Sie funkelt im Sonnenroth,
Er präsentirt, und schultert,--
Ich wollt', er schösse mich todt.”
“O!” says Cousin Lucy, either because the poignant melancholy of the
sentiment has suddenly pierced her, or because she does not quite
understand the German,--you never can tell about women. While Frank
smiles down upon her in this amiable doubt, their party is approached by
the tipsy man who has been making the excursion so merry for the other
passengers, in spite of the fact that there is very much to make one sad
in him. He is an old man, sweltering in rusty black, a two days' gray
beard, and a narrow-brimmed, livid silk hat, set well back upon the nape
of his neck. He explains to our friends, as he does to every one whose
acquaintance he makes, that he was in former days a seafaring man, and
that he has brought his two little grandsons here to show them something
about a ship; and the poor old soul helplessly saturates his phrase with
the rankest profanity. The boys are somewhat amused by their grandsire's
state, being no doubt familiar with it, but a very grim-looking old lady
who sits against the pilot-house, and keeps a sharp eye upon all three,
and who is also doubtless familiar with the unhappy spectacle, seems not
to find it a joke. Her stout matronly umbrella trembles in her hand when
her husband draws near, and her eye flashes; but he gives her as wide a
berth as he can, returning her glare with a propitiatory drunken smile
and a wink to the passengers to let them into the fun. In fact, he is
full of humor in his tipsy way, and one after another falls the prey of
his free sarcasm, which does not spare the boat or any feature of the
excursion. He holds for a long time, by swiftly successive stories of
his seafaring days, a very quiet gentleman, who dares neither laugh too
loudly nor show indifference for fear of rousing that terrible wit at
his expense, and finds his account in looking down at his boots.
“Well, sir,” says the deplorable old sinner, “we was forty days out from
Liverpool, with a cargo of salt and iron, and we got caught on the Banks
in a calm. 'Cap'n,' says I,--I 'us sec'n' mate,--''s they any man aboard
this ship knows how to pray?' 'No,' says the cap'n; 'blast yer prayers!'
'Well,' says I, 'cap'n, I'm no hand at all to pray, but I'm goin' to see
if prayin' won't git us out 'n this.' And I down on my knees, and I made
a first-class prayer; and a breeze sprung up in a minute and carried us
smack into Boston.”
At this bit of truculent burlesque the quiet man made a bold push, and
walked away with a somewhat sickened face, and as no one now intervened
between them, the inebriate laid a familiar hand upon Cousin Frank's
collar, and said with a wink at his late listener: “Looks like a
lerigious man, don't he? I guess I give him a good dose, if he _does_
think himself the head-deacon of this boat.” And he went on to state his
ideas of religion, from which it seemed that he was a person of the most
advanced thinking, and believed in nothing worth mentioning.
It is perhaps no worse for an Infidel to be drunk than a Christian, but
my friend found this tipsy blasphemer's case so revolting, that he
went to the hand-bag, took out the empty claret-bottle, and seeking a
solitary corner of the boat, cast the bottle into the water, and felt
a thrill of uncommon self-approval as this scapegoat of all the wine
at his grocer's bobbed off upon the little waves. “Besides, it saves
carrying the bottle home,” he thought, not without a half-conscious
reserve, that if his penitence were ever too much for him, he could
easily abandon it. And without the reflection that the gate is always
open behind him, who could consent to enter upon any course of perfect
behavior? If good resolutions could not be broken, who would ever have
the courage to form them? Would it not be intolerable to be made as good
as we ought to be? Then, admirable reader, thank Heaven even for your
lapses, since it is so wholesome and saving to be well ashamed of
yourself, from time to time.
“What an outrage,” said Cousin Frank, in the glow of virtue, as he
rejoined the ladies, “that that tipsy rascal should be allowed to go on
with his ribaldry. He seems to pervade the whole boat, and to subject
everybody to his sway. He's a perfect despot to us helpless sober
people,--I wouldn't openly disagree with him on any account. We ought
to send a Round Robin to the captain, and ask him to put that religious
liberal in irons during the rest of the voyage.”
In the mean time, however, the object of his indignation had used up
all the conversible material in that part of the boat, and had deviously
started for the other end. The elderly woman with the umbrella rose and
followed him, somewhat wearily, and with a sadness that appeared more in
her movement than in her face; and as the two went down the cabin, did
the comical affair look, after all, something like tragedy? My reader,
who expects a little novelty in tragedy, and not these stale and common
effects, will never think so.
“You'll not pretend, Frank,” says Lucy, “that in such an intellectual
place as Boston a crowd as large as this can be got together, and no
distinguished literary people in it. I know there are some notables
aboard: do point them out to me. Pretty near everybody has a literary
look.”
“Why, that's what we call our Boston look, Cousin Lucy. You needn't have
written anything to have it,--it's as general as tubercular consumption,
and is the effect of our universal culture and habits of reading. I
heard a New-Yorker say once that if you went into a corner grocery in
Boston to buy a codfish, the man would ask you how you liked 'Lucille,'
whilst he was tying it up. No, no; you mustn't be taken in by that
literary look; I'm afraid the real literary men don't always have it.
But I _do_ see a literary man aboard yonder,” he added, craning his neck
to one side, and then furtively pointing,--“the most literary man I ever
knew, one of the most literary men that ever lived. His whole existence
is really bound up in books; he never talks of anything else, and never
thinks of anything else, I believe. Look at him,--what kind and
pleasant eyes he's got! There, he sees me!” cries Cousin Frank, with a
pleasurable excitement. “How d'ye do?” he calls out.
“O Cousin Frank, introduce us,” sighs Lucy.
“Not I! He wouldn't thank me. He doesn't care for pretty girls outside
of books; he'd be afraid of 'em; he's the bashfullest man alive, and
all his heroines are fifty years old, at the least. But before I go any
further, tell me solemnly, Lucy, you're not interviewing me? You're not
going to write it to a New York newspaper? No? Well, I think it's best
to ask, always. Our friend there--he's everybody's friend, if you mean
nobody's enemy, by that, not even his own--is really what I say,--the
most literary man I ever knew. He loves all epochs and phases of
literature, but his passion is the Charles Lamb period and all Lamb's
friends. He loves them as if they were living men; and Lamb would have
loved him if he could have known him. He speaks rapidly, and rather
indistinctly, and when you meet him and say Good day, and you suppose
he answers with something about the weather, ten to one he's asking
you what you think of Hazlitt's essays on Shakespeare, or Leigh Hunt's
Italian Poets, or Lamb's roast pig, or Barry Cornwall's songs. He
couldn't get by a bookstall without stopping--for half an hour, at any
rate. He knows just when all the new books in town are to be published,
and when each bookseller is to get his invoice of old English books.
He has no particular address, but if you leave your card for him at any
bookstore in Boston, he's sure to get it within two days; and in the
summer-time you're apt to meet him on these excursions. Of course, he
writes about books, and very tastefully and modestly; there's hardly any
of the brand-new immortal English poets, who die off so rapidly, but has
had a good word from him; but his heart is with the older fellows, from
Chaucer down; and, after the Charles Lamb epoch, I don't know whether
he loves better the Elizabethan age or that of Queen Anne. Think of him
making me stop the other day at a bookstall, and read through an essay
out of the “Spectator!” I did it all for love of him, though money
couldn't have persuaded me that I had time; and I'm always telling him
lies, and pretending to be as well acquainted as he is with authors
I hardly know by name,--he seems so fondly to expect it. He's really
almost a disembodied spirit as concerns most mundane interests--his soul
is in literature, as a lover's in his mistress's beauty; and in the next
world, where, as the Swedenborgians believe, spirits seen at a distance
appear like the things they most resemble in disposition, as doves,
hawks, goats, lambs, swine, and so on, I'm sure that I shall see
his true and kindly soul in the guise of a noble old Folio, quaintly
lettered across his back in old English text, _Tom. I._”
While our friends talked and looked about them, a sudden change had come
over the brightness and warmth of the day; the blue heaven had turned a
chilly gray, and the water looked harsh and cold. Now, too, they noted
that they were drawing near a wooden pier built into the water, and that
they had been winding about in a crooked channel between muddy shallows,
and that their course was overrun with long, disheveled sea-weed. The
shawls had been unstrapped, and the ladies made comfortable in them.
“Ho for the beach!” cried Cousin Frank, with a vehement show of
enthusiasm. “Now, then, Aunt Melissa, prepare for the great enjoyment of
the day. In a few moments we shall be of the elves
'That on the sand with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back.'
Come! we shall have three hours on the beach, and that will bring us
well into the cool of the evening, and we can return by the last boat.”
“As to the cool of the evening,” said Aunt Melissa, “I don't know. It's
quite cool enough for comfort at present, and I'm sure that anything
more wouldn't be wholesome. What's become of our beautiful weather?” she
asked, deeply plotting to gain time.
“It's one of our Boston peculiarities, not to say merits,” answered
Frank, “which you must have noticed already, that we can get rid of a
fine day sooner than any other region. While you're saying how lovely
it is, a subtle change is wrought, and under skies still blue and a sun
still warm the keen spirit of the east wind pierces every nerve, and
all the fine weather within you is chilled and extinguished. The gray
atmosphere follows, but the day first languishes in yourself. But for
this, life in Boston would be insupportably perfect, if this is indeed a
drawback. You'd find Bostonians to defend it, I dare say. But this isn't
a regular east wind to-day; it's merely our nearness to the sea.”
“I think, Franklin,” said Aunt Melissa, “that we won't go down to the
beach this afternoon,” as if she had been there yesterday, and would go
to-morrow. “It's too late in the day; and it wouldn't be good for the
child, I'm sure.”
“Well, aunty, it was you determined us to wait for the boat, and it's
your right to say whether we shall leave it or not. I'm very willing
not to go ashore. I always find that, after working up to an object
with great effort, it's surpassingly sweet to leave it unaccomplished
at last. Then it remains forever in the region of the ideal, amongst the
songs that never were sung, the pictures that never were painted. Why,
in fact, should we force this pleasure? We've eaten our lunch, we've
lost the warm heart of the day; why should we poorly drag over to that
damp and sullen beach, where we should find three hours very long, when
by going back now we can keep intact that glorious image of a day by the
sea which we've been cherishing all summer? You're right, Aunt Melissa;
we won't go ashore; we will stay here, and respect our illusions.”
At heart, perhaps, Lucy did not quite like this retreat; it was not in
harmony with the youthful spirit of her sex, but she reflected that she
could come again,--O beneficent cheat of Another Time, how much thou
sparest us in our over-worked, over-enjoyed world!--she was very
comfortable where she was, in a seat commanding a perfect view for the
return trip; and she submitted without a murmur. Besides, now that the
boat had drawn up to the pier, and discharged part of her passengers,
and was waiting to take on others, Lucy was interested in a mass of
fluttering dresses and wide-rimmed straw hats that drew down toward
the “Rose Standish,” and gracefully thronged the pier, and prettily
hesitated about, and finally came aboard with laughter and little false
cries of terror, attended through all by the New England disproportion
of that sex which is so foolish when it is silly. It was a large picnic
party which had been spending the day upon the beach, as each of the
ladies showed in her face, where, if the roses upon her cheeks were
somewhat obscured by the imbrowning seaside sun, a bright pink had been
compensatingly bestowed upon the point of her nose. A mysterious quiet
fell upon them all when they were got aboard and had taken conspicuous
places, which was accounted for presently when a loud shout was heard
from the shore, and a man beside an ambulant photographic machine was
seen wildly waving his hat. It is impossible to resist a temptation of
this kind, and our party all yielded, and posed themselves in striking
and characteristic attitudes,--even Aunt Melissa sharing the ambition to
appear in a picture which she should never see, and the nurse coming
out strong from the abeyance in which she had been held, and lifting the
baby high into the air for a good likeness. The frantic gesticulator on
the shore gave an impressive wave with both hands, took the cap from the
instrument, turned his back, as photographers always do, with that air
of hiding their tears, for the brief space that seems so long, and then
clapped on the cap again, while a great sigh of relief went up from the
whole boat-load of passengers. They were taken.
But the interval had been a luckless one for the “Rose Standish,” and
when she stirred her wheels, clouds of mud rose to the top of the water,
and there was no responsive movement of the boat. She was aground in the
falling tide.
“There seems a pretty fair prospect of our spending some time here,
after all,” said Frank, while the ladies, who had reluctantly given up
the idea of staying, were now in a quiver of impatience to be off. The
picnic was shifted from side to side; the engine groaned and tugged,
Captain Miles Standish and his crew bestirred themselves vigorously, and
at last the boat swung loose, and strode down the sea-weedy channels;
while our friends, who had already done the great sights of the
harbor, now settled themselves to the enjoyment of its minor traits and
beauties. Here and there they passed small parties on the shore, which,
with their yachts anchored near, or their boats drawn up from the water,
were cooking an out-door meal by a fire that burned bright red upon the
sands in the late afternoon air. In such cases, people willingly indulge
themselves in saluting whatever craft goes by, and the ladies of these
small picnics, as they sat round the fires, kept up a great waving
of handkerchiefs, and sometimes cheered the “Rose Standish,” though
I believe the Bostonians are ordinarily not a demonstrative race. Of
course the large picnic on board fluttered multitudinous handkerchiefs
in response, both to these people ashore and to those who hailed them
from vessels which they met. They did not refuse the politeness even
to the passengers on a rival boat when she passed them, though at heart
they must have felt some natural pangs at being passed. The water was
peopled everywhere by all sorts of sail lagging slowly homeward in
the light evening breeze; and on some of the larger vessels there were
family groups to be seen, and a graceful smoke, suggestive of supper,
curled from the cook's galley. I suppose these ships were chiefly
coasting craft, of one kind or another, come from the Provinces at
farthest; but to the ignorance and the fancy of our friends, they
arrived from all remote and romantic parts of the world,--from India,
from China, and from the South Seas, with cargoes of spices and gums and
tropical fruits; and I see no reason why one should ever deny himself
the easy pleasure they felt in painting the unknown in such lively hues.
The truth is, a strange ship, if you will let her, always brings you
precious freight, always arrives from Wonderland under the command of
Captain Sinbad. How like a beautiful sprite she looks afar off, as if
she came from some finer and fairer world than ours! Nay, we will not go
out to meet her; we will not go on board; Captain Sinbad shall bring us
the invoice of gold-dust, slaves, and rocs' eggs to-night, and we will
have some of the eggs for breakfast; or if he never comes, are we
not just as rich? But I think these friends of ours got a yet keener
pleasure out of the spectacle of a large and stately ship, that with all
sails spread moved silently and steadily out toward the open sea. It is
yet grander and sweeter to sail toward the unknown than to come from it;
and every vessel that leaves port has this destination, and will bear
you thither if you will.
“It may be that the gulf shall wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew,”
absently murmured Lucy, looking on this beautiful apparition.
“But I can't help thinking of Ulysses' cabin-boy, yonder,” said Cousin
Frank, after a pause; “can you, Aunt Melissa?”
“I don't understand what you're talking about Franklin,” answered Aunt
Melissa, somewhat severely.
“Why, I mean that there is a poor wretch of a boy on board there, who's
run away, and whose heart must be aching just now at the thought of the
home he has left. I hope Ulysses will be good to him, and not swear at
him for a day or two, or knock him about with a belaying-pin. Just about
this time his mother, up in the country, is getting ready his supper,
and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes
that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room,
having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed
in at the window”--“Why, Franklin, this isn't true, is it?” asks Aunt
Melissa.
“Well, no, let's pray Heaven it isn't, in this case. It's been true
often enough to be false for once.”
“What a great, ugly, black object a ship is!” said Cousin Lucy.
Slowly the city rose up against the distance, sharpening all its
outlines, and filling in all its familiar details,--like a fact which
one dreams is a dream, and which, as the mists of sleep break away,
shows itself for reality.
The air grows closer and warmer,--it is the breath of the hot and
toil-worn land.
The boat makes her way up through the shipping, seeks her landing, and
presently rubs herself affectionately against the wharf. The passengers
quickly disperse themselves upon shore, dismissed each with an
appropriate sarcasm by the tipsy man, who has had the means of keeping
himself drunk throughout, and who now looks to the discharge of the
boat's cargo.
As our friends leave the wharf-house behind them, and straggle uneasily,
and very conscious of sunburn, up the now silent length of Pearl Street
to seek the nearest horse-cars, they are aware of a curious fidgeting
of the nurse, who flies from one side of the pavement to the other and
violently shifts the baby from one arm to the other.
“What's the matter?” asks Frank; but before the nurse can answer, “Thim
little divils,” he perceives that the whooping-coughers of the morning
have taken the occasion to renew a pleasant acquaintance, and are
surrounding the baby and nurse with an atmosphere of whooping-cough.
“I say, friends! we can't stand this, you know,” says the anxious
father. “We must part some time, and this is a favorable moment. Now
I'll give you all this, if you don't come another step!” and he empties
out to them, from the hand-bags he carries, the fragments of lunch which
the frugal mind of Aunt Melissa had caused her to store there. Upon
these the whooping-coughers hurl themselves in a body, and are soon left
round the corner. Yet they would have been no disgrace to our party,
whose appearance was now most disreputable: Frank and Lucy stalked
ahead, with shawls dragging from their arms, the former loaded down
with hand-bags and the latter with India-rubbers; Aunt Melissa came next
under a burden of bloated umbrellas; the nurse last, with her hat awry,
and the baby a caricature of its morning trimness, in her embrace. A
day's pleasure is so demoralizing, that no party can stand it, and come
out neat and orderly.
[Illustration: “Frank and Lucy stalked ahead, with shawls dragging from
their arms.”]
“Cousin Frank,” asked Lucy, awfully, “what if we should meet the
Mayflowers now?”--the Mayflowers being a very ancient and noble Boston
family whose acquaintance was the great pride and terror of our friends'
lives.
“I should cut them dead,” said Frank, and scarcely spoke again till his
party dragged slowly up the steps of their minute suburban villa.
At the door his wife met them with a troubled and anxious face.
“Calamities?” asked Frank, desperately.
“O, calamities upon calamities! We've got a lost child in the kitchen,”
answered Mrs. Sallie.
“O good heavens!” cried her husband. “Adieu, my dreams of repose, so
desirable after the quantity of active enjoyment I've had! Well, where
is the lost child?”
III.--THE EVENING
“Where is the lost child?” repeats Frank, desperately. “Where have you
got him?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Why in the kitchen?”
“How's baby?” demands Mrs. Sallie, with the incoherent suddenness of
her sex, and running halfway down the steps to meet the nurse. “Um, um,
um-m-m-m,” sounds, which may stand for smothered kisses of rapture and
thanksgiving that baby is not a lost child. “Has he been good, Lucy?
Take him off and give him some cocoa, Mrs. O'Gonegal,” she adds in her
business-like way, and with a little push to the combined nurse and
baby, while Lucy answers, “O beautiful!” and from that moment, being
warned through all her being by something in the other's tone, casts
aside the matronly manner which she has worn during the day, and lapses
into the comfortable irresponsibility of young-ladyhood.
“What kind of a time did you have?”
“Splendid!” answers Lucy. “Delightful, _I_ think,” she adds, as if she
thought others might not think so.
“I suppose you found Gloucester a quaint old place.”
“O,” says Frank, “we didn't go to Gloucester; we found that the City
Fathers had chartered the boat for the day, so we thought we'd go to
Nahant.”
“Then you've seen your favorite Gardens of Maolis! What in the world
_are_ they like?”
“Well; we didn't see the Gardens of Maolis; the Nahant boat was so
crowded that we couldn't think of going on her, and so we decided we'd
drive over to the Liverpool Wharf and go down to Nantasket Beach.”
“That was nice. I'm so glad on Aunt Melissa's account. It's much better
to see the ocean from a long beach than from those Nahant rocks.”
“That's what _I_ said. But, you know, when we got to the wharf the boat
had just left.”
“You _don't_ mean it! Well, then, what under the canopy _did_ you do?”
“Why, we sat down in the wharf-house, and waited from nine o'clock till
half-past two for the next boat.”
“Well, I'm glad you didn't back out, at any rate. You did show pluck,
you poor things! I hope you enjoyed the beach after you _did_ get
there.”
“Why,” says Frank, looking down, “we never got there.”
“Never got there!” gasps Mrs. Sallie. “Didn't you go down on the
afternoon boat?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you get to the beach, then?”
“We didn't go ashore.”
“Well, that's _like_ you, Frank.”
“It's a great deal more like Aunt Melissa,” answers Frank. “The air felt
so raw and chilly by the time we reached the pier, that she declared the
baby would perish if it was taken to the beach. Besides, nothing would
persuade her that Nantasket Beach was at all different from Liverpool
Wharf.”