Ce rat çi est un animal fort singulier. Il a deux pattes de derrière
sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il fait
usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a le peau noir pour le
plupart, et porte un cercle blanchâtre autour de son cou. On le
trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, digere, s'il y
a de quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, dort, et
ronfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblance de lire. On ne sait
pas s'il a une autre gite que celà. Il a l'air d'une bête très
stupide, mais il est d'une sagacité et d'une vitesse extraordinaire
quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne sait pas
pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idées. Il
vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers.
Il porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec lequel
il fait des marques sur les bords des journaux et des livres,
semblable aux suivans: !!!--Bah! Pooh! Il ne faut pas cependant les
prendre pour des signes d'intelligence. Il ne vole pas, ordinairement;
il fait rarement même des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau,
parceque son chapeau a toujours un caractère specifique. On ne sait
pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier était d'avis que
c'etait de l'odeur du cuir des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'etre une
nourriture animale fort saine, et peu chère. Il vit bien longtems.
Enfin il meure, en laissant à ses héritiers une carte du Salon à
Lecture ou il avait existé pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient
toutes les nuits, après la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir,
dit on, a minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir,
et ayant à sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des
caractères inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le
spiritulisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Professors de Cambridge
sont des imbeçiles qui ne savent rien du tout, du tout.
I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be
touched in any way, is very creditable to B.F. You observe that he
is acquiring a knowledge of zoölogy at the same time that he is
learning French. Fathers of families who take this periodical will
find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode of
instruction, to set them to revising and amending this boy's exercise.
The passage was originally taken from the "Histoire Naturelle des
Bêtes Ruminans et Rougeurs, Bipèdes et Autres," lately published in
Paris. This was translated into English and published in London. It
was republished at Great Pedlington, with notes and additions by the
American editor. The notes consist of an interrogation-mark on page
53d, and a reference (p. 127th) to another book "edited" by the
same hand. The additions consist of the editor's name on the
title-page and back, with a complete and authentic list of said
editor's honorary titles in the first of these localities. Our boy
translated the translation back into French. This may be compared
with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Division X, of the
Public Library of this metropolis.]
--Some of you boarders ask me from time to time why I don't write a
story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering
each one of you separately, I will thank you to step up into the
wholesale department for a few moments, where I deal in answers by
the piece and by the bale.
That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for
one novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me a
cherished belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that
many persons cannot write more than one novel,--that all after that
are likely to be failures.--Life is so much more tremendous a thing
in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that all
records of human experience are as so many bound _herbaria_ to the
innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden,
poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling leaves and flowers of
the forest and the prairies. All we can do with books of human
experience is to make them alive again with something borrowed from
our own lives. We can make a book alive for us just in proportion to
its resemblance in essence or in form to our own experience. Now an
author's first novel is naturally drawn, to a great extent, from his
personal experiences; that is, is a literal copy of nature under
various slight disguises. But the moment the author gets out of his
personality, he must have the creative power, as well as the
narrative art and the sentiment, in order to tell a living story;
and this is rare.
Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life-story shall
clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives, though
their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop
a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Oftentimes a
single _cradling_ gets them all, and after that the poor man's labor
is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which proves that I,
as an individual of the human family, could write one novel or story
at any rate, if I would.
--Why don't I, then?--Well, there are several reasons against it. In
the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that
verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme
and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of
imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a
heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the
luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty
shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her
diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders
laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would
be unendurable--in the opinion of the ladies.
Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends. I
should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am
afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they
have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I am
pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories among us
there is hardly one I can recall that has not drawn too faithfully
some living portrait that might better have been spared.
Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull
to write such a story as I should wish to write.
And finally, I think it very likely I _shall_ write a story one of
these days. Don't be surprised at anytime, if you see me coming out
with "The Schoolmistress," or "The Old Gentleman Opposite."
[_Our_ schoolmistress and _our_ old gentleman that sits opposite
had left the table before I said this.] I want my glory for writing
the same discounted now, on the spot, if you please. I will write
when I get ready. How many people live on the reputation of the
reputation they might have made!
----I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being
too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you
meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark that may hereafter
prove of value to some among you.--When one of us who has been led
by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or herself
possessed of talent arrives at the full and final conclusion that he
or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and
blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. All our failures,
our short-comings, our strange disappointments in the effect of our
efforts are lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like
Christian's pack, at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit
to deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence, with which one
look may overflow us in some wider sphere of being.
----How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, "I hate
books!" A gentleman,--singularly free from affectations,--not learned,
of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better
than learning,--by no means dull, in the sense of knowledge of the
world and society, but certainly not clever either in the arts or
sciences,--his company is pleasing to all who know him. I did not
recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as
I did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledgment of his
inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many
gentlemen and others, who read with a mark to keep their place, that
really "hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or the
manliness to own it.
[_Entre nous_, I always read with a mark.]
We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual man"
was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts,
of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if he is actually
so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong solution
of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as
hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I
would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep
all the leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion would do
for me without the vegetable fibre. You understand me; I would have
a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and
talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a
quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any
rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily,
and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common
plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that
are continually coming on in new costume; can give you a criticism
of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it;
cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says;
delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the
disembalming and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as
tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius,--that is;
of a new influx of truth or beauty,--as a nun over her missal. In
short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to
make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal
compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn,
in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of
course take--to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide.
In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase,
"put him through" all the material part of life; see him sheltered,
warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on
his talk when I liked,--with the privilege of shutting it off at will.
A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a harp, with
about a dozen ringing intelligences, each answering to some chord of
the macrocosm. They do well to dine together once in a while. A
dinner-party made up of such elements is the last triumph of
civilization over barbarism. Nature and art combine to charm the
senses; the equatorial zone of the system is soothed by well-studied
artifices; the faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural
attitudes; you see wisdom in slippers and science in a short jacket.
The whole force of conversation depends on how much you can take for
granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing
short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull
apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White
stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six
moves;--White looks,--nods;--the game is over. Just so in talking
with first-rate men; especially when they are good-natured and
expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That blessed clairvoyance
which sees into things without opening them,--that glorious license,
which, having shut the door and driven the reporter from its key-hole,
calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to get off from her pedestal and
drop her academic poses, and take a festive garland and the vacant
place on the _medius lectus_,--that carnival-shower of questions and
replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like
bomb-shells from professional mortars, and explosive wit dropping
its trains of many-colored fire, and the mischief-making rain of
_bon-bons_ pelting everybody that shows himself,--the picture of a
truly intellectual banquet is one that the old Divinities might well
have attempted to reproduce in their----
----"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the young fellow whom they call John,--
"that is from one of your lectures!"