These mortuary emblems furnished me with congenial food for reflection.
I used to lie in the long grass, and speculate on the advantages and
disadvantages of being a cherub.
I forget what I thought the advantages were, but I remember distinctly
of getting into an inextricable tangle on two points: How could a
cherub, being all head and wings, manage to sit down when he was tired?
To have to sit down on the back of his head struck me as an awkward
alternative. Again: Where did a cherub carry those indispensable
articles (such as jack-knives, marbles, and pieces of twine) which
boys in an earthly state of existence usually stow away in their
trousers-pockets?
These were knotty questions, and I was never able to dispose of them
satisfactorily.
Meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb would scour the whole town in search of me.
He finally discovered my retreat, and dropped in on me abruptly one
afternoon, while I was deep in the cherub problem.
“Look here, Tom Bailey!” said Pepper, shying a piece of clam-shell
indignantly at the Hic jacet on a neighboring gravestone. “You are just
going to the dogs! Can't you tell a fellow what in thunder ails you,
instead of prowling round among the tombs like a jolly old vampire?”
“Pepper,” I replied, solemnly, “don't ask me. All is not well
here”--touching my breast mysteriously. If I had touched my head instead,
I should have been nearer the mark.
Pepper stared at me.
“Earthly happiness,” I continued, “is a delusion and a snare. You will
never be happy, Pepper, until you are a cherub.”
Pepper, by the by, would have made an excellent cherub, he was so
chubby. Having delivered myself of these gloomy remarks, I arose
languidly from the grass and moved away, leaving Pepper staring after
me in mute astonishment. I was Hamlet and Werter and the late Lord Byron
all in one.
You will ask what my purpose was in cultivating this factitious
despondency. None whatever. Blighted beings never have any purpose in
life excepting to be as blighted as possible.
Of course my present line of business could not long escape the eye of
Captain Nutter. I don't know if the Captain suspected my attachment for
Miss Glentworth. He never alluded to it; but he watched me. Miss Abigail
watched me, Kitty Collins watched me, and Sailor Ben watched me.
“I can't make out his signals,” I overheard the Admiral remark to my
grandfather one day. “I hope he ain't got no kind of sickness aboard.”
There was something singularly agreeable in being an object of so great
interest. Sometimes I had all I could do to preserve my dejected aspect,
it was so pleasant to be miserable. I incline to the opinion that
people who are melancholy without any particular reason, such as poets,
artists, and young musicians with long hair, have rather an enviable
time of it. In a quiet way I never enjoyed myself better in my life than
when I was a Blighted Being.