"Turbine raptus ingenii."--SCALIGER.
Mac and I dined together yesterday,--as we are used to do at least once or
twice every year, for the sake of our ever-mellowing friendship, and those
good old times in which it began. Like all who are ripe enough to have
memories, we delight to recall the period of our vernal equinox, and to
moralize, with gentle sadness and many wise wags of our frosty polls, upon
the events in which that period was prolific; and so, when the cloth was
removed yesterday, and we sat toying with our cigars and our Sherry, our
talk insensibly drifted back to those merry college-days when we not
infrequently "heard the chimes at midnight."
"Ah, old fellow," quoth I to my chum, "those good old days are gone by,
now, and Israel worships strange gods. Old Nassau will never be what she
was before the fire of '55. Those precious heirlooms of our day are sunk
from sight forever, dear and mossy as they were,--swept down, like cobwebs,
before the flame-besom. _'Fuit Ilium!'_ The old bell will never again ring
out the gay 'larums of a 'Third Entry' barring-out. Homer's head no longer
perches owl-like and wise over the central door-way. _'Ai, Adonai!'_ No
more wilt proud fingers point to the spot whereat entered--not like
'Casca's envious dagger'--that well-aimed cannon-ball which pierced the
picture-gallery, punched 'Georgius Res' on the head, and frightened away
forever the Hessians that were stabled there, fouling the nest of stout old
John Witherspoon. They call other rolls now in chapel and in class-room,
and chant other songs at their revels and their feasts. '_Eheu,
Posthume!_'"
"Pshaw, Ned Blount! there's corn in Egypt still. Out of that bug-riddled
old barn we used to know a new and comely Phoenix has been born unto
Princeton; the fire hath purged, not destroyed; and we wiseacres who
flourished in the old 'flush times' yet survive in tradition, patterns for
our children, very Turveydrops of collegiate deportment. The belfry clangs
with a louder peal; even Clarian's Picture, though it hath utterly perished
to the eye of sense, lives vivid in a thousand memories, and, having found
in the tenderness of tradition and legend an engraver whose burin is as
faithful as Raphael Morghen's, has left the damp dark wall, like Leonardo's
_Cenacolo_, to accompany all of us to our firesides."
Clarian's Picture! what memories the mention of it stirred up!
"Poor Clarian!" I murmured.
"Poor, indeed I" repeated Mac, with a sneer. "He is only worth a lovely
wife and six children, with half a million to back them. And he only weighs
two hundred pounds, with I forget how many inches of fat over the
brisket. Poor, indeed! 'Tis pity you and I have not experienced a slight
attack of that same poverty, Ned Blount!"
"Poor Clarian!" repeated I, sturdily. "To think that a man who could paint
such a picture, a soul of imagination so compact, a so delicate
ether-breathing spirit, should settle down at last into a mere mechanical,
a plodding, every-day merchant, whose finest fancies are given to the
condition of the money-market, who governs his actions by a decline of
Erie, and narrows his ideas down to the requirements of filthy lucre, like
a mere 'wintry clod of earth'! Ay, poor Clarian, poor anybody, when we wake
from our bright youth-dream and tread the rough pathway of a reality like
this!"
"_Potz tausend_! the man is _fou_!" shouted Mac. "Come, drink your wine,
Ned, and we'll have our coffee. It is quite time, I think,--and he used to
be a three-bottle fellow," muttered my dear old friend, _sotto
voce_. "'_Heu, heu! tempora mutantur, et nos_'--well, well, well!"
* * * * *
Clarian's Picture! What a gush of recollection the words evoke! I was in
the heyday and blossom of my youth then, and now--well, 'tis some years
since; yet how vividly I remember that pleasant noontide of a day of early
summer, when, as a party of us students were lounging about the gates that
opened from our shady campus upon the street, "Dennis" handed me a note
from Clarian, in which my little friend announced that his picture was
finished at last, and invited Mac and myself to call and see it
"exhibited," at nine o'clock that very evening. We were talking about
Clarian and his picture, at the time,--as, indeed, we had been doing for a
month,--and when I mentioned the purport of the note, curiosity rose to the
tiptoe of expectation, and numerous surmises were set afloat. I could have
satisfied their queries as to the subject and character of the picture, for
Mac and I had seen it only a few days before, but Clarian expected us to be
secret about it; so I only listened and smiled, while the eager talk ran
on, and a thousand conjectures were hazarded.
"So the _magnum opus_ is finished at last," said Clayt Zoile, showing by
his manner, as he joined us, that he at least had not received an
invitation; "a precious specimen of Art it will prove, I doubt not, after
all the outcry about it. '_Montes parturiunt_' etc."
"You'll lose your wish this time, Clayt," drawled Mounchersey, carelessly;
"Mr. Cosine told me yesterday that 'Boss' has called on Clarian about his
cutting so many prayers and recites, and that, after seeing the unfinished
picture, he gave the youngster _carte blanche_ as to time, till it is
completed;--so it must be something worth looking at"
"I guess Ned Blount's glad the picture is finished," said Tone Ninyan,
turning to me,--"a'n't you, Ned?"