How beauteous is the bond
In the manifold array
Of its promises to pay,
While the eight per cent it gives
And the rate at which one lives
Correspond!
But at last the bough is bare
Where the coupons one by one
Through their ripening days have run,
And the bond, a beggar now,
Seeks investment anyhow,
Anywhere!
The Mistress commonly contents herself with the general supervision
of the company, only now and then taking an active part in the
conversation. She started a question the other evening which set some of
us thinking.
“Why is it,” she said, “that there is so common and so intense a desire
for poetical reputation? It seems to me that, if I were a man, I had
rather have done something worth telling of than make verses about what
other people had done.”
“You agree with Alexander the Great,” said the Professor. “You would
prefer the fame of Achilles to that of Homer, who told the story of his
wrath and its direful consequences. I am afraid that I should hardly
agree with you. Achilles was little better than a Choctaw brave. I won't
quote Horace's line which characterizes him so admirably, for I will
take it for granted that you all know it. He was a gentleman,--so is a
first-class Indian,--a very noble gentleman in point of courage, lofty
bearing, courtesy, but an unsoaped, ill-clad, turbulent, high-tempered
young fellow, looked up to by his crowd very much as the champion of
the heavy weights is looked up to by his gang of blackguards. Alexander
himself was not much better,--a foolish, fiery young madcap. How often
is he mentioned except as a warning? His best record is that he served
to point a moral as 'Macedonian's madman.' He made a figure, it is true,
in Dryden's great Ode, but what kind of a figure? He got drunk,--in
very bad company, too,--and then turned fire-bug. He had one redeeming
point,--he did value his Homer, and slept with the Iliad under his
pillow. A poet like Homer seems to me worth a dozen such fellows as
Achilles and Alexander.”
“Homer is all very well far those that can read him,” said Number Seven,
“but the fellows that tag verses together nowadays are mostly fools.
That's my opinion. I wrote some verses once myself, but I had been sick
and was very weak; hadn't strength enough to write in prose, I suppose.”
This aggressive remark caused a little stir at our tea-table. For you
must know, if I have not told you already, there are suspicions that we
have more than one “poet” at our table. I have already confessed that
I do myself indulge in verse now and then, and have given my readers
a specimen of my work in that line. But there is so much difference of
character in the verses which are produced at our table, without any
signature, that I feel quite sure there are at least two or three other
contributors besides myself. There is a tall, old-fashioned silver urn,
a sugar-bowl of the period of the Empire, in which the poems sent to be
read are placed by unseen hands. When the proper moment arrives, I lift
the cover of the urn and take out any manuscript it may contain. If
conversation is going on and the company are in a talking mood, I
replace the manuscript or manuscripts, clap on the cover, and wait until
there is a moment's quiet before taking it off again. I might guess the
writers sometimes by the handwriting, but there is more trouble taken to
disguise the chirography than I choose to take to identify it as that of
any particular member of our company.
The turn the conversation took, especially the slashing onslaught of
Number Seven on the writers of verse, set me thinking and talking
about the matter. Number Five turned on the stream of my discourse by a
question.
“You receive a good many volumes of verse, do you not?” she said, with a
look which implied that she knew I did.
I certainly do, I answered. My table aches with them. My shelves groan
with them. Think of what a fuss Pope made about his trials, when he
complained that
“All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out”!