We scarcely thought that the distinguished public servant, Mr. Ogden,
was likely to occupy once more any portion of our readers' attention;
and yet it so fell out that this useful personage, being on the
Continent getting up his Austria and Northern Italy for the coming
session, received a few lines from the Earl of Sommerville, half
mandatory, half entreating, asking him to find out the young Marquis of
Agincourt, and take him back with him to England.
Now the Earl was a great man, for he was father-in-law of a Cabinet
Minister, and related to half the leaders of the party, so that Mr.
Ogden, however little the mission suited his other plans, was fain at
once to accept it, and set out in search of his charge.
We need not follow him in his pursuit through Lombardy and the
Legations, down to Tuscany and Lucca, which latter city he reached at
the close of a cold and dreary day of winter, cheered to him, however,
by the certainty that he had at length come up with the object of his
chase.
It was a habit with Quackinboss, whenever he sent out Layton's servant
on an errand, to leave the house door ajar, that the sick man might not
be disturbed by the loud summons of the bell; and so on the evening in
question was it found by Mr. Ogden, who, after some gentle admonitions
by his knuckles and some preparatory coughs, at last groped his way into
the interior, and eventually entered the spacious sitting-room.
Quackinboss had dined, and was seated at his wine beside an ample
fireplace, with a blazing wood-fire. An old-fashioned screen sheltered
him from the draught of the ill-fitting windows, while a comfortable
buffalo rug was stretched under his feet. The Colonel was in his second
cigar, and in the drowsy mood of its easy enjoyment, when the harsh
accents of Mr. Ogden's voice startled him, by asking, “Can you inform me
if Lord Agincourt lives here?”
“You 're a Britisher now, I expect?” said the Colonel, as he slowly
puffed out a long volume of smoke, but never moved from his seat.
“My question having the precedence, sir, it will be, perhaps, more
regular to answer it first,” said Ogden, with a slow pertinacity.
“Well, I ain't quite sure o' that, stranger.” drawled out the other.
“Mine was a sort of an amendment, and so might be put before the
original motion.”
The remark chimed in well with the humor of one never indisposed to
word-fencing, and so he deferred to the suggestion, told his name and
his object in coming. “And now, sir,” added he, “I hope not to be deemed
indiscreet in asking an equal candor from you.”
“You ain't a doctor?” asked Quackinboss.
“No, sir; not a physician, at least.”
“That's a pity,” said Quackinboss, slowly, as he brushed the ashes off
his cigar. “Help yourself, stranger; that's claret, t'other's the
country wine, and this is cognac,--all three bad o' their kind; but, as
they say here to everything, 'Come si fa, eh? Come si fa!'”
“It is not from any disparagement of your hospitality, sir,” said Ogden,
somewhat pompously, “that I am forced to recall you to my first
question.”
“Come si fa!” repeated Quackinboss, still ruminating over the philosophy
of that expression, one of the very few he had ever succeeded in
committing to memory.
“Am I to conclude, sir, that you decline giving me the information I
ask?”
“I ain't in a witness-box, stranger. I 'm a-sittin' at my own fireside.
I 'm a-smokin' my Virginian, where I 've a right to, and if _you_ choose
to come in neighborly-like, and take a liquor with me, we 'll talk it
over, whatever it is; but if you think to come Holy Office and the
Inquisition over Shaver Quackinboss, you 've caught the wrong squirrel
by the tail, Britisher, you have!”
“I must say, sir, you have put a most forced and unfair construction
upon a very simple circumstance. I asked you if the Marquis of Agincourt
resided here?”
“And so you ain't a doctor?” said Quackinboss, pensively.
“No, sir; I have already told you as much.”
“Bred to the law, belike?”
“I _have_ studied, sir, but not practised as a lawyer.”
“Well, now, I expected you was!” said Quackinboss, with an air of self-
satisfaction. “You chaps betray yourselves sooner than any other class
in all creation; as Flay Harris says: 'A lawyer is a fellow won't drink
out of the bung-hole, but must always be for tapping the cask for
himself.' You ain't long in these parts?”
“No, sir; a very short time, indeed,” said Ogden, drearily.
“You needn't sigh about it, stranger, though it is main dull in these
diggin's! Here's a people that don't understand human natur'. What I
mean, sir, is, human natur' means goin' ahead; doin' a somewhat your
father and your grandfather never so much as dreamt of. But what are
these critturs about? Jest showin' the great things that was done
centuries before they was born,--what pictures and statues and monuments
their own ancestors could make, and of which they are jest showmen,
nothing more!”
“The Arts are Italy's noblest inheritance,” said Ogden, sententionsly.
“That ain't my platform, stranger. Civilization never got anything from
painters or sculptors. They never taught mankind to be truthful or
patient or self-denyin' or charitable. You may look at a bronze Hercules
till you 're black in the face, and it will never make you give a cent
to a lame cripple. I 'll go further again, stranger, and I 'll say that
there ain't anything has thrown so many stumblin'-blocks before pro-
gress as what you call the Arts, for there ain't the equal o' them to
make people idlers. What's all that loafing about galleries, I ask ye,
but the worst of all idling? If you want them sort of emotions, go to
the real article, sir. Look at an hospital, that's more life-like than
Gerard Dow and his dropsical woman,--ay, and may touch your heart,
belike, before you get away.”
“Though your conversation interests me much, sir, you will pardon my
observing that I feel myself an intruder.”
“No, you ain't; I'm jest in a talkin' humor, and I'd rather have _you_
than that Italian crittur, as don't understand me.”
“Even the flattery of your observation, sir, cannot make me forget that
another object claims my attention.”
“For I 've remarked,” resumed Quackinboss, as if in continuation of his
speech, “that a foreigner that don't know English wearies after a while
in listenin', even though you 're tellin' him very interesting things.”
“I perceive, sir,” said Ogden, rising, “that I have certainly been
mistaken in the address. I was told that at the Palazzo Barsotti--”
“Well, you 're jest there; that's what they call this ramshackle old
crazy consarn. Their palaces, bein' main like their nobility, would be
all the better for a little washin' and smartenin' up.”
“You can perhaps, however, inform me where Lord Agincourt _does_ live?”
“Well, he lives, as I may say, a little promiscuous. If he ain't _here_.
it's because he's _there!_ You understand?”
“I cannot say very confidently that I do understand,” said Ogden,
slowly.
“It was well as you was n't a practisin' lawyer, Britisher, for you
ain't smart! that's a fact. No, sir; you ain't smart!”
“Your countrymen's estimate of that quality has a high standard, sir,”
said Ogden, haughtily.
“What do you mean by my countrymen?” asked the other, quickly.
“I ventured to presume that you were an American,” said Ogden, with a
supercilious smile.
“Well, stranger, you were main right; though darn me con-siderable if I
know how you discovered it. Don't you be a-goin', now that we 're
gettin' friendly together. Set down a bit. Maybe you 'd taste a morsel
of something.”
“Excuse me, I have just dined.”
“Well, mix a summut in your glass. It's a rare pleasure to me, stranger,
to have a chat with a man as talks like a Christian. I'm tired of 'Come
si fa,'--that's a fact, sir.”
“I regret that I cannot profit by your polite invitation,” said Ogden,
bowing stiffly. “I had been directed to this house as the residence of
Lord Agincourt and his tutor; and as neither of them live here--”
“Who told you that? There's one of them a-bed in that room there; he's
caught swamp-fever, and it's gone up to the head. He's the tutor,--poor
fellow.”
“And the Marquis?”
“The Marquis! he's a small parcel to have such a big direction on him,
ain't he? He's at a villa, a few miles off; but he 'll be over here to-
morrow morning.”
“You are quite sure of that?” asked Ogden.
“Yes, sir,” said Quackinboss, drinking off his glass, and nodding, in
token of salutation.
“I must beg you to accept my excuses for this intrusion on my part,”
began Ogden.
“Jest set you down there again; there's a point I 'd like to be cleared
up about I 'm sure you 'll not refuse me. Jest set down.”
Ogden resumed his seat, although with an air and manner of no small
disinclination.
“No wine, thank you. Excuse me,” said he, stiffly, as Quackinboss tried
to fill his glass.
“You remarked awhile ago,” said Quackinboss, slowly, and like a man
weighing all his words, “that I was an American born. Now, sir, it ain't
a very likely thing that any man who was ever raised in the States is
goin' to deny it. It ain't, I say, very probable as he 'd say I'm a
Chinese, or a Mexican, or a Spaniard; no, nor a Britisher. Whatever we
do in this life, stranger, one thing, I suppose, is pretty certain,--we
don't say the worst of ourselves. Ain't that your platform, sir?”
“I agree to the general principle.”
“Agreein', then, to the gen'ral principle, here's where we go next, for
I ain't a-goin' to let you off, Britisher; I 've got a harpoon in you
now, and I 'll tow you after me into shoal water; see if I don't.
Agreein', as we say, to the gen'ral principle, that no man likes to make
his face blacker than it need be, what good could it do me to say that I
wasn't born a free citizen of the freest country of the universe?”
“I am really at a loss to see how I am interested in this matter. I have
not, besides, that perfect leisure abstract discussion requires. You
will forgive me if I take my leave.” He moved hastily towards the door
as he spoke, followed by Quackinboss, whose voice had now assumed the
full tones and the swelling modulations of public oratory.
“That great land, sanctified by the blood of the pilgrim fathers, and
whose proudest boast it is that from the first day, when the star-
spangled banner of Freedom dallied with the wind and scorned the sun,
waving its barred folds over the heads of routed enemies,--to that
glorious consummation, when, from the rugged plains of New England to
the golden groves of Florida--”
“Good-bye, sir,--good-evening,” said Ogden, passing out and gaining the
landing-place.
“--One universal shout, floating over the Atlantic waters, proclaimed to
the Old World that the 'Young' was alive and kickin'--”
“Good-night,” cried Ogden, from the bottom of the stairs; and
Quackinboss re-entered his chamber and banged the door after him,
muttering something to himself about Lexington and Concord, Columbus and
Quincy Adams.