State-House has its cupola fresh-gilded, and the Frog-Pond has got a
fountain that squirts up a hundred feet into the air and glorifies that
humble sheet with a fine display of provincial rainbows.
--I cannot fulfil my promise in this number. I expected to gratify
your curiosity, if you have become at all interested in these puzzles,
doubts, fancies, whims, or whatever you choose to call them, of mine.
Next month you shall hear all about it.
--It was evening, and I was going to the sick-chamber. As I paused at
the door before entering, I heard a sweet voice singing. It was not the
wild melody I had sometimes heard at midnight:--no, this was the voice
of Iris, and I could distinguish every word. I had seen the verses in
her book; the melody was new to me. Let me finish my page with them.