exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother officers by the
cool, steady, upright, downright, and impartial discharge of my
business, and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or
winter, nobody seeks me in vain; for, all day long I am seen at the
busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich
and poor alike; and at night I hold a lantern over my head, to show
where I am, and to keep people out of the gutters.
At this sultry noontide, I am cupbearer to the parched populace, for
whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist. Like a dram seller
on the public square, on a muster day, I cry aloud to all and sundry, in
my plainest accents, and at the very tiptop of my voice, "Here it is,
gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up, gentlemen, walk
up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the unadulterated ale
of father Adam! better than cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, strong beer, or
wine of any price; here it is by the hogshead or the single glass, and
not a cent to pay. Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help yourselves!"
It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they
come. A hot day, gentlemen. Quaff and away again, so as to keep
yourselves in a nice, cool sweat. You, my friend, will need another
cupful to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as
it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score of
miles to-day, and, like a wise man, have passed by the taverns, and
stopped at the running brooks and well curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat
without and fire within, you would have been burnt to a cinder, or
melted down to nothing at all--in the fashion of a jellyfish.
Drink, and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench
the fiery fever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup
of mine. Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been strangers
hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a
closer intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent.
Mercy on you, man! The water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet,
and is converted quite into steam in the miniature Tophet, which you
mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest
toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any other kind of dramshop,
spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious?
Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold
water. Good-by; and whenever you are thirsty, recollect that I keep a
constant supply at the old stand.
Who next? Oh, my little friend, you are just let loose from school, and
come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain
taps of the ferule, and other schoolboy troubles, in a draft from the
Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life; take it, and
may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than
now.
[Illustration: The Town Pump.]
There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this
elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the paving stones that I
suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so much
as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people
who have no wine cellars.
Well, well, sir, no harm done, I hope! Go, draw the cork, tip the
decanter; but when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no
affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant titillation of the gout,
it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue
lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs
and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers away
again! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout?
Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence, and
spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster
and his two yoke of oxen, who have come all the way from Staunton, or
somewhere along that way. No part of my business gives me more pleasure
than the watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the watermark
on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened
with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford time to breathe, with
sighs of calm enjoyment! Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim
of their monstrous drinking vessel. An ox is your true toper.
I hold myself the grand reformer of the age. From the Town Pump, as from
other sources of water supply, must flow the stream that will cleanse
our earth of a vast portion of the crime and anguish which have gushed
from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise, the
cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water!
Ahem! Dry work this speechifying, especially to all unpracticed orators.
I never conceived, till now, what toil the temperance lecturers undergo
for my sake. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet
my whistle. Thank you, sir. But to proceed.
The Town Pump and the Cow! Such is the glorious partnership that shall
finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed
consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no
hovel so wretched where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then
Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw his own heart and die.
Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength.
Then there will be no war of households. The husband and the wife,
drinking deep of peaceful joy, a calm bliss of temperate affections,
shall pass hand in hand through life, and lie down, not reluctantly, at
its protracted close. To them the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams,
nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of a
drunkard. Their dead faces shall express what their spirits were, and
are to be, by a lingering smile of memory and hope.
Drink, then, and be refreshed! The water is as pure and cold as when it
slaked the thirst of the red hunter, and flowed beneath the aged bough,
though now this gem of the wilderness is treasured under these hot
stones, where no shadow falls but from the brick buildings. But still is
this fountain the source of health, peace, and happiness, and I behold,
with certainty and joy, the approach of the period when the virtues of
cold water, too little valued since our father's days, will be fully
appreciated and recognized by all.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 29: By Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American writer of romances and
short stories (1804-1864).]
EXPRESSION: Read this selection again and again until you
understand it clearly and appreciate its rare charm. Study each
paragraph separately, observing how the topic of each is developed.
Select the expressions which are the most pleasing to you. Tell why
each pleases.
Did you ever see a town pump? In the cities and larger towns, what
has taken its place? Can we imagine a hydrant or a water faucet
talking as this town pump did? If Hawthorne were writing to-day,
would he represent the town pump as the "chief person of the
municipality"? Discuss this question fully.
Talk with your teacher about the life and works of the author of
this selection. If you have access to any of his books, bring them
to the class and read selections from them. Compare the style of
this story with that of the selection from Dickens, page 22; or
from Thackeray, page 27; or from Goldsmith, page 94.
WORD STUDY: Refer to the dictionary for the pronunciation and
meaning of: _perpetuity_, _constable_, _municipality_, _cognac_,
_quaff_, _rubicund_, _Tophet_, _decanter_, _titillation_,
_capacious_.
COME UP FROM THE FIELDS, FATHER[30]
Come up from the fields, father; here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door, mother; here's a letter from thy dear son.
Lo, 'tis autumn;
Lo, where the fields, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate
wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellised
vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo! the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with
wondrous clouds;
Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful,--and the farm prospers
well.
Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from the fields come, father,--come at the daughter's call;
And come to the entry, mother,--to the front door come, right away.
Fast as she can she hurries,--something ominous,--her steps trembling;
She does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly;
Oh, this is not our son's writing, yet his name is signed!
Oh, a strange hand writes for our dear son--O stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes,--flashes with black,--she catches the main
words only;
Sentences broken,--_gunshot wound in the breast_--_cavalry skirmish,
taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better._
Ah! now the single figure to me
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
_Grieve not so, dear mother_ (the just grown daughter speaks through her
sobs;
The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed).
_See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better._
Alas, poor boy! he will never be better (nor, maybe, needs to be better,
that brave and simple soul).
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
[Illustration: "Come up from the fields, father."]
But the mother needs to be better;
She, with thin form, presently dressed in black;
By day her meals untouched,--then at night fitfully sleeping, often
waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
Oh, that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life, escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son!
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 30: By Walt Whitman, an American poet (1819-1892).]
EXPRESSION: This poem is descriptive of an incident which occurred
during the Civil War. There were many such incidents, both in the
North and in the South. Read the selection silently to understand
its full meaning. Who are the persons pictured to your imagination
after reading it? Describe the place and the time.
Now read the poem aloud, giving full expression to its pathetic
meaning. Select the most striking descriptive passage and read it.
Select the stanza which seems to you the most touching, and read
it.
Study now the peculiarities of the poem. Do the lines rime? Are
they of similar length? What can you say about the meter?
Compare this poem with the two gems from Browning, pages 38 and 41.
Compare it with the selection from Longfellow, page 54; with that
from Lanier, page 66. How does it differ from any or all of these?
What is poetry? Name three great American poets; three great
English poets.
THE ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG[31]
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
great civil war, testing whether that nation--or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated--can long endure.
We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate
a portion of that field as the final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above
our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long
remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before
us;--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion;--that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 31: By Abraham Lincoln, at the dedication of the National
Cemetery, 1863.]
ODE TO THE CONFEDERATE DEAD[32]
Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.
In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone.
Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! Your sisters bring their tears
And these memorial blooms.
Small tribute! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreathes to-day,
Than when some cannon-molded pile
Shall overlook this bay.
Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 32: By Henry Timrod, an American poet (1829-1867).]
THE CHARIOT RACE[33]
Orestes? He is dead. I will tell all as it happened.
He journeyed forth to attend the great games which Hellas counts her
pride, to join the Delphic contests. There he heard the herald's voice,
with loud and clear command, proclaim, as coming first, the chariot
race, and so he entered, radiant, every eye admiring as he passed. And
in the race he equaled all the promise of his form in those his rounds,
and so with noblest prize of conquest left the ground.
Summing up in fewest words what many scarce could tell, I know of none
in strength and act like him. And having won the prize in all the
fivefold forms of race which the umpires had proclaimed, he then was
hailed, proclaimed an Argive, and his name Orestes, the son of mighty
Agamemnon, who once led Hellas's glorious host.
So far, well. But when a god will injure, none can escape, strong though
he be. For lo! another day, when, as the sun was rising, came the race
swift-footed of the chariot and the horse, he entered the contest with
many charioteers. One was an Achaean, one was from Sparta, two were from
Libya with four-horsed chariots, and Orestes with swift Thessalian mares
came as the fifth. A sixth, with bright bay colts, came from AEtolia; the
seventh was born in far Magnesia; the eighth was an AEnian with white
horses; the ninth was from Athens, the city built by the gods; the tenth
and last was a Boeotian.
[Illustration: The Chariot Race.]
And so they stood, their cars in order as the umpires had decided by
lot. Then, with sound of brazen trumpet, they started.
All cheering their steeds at the same moment, they shook the reins, and
at once the course was filled with the clash and din of rattling
chariots, and the dust rose high. All were now commingled, each striving
to pass the hubs of his neighbors' wheels. Hard and hot were the horses'
breathings, and their backs and the chariot wheels were white with foam.
Each charioteer, when he came to the place where the last stone marks
the course's goal, turned the corner sharply, letting go the right-hand
trace horse and pulling the nearer in. And so, at first, the chariots
kept their course; but, at length, the AEnian's unbroken colts, just as
they finished their sixth or seventh round, turned headlong back and
dashed at full speed against the chariot wheels of those who were
following. Then with tremendous uproar, each crashed on the other, they
fell overturned, and Crissa's broad plain was filled with wreck of
chariots.
The man from Athens, skilled and wise as a charioteer, saw the mischief
in time, turned his steeds aside, and escaped the whirling, raging surge
of man and horse. Last of all, Orestes came, holding his horses in
check, and waiting for the end. But when he saw the Athenian, his only
rival left, he urged his colts forward, shaking the reins and speeding
onward. And now the twain continued the race, their steeds sometimes
head to head, sometimes one gaining ground, sometimes the other; and so
all the other rounds were passed in safety.
Upright in his chariot still stood the ill-starred hero. Then, just as
his team was turning, he let loose the left rein unawares, and struck
the farthest pillar, breaking the spokes right at his axles' center.
Slipping out of his chariot, he was dragged along, with reins
dissevered. His frightened colts tore headlong through the midst of the
field; and the people, seeing him in his desperate plight, bewailed him
greatly--so young, so noble, so unfortunate, now hurled upon the ground,
helpless, lifeless.
The charioteers, scarcely able to restrain the rushing steeds, freed the
poor broken body--so mangled that not one of all his friends would have
known whose it was. They built a pyre and burned it; and now they bear
hither, in a poor urn of bronze, the sad ashes of that mighty form--that
so Orestes may have his tomb in his fatherland.
Such is my tale, full sad to hear; but to me who saw this accident,
nothing can ever be more sorrowful.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 33: Translated from the "Electra" of Sophocles, written about
450 years before Christ. The narrative is supposed to have been related
by the friend and attendant of the hero, Orestes.]
THE COLISEUM AT MIDNIGHT[34]
I crossed the Forum to the foot of the Palatine, and, ascending the Via
Sacra, passed beneath the Arch of Titus. From this point I saw below me
the gigantic outline of the Coliseum, like a cloud resting upon the
earth.
As I descended the hillside, it grew more broad and high,--more definite
in its form, and yet more grand in its dimensions,--till, from the vale
in which it stands encompassed by three of the Seven Hills of Rome, the
majestic ruin in all its solitary grandeur "swelled vast to heaven."
A single sentinel was pacing to and fro beneath the arched gateway which
leads to the interior, and his measured footsteps were the only sound
that broke the breathless silence of night.
What a contrast with the scene which that same midnight hour presented,
when in Domitian's time the eager populace began to gather at the gates,
impatient for the morning sports! Nor was the contrast within less
striking. Silence, and the quiet moonbeams, and the broad, deep shadow
of the ruined wall!
Where now were the senators of Rome, her matrons, and her virgins? Where
was the ferocious populace that rent the air with shouts, when, in the
hundred holidays that marked the dedication of this imperial slaughter
house, five thousand wild beasts from the Libyan deserts and the forests
of Anatolia made the arena sick with blood?
Where were the Christian martyrs that died with prayers upon their lips,
amid the jeers and imprecations of their fellow men? Where were the
barbarian gladiators, brought forth to the festival of blood, and
"butchered to make a Roman holiday"?
The awful silence answered, "They are mine!" The dust beneath me
answered, "They are mine!"
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 34: From "Outre Mer," by Henry W. Longfellow.]
EXPRESSION: Learn all you can about the Coliseum. When was it
built? by whom? For what was it used?
WORD STUDY: _Forum_, _Palatine_, _Via Sacra_, _Titus_, _Domitian_,
_Libyan_, _Anatolia_.
[Illustration]
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE[35]
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened, without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,--
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
_Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,--
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot,--
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still,
Find it somewhere, you must and will,--
Above or below, or within or without,--
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise _breaks down_, but doesn't _wear out_.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell _yeou_,")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it _couldn'_ break daown:
"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
[Illustration: The Deacon's Masterpiece.]
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
The panels of white wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"
Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em,
Never an ax had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin, too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through."--
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew."
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren--where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake day!
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED,--it came and found
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound,
Eighteen hundred increased by ten,--
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came,--
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty and FIFTY-FIVE.
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it,--You're welcome.--No extra charge.)
FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake day.--
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start,
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whippletree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub _encore_.
And yet, as a _whole_, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be _worn out_!
[Illustration]
First of November, Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text,--
Had got to _fifthly_, and stopped perplexed
At what the--Moses--was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet'n'house on the hill.
--First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill,--
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half-past nine by the meet'n'house clock,--
Just the hour of the earthquake shock!
--What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground.
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once,--
All at once, and nothing first,--
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 35: From "The Autocrat or the Breakfast Table," by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, a noted American author and physician (1809--1894).]