white hair be;
Here gape your great grand-sons--their wives gaze at them from the
windows,
See how well dressed--see how orderly they conduct themselves.
Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?
Is this hour with the living too dead for you?
Retreat then! Pell-mell!
To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers!
I do not think you belong here, anyhow.
But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it is,
gentlemen of Boston?
I will whisper it to the Mayor--he shall send a committee to England;
They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the
royal vault--haste!
Dig out King George's coffin, unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes,
box up his bones for a journey;
Find a swift Yankee clipper--here is freight for you, black-bellied
clipper,
Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward
Boston bay.
Now call for the President's marshal again, bring put the government
cannon,
Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession, guard
it with foot and dragoons.
This centre-piece for them:
Look! all orderly citizens--look from the windows, women!
The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that
will not stay,
Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the
skull.
You have got your revenge, old buster! The crown is come to its own,
and more than its own.
Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan--you are a made man from
this day;
You are mighty cute--and here is one of your bargains.
THE CHIEF MATE
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
My first glimpse of Europe was the shore of Spain. Since we got into the
Mediterranean, we have been becalmed for some days within easy view of
it. All along are fine mountains, brown all day, and with a bloom on
them at sunset like that of a ripe plum. Here and there at their feet
little white towns are sprinkled along the edge of the water, like the
grains of rice dropped by the princess in the story. Sometimes we see
larger buildings on the mountain slopes, probably convents. I sit and
wonder whether the farther peaks may not be the Sierra Morena (the rusty
saw) of Don Quixote. I resolve that they shall be, and am content.
Surely latitude and longitude never showed me any particular respect,
that I should be over-scrupulous with them.
But after all, Nature, though she may be more beautiful, is nowhere so
entertaining as in man, and the best thing I have seen and learned at
sea is our Chief Mate. My first acquaintance with him was made over my
knife, which he asked to look at, and, after a critical examination,
handed back to me, saying, "I shouldn't wonder if that 'ere was a good
piece o' stuff." Since then he has transferred a part of his regard for
my knife to its owner. I like folks who like an honest bit of steel, and
take no interest whatever in "your Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff."
There is always more than the average human nature in the man who has a
hearty sympathy with iron. It is a manly metal, with no sordid
associations like gold and silver. My sailor fully came up to my
expectation on further acquaintance. He might well be called an old salt
who had been wrecked on Spitzbergen before I was born. He was not an
American, but I should never have guessed it by his speech, which was
the purest Cape Cod, and I reckon myself a good taster of dialects. Nor
was he less Americanized in all his thoughts and feelings, a singular
proof of the ease with which our omnivorous country assimilates foreign
matter, provided it be Protestant, for he was a man ere he became an
American citizen. He used to walk the deck with his hands in his
pockets, in seeming abstraction, but nothing escaped his eyes. _How_ he
saw I could never make out, though I had a theory that it was with his
elbows. After he had taken me (or my knife) into his confidence, he took
care that I should see whatever he deemed of interest to a landsman.
Without looking up, he would say, suddenly, "There's a whale blowin'
clearn up to win'ard," or, "Them's porpises to leeward: that means
change o' wind." He is as impervious to cold as a polar bear, and paces
the deck during his watch much as one of those yellow hummocks goes
slumping up and down his cage. On the Atlantic, if the wind blew a gale
from the northeast, and it was cold as an English summer, he was sure to
turn out in a calico shirt and trousers, his furzy brown chest half
bare, and slippers, without stockings. But lest you might fancy this to
have chanced by defect of wardrobe, he comes out in a monstrous
pea-jacket here in the Mediterranean, when the evening is so hot that
Adam would have been glad to leave off his fig-leaves. "It's a kind o'
damp and unwholesome in these ere waters," he says, evidently regarding
the Midland Sea as a vile standing pool, in comparison with the bluff
ocean. At meals he is superb, not only for his strengths, but his
weaknesses. He has somehow or other come to think me a wag, and if I ask
him to pass the butter, detects an occult joke, and laughs as much as is
proper for a mate. For you must know that our social hierarchy on
shipboard is precise, and the second mate, were he present, would only
laugh half as much as the first. Mr. X. always combs his hair, and works
himself into a black frock-coat (on Sundays he adds a waist-coat) before
he comes to meals, sacrificing himself nobly and painfully to the social
proprieties. The second mate, on the other hand, who eats after us,
enjoys the privilege of shirt-sleeves, and is, I think, the happier man
of the two. We do not have seats above and below the salt, as in old
time, but above and below the white sugar. Mr. X. always takes brown
sugar, and it is delightful to see how he ignores the existence of
certain delicates which he considers above his grade, tipping his head
on one side with an air of abstraction so that he may seem not to deny
himself, but to omit helping himself from inadvertence, or absence of
mind. At such times he wrinkles his forehead in a peculiar manner,
inscrutable at first as a cuneiform inscription, but as easily read
after you once get the key. The sense of it is something like this: "I,
X., know my place, a height of wisdom attained by few. Whatever you may
think, I do _not_ see that currant jelly, nor that preserved grape.
Especially a kind Providence has made me blind to bowls of white sugar,
and deaf to the pop of champagne corks. It is much that a merciful
compensation gives me a sense of the dingier hue of Havana, and the
muddier gurgle of beer. Are there potted meats? My physician has ordered
me three pounds of minced salt-junk at every meal." There is such a
thing, you know, as a ship's husband: X. is the ship's poor relation.
As I have said, he takes also a below-the-white-sugar interest in the
jokes, laughing by precise point of compass, just as he would lay the
ship's course, all _yawing_ being out of the question with his
scrupulous decorum at the helm. Once or twice I have got the better of
him, and touched him off into a kind of compromised explosion, like that
of damp fireworks, that splutter and simmer a little, and then go out
with painful slowness and occasional relapses. But his fuse is always of
the unwillingest, and you must blow your match, and touch him off again
and again with the same joke. Or rather, you must magnetize him many
times to get him _en rapport_ with a jest. This once accomplished, you
have him, and one bit of fun will last the whole voyage. He prefers
those of one syllable, the _a-b abs_ of humor. The gradual fattening of
the steward, a benevolent mulatto with whiskers and ear-rings, who looks
as if he had been meant for a woman, and had become a man by accident,
as in some of those stories by the elder physiologists, is an abiding
topic of humorous comment with Mr. X. "That 'ere stooard," he says, with
a brown grin like what you might fancy on the face of a serious and aged
seal, "'s agittin' as fat's a porpis. He was as thin's a shingle when he
come aboord last v'yge. Them trousis'll bust yit. He don't darst take
'em off nights, for the whole ship's company couldn't git him into 'em
agin." And then he turns aside to enjoy the intensity of his emotion by
himself, and you hear at intervals low rumblings, an indigestion of
laughter. He tells me of St. Elmo's fires, Marvell's _corposants_,
though with him the original _corpos santos_ has suffered a sea change,
and turned to _comepleasants_, pledges of fine weather. I shall not soon
find a pleasanter companion. It is so delightful to meet a man who knows
just what you do _not_. Nay, I think the tired mind finds something in
plump ignorance like what the body feels in cushiony moss. Talk of the
sympathy of kindred pursuits! It is the sympathy of the upper and nether
mill-stones, both forever grinding the same grist, and wearing each
other smooth. One has not far to seek for book-nature, artist-nature,
every variety of superinduced nature, in short, but genuine human-nature
is hard to find. And how good it is! Wholesome as a potato, fit company
for any dish. The free masonry of cultivated men is agreeable, but
artificial, and I like better the natural grip with which manhood
recognizes manhood.
X. has one good story, and with that I leave him, wishing him with all
my heart that little inland farm at last which is his calenture as he
paces the windy deck. One evening, when the clouds looked wild and
whirling, I asked X. if it was coming on to blow. "No, I guess not,"
said he; "bumby the moon'll be up, and scoff away that 'ere loose
stuff." His intonation set the phrase "scoff away" in quotation-marks as
plain as print. So I put a query in each eye, and he went on. "Ther' was
a Dutch cappen onct, an' his mate come to him in the cabin, where he sot
takin' his schnapps, an' says, 'Cappen, it's agittin' thick, an' looks
kin' o' squally, hedn't we's good's shorten sail?' 'Gimmy my alminick,'
says the cappen. So he looks at it a spell, an' says he, 'The moon's due
in less'n half an hour, an' she'll scoff away ev'ythin' clare agin.' So
the mate he goes, an' bumby down he comes agin, an' says, 'Cappen, this
'ere's the allfiredest, powerfullest moon 't ever you _did_ see. She's
scoffed away the main-togallants'l, an' she's to work on the foretops'l
now. Guess you'd better look in the alminick agin, and fin' out when
_this_ moon sets.' So the cappen thought 'twas 'bout time to go on deck.
Dreadful slow them Dutch cappens be." And X. walked away, rumbling
inwardly, like the rote of the sea heard afar.
THE ROAD TO A WOMAN'S HEART
BY SAM SLICK
As we approached the inn at Amherst, the Clockmaker grew uneasy. "It's
pretty well on in the evening, I guess," said he, "and Marm Pugwash is
as onsartin in her temper as a mornin' in April; it's all sunshine or
all clouds with her, and if she's in one of her tantrums she'll stretch
out her neck and hiss like a goose with a flock of goslin's. I wonder
what on airth Pugwash was a-thinkin' on when he signed articles of
partnership with that are woman; she's not a bad-lookin' piece of
furniture, neither, and it's a proper pity sich a clever woman should
carry sich a stiff upper lip. She reminds me of our old minister Joshua
Hopewell's apple-trees.
"The old minister had an orchard of most particular good fruit, for he
was a great hand at buddin', graftin', and what not, and the orchard (it
was on the south side of the house) stretched right up to the road.
Well, there were some trees hung over the fence, I never seed such
bearers: the apples hung in ropes, for all the world like strings of
onions, and the fruit was beautiful. Nobody touched the minister's
apples, and when other folks lost their'n from the boys, his'n always
hung there like bait t' a hook, but there never was so much as a nibble
at 'em. So I said to him one day, 'Minister,' said I, 'how on airth do
you manage to keep your fruit that's so exposed, when no one else can't
do it nohow?' 'Why,' says he, 'they are dreadfully pretty fruit, ain't
they?' 'I guess,' said I, 'there ain't the like on 'em in all
Connecticut.' 'Well,' says he, 'I'll tell you the secret, but you
needn't let on to no one about it. That are row next the fence, I
grafted it myself: I took great pains to get the right kind. I sent
clean up to Roxberry and away down to Squawneck Creek.' I was afeard he
was a-goin' to give me day and date for every graft, bein' a terrible
long-winded man in his stories; so says I, 'I know that, minister, but
how do you preserve them?' 'Why, I was a-goin' to tell you,' said he,
'when you stopped me. That are outward row I grafted myself with the
choicest kind I could find, and I succeeded. They are beautiful, but so
etarnal sour, no human soul can eat them. Well, the boys think the old
minister's graftin' has all succeeded about as well as that row, and
they sarch no further. They snicker at my graftin', and I laugh in my
sleeve, I guess, at their penetration.'
"Now, Marm Pugwash is like the minister's apples, very temptin' fruit to
look at, but desperate sour. If Pugwash had a watery mouth when he
married, I guess it's pretty puckery by this time. However, if she goes
to act ugly, I'll give her a dose of 'soft sawder' that will take the
frown out of her frontispiece and make her dial-plate as smooth as a
lick of copal varnish. It's a pity she's such a kickin' devil, too, for
she has good points,--good eye, good foot, neat pastern, fine chest, a
clean set of limbs, and carries a good--But here we are. Now you'll see
what 'soft sawder' will do."
When we entered the house, the travelers' room was all in darkness, and
on opening the opposite door into the sitting-room we found the female
part of the family extinguishing the fire for the night. Mrs. Pugwash
had a broom in her hand, and was in the act (the last act of female
housewifery) of sweeping the hearth. The strong flickering light of the
fire, as it fell upon her tall, fine figure and beautiful face,
revealed a creature worthy of the Clockmaker's comments.
"Good evening, marm," said Mr. Slick. "How do you do? and how's Mr.
Pugwash?" "He!" said she: "why, he's been abed this hour. You don't
expect to disturb him this time of night, I hope?" "Oh, no," said Mr.
Slick, "certainly not, and I am sorry to have disturbed you, but we got
detained longer than we expected; I am sorry that--" "So am I," said
she, "but if Mr. Pugwash will keep an inn when he has no occasion to,
his family can't expect no rest."
Here the Clockmaker, seeing the storm gathering, stooped down suddenly,
and, staring intently, held out his hand and exclaimed: "Well, if that
ain't a beautiful child! Come here, my little man, and shake hands along
with me. Well, I declare, if that are little feller ain't the finest
child I ever seed. What, not abed yet? Ah, you rogue, where did you get
them are pretty rosy cheeks? Stole them from mama, eh? Well, I wish my
old mother could see that child, it is such a treat. In our country,"
said he, turning to me, "the children are all as pale as chalk or as
yaller as an orange. Lord! that are little feller would be a show in our
country. Come to me, my man." Here the "soft sawder" began to operate.
Mrs. Pugwash said, in a milder tone than we had yet heard, "Go, my dear,
to the gentleman; go, dear." Mr. Slick kissed him, asked him if he would
go to the States along with him, told him all the little girls would
fall in love with him, for they didn't see such a beautiful face once in
a month of Sundays. "Black eyes,--let me see,--ah, mama's eyes, too, and
black hair also; as I am alive, you are mama's own boy, the very image
of mama." "Do be seated, gentlemen," said Mrs. Pugwash. "Sally, make a
fire in the next room." "She ought to be proud of you," he continued.
"Well, if I live to return here, I must paint your face, and have it put
on my clocks, and our folks will buy the clocks for the sake of the
face. Did you ever see," said he, again addressing me, "such a likeness
between one human and another, as between this beautiful little boy and
his mother?" "I am sure you have had no supper," said Mrs. Pugwash to
me; "you must be hungry, and weary, too. I will get you a cup of tea."
"I am sorry to give you so much trouble," said I. "Not the least trouble
in the world," she replied; "on the contrary, a pleasure."
We were then shown into the next room, where the fire was now blazing
up, but Mr. Slick protested he could not proceed without the little boy,
and lingered behind to ascertain his age, and concluded by asking the
child if he had any aunts that looked like mama.
As the door closed Mr. Slick said, "It's a pity she don't go well in
gear. The difficulty with those critters is to git them to start: arter
that there is no trouble with them, if you don't check 'em too short. If
you do they'll stop again, run back and kick like mad, and then Old Nick
himself wouldn't start 'em. Pugwash, I guess, don't understand the
natur' of the crittur; she'll never go kind in harness for him. _When I
see a child_," said the Clockmaker, "_I always feel safe with these
women-folk; for I have always found that the road to a woman's heart
lies through her child_."
"You seem," said I, "to understand the female heart so well, I make no
doubt you are a general favorite among the fair sex." "Any man," he
replied, "that understands horses has a pretty considerable fair
knowledge of women, for they are jist alike in temper, and require the
very identical same treatment. _Encourage the timid ones, be gentle and
steady with the fractious, but lather the sulky ones like blazes._
"People talk an everlastin' sight of nonsense about wine, women and
horses. I've bought and sold 'em all, I've traded in all of them, and I
tell you there ain't one in a thousand that knows a grain about either
on 'em. You hear folks say, Oh, such a man is an ugly-grained critter,
he'll break his wife's heart; jist as if a woman's heart was as brittle
as a pipe-stalk. The female heart, as far as my experience goes, is jist
like a new india-rubber shoe: you may pull and pull at it till it
stretches out a yard long, and then let go, and it will fly right back
to its old shape. Their hearts are made of stout leather, I tell you;
there's a plaguy sight of wear in 'em.
"I never knowed but one case of a broken heart, and that was in t'other
sex, one Washington Banks. He was a sneezer. He was tall enough to spit
down on the heads of your grenadiers, and near about high enough to wade
across Charlestown River, and as strong as a tow-boat. I guess he was
somewhat less than a foot longer than the moral law and catechism, too.
He was a perfect pictur' of a man; you couldn't fault him in no
particular, he was so just a made critter; folks used to run to the
winder when he passed, and say, 'There goes Washington Banks; beant he
lovely!' I do believe there wasn't a gal in the Lowell factories that
warn't in love with him. Sometimes, at intermission, on Sabbath-days,
when they all came out together (an amazin' handsom' sight, too, near
about a whole congregation of young gals), Banks used to say, 'I vow,
young ladies, I wish I had five hundred arms to reciprocate one with
each of you; but I reckon I have a heart big enough for you all; it's a
whopper, you may depend, and every mite and morsel of it at your
service.' 'Well, how you do act, Mr. Banks!' half a thousand little
clipper-clapper tongues would say, all at the same time, and their dear
little eyes sparklin' like so many stars twinklin' of a frosty night.
"Well, when I last seed him he was all skin and bone, like a horse
turned out to die. He was teetotally defleshed, a mere walkin' skeleton.
'I am dreadful sorry,' says I, 'to see you, Banks, lookin' so peaked.
Why, you look like a sick turkey-hen, all legs! What on airth ails you?'
'I'm dyin', says he, '_of a broken heart_.' 'What!' I says I, 'have the
gals been jiltin' you?' 'No, no,' says he; 'I beant such a fool as that,
neither.' 'Well,' says I, 'have you made a bad speculation?' 'No,' says
he, shakin' his head, 'I hope I have too much clear grit in me to take
on so bad for that.' 'What under the sun is it, then?' said I. 'Why,'
says he, 'I made a bet the fore part of the summer with Leftenant Oby
Knowles that I could shoulder the best bower of the Constitution
frigate. I won my bet, _but the anchor was so etarnal heavy that it
broke my heart_.' Sure enough, he did die that very fall; and he was the
only instance I ever heard tell of a _broken heart_."
ICARUS
BY JOHN G. SAXE
I
All modern themes of poesy are spun so very fine,
That now the most amusing muse, _e gratia_, such as mine,
Is often forced to cut the thread that strings our recent rhymes,
And try the stronger staple of the good old classic times.
II
There lived and flourished long ago, in famous Athens town,
One _Dædalus_, a carpenter of genius and renown;
('Twas he who with an _auger_ taught mechanics how to _bore_,--
An art which the philosophers monopolized before.)
III
His only son was _Icarus_, a most precocious lad,
The pride of Mrs. Dædalus, the image of his dad;
And while he yet was in his teens such progress he had made,
He'd got above his father's size, and much above his trade.
IV
Now _Dædalus_, the carpenter, had made a pair of wings,
Contrived of wood and feathers and a cunning set of springs,
By means of which the wearer could ascend to any height,
And sail about among the clouds as easy as a kite!
V
"O father," said young _Icarus_, "how I should like to fly!
And go like you where all is blue along the upper sky;
How very charming it would be above the moon to climb,
And scamper through the Zodiac, and have a high old time!
VI
"Oh wouldn't it be jolly, though,--to stop at all the inns;
To take a luncheon at 'The Crab,' and tipple at 'The Twins';
And, just for fun and fancy, while careering through the air,
To kiss the _Virgin_, tease the _Ram_, and bait the biggest _Bear_?
VII
"O father, please to let me go!" was still the urchin's cry;
"I'll be extremely careful, sir, and won't go _very_ high;
Oh if this little pleasure-trip you only will allow,
I promise to be back again in time to fetch the cow!"
VIII
"You're rather young," said Dædalus, "to tempt the upper air;
But take the wings, and mind your eye with very special care;
And keep at least a thousand miles below the nearest star;
Young lads, when out upon a lark, are apt to go too far!"
IX
He took the wings--that foolish boy--without the least dismay;
His father stuck 'em on with wax, and so he soared away;
Up, up he rises, like a bird, and not a moment stops
Until he's fairly out of sight beyond the mountain-tops!
X
And still he flies--away--away; it seems the merest fun;
No marvel he is getting bold, and aiming at the sun;
No marvel he forgets his sire; it isn't very odd
That one so far above the earth should think himself a god!
XI
Already, in his silly pride, he's gone too far aloft;
The heat begins to scorch his wings; the wax is waxing soft;
Down--down he goes!--Alas!--next day poor Icarus was found
Afloat upon the Ægean Sea, extremely damp and drowned!
L'ENVOI
The moral of this mournful tale is plain enough to all:--
Don't get above your proper sphere, or you may chance to fall;
Remember, too, that borrowed plumes are most uncertain things;
And never try to scale the sky with other people's wings!
VIVE LA BAGATELLE
("_Swift's Cheerful Creed_")
BY CLINTON SCOLLARD
A bumper to the jolly Dean
Who, in "Augustan" times,
Made merriment for fat and lean
In jocund prose and rhymes!
Ah, but he drove a pranksome quill!
With quips he wove a spell;
His creed--he cried it with a will--
Was "_Vive la bagatelle!_"
Oh, there were reckless jesters then!
And when a man was hit,
He quick returned the stroke again
With trenchant blade of wit.
'Twas parry, thrust, and counter-thrust
That round the board befell;
They quaffed the wine and crunched the crust
With "_Vive la bagatelle!_"
How rang the genial laugh of Gay
At Pope's defiant ire!
How Parnell's sallies brought in play
The rapier wit of Prior!
And how o'er all the banter's shift--
The laughter's fall and swell--
Upleaped the great guffaw of Swift,
With "_Vive la bagatelle!_"
O moralist, frown not so dark,
Purse not thy lip severe;
'T will warm the heart if ye but hark
The mirth of "yester year."
To-day we wear too grave a face;
We slave,--we buy and sell;
Forget a while mad Mammon's race
In "_Vive la bagatelle!_"
A STACCATO TO O LE LUPE
BY BLISS CARMAN
O Le Lupe, Gelett Burgess, this is very sad to find:
In _The Bookman_ for September, in a manner most unkind,
There appears a half-page picture, makes me think I've lost my mind.