A wretched fragment of the singing-class met at the house of Mrs.
Widesworth. Professor Owlsdarck had kindly come over from Wrexford to
help fill up the rooms; but the pressure of his ponderous attainments
seemed only to compress yet more that handful of miscellaneous
miserables in the front-parlor. Eight or ten elderly people, one or two
undergraduates at home for the college-vacation,--these were the guests.
The precautions of Mrs. Romulus had not been taken in vain,--there could
be no singing: none, unless--but I trust that this evil suggestion
occurred to nobody--we were so lost to shame as to call upon the
college-boys to supply the place of our absent psalmody with some of
those Bacchanalian choruses with which they were doubtless too familiar.
We felt rather wicked. We knew that we were stigmatized by that terrible
compound, "_Pro-Rum_"; we were held up as the respectable abettors of
drunkenness, the _dilettanti_ patrons of pot-houses, the cold-blooded
connoisseurs in wife-beating and _delirium tremens_. That we really
appeared all this to many honest, enthusiastic people could not be
doubted.
Certain perplexing questions, which had fifty times been answered and
dismissed, were ever returning to worry the general consciousness of the
company:--Is it not best to scourge one's self along with a popular
enthusiasm, when, by many excellent methods, it would sweep society to a
definite good? Are not the ardors of the imagination better
working-powers than the cold judgments of the reason? Should we ever be
carping at controlling principles, when much of their present
manifestation seems full of active worthiness? Above all, have we not
listened to contemptible fallacies of self-indulgence and indolence, and
then cheated ourselves into believing them the sober testimonies of
conscience?
That some such melancholic refinements were restless in the brains of
many I have no doubt. Probably only Mrs. Widesworth and the
undergraduates were wholly undisturbed by them. Yet, in spite of this
secret uneasiness, there was common to the company a stiff recognition
of its own virtue, which seemed to impart a certain queer rigidity to
the bodily presence of the guests. Dr. Dastick, for the first and only
time in my remembrance, appeared with his trousers bound with straps to
the bottoms of his boots. Colonel Prowley had thrust his neck into a
stock of extraordinary stiffness, which seemed to proceed from some
antique coat-of-mail worn beneath the waistcoat. The collar and cuffs of
Miss Prowley were wonderful in their dimensions, and fairly creaked with
the starch. The clergyman, indeed, wore his dress and manners in relaxed
and even slouchy fashion; but this seemed not due to lightness of
heart, but only to weariness of mind. I knew that something had caused
him to feel acutely the limitations of his office. One might attribute
such feelings to the bass-viol player in an orchestra, who, in whatever
whirl of harmony, is permitted to scrape out only a few gruff notes. But
there was dear Mrs. Widesworth, so deliciously drugged by the anodynes
of Authority that she could shake the chains of custom till they jingled
like sleigh-bells.
"Come, come," said this good lady; "why, you all seem to be following
the advice of my grandfather Twynintuft,--which was, to let the mind
muddle after dinner. He thought it strengthened the voice,--gave it
_timber_, as he called it. But, ah, dear! in these days so little
attention is paid to elocution that it's of no consequence whatever!"
"I have endeavored, Madam," said Professor Owlsdarck, with great
precision of utterance, "I have endeavored to impress upon my scholars
that Socratic wisdom which condemned books as silent: a testimony, as I
take it, of great importance to those who would perfect the instrument
of oral instruction."
"There is no great elocutionist at the present day," said Mrs.
Widesworth with pious regret.
"And little could we profit by him, if there were," rejoined the
Principal of the Wrexford Academy. "For, in the present excited
condition of our river-towns, men do not strive to copy the moderate
virtues of the Ancients, but only to exaggerate their heathenish
extispicy."
"Ah, very true, very true," sighed Mrs. Widesworth; "only I forget what
that last word means."
"Extispicy," defined the Professor, "is properly the observation of
entrails and divination thereby."
"Yet more is to be learned from bones," said Dr. Dastick, decidedly. "I
hold that the performances of Cuvier alone are conclusive upon that
point."
Colonel Prowley looked doubtful: it would hardly do to question thus
lightly the wisdom of Antiquity.
Here Professor Owlsdarck experienced a queer twitching about the corners
of his mouth,--an affection which since his poetical address before the
Wrexford Trustees had occasionally troubled him.
"At any rate, Colonel," he observed, "we can agree, that, whatever
amount of wisdom the Ancients may have shown in observing the digestive
apparatus of animals, it certainly exceeded that of our modern
philosophers, who are always contemplating their own."
"Truly, I believe you are right," responded Colonel Prowley. "There is
my dear friend Miss Hurribattle, who is always coming to me with some
new cure for people who are perfectly well. At one time Mrs. Romulus
told her that everybody should live on fruits which ripen at least six
feet above-ground,--all roots having an earthy and degrading tendency.
The last recipe for the salvation of society is, to take a little gravel
with our meals, like birds."