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CONTENTS: The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table The Professor at the Breakfast-table The Poet at the Breakfast Table Over the Teacups Elsie Venner The Guardian Angel A Mortal Antipathy Pages from an Old Volume of Life Bread and the Newspaper My Hunt after "The Captain" The Inevitable Trial Cinders from Ashes The Pulpit and the Pew Medical Essays Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science Scholastic and Bedside Teaching The Medical Profession in Massachusetts The Young Practitioner Medical Libraries Some of My Early Teachers Scanned and proofed by David Price <ccx074@coventry.ac.uk> THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE by Oliver Wendell Holmes THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. THE interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of these papers was just a quarter of a century in duration. Two articles entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" will be found in the "New England Magazine," formerly published in Boston by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date of the first of these articles is November 1831, and that of the second February 1832. When "The Atlantic Monthly" was begun, twenty-five years afterwards, and the author was asked to write for it, the recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary boyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experiment to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the early windfalls. So began this series of papers, which naturally brings those earlier attempts to my own notice and that of some few friends who were idle enough to read them at the time of their publication. The man is father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as it seems to me, in those papers of the New England Magazine. If I find it hard to pardon the boy's faults, others would find it harder. They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as I hope, anywhere. But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and with these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being still breathes, will be contented. - "It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation." - - "When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their fhape and luftre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the fineft fimile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will fhow you a fingle word which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent analogy." - - "Once on a time, a notion was ftarted, that if all the people in the world would fhout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it fhould be done in juft ten years. Some thousand fhip-loads of chronometers were diftributed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the great occafion. When the time came, everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the universal ejaculation of BOO, - the word agreed upon, - that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never so ftill fince the creation." - There was nothing better than these things and there was not a little that was much worse. A young fellow of two or three and twenty has as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of essays in learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his hat-full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or an ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an armful of failures in the attempt to achieve a perfect tie. This son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised fancies. He, like too many American young people, got the spur when he should have had the rein. He therefore helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these papers abounds in the marts of his native country. All these by- gone shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not feel sure that very few of his readers know anything about them. In taking the old name for the new papers, he felt bound to say that he had uttered unwise things under that title, and if it shall appear that his unwisdom has not diminished by at least half while his years have doubled, he promises not to repeat the experiment if he should live to double them again and become his own grandfather. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. BOSTON. NOV. 1ST 1858. CHAPTER I I WAS JUST going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2+2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression A+B=C. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of figures. They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us to whom I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to take a certain share in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent questions are involved. He abused his liberty on this occasion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the same observation. - No, sir, I replied, he has not. But he said a mighty good thing about mathematics, that sounds something like it, and you found it, NOT IN THE ORIGINAL, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. I will tell the company what he did say, one of these days. - If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration? - I blush to say that I do not at this present moment. I once did, however. It was the first association to which I ever heard the term applied; a body of scientific young men in a great foreign city who admired their teacher, and to some extent each other. Many of them deserved it; they have become famous since. It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings described by Thackeray - "Letters four do form his name" - about a social development which belongs to the very noblest stage of civilization. All generous companies of artists, authors, philanthropists, men of science, are, or ought to be, Societies of Mutual Admiration. A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is not debarred from admiring the same quality in another, nor the other from returning his admiration. They may even associate together and continue to think highly of each other. And so of a dozen such men, if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so many. The being referred to above assumes several false premises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate each other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge or habitual association destroys our admiration of persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance. Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet together to dine and have a good time, have signed a constitutional compact to glorify themselves and to put down him and the fraction of the human race not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is an outrage that he is not asked to join them. Here the company laughed a good deal, and the old gentleman who sits opposite said, "That's it! that's it!" I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to clever people's hating each other, I think a LITTLE extra talent does sometimes make people jealous. They become irritated by perpetual attempts and failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions. Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke of, who always belongs to this class of slightly flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by the strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working and playing together in harmony. He and his fellows are always fighting. With them familiarity naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise each other's bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or spavined verses, nobody ever supposed it was from admiration; it was simply a contract between themselves and a publisher or dealer. If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that alters the question. But if they are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would literature or art be without such associations? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among all admirers, met together? Was there any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and as many more as they chose to associate with them? The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he abuses this noblest of institutions. Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a literary metropolis; if a town has not material for it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put together. - All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "facts." They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts" at this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech? [The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind. The reader will of course understand the precise amount of seasoning which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all responsibility for its abuse in incompetent hands.] This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow after the operation. There are men of ESPRIT who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called JERKY minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel. What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds. "Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady-boarders, - the same that sent me her autograph-book last week with a request for a few original stanzas, not remembering that "The Pactolian" pays me five dollars a line for every thing I write in its columns. "Madam," said I, (she and the century were in their teens together,) "all men are bores, except when we want them. There never was but one man whom I would trust with my latch-key." "Who might that favored person be?" "Zimmermann." - The men of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the great pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain with blood are only second in importance to its own organization. The bulbous-headed fellows that steam well when they are at work are the men that draw big audiences and give us marrowy books and pictures. It is a good sign to have one's feet grow cold when he is writing. A great writer and speaker once told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot water; but for this, ALL his blood would have run into his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into the ball of a thermometer. - You don't suppose that my remarks made at this table are like so many postage-stamps, do you, - each to be only once uttered? If you do, you are mistaken. He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, "Know thyself," never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools; and do you think a carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations. Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech twice over, and yet be held blameless. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an inland city, where dwells a LITTERATRICE of note, was invited to meet her and others over the social teacup. She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his new occupation. "Yes," he replied, "I am like the Huma, the bird that never lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on the wing." - Years elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once more for the same purpose. Another social cup after the lecture, and a second meeting with the distinguished lady. "You are constantly going from place to place," she said. - "Yes," he answered, "I am like the Huma," - and finished the sentence as before. What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine speech, word for word, twice over! Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversation with the Huma daily during that whole interval of years. On the contrary, he had never once thought of the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely the same circumstances brought up precisely the same idea. He ought to have been proud of the accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain factors, and a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed product with the certainty of Babbage's calculating machine. - What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; that turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of them! I have an immense respect for a man of talents PLUS "the mathematics." But the calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than any one of them. Sometimes I have been troubled that I had not a deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking in a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with numbers is a kind of "detached lever" arrangement, which may be put into a mighty poor watch - I suppose it is about as common as the power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a moderately rare endowment. - Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks of specialized knowledge, are things men are very apt to be conceited about. Nature is very wise; but for this encouraging principle how many small talents and little accomplishments would be neglected! Talk about conceit as much as you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plumage, which enables him to shed the rain that falls on him and the wave in which he dips. When one has had ALL his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost ALL his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more. "So you admire conceited people, do you?" said the young lady who has come to the city to be finished off for - the duties of life. I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, my dear. It does not follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little- minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not obviously imply any individual centre. Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is always imposing. What resplendent beauty that must have been which could have authorized Phryne to "peel" in the way she did! What fine speeches are those two: "NON OMNIS MORTAR," and "I have taken all knowledge to be my province"! Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times. - What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks than anything else; - long arguments on special points between people who differ on the fundamental principles upon which these points depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on certain ULTIMATA of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the secondary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short, just as a written constitution is essential to the best social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between two persons. Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music. - Do you mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and VERBICIDE - that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life - are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man's laughter, which is the end of the other. A pun is PRIMA FACIE an insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on the subject is deep raving. I have committed my self-respect by talking with such a person. I should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any modern inundation. A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity was like a top? It was in evidence that Doe preserved a dignified silence. Roe then said, "When it begins to hum." Doe then - and not till then - struck Roe, and his head happening to hit a bound volume of the Monthly Rag-bag and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification ensued, with a fatal result. The chief laid down his notions of the law to his brother justices, who unanimously replied, "Jest so." The chief rejoined, that no man should jest so without being punished for it, and charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted, and the pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. The bound volume was forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed. People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism. I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land-lady's youngest, is called BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, after the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly merited compliment.) I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist says: "To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion." And, once more, listen to the historian. "The Puritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its Royal quibble. 'Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,' said Queen Elizabeth, 'but ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.' The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared himself a descendant of 'Og, the King of Bashan. Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the soldier who brought him water, for wasting a casque full upon a dying man. A courtier, who saw Othello performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute, and not a man. 'Thou hast reason,' replied a great Lord, 'according to Plato his saying; for this be a two- legged animal WITH feathers.' The fatal habit became universal. The language was corrupted. The infection spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of the Stuarts." Who was that boarder that just whispered something about the Macaulay-flowers of literature? - There was a dead silence. - I said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If I have used any such, it has been only as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. We have done with them. - If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic? - I should say that its most frequent work was to build a PONS ASINORUM over chasms which shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, which couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other. Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I understand truth, - not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a good chess-player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because he wrangles or plays well. The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the expression, "his relations with truth, as I understand truth," and when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense was good enough for him. Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied; common sense, AS YOU UNDERSTAND IT. We all have to assume a standard of judgment in our own minds, either of things or persons. A man who is willing to take another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the choice of whom to follow, which is often as nice a matter as to judge of things for one's self. On the whole, I had rather judge men's minds by comparing their thoughts with my own, than judge of thoughts by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not recognize another man's thoughts as broader and deeper than my own; but that does not necessarily change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the mercy of every superior mind that held a different one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are like those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down! I have sometimes compared conversation to the Italian game of MORA, in which one player lifts his hand with so many fingers extended, and the other gives the number if he can. I show my thought, another his; if they agree, well; if they differ, we find the largest common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid disputing about remainders and fractions, which is to real talk what tuning an instrument is to playing on it. - What if, instead of talking this morning, I should read you a copy of verses, with critical remarks by the author? Any of the company can retire that like. ALBUM VERSES. When Eve had led her lord away, And Cain had killed his brother, The stars and flowers, the poets say, Agreed with one another To cheat the cunning tempter's art, And teach the race its duty, By keeping on its wicked heart Their eyes of light and beauty. A million sleepless lids, they say, Will be at least a warning; And so the flowers would watch by day, The stars from eve to morning. On hill and prairie, field and lawn, Their dewy eyes upturning, The flowers still watch from reddening dawn Till western skies are burning. Alas! each hour of daylight tells A tale of shame so crushing, That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, And some are always blushing. But when the patient stars look down On all their light discovers, The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown, The lips of lying lovers, They try to shut their saddening eyes, And in the vain endeavour We see them twinkling in the skies, And so they wink forever. What do YOU think of these verses my friends? - Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19 +. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says "Yes?" when you tell her anything.) - OUI ET NON, MA PETITE, - Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven verses were written off-hand; the other two took a week, - that is, were hanging round the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as long as that. All poets will tell you just such stories. C'EST LE DERNIER PAS QUI COUTE. Don't you know how hard it is for some people to get out of a room after their visit is really over? They want to be off, and you want to have them off, but they don't know how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your parlour or study, and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their "native element," the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable rhymes, DAY, RAY, BEAUTY, DUTY, SKIES, EYES, OTHER, BROTHER, MOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN, and the like; and so they go on until you think it is time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and turning them out of doors. I suspect a good many "impromptus" could tell just such a story as the above. - Here turning to our landlady, I used an illustration which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been highly commanded. "Madam," I said, "you can pour three gills and three quarters of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in less than one minute; but, Madam, you could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel upside down for a thousand years. One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such as you see in that copy of verses, - which I don't mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top- leathers to an old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am fitting sentiments to these venerable jingles. . . . . youth . . . . . morning . . . . . truth . . . . . warning Nine tenths of the "Juvenile Poems" written spring out of the above musical and suggestive coincidences. "Yes?" said our landlady's daughter. I did not address the following remark to her, and I trust, from her limited range of reading, she will never see it; I said it softly to my next neighbour. When a young female wears a flat circular side - curl, gummed on each temple, - when she walks with a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against the back of hers, - and when she says "Yes?" with the note of interrogation, you are generally safe in asking her what wages she gets, and who the "feller" was you saw her with. "What were you whispering?" said the daughter of the house, moistening her lips, as she spoke, in a very engaging manner. "I was only laying down a principle of social diagnosis." "Yes?" - It is curious to see how the same wants and tastes find the same implements and modes of expression in all times and places. The young ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the largest spread of our own lady-baskets. When I fling a Bay-State shawl over my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from the climate that the Indian had learned before me. A BLANKET-shawl we call it, and not a plaid; and we wear it like the aborigines, and not like the Highlanders. - We are the Romans of the modern world, - the great assimilating people. Conflicts and conquests are of course necessary accidents with us, as with our prototypes. And so we come to their style of weapon. Our army sword is the short, stiff, pointed GLADIUS of the Romans; and the American bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to meet the daily wants of civil society. I announce at this table an axiom not to be found in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress:- The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries. COROLLARY. It was the Polish LANCE that left Poland at last with nothing of her own to bound. "Dropped from her nerveless grasp the SHATTERED SPEAR!" What business had Sarmatia to be fighting for liberty with a fifteen-foot pole between her and the breasts of her enemies? If she had but clutched the old Roman and young American weapon, and come to close quarters, there might have been a chance for her; but it would have spoiled the best passage in "The Pleasures of Hope." - Self-made men? - Well, yes. Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all. Are any of you younger people old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. They never thought of praising the fine blocks of houses a little farther on. Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that is all, than the regular engine- turned article, shaped by the most approved pattern, and French- polished by society and travel. But as to saying that one is every way the equal of the other, that is another matter. The right of strict social discrimination of all things and persons, according to their merits, native or acquired, is one of the most precious republican privileges. I take the liberty to exercise it, when I say, that, OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, in most relations of life I prefer a man of family. What do I mean by a man of family? - O, I'll give you a general idea of what I mean. Let us give him a first-rate fit out; it costs us nothing. Four or five generations of gentlemen and gentlewomen; among them a member of his Majesty's Council for the Province, a Governor or so, one or two Doctors of Divinity, a member of Congress, not later than the time of top-boots with tassels. Family portraits. The member of the Council, by Smibert. The great merchant-uncle, by Copley, full length, sitting in his arm- chair, in a velvet cap and flowered robe, with a globe by him, to show the range of his commercial transactions, and letters with large red seals lying round, one directed conspicuously to The Honourable etc. etc. Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown satin, lace very fine, hands superlative; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, angular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full-blown, mediaeval gentleman, with a fiery dash of Tory blood in his veins, tempered down with that of a fine old rebel grandmother, and warmed up with the best of old India Madeira; his face is one flame of ruddy sunshine; his ruffled shirt rushes out of his bosom with an impetuous generosity, as if it would drag his heart after it; and his smile is good for twenty thousand dollars to the Hospital, besides ample bequests to all relatives and dependants. 2. Lady of the same; remarkable cap; high waist, as in time of Empire; bust A LA JOSEPHINE; wisps of curls, like celery-tips, at sides of forehead; complexion clear and warm, like rose-cordial. As for the miniatures by Malbone, we don't count them in the gallery. Books, too, with the names of old college-students in them, - family names; - you will find them at the head of their respective classes in the days when students took rank on the catalogue from their parents' condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations of youthful progenitors, and HIC LIBER EST MEUS on the title-page. A set of Hogarth's original plates. Pope, original edition, 15 volumes, London, 1717. Barrow on the lower shelves, in folio. Tillotson on the upper, in a little dark platoon of octo- decimos. Some family silver; a string of wedding and funeral rings; the arms of the family curiously blazoned; the same in worsted, by a maiden aunt. If the man of family has an old place to keep these things in, furnished with claw-footed chairs and black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is complete. No, my friends, I go (always, other things being equal) for the man who inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations. Above all things, as a child, he should have tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid of books, who have not handled them from infancy. Do you suppose our dear DIDASCALOS over there ever read POLI SYNOPSIS, or consulted CASTELLI LEXICON, while he was growing up to their stature? Not he; but virtue passed through the hem of their parchment and leather garments whenever he touched them, as the precious drugs sweated through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I tell you he is at home wherever he smells the invigorating fragrance of Russia leather. No self-made man feels so. One may, it is true, have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is the better of the two. - I should have felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken; and besides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I cannot bring myself to think was made for nothing. If certain things, which seem to me essential to a millennium, had come to pass, I should have been frightened; but they haven't. Perhaps you would like to hear my LATTER-DAY WARNINGS. When legislators keep the law, When banks dispense with bolts and locks, When berries, whortle - rasp - and straw - Grow bigger DOWNWARDS through the box, - When he that selleth house or land Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, - When haberdashers choose the stand Whose window hath the broadest light, - When preachers tell us all they think, And party leaders all they mean, - When what we pay for, that we drink, From real grape and coffee-bean, - When lawyers take what they would give, And doctors give what they would take, - When city fathers eat to live, Save when they fast for conscience' sake, - When one that hath a horse on sale Shall bring his merit to the proof, Without a lie for every nail That holds the iron on the hoof, - When in the usual place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips Where first umbrellas need repair, - When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot The power of suction to resist, And claret-bottles harber not Such dimples as would hold your fist, - When publishers no longer steal, And pay for what they stole before, - When the first locomotive's wheel Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore; - TILL then let Cumming a blaze away, And Miller's saints blow up the globe; But when you see that blessed day, THEN order your ascension robe! The company seemed to like the verses, and I promised them to read others occasionally, if they had a mind to hear them. Of course they would not expect it every morning. Neither must the reader suppose that all these things I have reported were said at any one breakfast-time. I have not taken the trouble to date them, as Raspail, PERE, used to date every proof he sent to the printer; but they were scattered over several breakfasts; and I have said a good many more things since, which I shall very possibly print some time or other, if I am urged to do it by judicious friends. I finished off with reading some verses of my friend the Professor, of whom you may perhaps hear more by and by. The Professor read them, he told me, at a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great Historians met a few of his many friends at their invitation. YES, we knew we must lose him, - though friendship may claim To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 'Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, - As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, - As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! * * * * * The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed: THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING, - the world holds him dear, - Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career! CHAPTER II. I REALLY believe some people save their bright thoughts, as being too precious for conversation. What do you think an admiring friend said the other day to one that was talking good things, - good enough to print? "Why," said he, "you are wasting mechantable literature, a cash article, at the rate, as nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars an hour." The talker took him to the window and asked him to look out and tell what he saw. "Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, "and a man driving a sprinkling-machine through it." "Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that water? What would be the state of the highways of life, if we did not drive our THOUGHT-SPRINKLERS through them with the valves open, sometimes? "Besides, there is another thing about this talking, which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us; - the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic, - you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily when you work that soft material, that there is nothing like it for modelling. Out of it come the shapes which you turn into marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to write such. Or, to use another illustration, writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it; - but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it." The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, "Fust-rate." I acknowledged the compliment, but gently rebuked the expression. "Fust-rate," "prime," "a prime article," "a superior piece of goods," "a handsome garment," "a gent in a flowered vest," - all such expressions are final. They blast the lineage of him or her who utters them, for generations up and down. There is one other phrase which will soon come to be decisive of a man's social STATUS, if it is not already: "That tells the whole story." It is an expression which vulgar and conceited people particularly affect, and which well-meaning ones, who know better, catch from them. It is intended to stop all debate, like the previous question in the General Court. Only it doesn't; simply because "that" does not usually tell the whole, nor one half of the whole story. - It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have had a professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures or sermons (discourses) on theology every year, - and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of QUASI heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become actually better educated in theology than any one of them. We are all theological students, and more of us qualified as doctors of divinity than have received degrees at any of the universities. It is not strange, therefore, that very good people should often find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep their attention fixed upon a sermon treating feebly a subject which they have thought vigorously about for years, and heard able men discuss scores of times. I have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull discourse acts INDUCTIVELY, as electricians would say, in developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to think with what accompaniments and variations and FIORITURE I have sometimes followed the droning of a heavy speaker, - not willingly, - for my habit is reverential, - but as a necessary result of a slight continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both in action without furnishing the food they required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable plumage flaps heavily along his straight-forward course, while the other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same time the crow does, having cut a perfect labyrinth of loops and knots and spirals while the slow fowl was painfully working from one end of his straight line to the other. [I think these remarks were received rather coolly. A temporary boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little "frisette" shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, a black dress too rusty for recent grief and contours in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was reported to have been very virulent about what I said. So I went to my good old minister, and repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember them, to him. He laughed good-naturedly, and said there was considerable truth in them. He thought he could tell when people's minds were wandering, by their looks. In the earlier years of his ministry he had sometimes noticed this, when he was preaching; - very little of late years. Sometimes, when his colleague was preaching, he observed this kind of inattention; but after all, it was not so very unnatural. I will say, by the way, that it is a rule I have long followed, to tell my worst thoughts to my minister, and my best thoughts to the young people I talk with.] - I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody has made before me. You know very well that I write verses sometimes, because I have read some of them at this table. (The company assented, - two or three of them in a resigned sort of way, as I thought, as if they supposed I had an epic in my pocket, and was going to read half a dozen books or so for their benefit.) - I continued. Of course I write some lines or passages which are better than others; some which, compared with the others, might be called relatively excellent. It is in the nature of things that I should consider these relatively excellent lines or passages as absolutely good. So much must be pardoned to humanity. Now I never wrote a "good" line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. Very commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen it somewhere. Possibly I may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I do not remember that I ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to bully me out of a thought or line. This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number of the company was diminished by a small secession.) Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystalline group of musical words has had a long and still period to form in. Here is one theory. But there is a larger law which perhaps comprehends these facts. It is this. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. Their apparent age runs up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as they increase in magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For this we seem to have lived; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror; in the "dissolving views" of dark day-visions; all omens pointed to it; all paths led to it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at waking; in a few moments it is old again, - old as eternity. [I wish I had not said all this then and there. I might have known better. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at once the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from a broken barometer-tube, and she melted away from her seat like an image of snow; a slung-shot could not have brought her down better. God forgive me! After this little episode, I continued, to some few that remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where they left gratuitous advertisements of various popular cosmetics.] When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, new position of trial, he finds the place fits him as if he had been measured for it. He has committed a great crime, for instance, and is sent to the State Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations, privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life, stamp themselves upon his consciousness as the signet on soft wax; - a single pressure is enough. Let me strengthen the image a little. Did you ever happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth piston slides backward and forward as a lady might slip her delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of ITS fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal; it is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is that a great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an hour or a moment, - as sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it. It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional dealers in misfortune; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass out of the individual life you were living into the rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. Do the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that can be thought of, you find yourself in a category of humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with an expert at your elbow who has studied your case all out beforehand, and is waiting for you with his implements of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if a man were to be burned in any of our cities tomorrow for heresy, there would be found a master of ceremonies that knew just how many fagots were necessary, and the best way of arranging the whole matter. - So we have not won the Goodwood cup; AU CONTRAIRE, we were a "bad fifth," if not worse than that; and trying it again, and the third time, has not yet bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as any of my fellow-citizens, - too patriotic in fact, for I have got into hot water by loving too much of my country; in short, if any man, whose fighting weight is not more than eight stone four pounds, disputes it, I am ready to discuss the point with him. I should have gloried to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish. I love my country, and I love horses. Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary, - whom I saw run at Epsom, - over my fireplace. Did I not elope from school to see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John, and Peacemaker run over the race-course where now yon suburban village flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and ever- so-few? Though I never owned a horse, have I not been the proprietor of six equine females, of which one was the prettiest little "Morgin" that ever stepped? Listen, then, to an opinion I have often expressed long before this venture of ours in England. Horse-RACING is not a republican institution; horse-TROTTING is. Only very rich persons can keep race-horses, and everybody knows they are kept mainly as gambling implements. All that matter about blood and speed we won't discuss; we understand all that; useful, very, - OF course, - great obligations to the Godolphin "Arabian," and the rest. I say racing horses are essentially gambling implements, as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preaching at this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning; but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It belongs to two phases of society, - a cankered over-civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real Republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, and with all its immense attractions to the sense and the feelings, - to which I plead very susceptible, - the disguise is too thin that covers it, and everybody knows what it means. Its supporters are the Southern gentry, - fine fellows, no doubt, but not republicans exactly, as we understand the term, - a few Northern millionnaires more or less thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the real people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of whom are commonly idlers, and the worst very bad neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in a dark alley. In England, on the other hand, with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural growth enough; the passion for it spreads downwards through all classes, from the Queen to the costermonger. London is like a shelled corn- cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool the next day without wincing. Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's "little joker." The trotter is essentially and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for sporting men. What better reason do you want for the fact that the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of America beat the world? And why should we have expected that the pick - if it was the pick - of our few and far-between racing stables should beat the pick of England and France? Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us must plead guilty to. We may beat yet. As an American, I hope we shall. As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it. Wherever the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child, - all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues. And by the way, let me beg you not to call a TROTTING MATCH a RACE, and not to speak of a "thoroughbred" as a "BLOODED" horse, unless he has been recently phlebotomized. I consent to your saying "blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next year, we send out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of the great national four- mile race in 7 18.5, and they happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how. [I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill-temper condensed in the above paragraph. To brag little, - to show well, - to crow gently, if in luck, - to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I think we have shown them in any great perfection of late.] - Apropos of horses. Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors? Judicious management; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the rein; - this is what I mean by jockeying. - When an author has a number of books out a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or a quotation. - Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming. The extracts are GROUND-BAIT. - Literary life is fun of curious phenomena. I don't know that there is anything more noticeable than what we may call CONVENTIONAL REPUTATIONS. There is a tacit understanding in every community of men of letters that they will not disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity. There are various reasons for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich; one is good-natured; one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The venerable augurs of the literary or scientific temple may smile faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned; but the farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay with you with the implied compact between you that he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on one of these bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling hands; but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Rupert's- drops of the learned and polite world. See how the papers treat them! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, which can be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their service! How kind the "Critical Notices" - where small authorship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy - always are to them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips; don't puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names will be household words a thousand years from now. "A thousand years is a good while," said the old gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully. - Where have I been for the last three or four days? Down at the Island, deer-shooting. - How many did I bag? I brought home one buck shot. - The Island is where? No matter. It is the most splendid domain that any man looks upon in these latitudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay- sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles; beeches, oaks, most numerous; - many of them hung with moss, looking like bearded Druids; some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as swan's down. Rocks scattered about, - Stonehenge-like monoliths. Fresh-water lakes; one of them, Mary's lake, crystal- clear, full of flashing pickerel lying under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungle. Six pounds of ditto killed one morning for breakfast. EGO FECIT. The divinity-student looked as if he would like to question my Latin. No, sir, I said, - you need not trouble yourself. There is a higher law in grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and Stoddard. Then I went on. Such hospitality as that island has seen there has not been the like of in these our New England sovereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has not found its home in that ocean-principality. It has welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the pale clergyman who came to breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great statesman who turned his back on the affairs of empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his white teeth in merriment over the long table, where his wit was the keenest and his story the best. [I don't believe any man ever talked like that in this world. I don't believe I talked just so; but the fact is, in reporting one's conversation, one cannot help BLAIR-ing it up more or less, ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as prinking at the looking-glass.] - How can a man help writing poetry in such a place? Everybody does write poetry that goes there. In the state archives, kept in the library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished verse, - some by well-known hands, and others quite as good, by the last people you would think of as versifiers, - men who could pension off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston common, if it was for sale, with what they had left. Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with the rest; here it is, if you will hear me read it. When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in an easterly direction look bright or dark to one who observes them from the north or south, according to the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and moralized thus:- SUN AND SHADOW. As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming bright on her sail. Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, - Of breakers that whiten and roar; How little he cares, if in shadow or sun They see him that gaze from the shore! He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee, As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves Where life and its ventures are laid, The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in sunshine or shade; Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, We'll trim our broad sail as before, And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, Nor ask how we look from the shore! - Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are called RELIGIOUS mental disturbances. I confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his discredit in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions are? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races, - anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated, - no matter by what name you call it, - no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it, - if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a normal one, under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of human beings, they would become NON-COMPOTES at once. [Nobody understood this but the theological student and the schoolmistress. They looked intelligently at each other; but whether they were thinking about my paradox or not, I am not clear. - It would be natural enough. Stranger things have happened. Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking the price of board, or whether there is room for them. Alas, these young people are poor and pallid! Love SHOULD be both rich and rosy, but MUST be either rich or rosy. Talk about military duty! What is that to the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the title of mistress, and an American female constitution, which collapses just in the middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it happen to live through the period when health and strength are most wanted?] - Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. I have played the part of the "Poor Gentleman," before a great many audiences, - more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced as the most desperate of BUFFOS, - one who was obliged to restrain himself in the full exercise of his powers, from prudential considerations. I have been through as many hardships as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my histrionic vocation. I have travelled in cars until the conductors all knew me like a brother. I have run off the rails, and stuck all night in snow-drifts, and sat behind females that would have the window open when one could not wink without his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps I shall give you some of my experiences one of these days; - I will not now, for I have something else for you. Private theatricals, as I have figured in them in country lyceum- halls, are one thing, - and private theatricals, as they may be seen in certain gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who do not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and stride, like most of our stage heroes and heroines, in the characters which show off their graces and talents; most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleasant voice, acting in those love-dramas which make us young again to look upon, when real youth and beauty will play them for us. - Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to write. I did not see the play, though. I knew there was a young lady in it, and that somebody was in love with her, and she was in love with him, and somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and, very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. The play of course ends charmingly; there is a general reconciliation, and all concerned form a line and take each others' hands, as people always do after they have made up their quarrels, - and then the curtain falls, - if it does not stick, as it commonly does at private theatrical exhibitions, in which case a boy is detailed to pull it down, which he does, blushing violently. Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to change my caesuras and cadences for anybody; so if you do not like the heroic, or iambic trimeter brachy-catalectic, you had better not wait to hear it THIS IS IT. A Prologue? Well, of course the ladies know; - I have my doubts. No matter, - here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: PRO means beforehand; LOGOS stands for speech. 'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings; - Prologues in metre are to other PROS As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. "The world's a stage," as Shakspeare said, one day; The stage a world - was what he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, Join hands, SO happy at the curtain's fall. - Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, And black-browed ruffians always come to grief, - When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech, And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, Cries, "Help, kyind Heaven!" and drops upon her knees On the green - baize, - beneath the (canvas) trees,- See to her side avenging Valor fly:- "Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!" - When the poor hero flounders in despair, Some dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire, - Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, Sobs on his neck, "MY BOY! MY BOY!! MY BOY!!!" Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night. Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft passion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, - The world's great masters, when you're out of school, - Learn the brief moral of our evening's play: Man has his will, - but woman has her way! While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire, - The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. All earthly powers confess your sovereign art But that one rebel, - woman's wilful heart. All foes you master; but a woman's wit Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit. So, just to picture what her art can do, Hear an old story made as good as new. Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. "Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," The prisoner said. (Hs voice was slightly cracked.) "Friend I HAVE struck," the artist straight replied; "Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." He held his snuff-box, - "Now then, if you please!" The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze, Off his head tumbled, - bowled along the floor, - Bounced down the steps; - the prisoner said no more! Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye; If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die! Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head; We die with love, and never dream we're dead! The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No alterations were suggested by the lady to whom it was sent, so far as I know. Sometimes people criticize the poems one sends them, and suggest all sorts of improvements. Who was that silly body that wanted Burns to alter "Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the last line, thus "EDWARD!" Chains and slavery! Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a committee for a certain celebration. I understood that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president of the day was what is called a "teetotaller." I received a note from him in the following words, containing the copy subjoined, with the emendations annexed to it. "Dear Sir, - your poem gives good satisfaction to the committee. The sentiments expressed with reference to liquor are not, however, those generally entertained by this community. I have therefore consulted the clergyman of this place, who has made come slight changes, which he thinks will remove all objections, and keep the valuable portions of the poem. Please to inform me of your charge for said poem. Our means are limited, etc., etc., etc. Yours with respect," HERE IT IS - WITH THE SLIGHT ALTERATIONS! Come! fill a fresh bumper, - for why should we go While the [nectar] [logwood] still reddens our cups as they flow? Pour out the [rich juices] [decoction] still bright with the sun, Till o'er the brimmed crystal the [rubies] [dye-stuff] shall run. The [purple glebed clusters] [half-ripened apples] their life-dews have bled; How sweet is the [breath] [taste] of the [fragrance they shed] [sugar of lead]! For summer's [last roses] [rank poisons] lie hid in the [wines] [WINES!!!] That were garnered by [maidens who laughed through the vines.] [stable-boys smoking long-nines.] Then a [smile] [scowl], and a [glass] [howl], and a [toast] [scoff], and a [cheer] [sneer], For all [the good wine, and we've some of it here] [strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer] In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, [Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!] [Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all!] The company said I had been shabbily treated, and advised me to charge the committee double, - which I did. But as I never got my pay, I don't know that it made much difference. I am a very particular person about having all I write printed as I write it. I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a double re- revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression of all my productions, especially verse. A misprint kills a sensitive author. An intentional change of his text murders him. No wonder so many poets die young! I have nothing more to report at this time, except two pieces of advice I gave to the young women at table. One relates to a vulgarism of language, which I grieve to say is sometimes heard even from female lips. The other is of more serious purport, and applies to such as contemplate a change of condition, - matrimony, in fact. - The woman who "calculates" is lost. - Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust. CHAPTER III [THE "Atlantic" obeys the moon, and its LUNIVERSARY has come round again. I have gathered up some hasty notes of my remarks made since the last high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please to remember this is TALK; just as easy and just as formal as I choose to make it.] - I never saw an author in my life - saving, perhaps, one - that did not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat, (FELIS CATUS, LINN.,) on having his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand. But let me give you a caution. Be very careful how you tell an author he is DROLL. Ten to one he will hate you; and if he does, be sure he can do you a mischief, and very probably will. Say you CRIED over his romance or his verses, and he will love you and send you a copy. You can laugh over that as much as you like - in private. - Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny? - Why, there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession. If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time to tell it. There is a perfect consciousness in every form of wit - using that term in its general sense - that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It throws a single ray, separated from the rest, - red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, - upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit, - all the prismatic colors, - but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth. - Will you allow me to pursue this subject a little further? [They didn't allow me at that time, for somebody happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then; which accidental sound, as all must have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that the cutting of the yellow hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke the charm, and that breakfast was over.] - Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them. Good-breeding NEVER forgets that AMOUR-PROPRE is universal. When you read the story of the Archbishop and Gil Blas, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor old man's delusion; but don't forget that the youth was the greater fool of the two, and that his master served such a booby rightly in turning him out of doors. - You need not get up a rebellion against what I say, if you find everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the little great man, who had once belabored me in his feeble way. But one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory. I doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any larceny. Neither make too much of flaws and occasional overstatements. Some persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propositions, is all that conversation admits. This is precisely as if a musician should insist on having nothing but perfect chords and simple melodies, - no diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on any account. Now it is fair to say, that, just as music must have all these, so conversation must have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated truths. It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal element as much as pictures or statues. One man who is a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of ESPRIT. - "Yes," you say, "but who wants to hear fanciful people's nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!" - Certainly, if a man is too fond of paradox, - if he is flighty and empty, - if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those harmonious discords, often so much better than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought, - if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember that talking is one of the fine arts, - the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult, - and that its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them. [The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.] When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension. [Our landlady turned pale; - no doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellects, - and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping VOCE DI PETTO, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving- knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were carelessly.] I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas. Three Johns. 1. The real John; known only to his Maker. 2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him. 3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either. Three Thomas. 1. The real Thomas. 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 3. John's ideal Thomas. Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time. [A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me VIA this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten the peaches.] - The opinions of relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the BREAKING of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors, - ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It is a surprise, - there is nothing to account for it. All at once we find that twice two make FIVE. Nature is fond of what are called "gift-enterprises." This little book of life which she has given into the hands of its joint possessors is commonly one of the old story-books bound over again. Only once in a great while there is a stately poem in it, or its leaves are illuminated with the glories of art, or they enfold a draft for untold values signed by the million-fold millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are commonly the first to find the "gift" that came with the little book. It may be questioned whether anything can be conscious of its own flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his own voice; many men do not know their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous "Characteristics" article; allow for exaggerations, and there is a great deal in his doctrine of the self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes under the great law just stated. This incapacity of knowing its own traits is often found in the family as well as in the individual. So never mind what your cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the rest, say about that fine poem you have written, but send it (postage-paid) to the editors, if there are any, of the "Atlantic," - which, by the way, is not so called because it is A NOTION, as some dull wits wish they had said, but are too late. - Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind; - not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's breadth; everything must go to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking. So of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts of external nature; only in a less degree. Every probability - and most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities - is provided with BUFFERS at both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this must react on the minds which handle these forms of truth. - Oh, you need net tell me that Messrs. A. and B. are the most gracious, unassuming people in the world, and yet preeminent in the ranges of science I am referring to. I know that as well as you. But mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward. A rash man, once visiting a certain noted institution at South Boston, ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School contradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization, notwithstanding. [ - It is my desire to be useful to those with whom I am associated in my daily relations. I not unfrequently practise the divine art of music in company with our landlady's daughter, who, as I mentioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a well-marked barytone voice of more than half an octave in compass, I sometimes add my vocal powers to her execution of "Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom." not, however, unless her mother or some other discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience, adopted by some of his betters. My acquaintance with the French language is very imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to it with the peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, I think, is doing well, between us, notwithstanding. The following is an UNCORRECTED French exercise, written by this young gentleman. His mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities; though, being unacquainted with the French language, her judgment cannot be considered final. LE RAT DIES SALONS A LECTURE. CE rat ci est un animal fort singulier. Il a deux pattes de derriere sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il fait usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noire pour le plupart, et porte un cerele blanchatre autour de son cou. On le trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, on il demeure, digere, s'il y a do quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, dort, et renfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de lire. On ne sait pas s'il a une autre gite que cela. Il a l'air d'une bete tres stupide, mais il est d'une sagacite et d'une vitesse extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne sait pas pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idees. Il vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers. Il porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec lequel il fait des marques sur les bords des journaux et des livres, semblable aux suivans: !!! - Bah! Pooh! Il ne faut pas cependant les prendre pour des signes d'intelligence. Il ne vole pas, ordinairement; il fait rarement meme des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son chapeau a toujours un caractere specifique. On ne sait pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier etait d'avis que c'etait de l'odeur du cuir des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'etre une nourriture animale fort saine, et peu chere. Il vit bien longtems. Enfin il meure, en laissant a ses heritiers une carte du Salon a Lecture on il avait existe pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient toutes les nuits, apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir, dit on, a minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, et ayant a sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Professeurs de Cambridge sont des imbeciles qui ne savent rien du tout, du tout. I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is learning French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances will find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode of instruction, to set them to revising and amending this boy's exercise. The passage was originally taken from the "Histoire Naturelle des Betes Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes et Autres," lately published in Paris. This was translated into English and published in London. It was republished at Great Pedlington, with notes and additions by the American editor. The notes consist of an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and a reference (p. 127th) to another book "edited" by the same hand. The additions consist of the editor's name on the title-page and back, with a complete and authentic list of said editor's honorary titles in the first of these localities. Our boy translated the translation back into French. This may be compared with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Division X, of the Public Library of this metropolis.] - Some of you boarders ask me from time to time why I don't write a story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering each one of you separately, I will thank you to step up into the wholesale department for a few moments, where I deal in answers by the piece and by the bale. That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for ONE novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me a cherished belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that many persons cannot write more than one novel, - that all after that are likely to be failures. - Life is so much more tremendous a thing in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that all records of human experience are as so many bound HERBARIA to the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All we can do with books of human experience is to make them alive again with something borrowed from our own lives. We can make a book alive for us just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form to our own experience. Now an author's first novel is naturally drawn, to a great extent, from his personal experiences; that is, is a literal copy of nature under various slight disguises. But the moment the author gets out of his personality, he must have the creative power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to tell a living story; and this is rare. Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Oftentimes a single CRADLING gets them all, and after that the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an individual of the human family, could write one novel or story at any rate, if I would. - Why don't I, then? - Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable - in the opinion of the ladies. Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I am pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories among us there is hardly one I can recall who has not drawn too faithfully some living portrait that might better have been spared. Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull to write such a story as I should wish to write. And finally, I think it very likely I SHALL write a story one of these days. Don't be surprised at any time, if you see me coming out with "The Schoolmistress," or "The Old Gentleman Opposite." [OUR schoolmistress and OUR old gentleman that sits opposite had left the table before I said this.] I want my glory for writing the same discounted now, on the spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready. How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made! - I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter prove of value to some among you. - When one of us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed of talent arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. All our failures, our shortcomings, our strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence, - with which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere of being. - How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, "I hate books!" A gentleman, - singularly free from affectations, - not learned, of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better than learning, - by no means dull, in the sense of knowledge of the world and society, but certainly not clever either in the arts or sciences, - his company is pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark to keep their place, that really "hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [ENTRE NOUS, I always read with a mark.] We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual man" was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if he is actually so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius, - that is, of a new influx of truth or beauty, - as a nun over her missal. In short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of course take - to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, "put him through" all the material part of life; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked, - with the privilege of shutting it off at will. A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligences, each answering to some chord of the macrocosm. They do well to dine together once in a while. A dinner-party made up of such elements is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism. Nature and art combine to charm the senses; the equatorial zone of the system is soothed by well- studied artifices; the faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural attitudes; you see wisdom in slippers and science in a short jacket. The whole force of conversation depends on how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six moves; - White looks, - nods; - the game is over. Just so in talking with first-rate men; especially when they are good-natured and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them, - that glorious license, which, having shut the door and driven the reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to get off from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a festive garland and the vacant place on the MEDIUS LECTUS, - that carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bomb-shells from professional mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored fire, and the mischief-making rain of BON-BONS pelting everybody that shows himself, - the picture of a truly intellectual banquet is one which the old Divinities might well have attempted to reproduce in their - - "Oh, oh, oh!" cried the young fellow whom they call John, - "that is from one of your lectures!" I know it, I replied, - I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it. "The trail of the serpent is over them all!" All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay, - where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs, - find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little underdone, through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just so, in talking with any of the characters above referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the conversation. The lack-lustre eye rayless as a Beacon-Street door- plate in August, all at once fills with light; the face flings itself wide open like the church-portals when the bride and bridegroom enter; the little man grows in stature before your eyes, like the small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet dreaded of early childhood; you were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile, - you have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before you! - Nothing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar lecture. - As when, at some unlooked-for moment, the mighty fountain-column springs into the air before the astonished passer-by, - silver-footed, diamond- crowned, rainbow-scarfed, - from the bosom of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batrachians at home, and the epigrams of a less amiable and less elevated order of REPTILIA in other latitudes. - Who was that person that was so abused some time since for saying that in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go with the higher? No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in India, - a white, superior "Caucasian" race, against a dark- skinned, inferior, but still "Caucasian" race, - and where are English and American sympathies? We can't stop to settle all the doubtful questions; all we know is, that the brute nature is sure to come out most strongly in the lower race, and it is the general law that the human side of humanity should treat the brutal side as it does the same nature in the inferior animals, - tame it or crush it. The India mail brings stories of women and children outraged and murdered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe- killers. England takes down the Map of the World, which she has girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus: [DELPHI] DELE. The civilized world says, Amen. - Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly, that I should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them and dilute it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old college themes and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their MELAS OINOS, - that black sweet, syrupy wine (?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream. [Could it have been MELASSES, as Webster and his provincials spell it, - or MOLOSSA'S, as dear old smattering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the "Magnalia"? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries who make barn-door-fowl flights of learning in "Notes and Queries!" - ye Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable triremes I, too, ascend the stream of time, while other hands tug at the oars! - ye Amines of parasitical literature, who pick up your grains of native-grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon less honest fare, until, like the great minds Goethe speaks of, you have "made a Golgotha" of your pages! - ponder thereon!] - Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses. You will understand by the title that they are written in an imaginary character. I don't doubt they will fit some family-man well enough. I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on A PRIORI grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody. There is no loftier illustration of faith than this. It believes that a soul has been clad in flesh; that tender parents have fed and nurtured it; that its mysterious COMPAGES or frame-work has survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature of maturity; that the Man, now self-determining, has given in his adhesion to the traditions and habits of the race in favor of artificial clothing; that he will, having all the world to choose from, select the very locality where this audacious generalization has been acted upon. It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and trusts that Nature will model a material shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration. - Now hear the verses. THE OLD MAN DREAMS. O for one hour of youthful joy! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy Than reign a gray-beard king! Off with the wrinkled spoils of age! Away with learning's crown! Tear out life's wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down! One moment let my life-blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame! Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame! - My listening angel heard the prayer, And calmly smiling, said, "If I but touch thy silvered hair, Thy hasty wish hath sped. "But is there nothing in thy track To bid thee fondly stay, While the swift seasons hurry back To find the wished-for day?" - Ah, truest soul of womankind! Without thee, what were life? One bliss I cannot leave behind: I'll take - my - precious wife! - The angel took a sapphire pen And wrote in rainbow dew, "The man would be a boy again, And be a husband too!" - "And is there nothing yet unsaid Before the change appears? Remember, all their gifts have fled With those dissolving years!" Why, yes; for memory would recall My fond paternal joys; I could not bear to leave them all; I'll take - my - girl - and - boys! The smiling angel dropped his pen, - "Why this will never do; The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" And so I laughed, - my laughter woke The household with its noise, - And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. CHAPTER IV. [I AM so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of course I shall have a great many conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of different tone and on different subjects. The talks are like the breakfasts, - sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes dry. You must take them as they come. How can I do what all these letters ask me to? No. 1. want serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell a "good storey" which he has copied out for me. (I suppose two letters before the word "good" refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand) - more poetry. No. 4. wants something that would be of use to a practical man. (PRAHCTICAL MAHN he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented) - "more sentiment," - " heart's outpourings." - My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table. Their character will depend on many accidents, - a good deal on the particular persons in the company to whom they were addressed. It so happens that those which follow were mainly intended for the divinity-student and the school-mistress; though others, whom I need not mention, saw to interfere, with more or less propriety, in the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a talker; and of course, if I was not talking for our whole company, I don't expect all the readers of this periodical to be interested in my notes of what was said. Still, I think there may be a few that will rather like this vein, - possibly prefer it to a livelier one, - serious young men, and young women generally, in life's roseate parenthesis from - years of age to - inclusive. Another privilege of talking is to misquote. - Of course it wasn't Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair, - but IRIS. (As I have since told you) it was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian Here - Juno, in Latin - sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for the celebrated "Oceanic Miscellany" misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse. "Waft us HOME the MESSAGE" of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful for the correction?] - The more we study the body and the mind, the more we find both to be governed, not by, but ACCORDING TO laws, such as we observe in the larger universe. - You think you know all about WALKING, - don't you, now? Well, how do you suppose your lower limbs are held to your body? They are sucked up by two cupping vessels, ("cotyloid" - cup-like - cavities,) and held there as long as you live, and longer. At any rate, you think you move them backward and forward at such a rate as your will determines, don't you? - On the contrary, they swing just as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed rate, determined by their length. You can alter this by muscular power, as you can take hold of the pendulum of a clock and make it move faster or slower; but your ordinary gait is timed by the same mechanism as the movements of the solar system. [My friend, the Professor, told me all this, referring me to certain German physiologists by the name of Weber for proof of the facts, which, however, he said he had often verified. I appropriated it to my own use; what can one do better than this, when one has a friend that tells him anything worth remembering? The Professor seems to think that man and the general powers of the universe are in partnership. Some one was saying that it had cost nearly half a million to move the Leviathan only so far as they had got it already. - Why, - said the Professor, - they might have hired an EARTHQUAKE for less money!] Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom of many of the bodily movements, just so thought may be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such or such a thought comes round periodically, in its turn. Accidental suggestions, however, so far interfere with the regular cycles, that we may find them practically beyond our power of recognition. Take all this for what it is worth, but at any rate you will agree that there are certain particular thoughts that do not come up once a day, nor once a week, but that a year would hardly go round without your having them pass through your mind. Here is one which comes up at intervals in this way. Some one speaks of it, and there is an instant and eager smile of assent in the listener or listeners. Yes, indeed; they have often been struck by it. ALL AT ONCE A CONVICTION FLASHES THROUGH US THAT WE HAVE BEEN IN THE SAME PRECISE CIRCUMSTANCES AS AT THE PRESENT INSTANT, ONCE OR MANY TIMES BEFORE. O, dear, yes! - said one of the company, - everybody has had that feeling. The landlady didn't know anything about such notions; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected. The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, that she knew the feeling well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her think she was a ghost, sometimes. The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it; he had just lighted a cheroot the other day, when a tremendous conviction all at once came over him that he had done just that same thing ever so many times before. I looked severely at him, and his countenance immediately fell - ON THE SIDE TOWARD ME; I cannot answer for the other, for he can wink and laugh with either half of his face without the other half's knowing it. - I have noticed - I went on to say - the following circumstances connected with these sudden impressions. First, that the condition which seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often very trivial, - one that might have presented itself a hundred times. Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary effort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, I have often felt that the duplicate condition had not only occurred once before, but that it was familiar and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I have had the same convictions in my dreams. How do I account for it? - Why, there are several ways that I can mention, and you may take your choice. The first is that which the young lady hinted at; - that these flashes are sudden recollections of a previous existence. I don't believe that; for I remember a poor student I used to know told me he had such a conviction one day when he was blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever lived in another world where they use Day and Martin. Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's being a double organ, its hemispheres working together like the two eyes, accounts for it. One of the hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the small interval between the perceptions of the nimble and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore the second perception appears to be the copy of another, ever so old. But even allowing the centre of perception to be double, I can see no good reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of the time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It seems to me most likely that the coincidence of circumstances is very partial, but that we take this partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture of circumstances is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a friend. The apparent similarity may be owing perhaps, quite as much to the mental state at the time, as to the outward circumstances. - Here is another of these curiously recurring remarks. I have said it, and heard it many times, and occasionally met with something like it in books, - somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I think, and in one of the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know. MEMORY, IMAGINATION, OLD SENTIMENTS AND ASSOCIATIONS, ARE MORE READILY REACHED THROUGH THE SENSE OF SMELL THAN BY ALMOST ANY OTHER CHANNEL. Of course the particular odors which act upon each person's susceptibilities differ. - O, yes! I will tell you some of mine. The smell of PHOSPHORUS is one of them. During a year or two of adolescence I used to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and as about that time I had my little aspirations and passions like another, some of these things got mixed up with each other: orange-colored fumes of nitrous acid, and visions as bright and transient; reddening litmus-paper, and blushing cheeks; - EHEU! "Soles occidere et redire possunt," but there is no reagent that will redden the faded roses of eighteen hundred and - spare them! But, as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of associations in an instant; its luminous vapors with their penetrating odor throw me into a trance; it comes to me in a double sense "trailing clouds of glory." Only the confounded Vienna matches, OHNE PHOSPHOR-GERUCH, have worn my sensibilities a little. Then there is the MARIGOLD. When I was of smallest dimensions, and wont to ride impacted between the knees of fond parental pair, we would sometimes cross the bridge to the next village-town and stop opposite a low, brown, "gambrel-roofed" cottage. Out of it would come one Sally, sister of its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, and, bending over her flower-bed, would gather a "posy," as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate at her head, lichen- crusted, and leaning a little within the last few years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies, grenadier-like rows of seedling onions, - stateliest of vegetables, - all are gone, but the breath of a marigold brings them all back to me. Perhaps the herb EVERLASTING, the fragrant IMMORTELLE of our autumn fields, has the most suggestive odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I can hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions that come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale, dry, rustling flowers. A something it has of sepulchral spicery, as if it had been brought from the core of some great pyramid, where it had lain on the breast of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of immortality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so long in its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why it fills my eyes with tears and carries me in blissful thought to the banks of asphodel that border the River of Life. - I should not have talked so much about these personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to make about them which I believe is a new one. It is this. There may be a physical reason for the strange connection between the sense of smell and the mind. The olfactory nerve - so my friend, the Professor, tells me - is the only one directly connected with the hemispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we have every reason to believe, the intellectual processes are performed. To speak more truly the olfactory "nerve" is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part of the brain, in intimate connection with its anterior lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement is at the bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I will not decide, but it is curious enough to be worth remembering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now the Professor assures me that you will find the nerve of taste has no immediate connection with the brain proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal cord. [The old gentleman opposite did not pay much attention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But while I was speaking about the sense of smell he nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. Then he lurched a little to the other side, and after much tribulation at last extricated an ample round snuff-box. I looked as he opened it and felt for the wonted pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean lying therein. I made the manual sign understood of all mankind that use the precious dust, and presently my brain, too, responded to the long unused stimulus - O boys, - that were, - actual papas and possible grandpapas, - some of you with crowns like billiard-balls, - some in locks of sable silvered, and some of silver sabled, - do you remember, as you doze over this, those after-dinners at the Trois Freres when the Scotch-plaided snuff-box went round, and the dry Lundy-Foot tickled its way along into our happy sensoria? Then it was that the Chambertin or the Clos Vougeot came in, slumbering in its straw cradle. And one among you, - do you remember how he would have a bit of ice always in his Burgundy, and sit tinkling it against the sides of the bubble-like glass, saying that he was hearing the cow-bells as he used to hear them, when the deep- breathing kine came home at twilight from the huckleberry pasture, in the old home a thousand leagues towards the sunset?] Ah me! what strains and strophes of unwritten verse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain closet in the ancient house where I was born! On its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; there apples were stored until their seeds should grow black, which happy period there were sharp little milk-teeth always ready to anticipate; there peaches lay in the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had lost, until, like the hearts of saints that dream of heaven in their sorrow, they grew fragrant as the breath of angels. The odorous echo of a score of dead summers lingers yet in those dim recesses. - Do I remember Byron's line about "striking the electric chain"? - To be sure I do. I sometimes think the less the hint that stirs the automatic machinery of association, the more easily this moves us. What can be more trivial than that old story of opening the folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some ancient English hall and finding the flakes of Christmas pastry between its leaves, shut up in them perhaps a hundred years ago? And, lo! as one looks on these poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe changes in the twinkling of an eye; old George the Second is back again, and the elder Pitt is coming into power, and General Wolfe is a fine, promising young man, and over the Channel they are pulling the Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William Henry; all the dead people who have been in the dust so long - even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry - are alive again; the planet unwinds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the precession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of heaven! And all this for a bit of pie-crust! - I will thank you for that pie, - said the provoking young fellow whom I have named repeatedly. He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands to his eyes as if moved. - I was thinking, - he said indistinctly - - How? What is't? - said our landlady. - I was thinking - said he - who was king of England when this old pie was baked, - and it made me feel bad to think how long he must have been dead. [Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a widow, of course; CELA VA SANS DIRE. She told me her story once; it was as if a grain of corn that had been ground and bolted had tried to individualize itself by a special narrative. There was the wooing and the wedding, - the start in life, - the disappointments, - the children she had buried, - the struggle against fate, - the dismantling of life, first of its small luxuries, and then of its comforts, - the broken spirits, - the altered character of the one on whom she leaned, - and at last the death that came and drew the black curtain between her and all her earthly hopes. I never laughed at my landlady after she had told me her story, but I often cried, - not those pattering tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors' grounds, the STILLICIDIUM of self-conscious sentiment, but those which steal noiselessly through their conduits until they reach the cisterns lying round about the heart; those tears that we weep inwardly with unchanging features; - such I did shed for her often when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged at her soul with their red-hot pincers.] Young man, - I said, - the pasty you speak lightly of is not old, but courtesy to those who labor to serve us, especially if they are of the weaker sex, is very old, and yet well worth retaining. May I recommend to you the following caution, as a guide, whenever you are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet - if you are handling an editor or politician, it is superfluous advice. I take it from the back of one of those little French toys which contain pasteboard figures moved by a small running stream of fine sand; Benjamin Franklin will translate it for you: "QUOIQU'ELLE SOIT TRES SOLIDEMENT MONTEE, IL FAUT NE PAS BRUTALISER LA MACHINE." - I will thank you for the pie, if you please. [I took more of it than was good for me - as much as 85 degrees, I should think, - and had an indigestion in consequence. While I was suffering from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay which took a very melancholy view of creation. When I got better I labelled them all "Pie-crust," and laid them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my shelves that I should like to label with some such title; but, as they have great names on their title-pages, - Doctors of Divinity, some of them, - it wouldn't do.] - My friend, the Professor, whom I have mentioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that somebody had been abusing him in some of the journals of his calling. I told him that I didn't doubt he deserved it; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse occasionally, and would for a number of years to come; that nobody could do anything to make his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to abuse for it; especially that people hated to have their little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing something of the kind. - The Professor smiled. - Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It will not take many years to bring you to the period of life when men, at least the majority of writing and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay. I don't know what it is, - whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty, - but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, or shut up our jack-knives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. So I am glad you have a little life left; you will be saccharine enough in a few years. - Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little nursery-stories read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later period of his life. And that leads me to say that men often remind me of pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long after the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint-Germain with a graft of the roseate Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre; the buds of a new summer were swelling when he ripened. - There is no power I envy so much - said the divinity-student - as that of seeing analogies and making comparisons. I don't understand how it is that some minds are continually coupling thoughts or objects that seem not in the least related to each other, until all at once they are put in a certain light, and you wonder that you did not always see that they were as like as a pair of twins. It appears to me a sort of miraculous gift. [He is rather a nice young man, and I think has an appreciation of the higher mental qualities remarkable for one of his years and training. I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs, - give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.] You call it MIRACULOUS, - I replied, - tossing the expression with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I fear. - Two men are walking by the polyphloesboean ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly hold water at all, - and you call the tin cup a miraculous possession! It is the ocean that is the miracle, my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than that all things are in all things, and that just according to the intensity and extension of our mental being we shall see the many in the one and the one in the many. Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying when he made HIS speech about the ocean, - the child and the pebbles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of a pebble? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel over its compartment of space before the stone that became the pyramids had grown solid, and has watched it until now! A body which knows all the currents of force that traverse the globe; which holds by invisible threads to the ring of Saturn and the belt of Orion! A body from the contemplation of which an archangel could infer the entire inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! A throne of the all-pervading Deity, who has guided its every atom since the rosary of heaven was strung with beaded stars! So, - to return to OUR walk by the ocean, - if all that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that maddening narcotics have driven through the brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the fancies of women, - if the dreams of colleges and convents and boarding-schools, - if every human feeling that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all their innumerable images, such as come with every hurried heart-beat, - the epic which held them all, though its letters filled the zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the universe. [The divinity-student honored himself by the way in which he received this. He did not swallow it at once, neither did he reject it; but he took it as a pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him to his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his leisure.] - Here is another remark made for his especial benefit. - There is a natural tendency in many persons to run their adjectives together in TRIADS, as I have heard them called, - thus: He was honorable, courteous, and brave; she was graceful, pleasing, and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this; I think it was Bulwer who said you could separate a paper in the "Rambler" into three distinct essays. Many of our writers show the same tendency, - my friend, the Professor, especially. Some think it is in humble imitation of Johnson, - some that it is for the sake of the stately sound only. I don't think they get to the bottom of it. It is, I suspect, an instinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to present a thought or image with the THREE DIMENSIONS that belong to every solid, - an unconscious handling of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and thickness. It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it, and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove it. But mind this: the more we observe and study, the wider we find the range of the automatic and instinctive principles in body, mind, and morals, and the narrower the limits of the self-determining conscious movement. - I have often seen piano-forte players and singers make such strange motions over their instruments or song-books that I wanted to laugh at them. "Where did our friends pick up all these fine ecstatic airs?" I would say to myself. Then I would remember My Lady in "Marriage a la Mode," and amuse myself with thinking how affectation was the same thing in Hogarth's time and in our own. But one day I bought me a Canary-bird and hung him up in a cage at my window. By-and-by he found himself at home, and began to pipe his little tunes; and there he was, sure enough, swimming and waving about, with all the droopings and liftings and languishing side-turnings of the head that I had laughed at. And now I should like to ask, WHO taught him all this? - and me, through him, that the foolish head was not the one swinging itself from side to side and bowing and nodding over the music, but that other which was passing its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made of finer clay than the frame which carried that same head upon its shoulders? - Do you want an image of the human will, or the self-determining principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable restrictions? A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal; you may see such a one in any mineralogical collection. One little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe! - Weaken moral obligations? - No, not weaken, but define them. When I preach that sermon I spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down some principles not fully recognized in some of your text- books. I should have to begin with one most formidable preliminary. You saw an article the other day in one of the journals, perhaps, in which some old Doctor or other said quietly that patients were very apt to be fools and cowards. But a great many of the clergyman's patients are not only fools and cowards, but also liars. [Immense sensation at the table. - Sudden retirement of the angular female in oxydated bombazine. Movement of adhesion - as they say in the Chamber of Deputies - on the part of the young fellow they call John. Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's lower jaw - (gravitation is beginning to get the better of him.) Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin, briskly, - Go to school right off, there's a good boy! Schoolmistress curious, - takes a quick glance at divinity-student. Divinity-student slightly flushed draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big falsehood - or truth - had hit him in the forehead. Myself calm.] - I should not make such a speech as that, you know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed. Will you run up stairs, Benjamin Franklin, (for B. F. had NOT gone right off, of course,) and bring down a small volume from the left upper corner of the right-hand shelves? [Look at the precious little black, ribbed backed, clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. "DESIDERII ERASMI COLLOQUIA. Amstelodami. Typis Ludovici Elzevirii. 1650." Various names written on title- page. Most conspicuous this: Gul. Cookeson E. Coll. Omn. Anim. 1725. Oxon. - O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, Oxford, - then writing as I now write, - now in the dust, where I shall lie, - is this line all that remains to thee of earthly remembrance? Thy name is at least once more spoken by living men; - is it a pleasure to thee? Thou shalt share with me my little draught of immortality, - its week, its month, its year, - whatever it may be, - and then we will go together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Uncatalogued Library!] - If you think I have used rather strong language, I shall have to read something to you out of the book of this keen and witty scholar, - the great Erasmus, - who "laid the egg of the Reformation which Luther hatched." Oh, you never read his NAUFRAGIUM, or "Shipwreck," did you? Of course not; for, if you had, I don't think you would have given me credit - or discredit - for entire originality in that speech of mine. That men are cowards in the contemplation of futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary antics of many on board the sinking vessel; that they are fools, by their praying to the sea, and making promises to bits of wood from the true cross, and all manner of similar nonsense; that they are fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this story: I will put it into rough English for you. - "I couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris - the monstrous statue in the great church there - that he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow, - but softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear him, - 'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once get my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so much as a tallow candle!'" Now, therefore, remembering that those who have been loudest in their talk about the great subject of which we were speaking have not necessarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have very often been wanting in one or two or all of the qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a good many doctrines current in the schools which I should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and false. - So you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir, and yet not tell us your own creed! - said the divinity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which I liked him all the better. - I have a creed, - I replied; - none better, and none shorter. It is told in two words, - the two first of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to DEFINE moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was what I intended to express: that the fluent, self-determining power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, condition. Organization may reduce the power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Education is only second to nature. Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, but "Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the prayer of Agur, and with good reason. If there is any improvement in modern theology, it is in getting out of the region of pure abstractions and taking these every-day working forces into account. The great theological question now heaving and throbbing in the minds of Christian men is this:- No, I wont talk about these things now. My remarks might be repeated, and it would give my friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I should be visited. Besides, what business has a mere boarder to be talking about such things at a breakfast- table? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and learned his alphabet out of a quarto "Concilium Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand theological lectures by men of various denominations; and it is not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit by this time to express an opinion on theological matters. I know well enough that there are some of you who had a great deal rather see me stand on my head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to. . . . , - on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin? - Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well enough, when I can. But then observe this: if the sense of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature, it is very well; but if that is all there is in a man, he had better have been an ape at once, and so have stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all. I have often heard the Professor talk about hysterics as being Nature's cleverest illustration of the reciprocal convertibility of the two states of which these acts are the manifestations; But you may see it every day in children; and if you want to choke with stifled tears at sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake play JESSE RURAL. It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh WITH him just so long as he amuses them; but if he attempts to be serious, they must still have their laugh, and so they laugh AT him. There is in addition, however, a deeper reason for this than would at first appear. Do you know that you feel a little superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether by making faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or literary, for your royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right! - first-rate performance! - and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to talk down at him, - ah, that wasn't in the programme! I have never forgotten what happened when Sydney Smith - who, as everybody knows, was an exceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch of him - ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even. - If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means to keep his wit in the background until after he had made a reputation by his more solid qualities. And so to an actor: HAMLET first, and BOB LOGIC afterwards, if you like; but don't think, as they say poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that you can do anything great with MACBETH'S dagger after flourishing about with PAUL PRY'S umbrella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men look upon all who challenge their attention, - for a while, at least, - as beggars, and nuisances? They always try to get off as cheaply as they can; and the cheapest of all things they can give a literary man - pardon the forlorn pleasantry! - is the FUNNY-bone. That is all very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and makes a good many angry, as I told you on a former occasion. - Oh, indeed, no! - I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk which would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call BLESSED! There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of recognition, - something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met, - that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to play with it? No, no! - give me a chance to talk to you, my fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can do it, as well as giving you some of my serious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne "EVERY MAN TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF." I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind that is really moving onward. It is this: that one cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought tied to him, and look - I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compassion - to see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow! and we are dashing along with the white foam and bright sparkle at our bows; - the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the sentimental side of the matter; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love. Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of movement by those with whom we have long been in the habit of comparing ourselves; and when they once become stationary, we can get our reckoning from them with painful accuracy. We see just what we were when they were our peers, and can strike the balance between that and whatever we may feel ourselves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and sailing in company for some distant region, we can get what we want out of it. There is one of our companions; - her streamers were torn into rags before she had got into the open sea, then by and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. But lo! at dawn she is still in sight, - it may be in advance of us. Some deep ocean-current has been moving her on, strong, but silent, - yes, stronger than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, towering in our pride, may never come. So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old friendships, because we cannot help instituting comparisons between our present and former selves by the aid of those who were what we were, but are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. "Commencement day" always reminds me of the start for the "Derby," when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the season are brought up for trial. That day is the start, and life is the race. Here we are at Cambridge, and a class is just "graduating." Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has paid forfeit; step out here into the grass back of the church; ah! there it is:- "HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT SOCII MOERENTES." But this is the start, and here they are, - coats bright as silk, and manes as smooth as EAU LUSTRALE can make them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? and the old lady by him, and the three girls, what are they all covering their eyes for? Oh, that is THEIR colt which has just been trotted up on the stage. Do they really think those little thin legs can do anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that comes to some of us when we begin to look through the silvered rings of the ARCUS SENILIS! TEN YEARS GONE. First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. CASSOCK, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. METEOR has pulled up. TWENTY YEARS. Second corner turned. CASSOCK has dropped from the front, and JUDEX, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat, - five, - six, - how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see who is going to win, - perhaps. THIRTY YEARS. Third corner turned. DIVES, bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast; is getting to be the favourite with many. But who is that other one that has been lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt ASTEROID, with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts; look out for him! The black "colt," as we used to call him, is in the background, taking it easily in a gentle trot. There is one they used to call THE FILLY, on account of a certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is not to be despised my boy! FORTY YEARS. More dropping off, - but places much as before. FIFTY YEARS. Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how! - Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts were suggested to them by the simplest natural objects, such as a flower or a leaf; but I will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble ourselves about the distinction between this and the Paper Nautilus, the ARGONAUTA of the ancients. The name applied to both shows that each has long been compared to a ship, as you may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the "Encyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells, and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this? THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main, - The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every clambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, - Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! CHAPTER V. A LYRIC conception - my friend, the Poet, said - hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death. Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine, - then a gasp and a great jump of the heart, - then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the head, - then a long sigh, - and the poem is written. It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it so suddenly, - I replied. No, - said he, - far from it. I said written, but I did not say COPIED. Every such poem has a soul and a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that men read and publishers pay for. The soul of it is born in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to him a thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words, - words that have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have never been wedded until now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain; but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale with it. It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences of association. No wonder the ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] Goddess, - Muse, - divine afflatus, - something outside always. I never wrote any verses worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth reading, I was only a medium. [I was talking all this time to our boarders, you understand, - telling them what this poet told me. The company listened rather attentively, I thought, considering the literary character of the remarks.] The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if I ever read anything better than Pope's "Essay on Man"? Had I ever perused McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy, - his mother taught him to say many little pieces, - he remembered one beautiful hymn; - and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for his years, - "The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens," - He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum, - the Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sudden breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high- shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk, - the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when I saw the coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested, - motionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't set the plate down while the old gentleman was speaking! He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever WERE there, they ARE there still! By and by we got talking again. - Does a poet love the verses written through him, do you think, Sir? - said the divinity- student. So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal heat about them, I KNOW he loves them, - I answered. When they have had time to cool, he is more indifferent. A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, - said the young fellow whom they call John. The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized female in black bombazine . - Buckwheat is skerce and high, - she remarked. [Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady, - pays nothing, - so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel boarders.] I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again. - I don't think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state. - You don't know what I mean by the GREEN STATE? Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they have been long kept and USED. Of the first, wine is the illustrious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and used I will name three, - meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without complexion or flavor, - born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as PALLIDA MORS herself. The fire is lighted in its central shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see, - as true in the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October! And then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that hang around it as the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina! [Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for I DO NOT, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver- mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's "Triumph of Galatea." It came to me in an ancient shagreen case, - how old it is I do not know, - but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. If you are curious, you shall see it any day. Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral- wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the CIGAR, so called, of the shops, - which to "draw" asks the suction- power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.] Violins, too, - the sweet old Amati! - the divine Stradivarius! Played on by ancient MAESTROS until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold VIRTUOSO, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle DILETTANTE who calmed it down with easy melodies until it answered him softly as in the days of the old MAESTROS. And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled and faded on its strings. Now I tell you a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum; - the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity, - its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate. Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's hands? Now you know very well that there are no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to make them thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule which had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant. Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a violin. The poet has forced all these words together, and fastened them, and they don't understand it at first. But let the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in the mind's muffled whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit together in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a syllable without the whole world's crying out against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its hundredth birthday, - (Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,) - the sap is pretty well out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom Neaera cheated. - "Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno Inter minora sidera, Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum In verba jurabas mea." Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead Latin phrases? Now I tell you that, every word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a certain succulence; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the "Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus that held those words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly judge of my performances, and that, if made of the true stuff, they will ring better after a while. [There was silence for a brief space, after my somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident analogies. Presently A PERSON turned towards me - I do not choose to designate the individual - and said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good "sahtisfahction." - I had, up to this moment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually accompanied by a small pecuniary testimonial, have acquired a certain relish for this moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of enthusiasm. But as a reward for gratuitous services, I confess I thought it a little below that blood-heat standard which a man's breath ought to have, whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for a favorable opportunity, however, before making the remarks which follow.] - There are single expressions, as I have told you already, that fix a man's position for you before you have done shaking hands with him. Allow me to expand a little. There are several things, very slight in themselves, yet implying other things not so unimportant. Thus, your French servant has DEVALISE your premises and got caught. EXCUSEZ, says the SERGENT-DE-VILLE, as he politely relieves him of his upper garments and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good shoulders enough, - a little marked, - traces of smallpox, perhaps, - but white. . . . . CRAC! from the SERGENT- DE-VILLE'S broad palm on the white shoulder! Now look! VOGUE LA GALERE! Out comes the big red V - mark of the hot iron; - he had blistered it out pretty nearly, - hadn't he? - the old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Marseilles! [Don't! What if he has got something like this? - nobody supposes I INVENTED such a story.] My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females which I told you I had owned, - for, look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, I am one that has been driven in his "kerridge," - not using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any battered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle WITH A POLE, - my man John, I say, was a retired soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many of Her Majesty's modest servants have done before and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really been in the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, "Strap!" If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes through his muscles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the place where the strap used to be. [I was all the time preparing for my grand COUP, you understand; but I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued, - always in illustration of the general principle I had laid down.] Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody thinks of. There was a legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the English coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape of Saxons, who would not let them go, - on the contrary, insisted on their staying, and, to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or an Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his title-page, and, having divested them of the one essential and perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest climates, nailed the same on the church-door as we do the banns of marriage, IN TERROREM. [There was a laugh at this among some of the young folks; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw that "the water stood in her eyes," as it did in Christiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spider, and I fancied, but wasn't quite sure that the schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same conversation, as you remember.] That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story, - said the young fellow whom they call John. I abstained from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, and continued. Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing and beautifying an old Saxon church in a certain English village, and among other things thought the doors should be attended to. One of them particularly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it were, and as if it would be all the better for scraping. There happened to be a microscopist in the village who had heard the old pirate story, and he took it into his head to examine the crust on this door. There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine historical document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern, - a real CUTIS HUMANA, stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster, and the legend was true. My friend, the Professor, settled an important historical and financial question once by the aid of an exceedingly minute fragment of a similar document. Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to the passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very natural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at the light and quenched the meek luminary, - breaking through the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don't want to go into MINUTIAE at table, you know, but a naked hand can no more go through a pane of thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle, to say the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a sausage-machine without looking the worse for it. The Professor gathered up the fragments of glass, and with them certain very minute but entirely satisfactory documents which would have identified and hanged any rogue in Christendom who had parted with them. - The historical question, WHO DID IT? and the financial question, WHO PAID FOR IT? were both settled before the new lamp was lighted the next evening. You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, may be reached by means of very insignificant premises. This is eminently true of manners and forms of speech; a movement or a phrase often tells you all you want to know about a person. Thus, "How's your health?" (commonly pronounced HAALTH) - instead of, How do you do? or, How are you? Or calling your little dark entry a "hall," and your old rickety one-horse wagon a "kerridge." Or telling a person who has been trying to please you that he has given you pretty good "sahtisfahction." Or saying that you "remember of" such a thing, or that you have been "stoppin"' at Deacon Somebody's, - and other such expressions. One of my friends had a little marble statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house, - bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the house "if that was a statoo of her deceased infant?" What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in that brief question! [Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness I smuggled in the particular offence which it was my object to hold up to my fellow-boarders, without too personal an attack on the individual at whose door it lay.] That was an exceedingly dull person who made the remark, EX PEDE HERCULEM. He might as well have said, "From a peck of apples you may judge of the barrel." EX PEDE, to be sure! Read, instead, EX UNGUE MINIMI DIGITI PEDIS, HERCULEM, EJUSQUE PATREM, MATREM, AVOS ET PROAVOS, FILIOS, NEPOTES ET PRONEPOTES! Talk to me about your [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]! Tell me about Cuvier's getting up a megatherium from a tooth, or Agassiz's drawing a portrait of an undiscovered fish from a single scale! As the "O" revealed Giotto, - as the one word "moi" betrayed the Stratford atte-Bowe-taught Anglais, - so all a man's antecedents and possibilities are summed up in a single utterance which gives at once the gauge of his education and his mental organization. Possibilities, Sir? - said the divinity-student; can't a man who says HAOW? arrive at distinction? Sir, - I replied, - in a republic all things are possible. But the man WITH A FUTURE has almost of necessity sense enough to see that any odious trick of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn't Sydney Smith say that a public man in England never gets over a false quantity uttered in early life? OUR public men are in little danger of this fatal misstep, as few of them are in the habit of introducing Latin into their speeches, - for good and sufficient reasons. But they are bound to speak decent English, - unless, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows who have quite as many on their own, and a constituency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided they do not swear in their Presidential Messages. However, it is not for me to talk. I have made mistakes enough in conversation and print. I never find them out until they are stereotyped, and then I think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I shall make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over, and remember them all before another. How one does tremble with rage at his own intense momentary stupidity about things he knows perfectly well, and to think how he lays himself open to the impertinences of the CAPTATORES VERBORUM, those useful but humble scavengers of the language, whose business it is to pick up what might offend or injure, and remove it, hugging and feeding on it as they go! I don't want to speak too slightingly of these verbal critics; - how can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a difference between those clerical blunders which almost every man commits, knowing better, and that habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that wears silk or broadcloth. [I write down the above remarks this morning, January 26th, making this record of the date that nobody may think it was written in wrath, on account of any particular grievance suffered from the invasion of any individual SCARABAEUS GRAMMATICUS.] - I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they did not. Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its edges, - and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this time"? What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or horny-shelled, - turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one of her flat- pattern five timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs - and some of them have a good many - rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. NEXT YEAR you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified being. - The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very familiar way, - at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I sometimes think it necessary to repress, - that I was coming it rather strong on the butterflies. No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images, - the butterfly as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its colour by it. The shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty - Divinity taking outlines and color - light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted. You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that dwells under it. - Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very probably begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man can have that he has said something it was time to say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of one of his pamphlets. "I think I have not been attacked enough for it," he said; - "attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds." - If a fellow attacked my opinions in print would I reply? Not I. Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called THE HYDROSTATIC PARADOX OF CONTROVERSY? Don't know what that means? - Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, - AND THE FOOLS KNOW IT. - No, but I often read what they say about other people. There are about a dozen phrases which all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one, you get the whole lot. What are they? - Oh, that depends a good deal on latitude and longitude. Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization. What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets? - Well, I should say a set of influences something like these: - 1st. Relationships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oyster, in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criticism. I believe in the school, the college, and the clergy; but my sovereign logic, for regulating public opinion - which means commonly the opinion of half a dozen of the critical gentry - is the following MAJOR PROPOSITION. Oysters AU NATUREL. MINOR PROPOSITION. The same "scalloped." CONCLUSION. That - (here insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, brilliant, - and the rest. - No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has oysters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a "spread" on linen, and the other on paper, - that is all. Don't you think you and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical line? I am sure I couldn't resist the softening influences of hospitality. I don't like to dine out, you know, - I dine so well at our own table, [our landlady looked radiant,] and the company is so pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the boarders]; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with such additions as that article of food requires to make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a string of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us, - not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest among the virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never be a critic, because I know I could not always tell it. I might write a criticism of a book that happened to please me; that is another matter. - Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, and such others of tender age as you may tell it to. When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold - TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns - thus we learn - to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must ROLL, or nobody can do anything with it; and so the first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood. The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that she was pleased with this, and that she would read it to her little flock the next day. But she should tell the children, she said, that there were better reasons for truth than could be found in mere experience of its convenience and the inconvenience of lying. Yes, - I said, - but education always begins through the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable, - afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity of the universe. - Do I think that the particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does any harm? - Why, no, - I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't really deceive people any more than the "Arabian Nights" or "Gulliver's Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile TOO carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers, the other day, which contains a number of improbabilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get it for you, if you would like to hear it. - Ah, this is it; it is headed "OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE. "This island is now the property of the Stamford family, - having been won, it is said, in a raffle, by Sir - Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions (unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 'Notes and Queries.' This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently displays on its surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppressively hot, and the winters very probably cold; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and thus the thermometer is rendered useless in winter. The principal vegetable productions of the island are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper being very abundantly produced, a benevolent society was organized in London during the last century for supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received from Dr. D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oysters were of the kind called NATIVES in England, the natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct, refused to touch them, and confined themselves entirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were brought over. This information was received from one of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to be very skilful in the CUISINE peculiar to the island. "During the season of gathering the pepper, the persons employed are subject to various incommodities, the chief of which is violent and long-continued sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the vehemence of these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of them are often driven backwards for great distances at immense speed, on the well-known principle of the aeolipile. Not being able to see where they are going, these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the PEPPER-FEVER as it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine called the PECCAVI by the Catholic Jews, who, it is well known, abstain from swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan Buddhists. "The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches are well known to Europe and America under the familiar name of MACCARONI. The smaller twigs are called VERMICELLI. They have a decided animal flavor, as may be observed in the soups containing them. Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly ferocious by being boiled. The government of the island, therefore, never allows a stick of it to be exported without being accompanied by a piston with which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out. These are commonly lost or stolen before the maccaroni arrives among us. It therefore always contains many of these insects, which, however, generally die of old age in the shops, so that accidents from this source are comparatively rare. "The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally of hot rolls. The buttered-muffin variety is supposed to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the hybrid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is commonly served up with cold" - - There, - I don't want to read any more of it. You see that many of these statements are highly improbable. - No, I shall not mention the paper. - No, neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the style of these popular writers. I think the fellow who wrote it must have been reading some of their stories, and got them mixed up with his history and geography. I don't suppose HE lies; - he sells it to the editor, who knows how many squares off "Sumatra" is. The editor, who sells it to the public - By the way, the papers have been very civil haven't they? - to the - the what d'ye call it? - "Northern Magazine," - isn't it? - got up by some of those Come-outers, down East, as an organ for their local peculiarities. - The Professor has been to see me. Came in, glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. Said he had been with "the boys." On inquiry, found that "the boys," were certain baldish and grayish old gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various important stations of society. The Professor is one of the same set, but he always talks as if he had been out of college about ten years, whereas. . . [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the company understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He calls them sometimes "the boys," and sometimes "the old fellows." Call him by the latter title, and see how he likes it. - Well, he came in last night glorious, as I was saying. Of course I don't mean vinously exalted; he drinks little wine on such occasions, and is well known to all the Peters and Patricks as the gentleman who always has indefinite quantities of black tea to kill any extra glass of red claret he may have swallowed. But the Professor says he always gets tipsy on old memories at these gatherings. He was, I forget how many years old when he went to the meeting; just turned of twenty now, - he said. He made various youthful proposals to me, including a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He had just learned a trick, he said, of one of "the boys," of getting a splendid bass out of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his hand. Offered to sing "The sky is bright," accompanying himself on the front-door, if I would go down and help in the chorus. Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, Congress-men, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better than famous, and famous too, poets by the half-dozen, singers with voices like angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers in the Commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists, - all forms of talent and knowledge he pretended were represented in that meeting. Then he began to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and maintained that he could "furnish out creation" in all its details from that set of his. He would like to have the whole boodle of them, (I remonstrated against this word, but the Professor said it was a diabolish good word, and he would have no other,) with their wives and children, shipwrecked on a remote island, just to see how splendidly they would reorganize society. They could build a city, - they have done it; make constitutions and laws; establish churches and lyceums; teach and practise the healing art; instruct in every department; found observatories; create commerce and manufactures; write songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make instruments to accompany the songs with; lastly, publish a journal almost as good as the "Northern Magazine," edited by the Come- outers. There was nothing they were not up to, from a christening to a hanging; the last, to be sure, could never be called for, unless some stranger got in among them. - I let the Professor talk as long as he liked; it didn't make much difference to me whether it was all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry and similar elements. All at once he jumped up and said, - Don't you want to hear what I just read to the boys? I have had questions of a similar character asked me before, occasionally. A man of iron mould might perhaps say, No! I am not a man of iron mould, and said that I should be delighted. The Professor then read - with that slightly sing-song cadence which is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses - the following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some impertinent young folks to that of the act of playing on the trombone. His eyesight was never better; I have his word for it. MARE RUBRUM. FLASH out a stream of blood-red wine! - For I would drink to other days; And brighter shall their memory shine, Seen flaming through its crimson blaze. The roses die, the summers fade; But every ghost of boyhood's dream By Nature's magic power is laid To sleep beneath this blood-red stream. It filled the purple grapes that lay And drank the splendors of the sun Where the long summer's cloudless day Is mirrored in the broad Garonne; It pictures still the bacchant shapes That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, - The maidens dancing on the grapes, - Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. Beneath these waves of crimson lie, In rosy fetters prisoned fast, Those flitting shapes that never die, The swift-winged visions of the past. Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, Each shadow rends its flowery chain, Springs in a bubble from its brim And walks the chambers of the brain. Poor Beauty! time and fortune's wrong No form nor feature may withstand, - Thy wrecks are scattered all along, Like emptied sea-shells on the sand; - Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain, The dust restores each blooming girl, As if the sea-shells moved again Their glistening lips of pink and pearl. Here lies the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest - their keen vibrations mute - The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell. Here, clad in burning robes, are laid Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed; And here those cherished forms have strayed We miss awhile, and call them dead. What wizard fills the maddening glass What soil the enchanted clusters grew? That buried passions wake and pass In beaded drops of fiery dew? Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine, - Our hearts can boast a warmer grow, Filled from a vantage more divine, - Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snow! To-night the palest wave we sip Rich as the priceless draught shall be That wet the bride of Cana's lip, - The wedding wine of Galilee! CHAPTER VI. SIN has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all. - I think, Sir, - said the divinity-student, - you must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other day. I thank you, my young friend, - was my reply, - but I must say something better than that, before I could pretend to fill out the number. - The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of these sayings there were on record, and what, and by whom said. - Why, let us see, - there is that one of Benjamin Franklin, "the great Bostonian," after whom this lad was named. To be sure, he said a great many wise things, - and I don't feel sure he didn't borrow this, - he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it so neatly! - "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged." Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his flashing moments:- "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To these must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men:- "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." - The divinity-student looked grave at this, but said nothing. The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn't think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place after New York or Boston. A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with the young fellow they call John, - evidently a stranger, - said there was one more wise man's saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he didn't know who said it. - A civil curiosity was manifested by the company to hear the fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly whispering to the young fellow who brought him to dinner, SHALL I TELL IT? To which the answer was, GO AHEAD! - Well, - he said, - this was what I heard:- "Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar." Sir, - said I, - I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston, - and of all other considerable - and inconsiderable - places with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only place in the world. Frenchmen - you remember the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc. - I recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus: "Hotel l'Univers et des Etats Unis"; and as Paris IS the universe to a Frenchman, of course the United States are outside of it. - "See Naples and then die." - It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been about, lecturing, you know, and have found the following propositions to hold true of all of them. 1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city. 2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabitants the "GOOD OLD town of" - (whatever its name may happen to be.) 3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be a "remarkably intelligent audience." 4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity. 5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world. (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the "Pactolian" some time since, which were "respectfully declined.") Boston is just like other places of its size; - only perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire-department, superior monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the English language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. I'll tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it would only send away its first-rate men, instead of its second-rate ones, (no offence to the well-known exceptions, of which we are always proud,) we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which the gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real metropolis in this country, until the biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth. - I have observed, by the way, that the people who really live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller cities situated within the intellectual basin, or SUCTION-RANGE, of one large one, of the pretensions of any other. Don't you see why? Because their promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring big city, - their prettiest girl has been exported to the same market; all their ambition points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. I hate little toad-eating cities. - Would I be so good as to specify any particular example? - Oh, - an example? Did you ever see a bear-trap? Never? Well, shouldn't you like to see me put my foot into one? With sentiments of the highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused. Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with their tomahawks,) - if they have, scattered about, those mighty square houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monument, - if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the side-walk, - if they have a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming decay, - I think I could go to pieces, after my life's work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in. I visit such spots always with infinite delight. My friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day and the stars by night. - Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great towns? - I don't believe there is much difference. You know how they read Pope's line in the smallest town in our State of Massachusetts? - Well, they read it "All are but parts of one stupendous HULL!" - Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. Some keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some, bolted, - with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in; and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its threshold. This front-door leads into a passage which opens into an ante-room, and this into the inferior apartments. The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers. There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none is given with it! If nature or accident has put one of these keys into the hands of a person who has the torturing instinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that Justice utters over its doomed victim, - THE LORD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL! You will probably go mad within a reasonable time, - or, if you are a man, run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco, - or, if you are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other. Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the side- door. The fact of possessing one renders those even who are dear to you very terrible at times. You can keep the world out from your front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, - touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found. A delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities! From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses. A few exercises on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well, - parent, child, brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to whom you give a side-door key; too many have them already. - You remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became thawed? If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it should sting us and we should die than that its chill should slowly steal into our hearts; warm it we never can! I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women's hearts. I knew what freezing image lay on the white breasts beneath the laces! A very simple INTELLECTUAL mechanism answers the necessities of friendship, and even of the most intimate relations of life. If a watch tells us the hour and the minute, we can be content to carry it about with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch, - though it is not enamelled nor jewelled, - in short, though it has little beyond the wheels required for a trustworthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair of useful hands. The more wheels there are in a watch or a brain, the more trouble they are to take care of. The movements of exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friendship. - Observe, I am talking about MINDS. I won't say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason; - but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, I have no question. If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or does not share all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits, that is a small matter. Intellectual companions can be found easily in men and books. After all, if we think of it, most of the world's loves and friendships have been between people that could not read nor spell. But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip, - this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings, - most of all in that perpetual AUTO DA FE where young womanhood is the sacrifice. - You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the loves and friendships of illiterate persons, - that is, of the human race, with a few exceptions here and there. I like books, - I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors. But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; yet they represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters next Saturday, we should feel honored by his company. What I wanted to say about books is this: that there are times in which every active mind feels itself above any and all human books. - I think a man must have a good opinion of himself, Sir, - said the divinity-student, - who should feel himself above Shakspeare at any time. My young friend, - I replied, - the man who is never conscious of a state of feeling or of intellectual effort entirely beyond expression by any form of words whatsoever is a mere creature of language. I can hardly believe there are any such men. Why, think for a moment of the power of music. The nerves that make us alive to it spread out (so the Professor tells me) in the most sensitive region of the marrow just where it is widening to run upwards into the hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of sense rather than of thought. Yet it produces a continuous and, as it were, logical sequence of emotional and intellectual changes; but how different from trains of thought proper! how entirely beyond the reach of symbols! - Think of human passions as compared with all phrases! Did you ever hear of a man's growing lean by the reading of "Romeo and Juliet," or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was maligned? There are a good many symbols, even, that are more expressive than words. I remember a young wife who had to part with her husband for a time. She did not write a mournful poem; indeed, she was a silent person, and perhaps hardly said a word about it; but she quietly turned of a deep orange color with jaundice. A great many people in this world have but one form of rhetoric for their profoundest experiences, - namely, to waste away and die. When a man can READ, his paroxysm of feeling is passing. When he can READ, his thought has slackened its hold. - You talk about reading Shakspeare, using him as an expression for the highest intellect, and you wonder that any common person should be so presumptuous as to suppose his thought can rise above the text which lies before him. But think a moment. A child's reading of Shakspeare is one thing, and Coleridge's or Schlegel's reading of him is another. The saturation-point of each mind differs from that of every other. But I think it is as true for the small mind which can only take up a little as for the great one which takes up much, that the suggested trains of thought and feeling ought always to rise above - not the author, but the reader's mental version of the author, whoever he may be. I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music. Then they may drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought without words. We may happen to be very dull folks, you and I, and probably are, unless there is some particular reason to suppose the contrary. But we get glimpses now and then of a sphere of spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in vast circles round the largest compass of earthly intelligences. - I confess there are times when I feel like the friend I mentioned to you some time ago, - I hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes it becomes almost a physical necessity to talk out what is in the mind, before putting anything else into it. It is very bad to have thoughts and feelings, which were meant to come out in talk, STRIKE IN, as they say of some complaints that ought to show outwardly. I always believed in life rather than in books. I suppose every day of earth, with its hundred thousand deaths and something more of births, - with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the books that were ever written, put together. I believe the flowers growing at this moment send up more fragrance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all the essences ever distilled. - Don't I read up various matters to talk about at this table or elsewhere? - No, that is the last thing I would do. I will tell you my rule. Talk about those subjects you have had long in your mind, and listen to what others say about subjects you have studied but recently. Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used, till they are seasoned. - Physiologists and metaphysicians have had their attention turned a good deal of late to the automatic and involuntary actions of the mind. Put an idea into your intelligence and leave it there an hour, a day, a year, without ever having occasion to refer to it. When, at last, you return to it, you do not find it as it was when acquired. It has domiciliated itself, so to speak, - become at home, - entered into relations with your other thoughts, and integrated itself with the whole fabric of the mind. - Or take a simple and familiar example; Dr. Carpenter has adduced it. You forget a name, in conversation, - go on talking, without making any effort to recall it, - and presently the mind evolves it by its own involuntary and unconscious action, while you were pursuing another train of thought, and the name rises of itself to your lips. There are some curious observations I should like to make about the mental machinery, but I think we are getting rather didactic. - I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin would let me know something of his progress in the French language. I rather liked that exercise he read us the other day, though I must confess I should hardly dare to translate it, for fear some people in a remote city where I once lived might think I was drawing their portraits. - Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I don't know whether the piece I mentioned from the French author was intended simply as Natural History, or whether there was not a little malice in his description. At any rate, when I gave my translation to B. F. to turn back again into French, one reason was that I thought it would sound a little bald in English, and some people might think it was meant to have some local bearing or other, - which the author, of course, didn't mean, inasmuch as he could not be acquainted with anything on this side of the water. [The above remarks were addressed to the school-mistress, to whom I handed the paper after looking it over. The divinity-student came and read over her shoulder, - very curious, apparently, but his eyes wandered, I thought. Fancying that her breathing was somewhat hurried and high, or THORACIC, as my friend, the Professor, calls it, I watched her a little more closely. - It is none of my business. - After all, it is the imponderables that move the world, - heat, electricity, love. HABET?] This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made into boarding-school French, such as you see here; don't expect too much; - the mistakes give a relish to it, I think. LES SOCIETES POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES. CES Societes la sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoins d'esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont survecu a leurs emotions a l'egard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction de l'habitude de boire. Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societes, on doit avoir le moins de cheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieurs qui resistent aux depilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques connaissances, n'importe dans quel genre. Des le moment qu'on ouvre la porte de la Societe, on a un grand interet dans toutes les choses dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste demontre un nouveau FLEXOR du TARSE d'un MELOLONTHA VULGARIS. Douze savans improvises, portans des besicles, et qui ne connaissent rien des insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du CULEX, se precipitent sur l'instrument, et voient - une grande bulle d'air, dont ils s'emerveillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle plein d'instruction - pour ceux qui ne sont pas de ladite Societe. Tous les membres regardent les chimistes en particulier avec un air d'intelligence parfaite pendant qu'ils prouvent dans un discours d'une demiheure que O6 N3 H5 C6 etc. font quelque chose qui n'est bonne a rien, mais qui probablement a une odeur tres desagreable, selon l'habitude des produits chimiques. Apres cela vient un mathematicien qui vous bourre avec des a+b et vous rapporte enfin un x+y, dont vous n'avex pas besoin et qui ne change nullement vos relations avec la vie. Un naturaliste vous parle des formations speciales des animaux excessivement inconnus, dont vous n'avez jamais soupconne l'existence. Ainsi il vous decrit les FOLLICULES de L'APPENDIX VERMIFORMIS d'un DZIGGUETAI. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un FOLLICULE. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un APPENDIX UERMIFORMIS. Vous n'avez jamais entendu parler du DZIGGUETAI. Ainsi vous gagnez toutes ces connaisances a la fois, qui s'attachent a votre esprit comme l'eau adhere aux plumes d'un canard. On connait toutes les langues EX OFFICIO en devenant membre d'une de ces Societes. Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai sur les dialectes Tchutchiens, on comprend tout cela de suite, et s'instruit enormement. Il y a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours a ces Societes: 1 (degree) Le membre a questions; 2 (degree) Le membre a "Bylaws." La QUESTION est une specialite. Celui qui en fait metier ne fait jamais des reponses. La question est une maniere tres commode de dire les choses suivantes: "Me voila! Je ne suis pas fossil, moi, - je respire encore! J'ai des idees, - voyez mon intelligence! Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de cela! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous! Nous ne sommes nullement la bete qu'on pense!" - LE FAISEUR DE QUESTIONS DONNE PEU D'ATTENTION AUX REPONSES QU'ON FAIT; CE N'EST PAS LA DANS SA SPECIALITE. Le membre a "Bylaws" est le bouchon de toutes les emotions mousseuses et genereuses qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est un empereur manque, - un tyran a la troiseme trituration. C'est un esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans les grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne l'aime pas dans la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le craint. Il n'y a qu'un mot pour ce membre audessus de "Bylaws." Ce mot est pour lui ce que l'Om est aux Hundous. C'est sa religion; il n'y a rien audela. Ce mot la c'est la CONSTITUTION! Lesdites Societes publient des feuilletons de tems en tems. On les trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus comme des enfans nouveaunes, faute de membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. Si on aime la botanique, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles; si on fait des etudes zoologiques, on square trouve un grand tas de q' [square root of minus one], ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que les encyclopedies. Ainsi il est clair comme la metaphysique qu'on doit devenir membre d'une Societe telle que nous decrivons. RECETTE POUR LE DEPILATOIRE PHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUE Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj. Depilez avec. Polissez ensuite. I told the boy that his translation into French was creditable to him; and some of the company wishing to hear what there was in the piece that made me smile, I turned it into English for them, as well as I could, on the spot. The landlady's daughter seemed to be much amused by the idea that a depilatory could take the place of literary and scientific accomplishments; she wanted me to print the piece, so that she might send a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah; she didn't think he'd have to do anything to the outside of his head to get into any of the societies; he had to wear a wig once, when he played a part in a tabullo. No, - said I, - I shouldn't think of printing that in English. I'll tell you why. As soon as you get a few thousand people together in a town, there is somebody that every sharp thing you say is sure to hit. What if a thing was written in Paris or in Pekin? - that makes no difference. Everybody in those cities, or almost everybody, has his counterpart here, and in all large places. - You never studied AVERAGES as I have had occasion to. I'll tell you how I came to know so much about averages. There was one season when I was lecturing, commonly, five evenings in the week, through most of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most speakers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lecture than to keep several in hand. - Don't you get sick to death of one lecture? - said the landlady's daughter, - who had a new dress on that day, and was in spirits for conversation. I was going to talk about averages, - I said, - but I have no objection to telling you about lectures, to begin with. A new lecture always has a certain excitement connected with its delivery. One thinks well of it, as of most things fresh from his mind. After a few deliveries of it, one gets tired and then disgusted with its repetition. Go on delivering it, and the disgust passes off, until, after one has repeated it a hundred or a hundred and fifty times, he rather enjoys the hundred and first or hundred and fifty-first time, before a new audience. But this is on one condition, - that he never lays the lecture down and lets it cool. If he does, there comes on a loathing for it which is intense, so that the sight of the old battered manuscript is as bad as sea-sickness. A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters our hands, and we hate to touch it. By-and-by our hands get callous, and then we have no longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the calluses disappear; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the novelty and get the blisters. - The story is often quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good for nothing until it had been preached forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I think, have doubled, if not quadrupled, that number. These old lectures are a man's best, commonly; they improve by age, also, - like the pipes, fiddles, and poems I told you of the other day. One learns to make the most of their strong points and to carry off their weak ones, - to take out the really good things which don't tell on the audience, and put in cheaper things that do. All this degrades him, of course, but it improves the lecture for general delivery. A thoroughly popular lecture ought to have nothing in it which five hundred people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered. - No, indeed, - I should be very sorry to say anything disrespectful of audiences. I have been kindly treated by a great many, and may occasionally face one hereafter. But I tell you the AVERAGE intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not very high. It may be sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it is not very rapid or profound. A lecture ought to be something which all can understand, about something which interests everybody. I think, that, if any experienced lecturer gives you a different account from this, it will probably be one of those eloquent or forcible speakers who hold an audience by the charm of their manner, whatever they talk about, - even when they don't talk very well. But an AVERAGE, which was what I meant to speak about, is one of the most extraordinary subjects of observation and study. It is awful in its uniformity, in its automatic necessity of action. Two communities of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their actions, so far as we can see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each, are so nearly alike, that they are absolutely undistinguishable in many cases by any definite mark, and there is nothing but the place and time by which one can tell the "remarkably intelligent audience" of a town in New York or Ohio from one in any New England town of similar size. Of course, if any principle of selection has come in, as in those special associations of young men which are common in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage. But let there be no such interfering circumstances, and one knows pretty well even the look the audience will have, before he goes in. Front seats: a few old folk, - shiny-headed, - slant up best ear towards the speaker, - drop off asleep after a while, when the air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but toward the front - (pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that.) Here and there a countenance, sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs of young people, - happy, but not always very attentive. Boys, in the background, more or less quiet. Dull faces here, there, - in how many places! I don't say dull PEOPLE, but faces without a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him; - that is the chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over. They render LATENT any amount of vital caloric; they act on our minds as those cold-blooded creatures I was talking about act on our hearts. Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is generated, - a great compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen as any two mammals of the same species are like each other. Each audience laughs, and each cries, in just the same places of your lecture; that is, if you make one laugh or cry, you make all. Even those little indescribable movements which a lecturer takes cognizance of, just as a driver notices his horse's cocking his ears, are sure to come in exactly the same place of your lecture always. I declare to you, that as the monk said about the picture in the convent, - that he sometimes thought the living tenants were the shadows, and the painted figures the realities, - I have sometimes felt as if I were a wandering spirit, and this great unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night after night was one ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last drowsy incantation! - Oh, yes! A thousand kindly and courteous acts, - a thousand faces that melted individually out of my recollection as the April snow melts, but only to steal away and find the beds of flowers whose roots are memory, but which blossom in poetry and dreams. I am not ungrateful, nor unconscious of all the good feeling and intelligence everywhere to be met with through the vast parish to which the lecturer ministers. But when I set forth, leading a string of my mind's daughters to market, as the country-folk fetch in their strings of horses - Pardon me, that was a coarse fellow who sneered at the sympathy wasted on an unhappy lecturer, as if, because he was decently paid for his services, he had therefore sold his sensibilities. - Family men get dreadfully homesick. In the remote and bleak village the heart returns to the red blaze of the logs in one's fireplace at home. "There are his young barbarians all at play," - if he owns any youthful savages. - No, the world has a million roosts for a man, but only one nest. - It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always made in all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus armed. When a person is really full of information, and does not abuse it to crush conversation, his part is to that of the real talkers what the instrumental accompaniment is in a trio or quartette of vocalists. - What do I mean by the real talkers? - Why, the people with fresh ideas, of course, and plenty of good warm words to dress them in. Facts always yield the place of honor, in conversation, to thoughts about facts; but if a false note is uttered, down comes the finger on the key and the man of facts asserts his true dignity. I have known three of these men of facts, at least, who were always formidable, - and one of them was tyrannical. - Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appearance on a particular occasion; but these men knew something about almost everything, and never made mistakes. - He? VENEERS in first-rate style. The mahogany scales off now and then in spots, and then you see the cheap light stuff - I found - very fine in conversational information, the other day when we were in company. The talk ran upon mountains. He was wonderfully well acquainted with the leading facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and the Appalachians; he had nothing in particular to say about Ararat, Ben Nevis, and various other mountains that were mentioned. By and by some Revolutionary anecdote came up, and he showed singular familiarity with the lives of the Adamses, and gave many details relating to Major Andre. A point of Natural History being suggested, he gave an excellent account of the air-bladder of fishes. He was very full upon the subject of agriculture, but retired from the conversation when horticulture was introduced in the discussion. So he seemed well acquainted with the geology of anthracite, but did not pretend to know anything of other kinds of coal. There was something so odd about the extent and limitations of his knowledge, that I suspected all at once what might be the meaning of it, and waited till I got an opportunity. - Have you seen the "New American Cyclopaedia?" said I. - I have, he replied; I received an early copy. - How far does it go? - He turned red, and answered, - To Araguay. - Oh, said I to myself, - not quite so far as Ararat; - that is the reason he knew nothing about it; but he must have read all the rest straight through, and, if he can remember what is in this volume until he has read all those that are to come, he will know more than I ever thought he would. Since I had this experience, I hear that somebody else has related a similar story. I didn't borrow it, for all that. - I made a comparison at table some time since, which has often been quoted and received many compliments. It was that of the mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts. The simile is a very obvious, and, I suppose I may now say, a happy one; for it has just been shown me that it occurs in a Preface to certain Political Poems of Thomas Moore's published long before my remark was repeated. When a person of fair character for literary honesty uses an image, such as another has employed before him, the presumption is, that he has struck upon it independently, or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his own. It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether a comparison which suddenly suggests itself is a new conception or a recollection. I told you the other day that I never wrote a line of verse that seemed to me comparatively good, but it appeared old at once, and often as if it had been borrowed. But I confess I never suspected the above comparison of being old, except from the fact of its obviousness. It is proper, however, that I proceed by a formal instrument to relinquish all claim to any property in an idea given to the world at about the time when I had just joined the class in which Master Thomas Moore was then a somewhat advanced scholar. I, therefore, in full possession of my native honesty, but knowing the liability of all men to be elected to public office, and for that reason feeling uncertain how soon I may be in danger of losing it, do hereby renounce all claim to being considered the FIRST person who gave utterance to a certain simile or comparison referred to in the accompanying documents, and relating to the pupil of the eye on the one part and the mind of the bigot on the other. I hereby relinquish all glory and profit, and especially all claims to letters from autograph collectors, founded upon my supposed property in the above comparison, - knowing well, that, according to the laws of literature, they who speak first hold the fee of the thing said. I do also agree that all Editors of Cyclopedias and Biographical Dictionaries, all Publishers of Reviews and Papers, and all Critics writing therein, shall be at liberty to retract or qualify any opinion predicated on the supposition that I was the sole and undisputed author of the above comparison. But, inasmuch as I do affirm that the comparison aforesaid was uttered by me in the firm belief that it was new and wholly my own, and as I have good reason to think that I had never seen or heard it when first expressed by me, and as it is well known that different persons may independently utter the same idea, - as is evinced by that familiar line from Donatus, - "Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt," - now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that all well- disposed persons will abstain from asserting or implying that I am open to any accusation whatsoever touching the said comparison, and, if they have so asserted or implied, that they will have the manliness forthwith to retract the same assertion or insinuation. I think few persons have a greater disgust for plagiarism than myself. If I had even suspected that the idea in question was borrowed, I should have disclaimed originality, or mentioned the coincidence, as I once did in a case where I had happened to hit on an idea of Swift's. - But what shall I do about these verses I was going to read you? I am afraid that half mankind would accuse me of stealing their thoughts, if I printed them. I am convinced that several of you, especially if you are getting a little on in life, will recognize some of these sentiments as having passed through your consciousness at some time. I can't help it, - it is too late now. The verses are written, and you must have them. Listen, then, and you shall hear WHAT WE ALL THINK. THAT age was older once than now, In spite of locks untimely shed, Or silvered on the youthful brow; That babes make love and children wed. That sunshine had a heavenly glow, Which faded with those "good old days," When winters came with deeper snow, And autumns with a softer haze. That - mother, sister, wife, or child - The "best of women" each has known. Were schoolboys ever half so wild? How young the grandpapas have grown, That BUT FOR THIS our souls were free, And BUT FOR THAT our lives were blest; That in some season yet to be Our cares will leave us time to rest. Whene'er we groan with ache or pain, Some common ailment of the race, - Though doctors think the matter plain, - That ours is "a peculiar case." That when like babes with fingers burned We count one bitter maxim more, Our lesson all the world has learned, And men are wiser than before. That when we sob o'er fancied woes, The angels hovering overhead Count every pitying drop that flows And love us for the tears we shed. That when we stand with tearless eye And turn the beggar from our door, They still approve us when we sigh, "Ah, had I but ONE THOUSAND MORE!" That weakness smoothed the path of sin, In half the slips our youth has known; And whatsoe'er its blame has been, That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown. Though temples crowd the crumbled brink O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, Their tablets bold with WHAT WE THINK, Their echoes dumb to WHAT WE KNOW; That one unquestioned text we read, All doubt beyond, all fear above, Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed Can burn or blot it: GOD IS LOVE! CHAPTER VII. [THIS particular record is noteworthy principally for containing a paper by my friend, the Professor, with a poem or two annexed or intercalated. I would suggest to young persons that they should pass over it for the present, and read, instead of it, that story about the young man who was in love with the young lady, and in great trouble for something like nine pages, but happily married on the tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for granted, will be contained in the periodical where this is found, unless it differ from all other publications of the kind. Perhaps, if such young people will lay the number aside, and take it up ten years, or a little more, from the present time, they may find something in it for their advantage. They can't possibly understand it all now.] My friend, the Professor, began talking with me one day in a dreary sort of way. I couldn't get at the difficulty for a good while, but at last it turned out that somebody had been calling him an old man. - He didn't mind his students calling him THE old man, he said. That was a technical expression, and he thought that he remembered hearing it applied to himself when he was about twenty- five. It may be considered as a familiar and sometimes endearing appellation. An Irishwoman calls her husband "the old man," and he returns the caressing expression by speaking of her as "the old woman." But now, said he, just suppose a case like one of these. A young stranger is overheard talking of you as a very nice old gentleman. A friendly and genial critic speaks of your green old age as illustrating the truth of some axiom you had uttered with reference to that period of life. What I call an old man is a person with a smooth, shining crown and a fringe of scattered white hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny days, stooping as he walks, bearing a cane, moving cautiously and slowly; telling old stories, smiling at present follies, living in a narrow world of dry habits; one that remains waking when others have dropped asleep, and keeps a little night-lamp-flame of life burning year after year, if the lamp is not upset, and there is only a careful hand held round it to prevent the puffs of wind from blowing the flame out. That's what I call an old man. Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me that I have got to that yet? Why, bless you, I am several years short of the time when - [I knew what was coming, and could hardly keep from laughing; twenty years ago he used to quote it as one of those absurd speeches men of genius will make, and now he is going to argue from it] - several years short of the time when Balzac says that men are - most - you know - dangerous to - the hearts of - in short, most to be dreaded by duennas that have charge of susceptible females. - What age is that? said I, statistically. - Fifty-two years, answered the Professor. - Balzac ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe said of him that each of his stories must have been dug out of a woman's heart. But fifty-two is a high figure. Stand in the light of the window, Professor, said I. - The Professor took up the desired position. - You have white hairs, I said. - Had 'em any time these twenty years, said the Professor. - And the crow's-foot, - PES ANSERINUS, rather. - The Professor smiled, as I wanted him to, and the folds radiated like the ridges of a half-opened fan, from the outer corner of the eyes to the temples. - And the calipers said I. - What are the CALIPERS? he asked, curiously. - Why, the parenthesis, said I. - PARENTHESIS? said the Professor; what's that? - Why, look in the glass when you are disposed to laugh, and see if your mouth isn't framed in a couple of crescent lines, - so, my boy ( ). - It's all nonsense, said the Professor; just look at my BICEPS; - and he began pulling off his coat to show me his arm. Be careful, said I; you can't bear exposure to the air, at your time of life, as you could once. - I will box with you, said the Professor, row with you, walk with you, ride with you, swim with you, or sit at table with you, for fifty dollars a side. - Pluck survives stamina, I answered. The Professor went off a little out of humor. A few weeks afterwards he came in, looking very good-natured, and brought me a paper, which I have here, and from which I shall read you some portions, if you don't object. He had been thinking the matter over, he said, - had read Cicero "De Senectute," and made up his mind to meet old age half way. These were some of his reflections that he had written down; so here you have. THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER. THERE is no doubt when old age begins. The human body is a furnace which keeps in blast three-score years and ten, more or less. It burns about three hundred pounds of carbon a year, (besides other fuel,) when in fair working order, according to a great chemist's estimate. When the fire slackens, life declines; when it goes out, we are dead. It has been shown by some noted French experimenters, that the amount of combustion increases up to about the thirtieth year, remains stationary to about forty-five, and then diminishes. This last is the point where old age starts from. The great fact of physical life is the perpetual commerce with the elements, and the fire is the measure of it. About this time of life, if food is plenty where you live, - for that, you know, regulates matrimony, - you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather some fine morning; a kind of domestic felicity that gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as among the not remotely possible events. I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. Johnson wrote to Thrale, telling her about life's declining from THIRTY-FIVE; the furnace is in full blast for ten years longer, as I have said. The Romans came very near the mark; their age of enlistment reached from seventeen to forty-six years. What is the use of fighting against the seasons, or the tides, or the movements of the planetary bodies, or this ebb in the wave of life that flows through us? We are old fellows from the moment the fire begins to go out. Let us always behave like gentlemen when we are introduced to new acquaintance. INCIPIT ALLEGORIA SENECTUTIS. Old Age, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Professor, this is Old Age. OLD AGE. - Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. I have known you for some time, though I think you did not know me. Shall we walk down the street together? PROFESSOR (drawing back a little). - We can talk more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you tell me how it is you seem to be acquainted with everybody you are introduced to, though he evidently considers you an entire stranger? OLD AGE. - I make it a rule never to force myself upon a person's recognition until I have known him at least FIVE YEARS. PROFESSOR. - Do you mean to say that you have known me so long as that? OLD AGE. I do. I left my card on you longer ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; yet I see you have it with you. PROFESSOR. - Where? OLD AGE. - There, between your eyebrows, - three straight lines running up and down; all the probate courts know that token, - "Old Age, his mark." Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and your middle finger on the inner end of the other eyebrow; now separate the fingers, and you will smooth out my sign- manual; that's the way you used to look before I left my card on you. PROFESSOR. - What message do people generally send back when you first call on them? OLD AGE. - Not at home. Then I leave a card and go. Next year I call; get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or six, - sometimes ten years or more. At last, if they don't let me in, I break in through the front door or the windows. We talked together in this way some time. Then Old Age said again, - Come, let us walk down the street together, - and offered me a cane, an eyeglass, a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes. - No, much obliged to you, said I. I don't want those things, and I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way and walked out alone; - got a fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think over this whole matter. EXPLICIT ALLEGORIA SENECTUTIS. We have settled when old age begins. Like all Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual in its approaches, strewed with illusions, and all its little griefs soothed by natural sedatives. But the iron hand is not less irresistible because it wears the velvet glove. The button-wood throws off its bark in large flakes, which one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and at last pushed off, by that tranquil movement from beneath, which is too slow to be seen, but too powerful to be arrested. One finds them always, but one rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from us, - scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the tender and immature fresh growth of old age. Looked at collectively, the changes of old age appear as a series of personal insults and indignities, terminating at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne has called "the very disgrace and ignominy of our nature." My lady's cheek can boast no more The cranberry white and pink it wore; And where her shining locks divide, The parting line is all too wide - No, no, - this will never do. Talk about men, if you will, but spare the poor women. We have a brief description of seven stages of life by a remarkably good observer. It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, each of these has its own three periods of immaturity, complete development, and decline. I recognize on OLD baby at once, - with its "pipe and mug," (a stick of candy and a porringer,) - so does everybody; and an old child shedding its milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the childhood, as it were, of old age; the graybeard youngster must be weaned from his late suppers now. So you will see that you have to make fifteen stages at any rate, and that it would not be hard to make twenty- five; five primary, each with five secondary divisions. The infancy and childhood of commencing old age have the same ingenuous simplicity and delightful unconsciousness about them as the first stage of the earlier periods of life shows. The great delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be individual and exceptional which is universal and according to law. A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as sailors are hurried on board of vessels, - in a state of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity reeling with our passions and imaginations, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of their stupid trances. There is one mark of age that strikes me more than any of the physical ones; - I mean the formation of HABITS. An old man who shrinks into himself falls into ways that become as positive and as much beyond the reach of outside influences as if they were governed by clock-work. The ANIMAL functions, as the physiologists call them, in distinction from the ORGANIC, tend, in the process of deterioration to which age and neglect united gradually lead them, to assume the periodical or rhythmical type of movement. Every man's HEART (this organ belongs, you know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of action; but I know a great many men whose BRAINS, and all their voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a SYSTOLE and DIASTOLE as regular as that of the heart itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the organic. It is a confession of failure in the highest function of being, which involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view of all existing circumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in present circumstances from past motives. It is substituting a VIS A TERGO for the evolution of living force. When a man, instead of burning up three hundred pounds of carbon a year, has got down to two hundred and fifty, it is plain enough he must economize force somewhere. Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel, - that is all; for fuel is force, you know, just as much in the page I am writing for you as in the locomotive or the legs that carry it to you. Carbon is the same thing, whether you call it wood, or coal, or bread and cheese. A reverend gentleman demurred to this statement, - as if, because combustion is asserted to be the SINE QUA NON of thought, therefore thought is alleged to be a purely chemical process. Facts of chemistry are one thing, I told him, and facts of consciousness another. It can be proved to him, by a very simple analysis of some of his spare elements, that every Sunday, when he does his duty faithfully, he uses up more phosphorus out of his brain and nerves than on ordinary days. But then he had his choice whether to do his duty, or to neglect it, and save his phosphorus and other combustibles. It follows from all this that THE FORMATION OF HABITS ought naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass their maximum long before the time when the true decline of life begins, if we may judge by the experience of the ring. A man is "stale," I think, in their language, soon after thirty, - often, no doubt, much earlier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceedingly apt to keep their vital fire burning WITH THE BLOWER UP. - So far without Tully. But in the mean time I have been reading the treatise, "De Senectute." It is not long, but a leisurely performance. The old gentleman was sixty-three years of age when he addressed it to his friend T. Pomponius Atticus, Eq., a person of distinction, some two or three years older. We read it when we are schoolboys, forget all about it for thirty years, and then take it up again by a natural instinct, - provided always that we read Latin as we drink water, without stopping to taste it, as all of us who ever learned it at school or college ought to do. Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A good deal of it is what would be called in vulgar phrase "slow." It unpacks and unfolds incidental illustrations which a modern writer would look at the back of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. I think ancient classics and ancient people are alike in the tendency to this kind of expansion. An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact) with some contrivance or other for people with broken kneepans. As the patient would be confined for a good while, he might find it dull work to sit with his hands in his lap. Reading, the ingenious inventor suggested, would be an agreeable mode of passing the time. He mentioned, in his written account of his contrivance, various works that might amuse the weary hour. I remember only three, - Don Quixote, Tom Jones, and WATTS ON THE MIND. It is not generally understood that Cicero's essay was delivered as a lyceum lecture, (CONCIO POPULARIS,) at the Temple of Mercury. The journals (PAPYRI) of the day ("Tempora Quotidiana," - "Tribuinus Quirinalis," - "Praeco Romanus," and the rest) gave abstracts of it, one of which I have translated and modernized, as being a substitute for the analysis I intended to make. IV. Kal. Mart. . . . . The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last evening, was well attended by the ELITE of our great city. Two hundred thousand sestertia were thought to have been represented in the house. The doors were besieged by a mob of shabby fellows, (ILLOTUM VULGUS,) who were at length quieted after two or three had been somewhat roughly handled (GLADIO JUGULATI). The speaker was the well-known Mark Tully, Eq., - the subject Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and scraggy person, with a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal feature, from which his nickname of CHICK-PEA (Cicero) is said by some to be derived. As a lecturer is public property, we may remark, that his outer garment (TOGA) was of cheap stuff and somewhat worn, and that his general style and appearance of dress and manner (HABITUS, VESTITUSQUE) were somewhat provincial. The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (POCULA QUAEDAM VINI). - All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore they are donkeys. - The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live through youth and manhood, IN SPITE of the troubles we shall groan over. - There was considerable prosing as to what old age can do and can't. - True, but not new. Certainly, old folks can't jump, - break the necks of their thigh-bones, (FEMORUM CERVICES,) if they do; can't crack nuts with their teeth; can't climb a greased pole (MALUM INUNCTUM SCANDERE NON POSSUNT); but they can tell old stories and give you good advice; if they know what you have made up your mind to do when you ask them. - All this is well enough, but won't set the Tiber on fire (TIBERIM ACCENDERE NEQUAQUAM POTEST.) There were some clever things enough, (DICTA HAND INEPTA,) a few of which are worth reporting. - Old people are accused of being forgetful; but they never forget where they have put their money. - Nobody is so old he doesn't think he can live a year. - The lecturer quoted an ancient maxim, - Grow old early, if you would be old long, - but disputed it. - Authority, he thought, was the chief privilege of age. - It is not great to have money, but fine to govern those that have it. - Old age begins at FORTY-SIX years, according to the common opinion. - It is not every kind of old age or of wine that grows sour with time. - Some excellent remarks were made on immortality, but mainly borrowed from and credited to Plato. - Several pleasing anecdotes were told. - Old Milo, champion of the heavy weights in his day, looked at his arms and whimpered, "They are dead." Not so dead as you, you old fool, - says Cato; - you never were good for anything but for your shoulders and flanks. - Pisistratus asked Solon what made him dare to be so obstinate. Old age, said Solon. The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a credit to our culture and civilization. - The reporter goes on to state that there will be no lecture next week, on account of the expected combat between the bear and the barbarian. Betting (SPONSIO) two to one (DUO AD UNUM) on the bear. - After all, the most encouraging things I find in the treatise, "De Senectute," are the stories of men who have found new occupations when growing old, or kept up their common pursuits in the extreme period of life. Cato learned Greek when he was old, and speaks of wishing to learn the fiddle, or some such instrument, (FIDIBUS,) after the example of Socrates. Solon learned something new, every day, in his old age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cyrus pointed out with pride and pleasure the trees he had planted with his own hand. [I remember a pillar on the Duke of Northumberland's estate at Alnwick, with an inscription in similar words, if not the same. That, like other country pleasures, never wears out. None is too rich, none too poor, none too young, none too old to enjoy it.] There is a New England story I have heard more to the point, however, than any of Cicero's. A young farmer was urged to set out some apple-trees. - No, said he, they are too long growing, and I don't want to plant for other people. The young farmer's father was spoken to about it, but he, with better reason, alleged that apple-trees were slow and life was fleeting. At last some one mentioned it to the old grandfather of the young farmer. He had nothing else to do, - so he stuck in some trees. He lived long enough to drink barrels of cider made from the apples that grew on those trees. As for myself, after visiting a friend lately, - [Do remember all the time that this is the Professor's paper.] - I satisfied myself that I had better concede the fact that - my contemporaries are not so young as they have been, - and that, - awkward as it is, - science and history agree in telling me that I can claim the immunities and must own the humiliations of the early stage of senility. Ah! but we have all gone down the hill together. The dandies of my time have split their waistbands and taken to high- low shoes. The beauties of my recollections - where are they? They have run the gantlet of the years as well as I. First the years pelted them with red roses till their cheeks were all on fire. By and by they began throwing white roses, and that morning flush passed away. At last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and after that no year let the poor girls pass without throwing snow- balls. And then came rougher missiles, - ice and stones; and from time to time an arrow whistled, and down went one of the poor girls. So there are but few left; and we don't call those few GIRLS, but - Ah, me! Here am I groaning just as the old Greek sighed AI, AI! and the old Roman, EHEU! I have no doubt we should die of shame and grief at the indignities offered us by age, if it were not that we see so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves. We always compare ourselves with our contemporaries. [I was interrupted in my reading just here. Before I began at the next breakfast, I read them these verses; - I hope you will like them, and get a useful lesson from them.] THE LAST BLOSSOM. Though young no more, we still would dream Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; The leagues of life to graybeards seem Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles. Who knows a woman's wild caprice? It played with Goethe's silvered hair, And many a Holy Father's "niece" Has softly smoothed the papal chair. When sixty bids us sigh in vain To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, We think upon those ladies twain Who loved so well the tough old Dean. We see the Patriarch's wintry face, The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, And dream that Youth and Age embrace, As April violets fill with snow. Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile His lotus-loving Memphian lies, - The musky daughter of the Nile With plaited hair and almond eyes. Might we but share one wild caress Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall, And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress The long cold kiss that waits us all! My bosom heaves, remembering yet The morning of that blissful day When Rose, the flower of spring, I met, And gave my raptured soul away. Flung from her eyes of purest blue, A lasso, with its leaping chain Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain. Thou com'st to cheer my waning age, Sweet vision, waited for so long! Dove that would seek the poet's cage Lured by the magic breath of song! She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid, Love's DRAPEAU ROUGE the truth has told! O'er girlhood's yielding barricade Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold! Come to my arms! - love heeds not years No frost the bud of passion knows. - Ha! what is this my frenzy hears? A voice behind me uttered, - Rose! Sweet was her smile, - but not for me; Alas, when woman looks TOO kind, Just turn your foolish head and see, - Some youth is walking close behind! As to GIVING UP because the almanac or the Family-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such thing. I grant you that I burn less carbon than some years ago. I see people of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit, effete, LA LEVRE INFERIEURE DEJA PENDANTE, with what little life they have left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody that lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I treat the malady in my own case. First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, there is less time for it than when I was younger, I find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and use my time more economically than ever before; so that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my earlier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new study. I took up a difficult language a very few years ago with good success, and think of mathematics and metaphysics by-and-by. Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good many neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach, and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them. You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle, when I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and satisfied myself that I could get much comfort, if not much music, out of it. Thirdly. I have found that some of those active exercises, which are commonly thought to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later period. A young friend has lately written an admirable article in one of the journals, entitled, "Saints and their Bodies." Approving of his general doctrines, and grateful for his records of personal experience, I cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirmation of his eulogy of one particular form of active exercise and amusement, namely, BOATING. For the past nine years, I have rowed about, during a good part of the summer, on fresh or salt water. My present fleet on the river Charles consists of three row-boats. 1. A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2. A fancy "dory" for two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 3. My own particular water-sulky, a "skeleton" or "shell" race-boat, twenty- two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten- foot sculls, - alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him out, if he doesn't mind what he is about. In this I glide around the Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats which leave a swell after them delightful to rock upon; I linger under the bridges, - those "caterpillar bridges," as my brother professor so happily called them; rub against the black sides of old wood-schooners; cool down under the overhanging stern of some tall Indiaman; stretch across to the Navy-Yard, where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio, - just as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow; then strike out into the harbor, where the water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean, - till all at once I remember, that, if a west wind blows up of a sudden, I shall drift along past the islands, out of sight of the dear old State- house, - plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home, but no chair drawn up at the table, - all the dear people waiting, waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in company with devil's-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn about and flap my long narrow wings for home. When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid fight to get through the bridges, but always make it a rule to beat, - though I have been jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and was caught once between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until our bones (the boat's, that is) cracked as if we had been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent wave, return to the garb of civilization, walk through my Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and, reaching my habitat, in consideration of my advanced period of life, indulge in the Elysian abandonment of a huge recumbent chair. When I have established a pair of well-pronounced feathering- calluses on my thumbs, when I am in training so that I can do my fifteen miles at a stretch without coming to grief in any way, when I can perform my mile in eight minutes or a little less, then I feel as if I had old Time's head in chancery, and could give it to him at my leisure. I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have bored this ancient city through and through in my daily travels, until I know it as an old inhabitant of a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who, in the course of these rambles, discovered that remarkable avenue called MYRTLE STREET, stretching in one long line from east of the Reservoir to a precipitous and rudely paved cliff which looks down on the grim abode of Science, and beyond it to the far hills; a promenade so delicious in its repose, so cheerfully varied with glimpses down the northern slope into busy Cambridge Street with its iron river of the horse-railroad, and wheeled barges gliding back and forward over it, - so delightfully closing at its western extremity in sunny courts and passages where I know peace, and beauty, and virtue, and serene old age must be perpetual tenants, - so alluring to all who desire to take their daily stroll, in the words of Dr. Watts, - "Alike unknowing and unknown," - that nothing but a sense of duty would have prompted me to reveal the secret of its existence. I concede, therefore, that walking is an immeasurably fine invention, of which old age ought constantly to avail itself. Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable to sole-leather. The principal objection to it is of a financial character. But you may be sure that Bacon and Sydenham did not recommend it for nothing. One's HEPAR, or, in vulgar language, liver, - a ponderous organ, weighing some three or four pounds, - goes up and down like the dasher of a churn in the midst of the other vital arrangements, at every step of a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up like coppers in a money-box. Riding is good, for those that are born with a silver-mounted bridle in their hand, and can ride as much and as often as they like, without thinking all the time they hear that steady grinding sound as the horse's jaws triturate with calm lateral movement the bank-bills and promises to pay upon which it is notorious that the profligate animal in question feeds day and night. Instead, however, of considering these kinds of exercise in this empirical way, I will devote a brief space to an examination of them in a more scientific form. The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely physical impression, and secondly to a sense of power in action. The first source of pleasure varies of course with our condition and the state of the surrounding circumstances; the second with the amount and kind of power, and the extent and kind of action. In all forms of active exercise there are three powers simultaneously in action, - the will, the muscles, and the intellect. Each of these predominates in different kinds of exercise. In walking, the will and muscles are so accustomed to work together and perform their task with so little expenditure of force, that the intellect is left comparatively free. The mental pleasure in walking, as such, is in the sense of power over all our moving machinery. But in riding, I have the additional pleasure of governing another will, and my muscles extend to the tips of the animal's ears and to his four hoofs, instead of stopping at my hands and feet. Now in this extension of my volition and my physical frame into another animal, my tyrannical instincts and my desire for heroic strength are at once gratified. When the horse ceases to have a will of his own and his muscles require no special attention on your part, then you may live on horseback as Wesley did, and write sermons or take naps, as you like. But you will observe, that, in riding on horseback, you always have a feeling, that, after all, it is not you that do the work, but the animal, and this prevents the satisfaction from being complete. Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I won't suppose you to be disgracing yourself in one of those miserable tubs, tugging in which is to rowing the true boat what riding a cow is to bestriding an Arab. You know the Esquimaux KAYAK, (if that is the name of it,) don't you? Look at that model of one over my door. Sharp, rather? - On the contrary, it is a lubber to the one you and I must have; a Dutch fish-wife to Psyche, contrasted with what I will tell you about. - Our boat, then, is something of the shape of a pickerel, as you look down upon his back, he lying in the sunshine just where the sharp edge of the water cuts in among the lily-pads. It is a kind of a giant POD, as one may say, - tight everywhere, except in a little place in the middle, where you sit. Its length is from seven to ten yards, and as it is only from sixteen to thirty inches wide in its widest part, you understand why you want those "outriggers," or projecting iron frames with the rowlocks in which the oars play. My rowlocks are five feet apart; double the greatest width of the boat. Here you are, then, afloat with a body a rod and a half long, with arms, or wings, as you may choose to call them, stretching more than twenty feet from tip to tip; every volition of yours extending as perfectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled as far as the broad blades of your oars, - oars of spruce, balanced, leathered, and ringed under your own special direction. This, in sober earnest, is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails without flapping his pinions, so you drift with the tide when you will, in the most luxurious form of locomotion indulged to an embodied spirit. But if your blood wants rousing, turn round that stake in the river, which you see a mile from here; and when you come in in sixteen minutes, (if you do, for we are old boys, and not champion scullers, you remember,) then say if you begin to feel a little warmed up or not! You can row easily and gently all day, and you can row yourself blind and black in the face in ten minutes, just as you like. It has been long agreed that there is no way in which a man can accomplish so much labor with his muscles as in rowing. It is in the boat, then, that man finds the largest extension of his volitional and muscular existence; and yet he may tax both of them so slightly, in that most delicious of exercises, that he shall mentally write his sermon, or his poem, or recall the remarks he has made in company and put them in form for the public, as well as in his easy-chair. I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay are smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining for many a long rood behind me. To lie still over the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat, - to rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek, - to take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down its interminable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy growths, studded with minute barnacles, and belted with rings of dark muscles, while overhead streams and thunders that other river whose every wave is a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the ocean, - lying there moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that the columns of Tadmor in the Desert could not seem more remote from life, - the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against the half- sunken pillars, - why should I tell of these things, that I should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots we must be not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in winter with skaters! I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our Atlantic cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. Of the females that are the mates of these males I do not here speak. I preached my sermon from the lay-pulpit on this matter a good while ago. Of course, if you heard it, you know my belief is that the total climatic influences here are getting up a number of new patterns of humanity, some of which are not an improvement on the old model. Clipper-built, sharp in the bows, long in the spars, slender to look at, and fast to go, the ship, which is the great organ of our national life of relation, is but a reproduction of the typical form which the elements impress upon its builder. All this we cannot help; but we can make the best of these influences, such as they are. We have a few good boatmen, - no good horsemen that I hear of, - I cannot speak for cricketing, - but as for any great athletic feat performed by a gentleman in these latitudes, society would drop a man who should run round the Common in five minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, single-stick players, and boxers, we have no reason to be ashamed of. Boxing is rough play, but not too rough for a hearty young fellow. Anything is better than this white-blooded degeneration to which we all tend. I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibition only last evening. It did my heart good to see that there were a few young and youngish youths left who could take care of their own heads in case of emergency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolving himself into the primitive constituents of his humanity. Here is a delicate young man now, with an intellectual countenance, a slight figure, a sub-pallid complexion, a most unassuming deportment, a mild adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jonathan from between the ploughtails would of course expect to handle with perfect ease. Oh, he is taking off his gold-bowed spectacles! Ah, he is divesting himself of his cravat! Why, he is stripping off his coat! Well, here he is, sure enough, in a tight silk shirt, and with two things that look like batter puddings in the place of his fists. Now see that other fellow with another pair of batter puddings, - the big one with the broad shoulders; he will certainly knock the little man's head off, if he strikes him. Feinting, dodging, stopping, hitting, countering, - little man's head not off yet. You might as well try to jump upon your own shadow as to hit the little man's intellectual features. He needn't have taken off the gold-bowed spectacles at all. Quick, cautious, shifty, nimble, cool, he catches all the fierce lunges or gets out of their reach, till his turn comes, and then, whack goes one of the batter puddings against the big one's ribs, and bang goes the other into the big one's face, and, staggering, shuffling, slipping, tripping, collapsing, sprawling, down goes the big one in a miscellaneous bundle. - If my young friend, whose excellent article I have referred to, could only introduce the manly art of self-defence among the clergy, I am satisfied that we should have better sermons and an infinitely less quarrelsome church-militant. A bout with the gloves would let off the ill-nature, and cure the indigestion, which, united, have embroiled their subject in a bitter controversy. We should then often hear that a point of difference between an infallible and a heretic, instead of being vehemently discussed in a series of newspaper articles, had been settled by a friendly contest in several rounds, at the close of which the parties shook hands and appeared cordially reconciled, But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid. I was for a moment tempted, by the contagion of muscular electricity last evening, to try the gloves with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a friend to the noble art; but remembering that he had twice my weight and half my age, besides the advantage of his training, I sat still and said nothing. There is one other delicate point I wish to speak of with reference to old age. I refer to the use of dioptric media which correct the diminished refracting power of the humors of the eye, - in other words, spectacles. I don't use them. All I ask is a large, fair type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard of focal distance, and my eyes are as good as ever. But if YOUR eyes fail, I can tell you something encouraging. There is now living in New York State an old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail, immediately took to exercising it on the finest print, and in this way fairly bullied Nature out of her foolish habit of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout. And now this old gentleman performs the most extraordinary feats with his pen, showing that his eyes must be a pair of microscopes. I should be afraid to say to you how much he writes in the compass of a half- dime, - whether the Psalms or the Gospels, or the Psalms AND the Gospels, I won't be positive. But now let rue tell you this. If the time comes when you must lay down the fiddle and the bow, because your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten-foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and, after dallying awhile with eye-glasses, come at last to the undisguised reality of spectacles, - if the time comes when that fire of life we spoke of has burned so low that where its flames reverberated there is only the sombre stain of regret, and where its coals glowed, only the white ashes that cover the embers of memory, - don't let your heart grow cold, and you may carry cheerfulness and love with you into the teens of your second century, if you can last so long. As our friend, the Poet, once said, in some of those old-fashioned heroics of his which he keeps for his private reading, - Call him not old, whose visionary brain Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, Spring with her birds, or children with their play, Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, - Turn to the record where his years are told, - Count his gray hairs, - they cannot make him old! END OF THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER. [The above essay was not read at one time, but in several instalments, and accompanied by various comments from different persons at the table. The company were in the main attentive, with the exception of a little somnolence on the part of the old gentleman opposite at times, and a few sly, malicious questions about the "old boys" on the part of that forward young fellow who has figured occasionally, not always to his advantage, in these reports. On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feeling I am not ashamed of, I have always tried to give a more appropriate character to our conversation. I have never read them my sermon yet, and I don't know that I shall, as some of them might take my convictions as a personal indignity to themselves. But having read our company so much of the Professor's talk about age and other subjects connected with physical life, I took the next Sunday morning to repeat to them the following poem of his, which I have had by me some time. He calls it - I suppose, for his professional friends - THE ANATOMIST'S HYMN, but I shall name it - ] THE LIVING TEMPLE. Not in the world of light alone, Where God has built his blazing throne, Nor yet alone in earth below, With belted seas that come and go, And endless isles of sunlit green, Is all thy Maker's glory seen: Look in upon thy wondrous frame, - Eternal wisdom still the same! The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves Flows murmuring through its hidden caves Whose streams of brightening purple rush Fired with a new and livelier blush, While all their burden of decay The ebbing current steals away, And red with Nature's flame they start From the warm fountains of the heart. No rest that throbbing slave may ask, Forever quivering o'er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net Which in unnumbered crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then kindling each decaying part Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. But warmed with that uchanging flame Behold the outward moving frame, Its living marbles jointed strong With glistening band and silvery thong, And linked to reason's guiding reins By myriad rings in trembling chains, Each graven with the threaded zone Which claims it as the master's own. See how yon beam of seeming white Is braided out of seven-hued light, Yet in those lucid globes no ray By any chance shall break astray. Hark how the rolling surge of sound, Arches and spirals circling round, Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear With music it is heaven to hear. Then mark the cloven sphere that holds All thought in its mysterious folds, That feels sensation's faintest thrill And flashes forth the sovereign will; Think on the stormy world that dwells Locked in its dim and clustering cells! The lightning gleams of power it sheds Along its hollow glassy threads! O Father! grant thy love divine To make these mystic temples thine! When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapped the leaning walls of life, When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars fall, Take the poor dust thy mercy warms And mould it into heavenly forms! CHAPTER VIII. [SPRING has come. You will find some verses to that effect at the end of these notes. If you are an impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will confuse them. Many people can ride on horseback who find it hard to get on and to get off without assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the saddle again, at every parenthesis.] - The old gentleman who sits opposite, finding that spring had fairly come, mounted a white hat one day, and walked into the street. It seems to have been a premature or otherwise exceptionable exhibition, not unlike that commemorated by the late Mr. Bayly. When the old gentleman came home, he looked very red in the face, and complained that he had been "made sport of." By sympathizing questions, I learned from him that a boy had called him "old daddy," and asked him when he had his hat whitewashed. This incident led me to make some observations at table the next morning, which I here repeat for the benefit of the readers of this record. - The hat is the vulnerable point of the artificial integument. I learned this in early boyhood. I was once equipped in a hat of Leghorn straw, having a brim of much wider dimensions than were usual at that time, and sent to school in that portion of my native town which lies nearest to this metropolis. On my way I was met by a "Port-chuck," as we used to call the young gentlemen of that locality, and the following dialogue ensued. THE PORT-CHUCK. Hullo, You-sir, joo know th' wuz gon-to be a race to-morrah? MYSELF. No. Who's gon-to run, 'n' wher's't gon-to be? THE PORT-CHUCK. Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Wiliams, round the brim o' your hat. These two much-respected gentlemen being the oldest inhabitants at that time, and the alleged race-course being out of the question, the Port-chuck also winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek, I perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect has been to make me sensitive and observant respecting this article of dress ever since. Here is an axiom or two relating to it. A hat which has been POPPED, or exploded by being sat down upon, is never itself again afterwards. It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to believe the contrary. Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as its hat. There is always an unnatural calmness about its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, suggestive of a wet brush. The last effort of decayed fortune is expended in smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is the ULTIMUM MORIENS of "respectability." - The old gentleman took all these remarks and maxims very pleasantly, saying, however, that he had forgotten most of his French except the word for potatoes, - PUMMIES DE TARE. - ULTIMUM MORIENS, I told him, is old Italian, and signifies LAST THING TO DIE. With this explanation he was well contented, and looked quite calm when I saw him afterwards in the entry with a black hat on his head and the white one in his hand. - I think myself fortunate in having the Poet and the Professor for my intimates. We are so much together, that we no doubt think and talk a good deal alike; yet our points of view are in many respects individual and peculiar. You know me well enough by this time. I have not talked with you so long for nothing and therefore I don't think it necessary to draw my own portrait. But let me say a word or two about my friends. The Professor considers himself, and I consider him, a very useful and worthy kind of drudge. I think he has a pride in his small technicalities. I know that he has a great idea of fidelity; and though I suspect he laughs a little inwardly at times at the grand airs "Science" puts on, as she stands marking time, but not getting on, while the trumpets are blowing and the big drums beating, - yet I am sure he has a liking for his specially, and a respect for its cultivators. But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the Poet the other day. - My boy, said he, I can work a great deal cheaper than you, because I keep all my goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them down again to your customers. I take mine in at the level of the ground, and send them off from my doorstep almost without lifting. I tell you, the higher a man has to carry the raw material of thought before he works it up, the more it costs him in blood, nerve, and muscle. Coleridge knew all this very well when he advised every literary man to have a profession. - Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, and sometimes with the other. After a while I get tired of both. When a fit of intellectual disgust comes over me, I will tell you what I have found admirable as a diversion, in addition to boating and other amusements which I have spoken of, - that is, working at my carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical employment is the greatest possible relief, after the purely intellectual faculties begin to tire. When I was quarantined once at Marseilles, I got to work immediately at carving a wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick, and got so interested in it, that when we were set loose, I "regained my freedom with a sigh," because my toy was unfinished. There are long seasons when I talk only with the Professor, and others when I give myself wholly up to the Poet. Now that my winter's work is over and spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn to the Poet's company. I don't know anybody more alive to life than he is. The passion of poetry seizes on him every spring, he says, - yet oftentimes he complains, that, when he feels most, he can sing least. Then a fit of despondency comes over him. - I feel ashamed, sometimes, - said he, the other day, - to think how far my worst songs fall below my best. It sometimes seems to me, as I know it does to others who have told me so, that they ought to be ALL BEST, - if not in actual execution, at least in plan and motive. I am grateful - he continued - for all such criticisms. A man is always pleased to have his most serious efforts praised, and the highest aspect of his nature get the most sunshine. Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many minds must change their key now and then, on penalty of getting out of tune or losing their voices. You know, I suppose, - he said, - what is meant by complementary colors? You know the effect, too, which the prolonged impression of any one color has on the retina. If you close your eyes after looking steadily at a RED object, you see a GREEN image. It is so with many minds, - I will not say with all. After looking at one aspect of external nature, or of any form of beauty or truth, when they turn away, the COMPLEMENTARY aspect of the same object stamps itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind. Shall they give expression to this secondary mental state, or not? When I contemplate - said my friend, the Poet - the infinite largeness of comprehension belonging to the Central Intelligence, how remote the creative conception is from all scholastic and ethical formulae, I am led to think that a healthy mind ought to change its mood from time to time, and come down from its noblest condition, - never, of course, to degrade itself by dwelling upon what is itself debasing, but to let its lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise themselves. After the first and second floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry - simple adornments, but befitting the station of those who wear them - show themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought to, though the people up stairs know that they are cheap and perishable? - I don't know that I may not bring the Poet here, some day or other, and let him speak for himself. Still I think I can tell you what he says quite as well as he could do it. - Oh, - he said to me, one day, - I am but a hand-organ man, - say rather, a hand- organ. Life turns the winch, and fancy or accident pulls out the stops. I come under your windows, some fine spring morning, and play you one of my ADAGIO movements, and some of you say, - This is good, - play us so always. But, dear friends, if I did not change the stop sometimes, the machine would wear out in one part and rust in another. How easily this or that tune flows! - you say, - there must be no end of just such melodies in him. - I will open the poor machine for you one moment, and you shall look. - Ah! Every note marks where a spur of steel has been driven in. It is easy to grind out the song, but to plant these bristling points which make it was the painful task of time. I don't like to say it, - he continued, - but poets commonly have no larger stock of tunes than hand-organs; and when you hear them piping up under your window, you know pretty well what to expect. The more stops, the better. Do let them all be pulled out in their turn! So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one of his stateliest songs, and after it a gay CHANSON, and then a string of epigrams. All true, - he said, - all flowers of his soul; only one with the corolla spread, and another with its disk half opened, and the third with the heart-leaves covered up and only a petal or two showing its tip through the calyx. The water-lily is the type of the poet's soul, - he told me. - What do you think, Sir, - said the divinity-student, - opens the souls of poets most fully? Why, there must be the internal force and the external stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. A rose will not flower in the dark, and a fern will not flower anywhere. What do I think is the true sunshine that opens the poet's corolla? - I don't like to say. They spoil a good many, I am afraid; or at least they shine on a good many that never come to anything. Who are THEY? - said the schoolmistress. Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and their praise is his best reward. The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked pleased. - Did I really think so? - I do think so; I never feel safe until I have pleased them; I don't think they are the first to see one's defects, but they are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a true poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a bow- string, - to a woman and it is a harp-string. She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings of the air about her. - Ah, me! - said my friend, the Poet, to me, the other day, - what color would it not have given to my thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to my words, had I been fed on women's praises! I should have grown like Marvell's fawn, - "Lilies without; roses within!" But then, - he added, - we all think, IF so and so, we should have been this or that, as you were saying the other day, in those rhymes of yours. - I don't think there are many poets in the sense of creators; but of those sensitive natures which reflect themselves naturally in soft and melodious words, pleading for sympathy with their joys and sorrows, every literature is full. Nature carves with her own hands the brain which holds the creative imagination, but she casts the over-sensitive creatures in scores from the same mould. There are two kinds of poets, just as there are two kinds of blondes. [Movement of curiosity among our ladies at table. - Please to tell us about those blondes, said the schoolmistress.] Why, there are blondes who are such simply by deficiency of coloring matter, - NEGATIVE or WASHED blondes, arrested by Nature on the way to become albinesses. There are others that are shot through with golden light, with tawny or fulvous tinges in various degree, - POSITIVE or STAINED blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as unlike in their mode of being to the others as an orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style carries with it a wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline fire in her clear eye, which the brunette can hardly match with her quick glittering glances. Just so we have the great sun-kindled, constructive imaginations, and a far more numerous class of poets who have a certain kind of moonlight-genius given them to compensate for their imperfection of nature. Their want of mental coloring-matter makes them sensitive to those impressions which stronger minds neglect or never feel at all. Many of them die young, and all of them are tinged with melancholy. There is no more beautiful illustration of the principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence than the fact that some of the holiest lives and some of the sweetest songs are the growth of the infirmity which unfits its subject for the rougher duties of life. When one reads the life of Cowper, or of Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, - of so many gentle, sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly dying before their time, - one cannot help thinking that the human race dies out singing, like the swan in the old story. The French poet, Gilbert, who died at the Hotel Dieu, at the age of twenty-nine, - (killed by a key in his throat, which he had swallowed when delirious in consequence of a fall,) - this poor fellow was a very good example of the poet by excess of sensibility. I found, the other day, that some of my literary friends had never heard of him, though I suppose few educated Frenchmen do not know the lines which he wrote, a week before his death, upon a mean bed in the great hospital of Paris. "Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive, J'apparus un jour, et je meurs; Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, ou lentement j'arrive, Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs." At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest, One day I pass, then disappear; I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest No friend shall come to shed a tear. You remember the same thing in other words some where in Kirke White's poems. It is the burden of the plaintive songs of all these sweet albino-poets. "I shall die and be forgotten, and the world will go on just as if I had never been; - and yet how I have loved! how I have longed! how I have aspired!" And so singing, their eyes grow brighter and brighter, and their features thinner and thinner, until at last the veil of flesh is threadbare, and, still singing, they drop it and pass onward. - Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them; they cannot stop themselves, sleep cannot still them; madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads. If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pillows and count the dead beats of thought after thought and image after image jarring through the overtired organ! Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those weights, blow up the infernal machine with gunpowder? What a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest! - that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos? - that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath? - that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and silence them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, - the kind city fathers, - and the walls are nicely padded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes without damaging himself on the very plain and serviceable upholstery. If anybody would only contrive some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among the works of this horrid automaton and check them, or alter their rate of going, what would the world give for the discovery? - From half a dime to a dime, according to the style of the place and the quality of the liquor, - said the young fellow whom they call John. You speak trivially, but not unwisely, - I said. Unless the will maintain a certain control over these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. They clap on the brakes by means of opium; they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain is locked up and we cannot touch its movement directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any crevice, by which they may reach the interior, and so alter its rate of going for a while, and at last spoil the machine. Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the mind which work independently of the will, - poets and artists, for instance, who follow their imagination in their creative moments, instead of keeping it in hand as your logicians and practical men do with their reasoning faculty, - such men are too apt to call in the mechanical appliances to help them govern their intellects. - He means they get drunk, - said the young fellow already alluded to by name. Do you think men of true genius are apt to indulge in the use of inebriating fluids? said the divinity-student. If you think you are strong enough to bear what I am going to say, - I replied, - I will talk to you about this. But mind, now, these are the things that some foolish people call DANGEROUS subjects, - as if these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the Guinea- worm burrows into the naked feet of West-Indian slaves, would be more mischievous when seen than out of sight. Now the true way to deal with those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long, some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to get a piece of silk round their HEADS, and pull them out very cautiously. If you only break them off, they grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the person who has the misfortune to harbor one of them. Whence it is plain that the first thing to do is to find out where the head lies. Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this vice of intemperance. What is the head of it, and where does it lie? For you may depend upon it, there is not one of these vices that has not a head of its own, - an intelligence, - a meaning, - a certain virtue, I was going to say, - but that might, perhaps, sound paradoxical. I have heard an immense number of moral physicians lay down the treatment of moral Guinea-worms, and the vast majority of them would always insist that the creature had no head at all, but was all body and tail. So I have found a very common result of their method to be that the string slipped, or that a piece only of the creature was broken off, and the worm soon grew again, as bad as ever. The truth is, if the Devil could only appear in church by attorney, and make the best statement that the facts would bear him out in doing on behalf of his special virtues, (what we commonly call vices,) the influence of good teachers would be much greater than it is. For the arguments by which the Devil prevails are precisely the ones that the Devil-queller most rarely answers. The way to argue down a vice is not to tell lies about it, - to say that it has no attractions, when everybody knows that it has, - but rather to let it make out its case just as it certainly will in the moment of temptation, and then meet it with the weapons furnished by the Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his spear, you remember, but touched him with it, and the blasted angel took the sad glories of his true shape. If he had shown fight then, the fair spirits would have known how to deal with him. That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is not perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with music, with poetry, with religious excitement, oftenest with love. Ninon de l'Enclos said she was so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and convalescents have been made tipsy by a beef-steak. There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation which, in themselves, and without regard to their consequences, might be considered as positive improvements of the persons affected. When the sluggish intellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, the cold nature warmed, the latent sympathy developed, the flagging spirit kindled, - before the trains of thought become confused or the will perverted, or the muscles relaxed, - just at the moment when the whole human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose, and is ripe for the subscription-paper or the contribution-box, - it would be hard to say that a man was, at that very time, worse, or less to be loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all his meaner wits about him. The difficulty is, that the alcoholic virtues don't wash; but until the water takes their colors out, the tints are very much like those of the true celestial stuff. [Here I was interrupted by a question which I am very unwilling to report, but have confidence enough in those friends who examine these records to commit to their candor. A PERSON at table asked me whether I "went in for rum as a steady drink?" - His manner made the question highly offensive, but I restrained myself, and answered thus:-] Rum I take to be the name which unwashed moralists apply alike to the product distilled from molasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard. Burgundy "in all its sunset glow" is rum. Champagne, "the foaming wine of Eastern France," in rum. Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaks of as "The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright, Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light," is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Founder of our religion! I address myself to the company. - I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, as a rule for healthy people. I trust that I practice both. But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober. Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt, - sometimes a misfortune, - as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it, - but oftenest of all a PUNISHMENT. Empty heads, - heads without ideas in wholesome variety and sufficient number to furnish food for the mental clockwork, - ill- regulated heads, where the faculties are not under the control of the will, - these are the ones that hold the brains which their owners are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appliances we have been talking about. Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven has an AD VALOREM scale for them - and all of us. But to come back to poets and artists; - if they really are more prone to the abuse of stimulants, - and I fear that this is true, - the reason of it is only too clear. A man abandons himself to a fine frenzy, and the power which flows through him, as I once explained to you, makes him the medium of a great poem or a great picture. The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to REVERIE, or dreaming. If mind and body were both healthy and had food enough and fair play, I doubt whether any men would be more temperate than the imaginative classes. But body and mind often flag, - perhaps they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread or ideas, overworked, or abused in some way. The automatic action, by which genius wrought its wonders, fails. There is only one thing which can rouse the machine; not will, - that cannot reach it; nothing but a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels awhile and soon eats out the heart of the mechanism. The dreaming faculties are always the dangerous ones, because their mode of action can be imitated by artificial excitement; the reasoning ones are safe, because they imply continued voluntary effort. I think you will find it true, that, before any vice can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the germination of the seeds of intemperance. Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness finds a ship adrift, - no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course, - he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight for the maelstrom. - I wonder if you know the TERRIBLE SMILE? [The young fellow whom they call John winked very hard, and made a jocular remark, the sense of which seemed to depend on some double meaning of the word SMILE. The company was curious to know what I meant.] There are persons - I said - who no sooner come within sight of you than they begin to smile, with an uncertain movement of the mouth, which conveys the idea that they are thinking about themselves, and thinking, too, that you are thinking they are thinking about themselves, - and so look at you with a wretched mixture of self- consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry off both, which are betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and the tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize these unfortunate beings. - Why do you call them unfortunate, Sir? - asked the divinity- student. Because it is evident that the consciousness of some imbecility or other is at the bottom of this extraordinary expression. I don't think, however, that these persons are commonly fools. I have known a number, and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing conveys the idea of UNDERBREEDING more than this self-betraying smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit as well as that of MEANINGLESS BLUSHING may be fallen into by very good people who met often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true gentleman's face is infinitely removed from all such paltriness, - calm-eyed, firm-mouthed. I think Titian understood the look of a gentleman as well as anybody that ever lived. The portrait of a young man holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of the Louvre, if any of you have seen that collection, will remind you of what I mean. - Do I think these people know the peculiar look they have? - I cannot say; I hope not; I am afraid they would never forgive me, if they did. The worst of it is, the trick is catching; when one meets one of these fellows, he feels a tendency to the same manifestation. The Professor tells me there is a muscular slip, a dependence of the PLATYSMA MYOIDES, which is called the RISORIUS SANTORINI. - Say that once more, - exclaimed the young fellow mentioned above. The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip called Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have it cut out of my face, if I were born with one of those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking people I told you of the other day, and of these smiling folks. It may be that they are born with these looks, as other people are with more generally recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet three of the scowlers than one of the smilers. - There is another unfortunate way of looking, which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not like to find fault with. There are some very pretty, but, unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don't understand the law of the road with regard to handsome faces. Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to define the person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in passing. Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second, - not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation countenance at home; she knows well enough that the street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to see them. - When we observe how the same features and style of person and character descend from generation to generation, we can believe that some inherited weakness may account for these peculiarities. Little snapping-turtles snap - so the great naturalist tells us - before they are out of the egg-shell. I am satisfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, character is distinctly shown at the age of -2 or -3 months. - My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the great book where he found the fact about the little snapping- turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he has told me have suggested several odd analogies enough. There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in their brains the OVARIAN EGGS of the next generation's or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet; some of them are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and these are what must form the future. A man's general notions are not good for much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as they exist in the minds of others. One must be in the HABIT of talking with such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of thought; for their development is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded on new patterns, which must be long and closely studied. But these are the men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a book. - A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow, - said one of the company. I proceeded in spite of the interruption. - All uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is of the nature of an excretion. Its materials have been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its office in one mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. It may be milk or venom to other minds; but, in either case, it is something which the producer has had the use of and can part with. A man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or in print so soon as it is matured; but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his intellect. - Where are the brains that are fullest of these ovarian eggs of thought? - I decline mentioning individuals. The producers of thought, who are few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed up in the popular apprehension, that it would be hopeless to try to separate them before opinion has had time to settle. Follow the course of opinion on the great subjects of human interest for a few generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of its movement, see where it tends, and then see who is in advance of it or even with it; the world calls him hard names, probably; but if you would find the OVA of the future, you must look into the folds of his cerebral convolutions. [The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr- burning and witch-hanging; - but time will show, - time will show, as the old gentleman opposite says.] - Oh, - here is that copy of verses I told you about. SPRING HAS COME. INTRA MUROS. The sunbeams, lost for half a year, Slant through my pane their morning rays For dry Northwesters cold and clear, The East blows in its thin blue haze. And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, Then close against the sheltering wall The tulip's horn of dusky green, The peony's dark unfolding ball. The golden-chaliced crocus burns; The long narcissus-blades appear; The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, And lights her blue-flamed chandelier. The willow's whistling lashes, wrung By the wild winds of gusty March, With sallow leaflets lightly strung, Are swaying by the tufted larch. The elms have robed their slender spray With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; Wide o'er the clasping arch of day Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. - [See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, That flames in glory for an hour, - Behold it withering, - then look up, - How meek the forest-monarch's flower! - When wake the violets, Winter dies; When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near; When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, "Bud, little roses! Spring is here!"] The windows blush with fresh bouquets, Cut with the May-dew on their lips; The radish all its bloom displays, Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. Nor less the flood of light that showers On beauty's changed corolla-shades, - The walks are gay as bridal bowers With rows of many-petalled maids. The scarlet shell-fish click and clash In the blue barrow where they slide; The horseman, proud of streak and splash, Creeps homeward from his morning ride. Here comes the dealer's awkward string, With neck in rope and tail in knot, - Rough colts, with careless country-swing, In lazy walk or slouching trot. - Wild filly from the mountain-side, Doomed to the close and chafing thills, Lend me thy long, untiring stride To seek with thee thy western hills! I hear the whispering voice of Spring, The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry, Like some poor bird with prisoned wing That sits and sings, but longs to fly. Oh for one spot of living green, - One little spot where leaves can grow, - To love unblamed, to walk unseen, To dream above, to sleep below! CHAPTER IX. [AQUI ESTA ENCERRADA EL ALMA DEL LICENCIADO PEDRO GARCIAS. If I should ever make a little book out of these papers, which I hope you are not getting tired of, I suppose I ought to save the above sentence for a motto on the title-page. But I want it now, and must use it. I need not say to you that the words are Spanish, nor that they are to be found in the short Introduction to "Gil Blas," nor that they mean, "Here lies buried the soul of the licentiate Pedro Garcias." I warned all young people off the premises when I began my notes referring to old age. I must be equally fair with old people now. They are earnestly requested to leave this paper to young persons from the age of twelve to that of fourscore years and ten, at which latter period of life I am sure that I shall have at least one youthful reader. You know well enough what I mean by youth and age; - something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the grass a thousand feet above it. I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires not only youth, but genius, to read this paper. I don't mean to imply that it required any whatsoever to talk what I have here written down. It did demand a certain amount of memory, and such command of the English tongue as is given by a common school education. So much I do claim. But here I have related, at length, a string of trivialities. You must have the imagination of a poet to transfigure them. These little colored patches are stains upon the windows of a human soul; stand on the outside, they are but dull and meaningless spots of color; seen from within, they are glorified shapes with empurpled wings and sunbright aureoles. My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many times I have come bearing flowers such as my garden grew; but now I offer you this poor, brown, homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless. And yet - and yet - it is something better than flowers; it is a SEED- CAPSULE. Many a gardener will cut you a bouquet of his choicest blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of his rarest varieties go out of his own hands. It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very probably mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it not for individual experiences which differ from those of others only in details seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty thousands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water was the best of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, remember one particular pailful of water, flavored with the white-pine of which the pail was made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high summer, and little full-blooded boys feeling very warm and porous in the low- "studded" school-room where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young children, many of whom are old ghosts now, and have known Abraham for twenty or thirty years of our mortal time. Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in all ages; but that white-pine pail, and that brown mug belong to me in particular; and just so of my special relationships with other things and with my rice. One could never remember himself in eternity by the mere fact of having loved or hated any more than by that of having thirsted; love and hate have no more individuality in them than single waves in the ocean; - but the accidents or trivial marks which distinguished those whom we loved or hated make their memory our own forever, and with it that of our own personality also. Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or thereabouts, pause at the threshold of this particular record, and ask yourself seriously whether you are fit to read such revelations as are to follow. For observe, you have here no splendid array of petals such as poets offer you, - nothing but a dry shell, containing, if you will get out what is in it, a few small seeds of poems. You may laugh at them, if you like. I shall never tell you what I think of you for so doing. But if you can read into the heart of these things, in the light of other memories as slight, yet as dear to your soul, then you are neither more nor less than a POET, and can afford to write no more verses during the rest of your natural life, - which abstinence I take to be one of the surest marks of your meriting the divine name I have just bestowed upon you. May I beg of you who have begun this paper nobly trusting to your own imagination and sensibilities to give it the significance which it does not lay claim to without your kind assistance, - may I beg of you, I say, to pay particular attention to the BRACKETS which enclose certain paragraphs? I want my "asides," you see, to whisper loud to you who read my notes, and sometimes I talk a page or two to you without pretending that I said a word of it to our boarders. You will find a very long "aside" to you almost as soon as you begin to read. And so, dear young friend, fall to at once, taking such things as I have provided for you; and if you turn them, by the aid of your powerful imagination, into a fair banquet, why, then, peace be with you, and a summer by the still waters of some quiet river, or by some yellow beach, where, as my friend the Professor, says, you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand and count her ocean-pulses.] I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating especially to my early life, if I thought you would like to hear them. [The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and sat with her face directed partly towards me. - Half-mourning now; - purple ribbon. That breastpin she wears has GRAY hair in it; her mother's, no doubt; - I remember our landlady's daughter telling me, soon after the schoolmistress came to board with us, that she had lately "buried a payrent." That's what made her look so pale, - kept the poor dying thing alive with her own blood. Ah! long illness is the real vampyrism; think of living a year or two after one is dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail young creature at one's bedside! Well, souls grow white, as well as cheeks, in these holy duties one that goes in a nurse may come out an angel. - God bless all good women! - to their soft hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last! - The schoolmistress has a better color than when she came. - Too late! "It might have been." - Amen! - How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, sometimes! There was no long pause after my remark addressed to the company, but in that time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have just given flash through my consciousness sudden and sharp as the crooked red streak that springs out of its black sheath like the creese of a Malay in his death-race, and stabs the earth right and left in its blind rage. I don't deny that there was a pang in it, - yes, a stab; but there was a prayer, too, - the "Amen" belonged to that. - Also, a vision of a four-story brick house, nicely furnished, - I actually saw many specific articles, - curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could draw the patterns of them at this moment, - a brick house, I say, looking out on the water, with a fair parlor, and books and busts and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all complete; and at the window, looking on the water, two of us. - "Male and female created He them." - These two were standing at the window, when a smaller shape that was playing near them looked up at me with such a look that I - - poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and then continued.] I said I should like to tell you some things, such as people commonly never tell, about my early recollections. Should you like to hear them? Should we LIKE to hear them? - said the schoolmistress; - no, but we should love to. [The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had something very pleasant in its tone, just then. - The four-story brick house, which had gone out like a transparency when the light behind it is quenched, glimmered again for a moment; parlor, books, busts, flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete, - and the figures as before.] We are waiting with eagerness, Sir, - said the divinity-student. [The transparency went out as if a flash of black lightning had struck it.] If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing - I said - is to know whether I can trust you with them. It is only fair to say that there are a great many people in the world that laugh at such things. I think they are fools, but perhaps you don't all agree with me. Here are children of tender age talked to as if they were capable of understanding Calvin's "Institutes," and nobody has honesty or sense enough to tell the plain truth about the little wretches: that they are as superstitious as naked savages, and such miserable spiritual cowards - that is, if they have any imagination - that they will believe anything which is taught them, and a great deal more which they teach themselves. I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty times, among books and those who knew what was in books. I was carefully instructed in things temporal and spiritual. But up to a considerable maturity of childhood I believed Raphael and Michael Angelo to have been superhuman beings. The central doctrine of the prevalent religious faith of Christendom was utterly confused and neutralized in my mind for years by one of those too common stories of actual life, which I overheard repeated in a whisper. - Why did I not ask? you will say. - You don't remember the rosy pudency of sensitive children. The first instinctive movement of the little creatures is to make a cache, and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes, and terrors. I am uncovering one of these CACHES. Do you think I was necessarily a greater fool and coward than another? I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. The masts looked frightfully tall, - but they were not so tall as the steeple of our old yellow meeting-house. At any rate I used to hide my eyes from the sloops and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long. - One other source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was a great wooden HAND, - a glove-maker's sign, which used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to catch up a little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed, - whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit them. As for all manner of superstitious observances, I used once to think I must have been peculiar in having such a list of them, but I now believe that half the children of the same age go through the same experiences. No Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of OMENS as I found in the Sibylline leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or over certain particular things or spots - Dr. Johnson's especial weakness I got the habit of at a very early age. - I won't swear that I have not some tendency to these not wise practices even at this present date. [How many of you that read these notes can say the same thing!] With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which I loved so well I would not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to put a momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling you. The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is easily heard at the place where I was born and lived. "There is a ship of war come in," they used to say, when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence, - suddenly as falling stones; and that the great guns roared in their astonishment and delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of- war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for a time, hopes were entertained that she might be heard from. Long after the last real chance had utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the fond illusion that somewhere on the waste of waters she was still floating, and there were YEARS during which I never heard the sound of the great guns booming inland from the Navy-yard without saying to myself, "The Wasp has come!" and almost thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears of thousands. This was one of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, and the long-unspoken words have articulated themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, THE WASP HAS COME! - Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. I suppose all of you have had the pocket-book fever when you were little? - What do I mean? Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in them. - So, too, you must all remember some splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you with hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank in your life which nothing has ever filled up. - O. T. quitted our household carrying with him the passionate regrets of the more youthful members. He was an ingenious youngster; wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two initials given above with great skill on all available surfaces. I thought, by the way, they were all gone; but the other day I found them on a certain door which I will show you some time. How it surprised me to find them so near the ground! I had thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O. T., when he went, made a solemn promise to two of us. I was to have a ship, and the other a marTIN-house (last syllable pronounced as in the word TIN). Neither ever came; but, oh, how many and many a time I have stolen to the corner, - the cars pass close by it at this time, - and looked up that long avenue, thinking that he must be coming now, almost sure, as I turned to look northward, that there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship in one hand and the marTIN-house in the other! [You must not suppose that all I am going to say, as well as all I have said, was told to the whole company. The young fellow whom they call John was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a cheroot, the fumes of which came in, not ungrateful, through the open window. The divinity-student disappeared in the midst of our talk. The poor relation in black bombazine, who looked and moved as if all her articulations were elbow-joints, had gone off to her chamber, after waiting with a look of soul-subduing decorum at the foot of the stairs until one of the male sort had passed her and ascended into the upper regions. This is a famous point of etiquette in our boarding-house; in fact, between ourselves, they make such an awful fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather have them simple enough not to think of such matters at all. Our landlady's daughter said, the other evening, that she was going to "retire"; whereupon the young fellow called John took up a lamp and insisted on lighting her to the foot of the staircase. Nothing would induce her to pass by him, until the schoolmistress, saying in good plain English that it was her bed-time, walked straight by them both, not seeming to trouble herself about either of them. I have been led away from what I meant the portion included in these brackets to inform my readers about. I say, then, most of the boarders had left the table about the time when I began telling some of these secrets of mine, - all of them, in fact, but the old gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress. I understand why a young woman should like to hear these simple but genuine experiences of early life, which are, as I have said, the little brown seeds of what may yet grow to be poems with leaves of azure and gold; but when the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I was speaking of some trifling, tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with such a tremor in it that a little more and it would have been a sob, why, then I felt there must be something of nature in them which redeemed their seeming insignificance. Tell me, man or woman with whom I am whispering, have you not a small store of recollections, such as these I am uncovering, buried beneath the dead leaves of many summers, perhaps under the unmelting snows of fast-returning winters, - a few such recollections, which, if you should write them all out, would be swept into some careless editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty half-hour's lazy reading to his subscribers, - and yet, if Death should cheat you of them, you would not know yourself in eternity?] - I made three acquaintances at a very early period of life, my introduction to whom was never forgotten. The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory was this: refusing a small favor asked of me, - nothing more than telling what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to speak; - I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence more leniently; I do not believe it or any other childish wrong is infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh if I had but won that battle! The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was that had silenced me, came near me, - but never, so as to be distinctly seen and remembered, during my tender years. There flits dimly before me the image of a little girl, whose name even I have forgotten, a schoolmate, whom we missed one day, and were told that she had died. But what death was I never had any very distinct idea, until one day I climbed the low stone wall of the old burial-ground and mingled with a group that were looking into a very deep, long, narrow hole, dug down through the green sod, down through the brown loam, down through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young man seen through an opening at one end of it. When the lid was closed, and the gravel and stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman in black, who was crying and wringing her hands, went off with the other mourners, and left him, then I felt that I had seen Death, and should never forget him. One other acquaintance I made at an earlier period of life than the habit of romancers authorizes. - Love, of course. - She was a famous beauty afterwards. - I am satisfied that many children rehearse their parts in the drama of life before they have shed all their milk-teeth. - I think I won't tell the story of the golden blonde. - I suppose everybody has had his childish fancies; but sometimes they are passionate impulses, which anticipate all the tremulous emotions belonging to a later period. Most children remember seeing and adoring an angel before they were a dozen years old. [The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and taken a seat by the schoolmistress and myself, a little way from the table. - It's true, it's true, - said the old gentleman. - He took hold of a steel watch-chain, which carried a large, square gold key at one end and was supposed to have some kind of time-keeper at the other. With some trouble he dragged up an ancient-looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch. He looked at it for a moment, - hesitated, - touched the inner corner of his right eye with the pulp of his middle finger, - looked at the face of the watch, - said it was getting into the forenoon, - then opened the watch and handed me the loose outside case without a word. - The watch-paper had been pink once, and had a faint tinge still, as if all its tender life had not yet quite faded out. Two little birds, a flower, and, in small school-girl letters, a date, - 17 . . - no matter. - Before I was thirteen years old, - said the old gentleman. - I don't know what was in that young schoolmistress's head, nor why she should have done it; but she took out the watch-paper and put it softly to her lips, as if she were kissing the poor thing that made it so long ago. The old gentleman took the watch-paper carefully from her, replaced it, turned away and walked out, holding the watch in his hand. I saw him pass the window a moment after with that foolish white hat on his head; he couldn't have been thinking what he was about when he put it on. So the schoolmistress and I were left alone. I drew my chair a shade nearer to her, and continued.] And since I am talking of early recollections, I don't know why I shouldn't mention some others that still cling to me, - not that you will attach any very particular meaning to these same images so full of significance to me, but that you will find something parallel to them in your own memory. You remember, perhaps, what I said one day about smells. There were certain SOUNDS also which had a mysterious suggestiveness to me, - not so intense, perhaps, as that connected with the other sense, but yet peculiar, and never to be forgotten. The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, bringing their loads of oak and walnut from the country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them along over the complaining snow, in the cold, brown light of early morning. Lying in bed and listening to their dreary music had a pleasure in it akin to the Lucretian luxury, or that which Byron speaks of as to be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by one "who hath no friend, no brother there." There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and so connected with one of those simple and curious superstitions of childhood of which I have spoken, that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love for it. - Let me tell the superstitious fancy first. The Puritan "Sabbath," as everybody knows, began at "sundown" on Saturday evening. To such observance of it I was born and bred. As the large, round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for work to cease, and for playthings to be put away. The world of active life passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should sink again beneath the horizon. It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard, - so that I well remember I used to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, WAS PECULIAR TO SATURDAY EVENINGS. I don't know that anything could give a clearer idea of the quieting and subduing effect of the old habit of observance of what was considered holy time, than this strange, childish fancy. Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn cadences with the waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was heard only at times, - a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell, not loud, but vast, - a whistling boy would have drowned it for his next neighbor, but it must have been heard over the space of a hundred square miles. I used to wonder what this might be. Could it be the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten thousand footsteps jarring and trampling along the stones of the neighboring city? That would be continuous; but this, as I have said, rose and fell in regular rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this to have been the true solution, that it was the sound of the waves, after a high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles distant. I should really like to know whether any observing people living ten miles, more or less, inland from long beaches, - in such a town, for instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the Territory of the Massachusetts, - have ever observed any such sound, and whether it was rightly accounted for as above. Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low murmur of memory, are the echoes of certain voices I have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have not generally agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath, and velvet linings to their singing-pipes, are not so common among us as that other pattern of humanity with angular outlines and plane surfaces, and integuments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous, - acidulous enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing duets with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, for instance, - young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes, - I say, I think the conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not be among the allurements the old Enemy would put in requisition, were he getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony. There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear them for the first time, yet sweeter to us than any we shall hear until we listen to some warbling angel in the overture to that eternity of blissful harmonies we hope to enjoy. - But why should I tell lies? If my friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by their sweetness. - Frightened you? - said the schoolmistress. - Yes, frightened me. They made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with such a chord in her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred a little by and by come into harmony with it. - But I tell you this is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who followed him? - Whose were those two voices that bewitches me so? - They both belonged to German women. One was a chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating. The key of my room at a certain great hotel was missing, and this Teutonic maiden was summoned to give information respecting it. The simple soul was evidently not long from her mother-land, and spoke with sweet uncertainty of dialect. But to hear her wonder and lament and suggest, with soft, liquid inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious tenderness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a child that had strayed from its mother, was so winning, that, had her features and figure been as delicious as her accents, - if she had looked like the marble Clytie, for instance, - why, all can say is - [The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that I stopped short.] I was only going to say that I should have drowned myself. For Lake Erie was close by, and it is so much better to accept asphyxia, which takes only three minutes by the watch, than a MESALLIANCE, that lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes along down the line of descent, (breaking out in all manner of boorish manifestations of feature and manner, which, if men were only as short-lived as horses, could be readily traced back through the square-roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on which you have hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons or the De la Morues, until one came to beings that ate with knives and said "Haow?") that no person of right feeling could have hesitated for a single moment. The second of the ravishing voices I have heard was, as I have said, that of another German woman. - I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that such a voice could not have come from any Americanized human being. - What was there in it? - said the schoolmistress, - and, upon my word, her tones were so very musical, that I almost wished I had said three voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic remark above reported. - Oh, I said, it had so much WOMAN in it, - MULIEBRITY, as well as FEMINEITY; - no self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us, - I have known families famous for them, - but ask the first person you meet a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter-of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the effect of one of those bells which small trades-people connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire at once from the precincts. - Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out of her chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough students round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like; but the child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards. - C'EST TOUT COMME UN SERIN, said the French student at my side. These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres to ours; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humanity to make one more trial to reach the shore, - as some grave theologians have maintained, - if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead devils who have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living rags which lasts three or four score summers, - why, there must have been a few good spirits sent to keep them company, and these sweet voices I speak of must belong to them. - I wish you could once hear my sister's voice, - said the schoolmistress. If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, - said I. I never thought mine was anything, - said the schoolmistress. How should you know? - said I. - People never hear their own voices, - any more than they see their own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for the voice. Of course, there is something audible to us when we speak; but that something is not our own voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I think, if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we should not know them in the least. - How pleasant it would be, if in another state of being we could have shapes like our former selves for playthings, - we standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they being to us just what we used to be to others! - I wonder if there will be nothing like what we call "play," after our earthly toys are broken, - said the schoolmistress. Hush, - said I, - what will the divinity-student say? [I thought she was hit, that time; - but the shot must have gone over her, or on one side of her; she did not flinch.] Oh, - said the schoolmistress, - he must look out for my sister's heresies; I am afraid he will be too busy with them to take care of mine. Do you mean to say, - said I, - that it is YOUR SISTER whom that student - [The young fellow commonly known as John, who had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, jumped off just then, kicked over the barrel, gave it a push with his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his saucy-looking face in at the window so as to cut my question off in the middle; and the schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes afterwards, I did not have a chance to finish it. The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, putting his heels on the top of another. Pooty girl, - said he. A fine young lady, - I replied. Keeps a first-rate school, according to accounts, - said he, - teaches all sorts of things, - Latin and Italian and music. Folks rich once, - smashed up. She went right ahead as smart as if she'd been born to work. That's the kind o' girl I go for. I'd marry her, only two or three other girls would drown themselves, if I did. I think the above is the longest speech of this young fellow's which I have put on record. I do not like to change his peculiar expressions, for this is one of those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a good-hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes, - and if it were not for those heat-lightning winks on one side of his face, I should not mind his fun much.] [Some days after this, when the company were together again, I talked a little.] - I don't think I have a genuine hatred for anybody. I am well aware that I differ herein from the sturdy English moralist and the stout American tragedian. I don't deny that I hate THE SIGHT of certain people; but the qualities which make me tend to hate the man himself are such as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except under immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them. It is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple of club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a certain tenderness which we need not waste on noble natures. One who is born with such congenital incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is entitled, not to our wrath, but to our profoundest sympathy. But as we cannot help hating the sight of these people, just as we do that of physical deformities, we gradually eliminate them from our society, - we love them, but open the window and let them go. By the time decent people reach middle age they have weeded their circle pretty well of these unfortunates, unless they have a taste for such animals; in which case, no matter what their position may be, there is something, you may be sure, in their natures akin to that of their wretched parasites. - The divinity-student wished to know what I thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies; did I believe in love at first sight? Sir, - said I, - all men love all women. That is the PRIMA-FACIE aspect of the case. The Court of Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so; and the individual man is bound to show cause why he does not love any particular woman. A man, says one of my old black-letter law-books, may show divers good reasons, as thus: He hath not seen the person named in the indictment; she is of tender age, or the reverse of that; she hath certain personal disqualifications, - as, for instance, she is a blackamoor, or hath an ill-favored countenance; or, his capacity of loving being limited, his affections are engrossed by a previous comer; and so of other conditions. Not the less is it true that he is bound by duty and inclined by nature to love each and every woman. Therefore it is that each woman virtually summons every man to show cause why he doth not love her. This is not by written document, or direct speech, for the most part, but by certain signs of silk, gold, and other materials, which say to all men, - Look on me and love, as in duty bound. Then the man pleadeth his special incapacity, whatsoever that may be, - as, for instance, impecuniosity, or that he hath one or many wives in his household, or that he is of mean figure, or small capacity; of which reasons it may be noted, that the first is, according to late decisions, of chiefest authority. - So far the old law-book. But there is a note from an older authority, saying that every woman doth also love each and every man, except there be some good reason to the contrary; and a very observing friend of mine, a young unmarried clergyman, tells me, that, so far as his experience goes, he has reason to think the ancient author had fact to justify his statement. I'll tell you how it is with the pictures of women we fall in love with at first sight. - We a'n't talking about pictures, - said the landlady's daughter, - we're talking about women. I understood that we were speaking of love at sight, - I remarked, mildly. - Now, as all a man knows about a woman whom he looks at is just what a picture as big as a copper, or a "nickel," rather, at the bottom of his eye can teach him, I think I am right in saying we are talking about the pictures of women. - Well, now, the reason why a man is not desperately in love with ten thousand women at once is just that which prevents all our portraits being distinctly seen upon that wall. They all ARE painted there by reflection from our faces, but because ALL of them are painted on each spot, and each on the same surface, and many other objects at the same time, no one is seen as a picture. But darken a chamber and let a single pencil of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture on the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in distinction from women, until we can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and then we can see nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in our mental camera-obscura. - My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave town whenever the anniversaries come round. What's the difficulty? - Why, they all want him to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts; which is just the very thing he doesn't want to do. He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on these occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and can't do without him, and feel all over his poor weak head until they get their fingers on the FONTANELLE, (the Professor will tell you what this means, - he says the one at the top of the head always remains open in poets,) until, by gentle pressure on that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the point of acquiescence. There are times, though, he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what grows there, - weeds and violets together, - not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, were pulled up by the roots just in that way, the other day. - Beautiful entertainment, - names there on the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues as familiarly as AND or THE; entertainers known wherever good poetry and fair title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind-hearted, modest, genial, hopeful poet, who sings to the hearts of his countrymen, the British people, the songs of good cheer which the better days to come, as all honest souls trust and believe, will turn into the prose of common life. My friend, the Poet, says you must not read such a string of verses too literally. If he trimmed it nicely below, you wouldn't see the roots, he says, and he likes to keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to them. This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to his and our friend, the Poet:- A GOOD TIME GOING! BRAVE singer of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good-bye! Good-bye! - Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among the English daisies! 'Tis here we part; - for other eyes The busy deck, the flattering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above and home before him! His home! - the Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it; - This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle, - never mind it! - He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! But memory blushes at the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant:- "An islet is a world," she said, "When glory with its dust has blended, And Britain kept her noble dead Till earth and seas and skies are rended!" Beneath each swinging forest-bough Some arm as stout in death reposes, - From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; Nay, let our brothers of the West Write smiling in their florid pages, One-half her soil has walked the rest In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages! Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, The British oak with rooted grasp Her slender handful holds together; - With cliffs of white and bowers of green, And Ocean narrowing to caress her, And hills and threaded streams between, - Our little mother isle, God bless her! In earth's broad temple where we stand, Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us, We hold the missal in our hand, Bright with the lines our Mother taught us; Where'er its blazoned page betrays The glistening links of gilded fetters, Behold, the half-turned leaf displays Her rubric stained in crimson letters! Enough! To speed a parting friend 'Tis vain alike to speak and listen; - Yet stay, - these feeble accents blend With rays of light from eyes that glisten. Good-bye! once more, - and kindly tell In words of peace the young world's story, - And say, besides, - we love too well Our mother's soil, our father's glory! When my friend, the Professor, found that my friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this full-blown style, he got a little excited, as you may have seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up. The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has often tried, and now he was determined to try again. So when some professional friends of his called him up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular "freshet" of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read them these verses. He introduced them with a few remarks, he told me, of which the only one he remembered was this: that he had rather write a single line which one among them should think worth remembering than set them all laughing with a string of epigrams. It was all right, I don't doubt; at any rate, that was his fancy then, and perhaps another time he may be obstinately hilarious; however, it may be that he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said the other day. You must listen to this seriously, for I think the Professor was very much in earnest when he wrote it. THE TWO ARMIES. As Life's unending column pours, Two marshalled hosts are seen,- Two armies on the trampled shores That Death flows black between. One marches to the drum-beat's roll, The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, And bears upon a crimson scroll, "Our glory is to slay." One moves in silence by the stream, With sad, yet watchful eyes, Calm as the patient planet's gleam That walks the clouded skies. Along its front no sabres shine, No blood-red pennons wave; Its banner bears the single line, "Our duty is to save." For those no death-bed's lingering shade; At Honor's trumpet-call, With knitted brow and lifted blade In Glory's arms they fall. For these no clashing falchions bright, No stirring battle-cry; The bloodless stabber calls by night, - Each answers, "Here am I!" For those the sculptor's laurelled bust, The builder's marble piles, The anthems pealing o'er their dust Through long cathedral aisles. For these the blossom-sprinkled turf That floods the lonely graves, When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf In flowery-foaming waves. Two paths lead upward from below, And angels wait above, Who count each burning life-drop's flow, Each falling tear of Love. Though from the Hero's bleeding breast Her pulses Freedom drew, Though the white lilies in her crest Sprang from that scarlet dew, - While Valor's haughty champions wait Till all their scars are shown, Love walks unchallenged through the gate, To sit beside the Throne! CHAPTER X. [THE schoolmistress came down with a rose in her hair, - a fresh June rose. She has been walking early; she has brought back two others, - one on each cheek. I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could muster for the occasion. Those two blush-roses I just spoke of turned into a couple of damasks. I suppose all this went through my mind, for this was what I went on to say:-] I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers our mothers and sisters used to love and cherish, those which grow beneath our eaves and by our doorstep, are the ones we always love best. If the Houyhnhnms should ever catch me, and, finding me particularly vicious and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy me, I'll tell you what drugs he would have to take and how he would have to use them. Imagine yourself reading a number of the Houyhnhnm Gazette, giving an account of such an experiment. "MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY. "THE soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured was subjected to the art of our distinguished man-tamer in presence of a numerous assembly. The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dangerous tricks of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. His countenance expressed the utmost degree of ferocity and cunning. "The operator took a handful of BUDDING LILAC-LEAVES, and crushing them slightly between his hoofs, so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, fastened them to the end of a long pole and held them towards the creature. Its expression changed in an instant, - it drew in their fragrance eagerly, and attempted to seize them with its soft split hoofs. Having thus quieted his suspicious subject, the operator proceeded to tie a BLUE HYACINTH to the end of the pole and held it out towards the wild animal. The effect was magical. Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips trembled as it pressed them to the flower. After this it was perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to the man-tamer, without showing the least disposition to strike with the feet or hit from the shoulder." That will do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette. - Do you ever wonder why poets talk so much about flowers? Did you ever hear of a poet who did not talk about them? Don't you think a poem, which, for the sake of being original, should leave them out, would be like those verses where the letter A or E or some other is omitted? No, - they will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always old and always new. Why should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars? Look at Nature. She never wearies of saying over her floral pater-noster. In the crevices of Cyclopean walls, - in the dust where men lie, dust also, - on the mounds that bury huge cities, the wreck of Nineveh and the Babel- heap, - still that same sweet prayer and benediction. The Amen! of Nature is always a flower. Are you tired of my trivial personalities, - those splashes and streaks of sentiment, sometimes perhaps of sentimentality, which you may see when I show you my heart's corolla as if it were a tulip? Pray, do not give yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot whose conceit it is to treat himself as an exceptional being. It is because you are just like me that I talk and know that you will listen. We are all splashed and streaked with sentiments, - not with precisely the same tints, or in exactly the same patterns, but by the same hand and from the same palette. I don't believe any of you happen to have just the same passion for the blue hyacinth which I have, - very certainly not for the crushed lilac-leaf-buds; many of you do not know how sweet they are. You love the smell of the sweet-fern and the bayberry-leaves, I don't doubt; but I hardly think that the last bewitches you with young memories as it does me. For the same reason I come back to damask roses, after having raised a good many of the rarer varieties. I like to go to operas and concerts, but there are queer little old homely sounds that are better than music to me. However, I suppose it's foolish to tell such things. - It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time, - said the divinity-student; - saying it, however, in one of the dead languages, which I think are unpopular for summer-reading, and therefore do not bear quotation as such. Well, now, - said I, - suppose a good, clean, wholesome-looking countryman's cart stops opposite my door. - Do I want any huckleberries? - If I do not, there are those that do. Thereupon my soft-voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to confine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run nimbly along the narrowing channel until they tumble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the resounding metal beneath. - I won't say that this rushing huckleberry hail-storm has not more music for me than the "Anvil Chorus." - I wonder how my great trees are coming on this summer. - Where are your great trees, Sir? - said the divinity-student. Oh, all round about New England. I call all trees mine that I have put my wedding-ring on, and I have as many tree-wives as Brigham Young has human ones. - One set's as green as the other, - exclaimed a boarder, who has never been identified. They're all Bloomers, - said the young fellow called John. [I should have rebuked this trifling with language, if our landlady's daughter had not asked me just then what I meant by putting my wedding-ring on a tree.] Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my dear, - said I, - I have worn a tape almost out on the rough barks of our old New England elms and other big trees. - Don't you want to hear me talk trees a little now? That is one of my specialities. [So they all agreed that they should like to hear me talk about trees.] I want you to understand, in the first place, that I have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had several romantic attachments to certain trees in particular. Now, if you expect me to hold forth in a "scientific" way about my tree- loves, - to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus Americana, and describe the ciliated edges of its samara, and all that, - you are an anserine individual, and I must refer you to a dull friend who will discourse to you of such matters. What should you think of a lover who should describe the idol of his heart in the language of science, thus: Class, Mammalia; Order, Primates; Genus, Homo; Species, Europeus; Variety, Brown; Individual, Ann Eliza; Dental Formula 2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3 i---c---p---m--- 2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3' and so on? No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green sun-shades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with that sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but limited organisms, - which one sees in the brown eyes of oxen, but most in the patient posture, the outstretched arms, and the heavy-drooping robes of these vast beings endowed with life, but not with soul, - which outgrow us and outlive us, but stand helpless, - poor things! - while Nature dresses and undresses them, like so many full-sized, but under- witted children. Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin? Slowest of men, even of English men; yet delicious in his slowness, as is the light of a sleepy eye in woman. I always supposed "Dr. Syntax" was written to make fun of him. I have a whole set of his works, and am very proud of it, with its gray paper, and open type, and long ff, and orange-juice landscapes. The PERE Gilpin had the kind of science I like in the study of Nature, - a little less observation than White of Selborne, but a little more poetry. - Just think of applying the Linnaean system to an elm! Who cares how many stamens or pistils that little brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, may have to classify it by? What we want is the meaning, the character, the expression of a tree, as a kind and as an individual. There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for instance, and we find it always standing as a type of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought of the single mark of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from all our other forest-trees? All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting gravity; the oak alone defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell, - and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be mighty enough to be worth resisting. You will find, that, in passing from the extreme downward droop of the branches of the weeping-willow to the extreme upward inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly half a circle. At 90 degrees the oak stops short; to slant upward another degree would mark infirmity of purpose; to bend downwards, weakness of organization. The American elm betrays something of both; yet sometimes, as we shall see, puts on a certain resemblance to its sturdier neighbor. It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about trees. There is hardly one of them which has not peculiar beauties in some fitting place for it. I remember a tall poplar of monumental proportions and aspect, a vast pillar of glossy green, placed on the summit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the country round. A native of that region saw fit to build his house very near it, and, having a fancy that it might blow down some time or other, and exterminate himself and any incidental relatives who might be "stopping" or "tarrying" with him, - also laboring under the delusion that human life is under all circumstances to be preferred to vegetable existence, - had the great poplar cut down. It is so easy to say, "It is only a poplar!" and so much harder to replace its living cone than to build a granite obelisk! I must tell you about some of my tree-wives. I was at one period of my life much devoted to the young lady-population of Rhode Island, a small, but delightful State in the neighborhood of Pawtucket. The number of inhabitants being not very large, I had leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plantations, to inspect the face of the country in the intervals of more fascinating studies of physiognomy. I heard some talk of a great elm a short distance from the locality just mentioned. "Let us see the great elm," - I said, and proceeded to find it, - knowing that it was on a certain farm in a place called Johnston, if I remember rightly. I shall never forget my ride and my introduction to the great Johnston elm. I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I approach it for the first time. Provincialism has no SCALE of excellence in man or vegetable; it never knows a first-rate article of either kind when it has it, and is constantly taking second and third rate ones for Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree was afraid of me, and that a sort of shiver came over it as over a betrothed maiden when she first stands before the unknown to whom she has been plighted. Before the measuring-tape the proudest tree of them all quails and shrinks into itself. All those stories of four or five men stretching their arms around it and not touching each other's fingers, if one's pacing the shadow at noon and making it so many hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful ribbon which has strangled so many false pretensions. As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly for the object of my journey, the rounded tops of the elms rose from time to time at the road-side. Wherever one looked taller and fuller than the rest, I asked myself, - "Is this it?" But as I drew nearer, they grew smaller, - or it proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line had looked like one, and so deceived me. At last, all at once, when I was not thinking of it, - I declare to you it makes my flesh creep when I think of it now, - all at once I saw a great, green cloud swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, of such Olympian majesty and imperial supremacy among the lesser forest- growths, that my heart stopped short, then jumped at my ribs as a hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through me, without need of uttering the words, - "This is it!" You will find this tree described, with many others, in the excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts. The author has given my friend the Professor credit for some of his measurements, but measured this tree himself, carefully. It is a grand elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular development, - one of the first, perhaps the first, of the first class of New England elms. The largest actual girth I have ever found at five feet from the ground is in the great elm lying a stone's throw or two north of the main road (if my points of compass are right) in Springfield. But this has much the appearance of having been formed by the union of two trunks growing side by side. The West-Springfield elm and one upon Northampton meadows, belong also to the first class of trees. There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, which used to spread its claws out over a circumference of thirty-five feet or more before they covered the foot of its bole up with earth. This is the American elm most like an oak of any I have ever seen. The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size and perfection of form. I have seen nothing that comes near it in Berkshire County, and few to compare with it anywhere. I am not sure that I remember any other first-class elms in New England, but there may be many. - What makes a first-class elm? - Why, size, in the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, may claim that title, according to my scale. All of them, with the questionable exception of the Springfield tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty- two or twenty-three feet of girth and a hundred and twenty of spread. Elms of the second class, generally ranging from fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively common. The queen of them all is that glorious tree near one of the churches in Springfield. Beautiful and stately she is beyond all praise. The "great tree" on Boston Common comes in the second rank, as does the one at Cohasset, which used to have, and probably has still, a head as round as an apple-tree, and that at Newburyport, with scores of others which might be mentioned. These last two have perhaps been over-celebrated. Both, however, are pleasing vegetables. The poor old Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation. A wig of false leaves is indispensable to make it presentable. [I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm or other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some remote New England village, which only wants a sacred singer to make it celebrated. Send us your measurements, - (certified by the postmaster, to avoid possible imposition,) - circumference five feet from soil, length of line from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see what can be done for you.] - I wish somebody would get us up the following work:- SYLVA NOVANGLICA. Photographs of New England Elms and other Trees, taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude. With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished Literary Gentleman. Boston & Co. 185.. The same camera should be used, - so far as possible, - at a fixed distance. Our friend, who has given us so many interesting figures in his "Trees of America," must not think this Prospectus invades his province; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, would be a pretty complement to his large work, which, so far as published, I find excellent. If my plan were carried out, and another series of a dozen English trees photographed on the same scale the comparison would be charming. It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring the life of the Old and the New World face to face, by an accurate comparison of their various types of organization. We should begin with man, of course; institute a large and exact comparison between the development of LA PIANTA UMANA, as Alfieri called it, in different sections of each country, in the different callings, at different ages, estimating height, weigh, force by the dynamometer and the spirometer, and finishing off with a series of typical photographs, giving the principal national physiognomies. Mr. Hutchinson has given us some excellent English data to begin with. Then I would follow this up by contrasting the various parallel forms of life in the two continents. Our naturalists have often referred to this incidentally or expressly; but the ANIMUS of Nature in the two half globes of the planet is so momentous a point of interest to our race, that it should be made a subject of express and elaborate study. Go out with me into that walk which we call THE MALL, and look at the English and American elms. The American elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if from languor. The English elm is compact, robust, holds its branches up, and carries its leaves for weeks longer than our own native tree. Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides of the ocean, or not? Nothing but a careful comparison through the whole realm of life can answer this question. There is a parallelism without identity in the animal and vegetable life of the two continents, which favors the task of comparison in an extraordinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in many ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just so we have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting from the same ideal, embody it with various modifications. Inventive power is the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence seems to be economical; just as with our largest human minds, that is the divinest of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind which exercises it. As the same patterns have very commonly been followed, we can see which is worked out in the largest spirit, and determine the exact limitations under which the Creator places the movement of life in all its manifestations in either locality. We should find ourselves in a very false position, if it should prove that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but die out, if not kept up by fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox and other more or less wise persons have maintained. It may turn out the other way, as I have heard one of our literary celebrities argue, - and though I took the other side, I liked his best, - that the American is the Englishman reinforced. - Will you walk out and look at those elms with me after breakfast? - I said to the schoolmistress. [I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that she blushed, - as I suppose she ought to have done, at such a tremendous piece of gallantry as that was for our boarding-house. On the contrary, she turned a little pale, - but smiled brightly and said, - Yes, with pleasure, but she must walk towards her school. - She went for her bonnet. - The old gentleman opposite followed her with his eyes, and said he wished he was a young fellow. Presently she came down, looking very pretty in her half-mourning bonnet, and carrying a school-book in her hand.] MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. This is the shortest way, - she said, as we came to a corner. - Then we won't take it, - said I. - The schoolmistress laughed a little, and said she was ten minutes early, so she could go round. We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English elms. The gray squirrels were out looking for their breakfasts, and one of them came toward us in light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to the rail of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a broad blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing on it. The stone said this was the grave of a young man who was the son of an Honorable gentleman, and who died a hundred years ago and more. - Oh, yes, DIED, - with a small triangular mark in one breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back, where another young man's rapier had slid through his body; and so he lay down out there on the Common, and was found cold the next morning, with the night- dews and the death-dews mingled on his forehead. Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, - said I. - His bones lie where his body was laid so long ago, and where the stone says they lie, - which is more than can be said of most of the tenants of this and several other burial-grounds. [The most accursed act of Vandalism ever committed within my knowledge was the uprooting of the ancient gravestones in three at least of our city burialgrounds, and one at least just outside the city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry of the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this disgraceful process was going on under my eyes, I addressed an indignant remonstrance to a leading journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary elegance, or too warm in its language; for no notice was taken of it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete itself in the face of daylight. I have never got over it. The bones of my own ancestors, being entombed, lie beneath their own tablet; but the upright stones have been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies beneath any of those records, meant by affection to mark one small spot as sacred to some cherished memory. Shame! shame! shame! - that is all I can say. It was on public thoroughfares, under the eye of authority, that this infamy was enacted. The red Indians would have known better; the selectmen of an African kraal-village would have had more respect for their ancestors. I should like to see the gravestones which have been disturbed all removed, and the ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones; epitaphs were never famous for truth, but the old reproach of "Here LIES" never had such a wholesale illustration as in these outraged burial-places, where the stone does lie above, and the bones do not lie beneath.] Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's sigh over poor Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and out there fighting another young fellow on the Common, in the cool of that old July evening; - yes, there must have been love at the bottom of it. The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in her hand, through the rails, upon the grave of Benjamin Woodbridge. That was all her comment upon what I told her. - How women love Love! said I; - but she did not speak. We came opposite the head of a place or court running eastward from the main street. - Look down there, - I said, - My friend the Professor lived in that house at the left hand, next the further corner, for years and years. He died out of it, the other day. - Died? - said the schoolmistress. - Certainly, - said I. - We die out of houses, just as we die out of our bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred men's houses for them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal frames and drives out the immortal tenants. Men sicken of houses until at last they quit them, as the soul leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmities. The body has been called "the house we live in"; the house is quite as much the body we live in. Shall I tell you some things the Professor said the other day? - Do! - said the schoolmistress. A man's body, - said the Professor, - is whatever is occupied by his will and his sensibility. The small room down there, where I wrote those papers you remember reading, was much more a portion of my body than a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg is of his. The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes round it, like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then, his artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And then, the whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside wrapper. You shall observe, - the Professor said, - for, like Mr. John Hunter and other great men, he brings in that SHALL with great effect sometimes, - you shall observe that a man's clothing or series of envelopes does after a certain time mould itself upon his individual nature. We know this of our hats, and are always reminded of it when we happen to put them on wrong side foremost. We soon find that the beaver is a hollow cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps and depressions. Just so all that clothes a man, even to the blue sky which caps his head, - a little loosely, - shapes itself to fit each particular being beneath it. Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned criminals, all find it different, according to the eyes with which they severally look. But our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer natures. See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell-fish which builds all manner of smaller shells into the walls of its own. A house is never a home until we have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our own past. See what these are and you can tell what the occupant is. I had no idea, - said the Professor, - until I pulled up my domestic establishment the other day, what an enormous quantity of roots I had been making during the years I was planted there. Why, there wasn't a nook or a corner that some fibre had not worked its way into; and when I gave the last wrench, each of them seemed to shriek like a mandrake, as it broke its hold and came away. There is nothing that happens, you know, which must not inevitably, and which does not actually, photograph itself in every conceivable aspect and in all dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past await but one brief process and all their pictures will be called out and fixed forever. We had a curious illustration of the great fact on a very humble scale. When a certain bookcase, long standing in one place, for which it was built, was removed, there was the exact image on the wall of the whole, and of many of its portions. But in the midst of this picture was another, - the precise outline of a map which had hung on the wall before the bookcase was built. We had all forgotten everything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as some day or other we may remember a sin which has been built over and covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away from before the wall of Infinity, where the wrong-doing stands self-recorded. The Professor lived in that house a long time, - not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time, - and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof but his; children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to those walls, forever, - the Professor said, - for the many pleasant years he has passed within them! The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, who has been with him in many of his changes of place, and who follows him in imagination with tender interest wherever he goes. - In that little court, where he lived in gay loneliness so long, - - in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from its mountain fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud and swollen and wantons in huge luxurious oxbows about the fair Northampton meadows, and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its lower shores, - up in that caravansary on the banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement processions, - where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor always called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft climbing masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used to look through his old "Dollond" to see if the Shining Ones were not within range of sight, - sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks which carried them by the peaceful common, through the solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the terminus of their harmless stroll, - the patulous fage, in the Professor's classic dialect, - the spreading beech, in more familiar phrase, - [stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not done yet, and we have another long journey before us,] - - and again once more up among those other hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, - dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed demi-blondes, - in the home overlooking the winding stream and the smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, where the tracks of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter snow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North, the highest waves of the great land-storm in all this billowy region, - suggestive to mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of the forest, - in that home where seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific vision of the holy dreamer, - - in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its drab and mahogany, - full of great and little boys' playthings from top to bottom, - in all these summer or winter nests he was always at home and always welcome. This long articulated sigh of reminiscences, - this calenture which shows me the maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire and the mountain- circled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves which come feeling their way along the wall at my feet, restless and soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers, - is for that friend of mine who looks into the waters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them the same visions which paint themselves for me in the green depths of the Charles. - Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress? - Why, no, - of course not. I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't think I should expect any woman to listen to such a sentence as that long one, without giving her a chance to put in a word? - What did I say to the schoolmistress? - Permit me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is NULLUM TUI NEGOTII. When the schoolmistress and I reached the school-room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to let me join her again. EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL. (TO BE BURNED UNREAD.) I am afraid I have been a fool; for I have told as much of myself to this young person as if she were of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence and expansive utterance. I have been low- spirited and listless, lately, - it is coffee, I think, - (I observe that which is bought READY-GROUND never affects the head,) - and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am downhearted. There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except at dead-low tide. There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription! - Oh, no, no, no! a thousand times, no! - Yet what is this which has been shaping itself in my soul? - Is it a thought? - is it a dream? - is it a PASSION? - Then I know what comes next. - The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill; those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all the windows. When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside that very high fence. But I never see much life in those groups I sometimes meet; - and then the careful man watches them so closely! How I remember that sad company I used to pass on fine mornings, when I was a schoolboy! - B., with his arms full of yellow weeds, - ore from the gold mines which he discovered long before we heard of California, - Y., born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive, - made a Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a stick, - (the multi-millonnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good people made him easy for life,) - how I remember them all! I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, in "Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its hand from its breast, showed its heart, - a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder summit. Go there on the next visiting-day, and ask that figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the sitting posture, to lift its hand, - look upon its heart, and behold, not fire, but ashes. - No, I must not think of such an ending! Dying would be a much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping school. - I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she could by any possibility marry. - It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing. - It is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, I hope, though, - it depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably; - they must have been grinding it at home. - Another morning walk will be good for me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air before school. - The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermittent have been coming over me from time to time of late. Did you ever see that electrical experiment which consists in passing a flash through letters of gold-leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name or legend springs out of the darkness in characters of fire? There are songs all written out in my soul, which I could read, if the flash might pass through them, - but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy NIMBUS of youthful passion has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged CIRRUS of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered CUMULUS of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer worship, - the immortal maid, who, name her what you will, - Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty, - sits by the pillow of every youthful poet, and bends over his pale forehead until her tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into his dreams. MUSA. O MY lost Beauty! - hast thou folded quite Thy wings of morning light Beyond those iron gates Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, And Age upon his mound of ashes waits To chill our fiery dreams, Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams? Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, Whose flowers are silvered hair! - Have I not loved thee long, Though my young lips have often done thee wrong And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song? Ah, wilt thou yet return, Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn? Come to me! - I will flood thy silent shine With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palm toss, plume-like, in the breeze. Come to me! - thou shalt feed on honied words, Sweeter than song of birds; - No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note, When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, Thy ravished sense might soothe With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, Sought in those bowers of green Where loop the clustered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara twines, - Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, And Summer's fruited gems, And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, - Or stretched by grass-grown graves, Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones Still slumbering where they lay While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away. Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! Still let me dream and sing, - Dream of that winding shore Where scarlet cardinals bloom, - for me no more, - The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And clustering nenuphars Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars! Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed! - Come while the rose is red, - While blue-eyed Summer smiles On the green ripples round you sunken piles Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, And on the sultry air The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer! Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain With thrills of wild sweet pain! - On life's autumnal blast, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's, passion-flowers are cast, - Once loving thee, we love thee to the last! - Behold thy new-decked shrine, And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!" CHAPTER XI. [THE company looked a little flustered one morning when I came in, - so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity- student,) what had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several questions involving a quibble or play upon words, - in short, containing that indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the illustrious historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a PUN. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures. - It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they SKIP a day or two. - "Why an Englishman must go to the Continent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer proves to have no relation whatever to the temperance-movement, as no better reason is given than that island- (or, as it is absurdly written, ILE AND) water won't mix. - But when I came to the next question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a virtue. "Why an onion is like a piano" is a query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words, - "Because it smell odious," QUASI, it's melodious, - is not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper. Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know most conversations reported in books are altogether above such trivial details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as purslain and chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he didn't, - he made jokes.] I am willing, - I said, - to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner. - No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, "De Sancto Matrimonio." I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the Professor. THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-SHAY." A LOGICAL STORY. HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-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 BREASTS 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." 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 axe 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 father guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grand-children - 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! 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-horse-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. - I think there is one habit, - I said to our company a day or two afterwards - worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories, - FAST or SLOW. Man's chief end was to be a BRICK. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a GOOD DEAL CUT UP. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, BORE. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy; - you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three- volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial climate. - The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased. - I replied with my usual forbearance. - Certainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, because A or B is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation (as it supposed,) all of which could have been sufficiently explained by the participle - BORED. I have seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one word - SLOW. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow. Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something. They invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well enough, - on one condition. - What is that, Sir? - said the divinity-student. - That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in his mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks very silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in the fists, and makes an example of the biggest of his assailants, throwing off his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to consummate the act of justice, his small toggery takes on the splendors of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. You remember that the Duke said his dandy officers were his best officers. The "Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so easily. Look out for "la main de fer sous le gant de velours," (which I printed in English the other day without quotation-marks, thinking whether any SCARABAEUS CRITICUS would add this to his globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers, - which he didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of the London language, and therefore I claim the sole merit of exposing the same.) A good many powerful and dangerous people have had a decided dash of dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the "curled son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but what would be called a "swell" in these days. There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, of whom you have heard, - a philosopher, in short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and is now going to take a generation or more to learn over again. Regular dandy, he was. So was Marcus Antonius; and though he lost his game, he played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism that spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar or a poet, but he was one of the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so was Lord Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes, - a dandy is good for something as such; and dandies such as I was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a cradle, - aye, and left it swinging to this day. - Still, if I were you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next suit. ELEGANS "NASCITUR, NON FIT." A man is born a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads that can't wear hats; there are necks that can't fit cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out collars - (Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are TOURNURES nothing can humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity which belong to different styles of dandyism. We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this country, - not a GRATIA-DEI, nor a JUREDIVINO one, - but a DE-FACTO upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves of common life like the iridescent film you may have seen spreading over the water about our wharves, - very splendid, though its origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept for two or three generations transforms a race, - I don't mean merely in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in which children grow up more kindly, of course, than in close, back streets; it buys country-places to give them happy and healthy summers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and mutton. When the spring-chickens come to market - I beg your pardon, - that is not what I was going to speak of. As the young females of each successive season come on, the finest specimens among them, other things being equal, are apt to attract those who can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The physical character of the next generation rises in consequence. It is plain that certain families have in this way acquired an elevated type of face and figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections one may sometimes find models of both sexes which one of the rural counties would find it hard to match from all its townships put together. Because there is a good deal of running down, of degeneration and waste of life, among the richer classes, you must not overlook the equally obvious fact I have just spoken of, - which in one or two generations more will be, I think, much more patent than just now. The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the same I have alluded to in connection with cheap dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its high-caste gallantry, are not so manifest as the plate-glass of its windows and the more or less legitimate heraldry of its coach- panels. It is very curious to observe of how small account military folks are held among our Northern people. Our young men must gild their spurs, but they need not win them. The equal division of property keeps the younger sons of rich people above the necessity of military service. Thus the army loses an element of refinement, and the moneyed upper class forgets what it is to count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't believe in any aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. Ours may show it when the time comes, if it ever does come. - These United States furnish the greatest market for intellectual GREEN FRUIT of all the places in the world. I think so, at any rate. The demand for intellectual labor is so enormous and the market so far from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like unripe gooseberries, - get plucked to make a fool of. Think of a country which buys eighty thousand copies of the "Proverbial Philosophy," while the author's admiring countrymen have been buying twelve thousand! How can one let his fruit hang in the sun until it gets fully ripe, while there are eighty thousand such hungry mouths ready to swallow it and proclaim its praises? Consequently, there never was such a collection of crude pippins and half-grown windfalls as our native literature displays among its fruits. There are literary green-groceries at every corner, which will buy anything, from a button-pear to a pine-apple. It takes a long apprenticeship to train a whole people to reading and writing. The temptation of money and fame is too great for young people. Do I not remember that glorious moment when the late Mr. - we won't say who, - editor of the - we won't say what, offered me the sum of fifty cents PER double-columned quarto page for shaking my young boughs over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have revelled in its wealth and splendor, but for learning that the FIFTY CENTS was to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal expression of past fact or present intention. - Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence. - I don't believe one word of what you are saying, - spoke up the angular female in black bombazine. I am sorry you disbelieve it, Madam, - I said, and added softly to my next neighbor, - but you prove it. The young fellow sitting near me winked; and the divinity-student said, in an undertone, - OPTIME DICTUM. Your talking Latin, - said I, - reminds me of an odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so much of that language, that his English half turned into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, in pretty close quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a series of city pastorals. Eclogues he called them, and meant to have published them by subscription. I remember some of his verses, if you want to hear them. - You, Sir, (addressing myself to the divinity-student,) and all such as have been through college, or, what is the same thing, received an honorary degree, will understand them without a dictionary. The old man had a great deal to say about "aestivation," as he called it, in opposition, as one might say, to HIBERNATION. Intramural aestivation, or town-life in summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence, or semi-asphyxia. One wakes up from it about the beginning of the last week in September. This is what I remember of his poem:- AESTIVATION. AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, BY MY LATE LATIN TUTOR IN candent ire the solar splendor flames; The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames; His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine! To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, - No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue! Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump, - Depart, - be off, - excede, - evade, - erump! - I have lived by the sea-shore and by the mountains. - No, I am not going to say which is best. The one where your place is is the best for you. But this difference there is: you can domesticate mountains, but the sea is FERAE NATURAE. You may have a hut, or know the owner of one, on the mountain-side; you see a light half- way up its ascent in the evening, and you know there is a home, and you might share it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps; you know the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black in October, when the maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped themselves in the medallions that hang round the walls of your memory's chamber. - The sea remembers nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet, - its huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you; but it will crack your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing had happened. The mountains give their lost children berries and water; the sea mocks their thirst and lets them die. The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity; the sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The mountains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see their joints, - but their shining is that of a snake's belly, after all. - In deeper suggestiveness I find as great a difference. The mountains dwarf mankind and foreshorten the procession of its long generations. The sea drowns out humanity and time; it has no sympathy with either; for it belongs to eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever. Yet I should love to have a little box by the seashore. I should love to gaze out on the wild feline element from a front window of my own, just as I should love to look on a caged panther, and see it, stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap its smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself into rage and show its white teeth and spring at its bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harmless fury. - And then, - to look at it with that inward eye, - who does not love to shuffle off time and its concerns, at intervals, - to forget who is President and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the firmament his particular planetary system is hung upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing just as steadily after the human chorus has died out and man is a fossil on its shores? - What should decide one, in choosing a summer residence? - Constitution, first of all. How much snow could you melt in an hour, if you were planted in a hogshead of it? Comfort is essential to enjoyment. All sensitive people should remember that persons in easy circumstances suffer much more cold in summer - that is, the warm half of the year - than in winter, or the other half. You must cut your climate to your constitution, as much as your clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste and convenient. But if you would be happy in Berkshire, you must carry mountains in your brain; and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have an ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with you; you must match her piece, or she will never give it up to you. - The schoolmistress said, in a rather mischievous way, that she was afraid some minds or souls would be a little crowded, if they took in the Rocky Mountains or the Atlantic. Have you ever read the little book called "The Stars and the Earth?" - said I. - Have you seen the Declaration of Independence photographed in a surface that a fly's foot would cover? The forms or conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, are nothing in themselves, - only our way of looking at things. You are right, I think, however, in recognizing the category of Space as being quite as applicable to minds as to the outer world. Every man of reflection is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined circle which is drawn about his intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his intellectual circle include the curves of many other minds of which he is cognizant. He often recognizes these as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less radius. On the other hand, when we find a portion of an are on the outside of our own, we say it INTERSECTS ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that it CIRCUMSCRIBES it. Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it. - If I thought I should ever see the Alps! - said the schoolmistress. Perhaps you will, some time or other, - I said. It is not very likely, - she answered. - I have had one or two opportunities, but I had rather be anything than governess in a rich family. [Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman! Well, I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How long will school-keeping take to kill you? Is it possible the poor thing works with her needle, too? I don't like those marks on the side of her forefinger. TABLEAU. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. Figures in the foreground; two of them standing apart; one of them a gentleman of - oh, - ah, - yes! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning on his shoulder. - The ingenuous reader will understand that this was an internal, private, personal, subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the background of my own consciousness, and abolished into black nonentity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down in front of it "by the run."] - Should you like to hear what moderate wishes life brings one to at last? I used to be very ambitious, - wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in all my fancies. Read too much in the "Arabian Nights." Must have the lamp, - couldn't do without the ring. Exercise every morning on the brazen horse. Plump down into castles as full of little milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at once. - Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for the reality. I have outgrown all this; my tastes have become exceedingly primitive, - almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but must not hope to find it there. I think you will be willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued and limited desires of my maturity. CONTENTMENT. "Man wants but little here below." LITTLE I ask, my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A VERY PLAIN brown stone will do,) That I may call my own; - And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten; - If Nature can subsist on three, Thank heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice; - My CHOICE would be vanilla-ice. I care not much for gold or land; - Give me a mortgage here and there, - Some good bank-stock, - some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share; - I only ask that Fortune send A LITTLE more than I shall spend. Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names; - I would, PERHAPS, be Plenipo, - But only near St. James; - I'm very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator's chair. Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin To care for such unfruitful things; - One good-sized diamond in a pin, - Some, NOT SO LARGE, in rings, - A ruby and a pearl, or so, Will do for me; - I laugh at show. My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good, heavy silks are never dear;) - I own perhaps I MIGHT desire Some shawls of true cashmere, - Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare An easy gait - two, forty-five - Suits me; I do not care; - Perhaps, for just a SINGLE SPURT, Some seconds less would do no hurt. Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four, - I love so much their style and tone, - One Turner, and no more, - (A landscape, - foreground golden dirt The sunshine painted with a squirt.) Of books but few, - some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor; - Some LITTLE luxury THERE Of red morocco's gilded gleam, And vellum rich as country cream. Busts, cameos, gems, - such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride; - ONE Stradivarius, I confess, TWO Meerschaums, I would fain possess. Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; - Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But ALL must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share, - I ask but ONE recumbent chair. Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch, If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them MUCH, - Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content! MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. (A PARENTHESIS.) I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together before this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the school-house-steps. I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the public. - I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her bones and marrow. - Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them. - Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy. - She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, - said a wise old friend to me, - he was a boor. - Better too few words, from the woman we love, than too many: while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working for herself. - Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold. - Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress, or not, - whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon, - whether I cribbed them from Balzac, - whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian wisdom, - or whether I have just found them in my head, laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience, (who, according to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs,) I cannot say. Wise men have said more foolish things, - and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report. - You are a stranger to me, Ma'am. - I don't doubt you would like to know all I said to the schoolmistress. - I sha'n't do it; - I had rather get the publishers to return the money you have invested in this. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell only what I like of what I remember. - My idea was, in the first place, to search out the picturesque spots which the city affords a sight of, to those who have eyes. I know a good many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in company with my young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the Franklin-Place front-yards or borders; Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon them. Then there are certain small seraglio- gardens, into which one can get a peep through the crevices of high fences, - one in Myrtle Street, or backing on it, - here and there one at the North and South Ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then the stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers Street, which hold their outspread hands over your head, (as I said in my poem the other day,) and look as if they were whispering, "May grace, mercy, and peace be with you!" - and the rest of that benediction. Nay, there are certain patches of ground, which, having lain neglected for a time, Nature, who always has her pockets full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has covered with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael would not have disdained to spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of young tatterdemalions playing pitch- and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at their head. But then the Professor has one of his burrows in that region, and puts everything in high colors relating to it. That is his way about everything. I hold any man cheap, - he said, - of whom nothing stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are swans. - How is that, Professor? - said I; - I should have set you down for one of that sort. - Sir, - said he, - I am proud to say, that Nature has so far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a duck without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever swam the basin in the garden of the Luxembourg. And the Professor showed the whites of his eyes devoutly, like one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses. I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth which was green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe, - "What are these people about?" And the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper back, - "We will go and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up in the least possible bundles, and wait until the wind steals to them at night and whispers, "Come with me." Then they go softly with it into the great city, - one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone where nothing but a man is buried, - and there they grow, looking down on the generations of men from mouldy roofs, looking up from between the less-trodden pavements, looking out through iron cemetery- railings. Listen to them, when there is only a light breath stirring, and you will hear them saying to each other, - "Wait awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those narrow green lines that border the roads leading from the city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to each other, - "Wait awhile!" By-and-by the flow of life in the streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants - the smaller tribes always in front - saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees take up their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have encamped in the market-place. Wait long enough and you will find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block in its yellow underground arms; that was the cornerstone of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, this imperturbable Nature! - Let us cry! - But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks with the schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not tell you something about them. Let me alone, and I shall talk to you more than I ought to, probably. We never tell our secrets to people that pump for them. Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, - but she goes into all the corners, and attends to the leaves as much as the covers. - Books are the NEGATIVE pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A woman, (of the right kind,) reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat. But it was in talking of Life that we came most clearly together. I thought I knew something about that, - that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the purpose. To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up water, - to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seven years in a tan-pit, - to have winnowed every wave of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the flume upon its float-boards, - to have curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing- sickness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four score years, - to have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels of its delirium, - and then, just at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province. The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, - unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great Passion. - I never addressed one word of love to the schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me that we talked of everything but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our people at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast-table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon, - with the condition, however, of being released in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of course, as yet. It was on the Common that we were walking. The MALL, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs down from opposite Joy Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it. I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, - Will you take the long path with me? - Certainly, - said the schoolmistress, - with much pleasure. - Think, - I said, - before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more! - The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by, - the one you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. - Pray, sit down, - I said. - No, no, she answered, softly, - I will walk the LONG PATH with you! - The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly, - "Good morning, my dears!" CHAPTER XII. [I DID not think it probable that I should have a great many more talks with our company, and therefore I was anxious to get as much as I could into every conversation. That is the reason why you will find some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which I wished to tell at least once, as I should not have a chance to tell them habitually at our breakfast-table. - We're very free and easy, you know; we don't read what we don't like. Our parish is so large, one can't pretend to preach to all the pews at once. One can't be all the time trying to do the best of one's best if a company works a steam fire-engine, the firemen needn't be straining themselves all day to squirt over the top of the flagstaff. Let them wash some of those lower-story windows a little. Besides, there is no use in our quarrelling now, as you will find out when you get through this paper.] - Travel, according to my experience, does not exactly correspond to the idea one gets of it out of most books of travels. I am thinking of travel as it was when I made the Grand Tour, especially in Italy. Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking. I can prove some facts about travelling by a story or two. There are certain principles to be assumed, - such as these:- He who is carried by horses must deal with rogues. - To- day's dinner subtends a larger visual angle than yesterday's revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger to me than the biggest of Dr. Gould's private planets. - Every traveller is a self-taught entomologist. - Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension; an old joke tells better among friends travelling than at home, - which shows that their minds are in a state of diminished, rather than increased vitality. There was a story about "strahps to your pahnts," which was vastly funny to us fellows - on the road from Milan to Venice. - CAELUM, NON ANIMUM, - travellers change their guineas, but not their characters. The bore is the same, eating dates under the cedars of Lebanon, as over a plate of baked beans in Beacon Street. - Parties of travellers have a morbid instinct for "establishing raws" upon each other. - A man shall sit down with his friend at the foot of the Great Pyramid and they will take up the question they had been talking about under "the great elm," and forget all about Egypt. When I was crossing the Po, we were all fighting about the propriety of one fellow's telling another that his argument was ABSURD; one maintaining it to be a perfectly admissible logical term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad absurdum;" the rest badgering him as a conversational bully. Mighty little we troubled ourselves for PADUS, the Po, "a river broader and more rapid than the Rhone," and the times when Hannibal led his grim Africans to its banks, and his elephants thrust their trunks into the yellow waters over which that pendulum ferry-boat was swinging back and forward every ten minutes! - Here are some of those reminiscences, with morals prefixed, or annexed, or implied. Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us full in front, but obliquely from the side; a scene or incident in UNDRESS often affects us more than one in full costume. "Is this the mighty ocean? - is this all?" says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should have flooded my soul in the Coliseum did not come. But walking one day in the fields about the city, I stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo! the World's Mistress in her stone girdle - ALTA MAENIA ROMAE - rose before me and whitened my cheek with her pale shadow as never before or since. I used very often, when coming home from my morning's work at one of the public institutions of Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of St. Etienne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, surrounded by burning candles and votive tablets, was there; the mural tablet of Jacobus Benignus Winslow was there; there was a noble organ with carved figures; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders of a stooping Samson; and there was a marvellous staircase like a coil of lace. These things I mention from memory, but not all of them together impressed me so much as an inscription on a small slab of marble fixed in one of the walls. It told how this church of St. Stephen was repaired and beautified in the year 16**, and how, during the celebration of its reopening, two girls of the parish (FILLES DE LA PAROISSE) fell from the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade with them, to the pavement, but by a miracle escaped uninjured. Two young girls, nameless, but real presences to my imagination, as much as when they came fluttering down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed the sharpest treble in the Te Deum. (Look at Carlyle's article on Boswell, and see how he speaks of the poor young woman Johnson talked with in the streets one evening.) All the crowd gone but these two "filles de la paroisse," - gone as utterly as the dresses they wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as the bread and meat that were in the market on that day. Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that call up single sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or struggle, reach us most nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the parapet of which Theobald Weinzapfli's restive horse sprung with him and landed him more than a hundred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's servant from that day forward. I have forgotten the famous bears, and all else. - I remember the Percy lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick, - the leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight like a pump-handle, - and why? Because of the story of the village boy who must fain bestride the leaden tail, standing out over the water, - which breaking, he dropped into the stream far below, and was taken out an idiot for the rest of his life. Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point, and the guillotine- axe must have a slanting edge. Something intensely human, narrow, and definate pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily than huge occurrences and catastrophes. A nail will pick a lock that defies hatchet and hammer. "The Royal George" went down with all her crew, and Cowper wrote an exquisitely simple poem about it; but the leaf which holds it is smooth, while that which bears the lines on his mother's portrait is blistered with tears. My telling these recollections sets me thinking of others of the same kind which strike the imagination, especially when one is still young. You remember the monument in Devizes market to the woman struck dead with a lie in her mouth. I never saw that, but it is in the books. Here is one I never heard mentioned; - if any of the "Note and Query" tribe can tell the story, I hope they will. Where is this monument? I was riding on an English stage-coach when we passed a handsome marble column (as I remember it) of considerable size and pretensions. - What is that? - I said. - That, - answered the coachman, - is THE HANGMAN'S PILLAR. Then he told me how a man went out one night, many years ago, to steal sheep. He caught one, tied its legs together, passed the rope over his head, and started for home. In climbing a fence, the rope slipped, caught him by the neck, and strangled him. Next morning he was found hanging dead on one side of the fence and the sheep on the other; in memory whereof the lord of the manor caused this monument to be erected as a warning to all who love mutton better than virtue. I will send a copy of this record to him or her who shall first set me right about this column and its locality. And telling over these old stories reminds me that I have something which may interest architects and perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's twenty digits. While I was on it, "pinnacled dim in the intense inane," a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. It swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye or a cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to the guide, and he said that the spire did really swing back and forward, - I think he said some feet. Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some other line will intersect it. Long afterwards I was hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an old journal, - the "Magazin Encyclopedique" for L'AN TROISIEME, (1795,) when I stumbled upon a brief article on the vibrations of the spire of Strasburg Cathedral. A man can shake it so that the movement shall be shown in a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below the summit, and higher up the vibration is like that of an earthquake. I have seen one of those wretched wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish some of our stone churches (thinking that the lidless blue eye of heaven cannot tell the counterfeit we try to pass on it,) swinging like a reed, in a wind, but one would hardly think of such a thing's happening in a stone spire. Does the Bunker-Hill Monument bend in the blast like a blade of grass? I suppose so. You see, of course, that I am talking in a cheap way; - perhaps we will have some philosophy by and by; - let me work out this thin mechanical vein. - I have something more to say about trees. I have brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. Tree blew down in my woods (that were) in 1852. Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth; - nine feet, where I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, going to the centre, of the general shape of a slice of apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. Length, about eighteen inches. I have studied the growth of this tree by its rings, and it is curious. Three hundred and forty-two rings. Started, therefore, about 1510. The thickness of the rings tells the rate at which it grew. For five or six years the rate was slow, - then rapid for twenty years. A little before the year 1550 it began to grow very slowly, and so continued for about seventy years. In 1620 it took a new start and grew fast until 1714 then for the most part slowly until 1786, when it started again and grew pretty well and uniformly until within the last dozen years, when it seems to have got on sluggishly. Look here. Here are some human lives laid down against the periods of its growth, to which they corresponded. This is Shakspeare's. The tree was seven inches in diameter when he was born; ten inches when he died. A little less than ten inches when Milton was born; seventeen when he died. Then comes a long interval, and this thread marks out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the span of Napoleon's career; - the tree doesn't seem to have minded it. I never saw the man yet who was not startled at looking on this section. I have seen many wooden preachers, - never one like this. How much more striking would be the calendar counted on the rings of one of those awful trees which were standing when Christ was on earth, and where that brief mortal life is chronicled with the stolid apathy of vegetable being, which remembers all human history as a thing of yesterday in its own dateless existence! I have something more to say about elms. A relative tells me there is one of great glory in Andover, near Bradford. I have some recollections of the former place, pleasant and other. [I wonder if the old Seminary clock strikes as slowly as it used to. My room-mate thought, when he first came, it was the bell tolling deaths, and people's ages, as they do in the country. He swore - (ministers' sons get so familiar with good words that they are apt to handle them carelessly) - that the children were dying by the dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next day in recess, when it began to strike eleven, but was caught before the clock got through striking.] At the foot of "the hill," down in town, is, or was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron to protect it from Indian tomahawks, (CREDAT HAHNEMANNUS,) and to have grown round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of course, this is not the tree my relative means. Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in Connecticut, telling me of two noble elms which are to be seen in that town. One hundred and twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end! What do you say to that? And gentle ladies beneath it, that love it and celebrate its praises! And that in a town of such supreme, audacious, Alpine loveliness as Norwich! - Only the dear people there must learn to call it Norridge, and not be misled by the mere accident of spelling. NorWICH. PorCHmouth. CincinnatAH. What a sad picture of our civilization! I did not speak to you of the great tree on what used to be the Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply because I had not seen it for many years, and did not like to trust my recollection. But I had it in memory, and even noted down, as one of the finest trees in symmetry and beauty I had ever seen. I have received a document, signed by two citizens of a neighboring town, certified by the postmaster and a selectman, and these again corroborated, reinforced, and sworn to by a member of that extraordinary college- class to which it is the good fortune of my friend the Professor to belong, who, though he has FORMERLY been a member of Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy of confidence. The tree "girts" eighteen and a half feet, and spreads over a hundred, and is a real beauty. I hope to meet my friend under its branches yet; if we don't have "youth at the prow," we will have "pleasure at the 'elm." And just now, again, I have got a letter about some grand willows in Maine, and another about an elm in Wayland, but too late for anything but thanks. [And this leads me to say, that I have received a great many communications, in prose and verse since I began printing these notes. The last came this very morning, in the shape of a neat and brief poem, from New Orleans. I could not make any of them public, though sometimes requested to do so. Some of them have given me great pleasure, and encouraged me to believe I had friends whose faces I had never seen. If you are pleased with anything a writer says, and doubt whether to tell him of it, do not hesitate; a pleasant word is a cordial to one, who perhaps thinks he is tiring you, and so becomes tired himself. I purr very loud over a good, honest letter that says pretty things to me.] - Sometimes very young persons send communications which they want forwarded to editors; and these young persons do not always seem to have right conceptions of these same editors, and of the public, and of themselves. Here is a letter I wrote to one of these young folks, but, on the whole, thought it best not to send. It is not fair to single out one for such sharp advice, where there are hundreds that are in need of it. DEAR SIR, - You seem to be somewhat, but not a great deal, wiser than I was at your age. I don't wish to be understood as saying too much, for I think, without committing myself to any opinion on my present state, that I was not a Solomon at that stage of development. You long to "leap at a single bound into celebrity." Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else, - very rarely to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!" The struggle for fame, as such, commonly ends in notoriety; - that ladder is easy to climb, but it leads to the pillory which is crowded with fools who could not hold their tongues and rogues who could not hide their tricks. If you have the consciousness of genius, do something to show it. The world is pretty quick, nowadays, to catch the flavor of true originality; if you write anything remarkable, the magazines and newspapers will find you out, as the school-boys find out where the ripe apples and pears are. Produce anything really good, and an intelligent editor will jump at it. Don't flatter yourself that any article of yours is rejected because you are unknown to fame. Nothing pleases an editor more than to get anything worth having from a new hand. There is always a dearth of really fine articles for a first-rate journal; for, of a hundred pieces received, ninety are at or below the sea-level; some have water enough, but no head; some head enough, but no water; only two or three are from full reservoirs, high up that hill which is so hard to climb. You may have genius. The contrary is of course probable, but it is not demonstrated. If you have, the world wants you more than you want it. It has not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of genius that shows itself among us; there is not a bull-calf in our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one, among his friends, and no takers, that he is the real, genuine, no- mistake Osiris. QU'EST CE QU'IL A FAIT? What has he done? That was Napoleon's test. What have you done? Turn up the faces of your picture- cards, my boy! You need not make mouths at the public because it has not accepted you at your own fancy-valuation. Do the prettiest thing you can and wait your time. For the verses you send me, I will not say they are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show promise. I am not an editor, but I know the standard of some editors. You must not expect to "leap with a single bound" into the society of those whom it is not flattery to call your betters. When "The Pactolian" has paid you for a copy of verses, - (I can furnish you a list of alliterative signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe Zenith,) - when "The Rag-bag" has stolen your piece, after carefully scratching your name out, - when "The Nut-cracker" has thought you worth shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem, - then, and not till then, you may consider the presumption against you, from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in question, and let our friends hear from you, if you think it worth while. You may possibly think me too candid, and even accuse me of incivility; but let me assure you that I am not half so plain- spoken as Nature, nor half so rude as Time. If you prefer the long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendship, try it like a man. Only remember this, - that, if a bushel of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart without springs to it, the small potatoes always get to the bottom. Believe me, etc., etc. I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this vein; for these are by far the most exacting, eager, self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable literary persons one is like to meet with. Is a young man in the habit of writing verses? Then the presumption is that he is an inferior person. For, look you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes POOR verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and soul to match them is, like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young man can get rid of the presumption against him afforded by his writing verses only by convincing us that they are verses worth writing. All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, it is not addressed to any individual, and of course does not refer to any reader of these pages. I would always treat any given young person passing through the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief period of adolescence with great tenderness. God forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young creatures on the strength of these ugly truths, and so sooner or later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess on the lips who might have sung the world into sweet trances, had we not silenced the matin-song in its first low breathings! Just as my heart yearns over the unloved, just so it sorrows for the ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of an undeceived self- estimate. I have always tried to be gentle with the most hopeless cases. My experience, however, has not been encouraging. - X. Y., aet. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, with narrow jaws, and broad, bony, cold, red hands, having been laughed at by the girls in his village, and "got the mitten" (pronounced mittIn) two or three times, falls to souling and controlling, and youthing and truthing, in the newspapers. Sends me some strings of verses, candidates for the Orthopedic Infirmary, all of them, in which I learn for the millionth time one of the following facts: either that something about a chime is sublime, or that something about time is sublime, or that something about a chime is concerned with time, or that something about a rhyme is sublime or concerned with time or with a chime. Wishes my opinion of the same, with advice as to his future course. What shall I do about it? Tell him the whole truth, and send him a ticket of admission to the Institution for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth? One doesn't like to be cruel, - and yet one hates to lie. Therefore one softens down the ugly central fact of donkeyism, - recommends study of good models, - that writing verse should be an incidental occupation only, not interfering with the hoe, the needle, the lapstone, or the ledger, - and, above all that there should be no hurry in printing what is written. Not the least use in all this. The poetaster who has tasted type is done for. He is like the man who has once been a candidate for the Presidency. He feeds on the madder of his delusion all his days, and his very bones grow red with the glow of his foolish fancy. One of these young brains is like a bunch of India crackers; once touch fire to it and it is best to keep hands off until it has done popping, - if it ever stops. I have two letters on file; one is a pattern of adulation, the other of impertinence. My reply to the first, containing the best advice I could give, conveyed in courteous language, had brought out the second. There was some sport in this, but Dulness is not commonly a game fish, and only sulks after he is struck. You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your OPINION really want your PRAISE, and will be contented with nothing less. There is another kind of application to which editors, or those supposed to have access to them, are liable, and which often proves trying and painful. One is appealed to in behalf of some person in needy circumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. A manuscript accompanying the letter is offered for publication. It is not commonly brilliant, too often lamentably deficient. If Rachel's saying is true, that "fortune is the measure of intelligence," then poverty is evidence of limited capacity which it too frequently proves to be, notwithstanding a noble exception here and there. Now an editor is a person under a contract with the public to furnish them with the best things he can afford for his money. Charity shown by the publication of an inferior article would be like the generosity of Claude Duval and the other gentlemen highwaymen, who pitied the poor so much they robbed the rich to have the means of relieving them. Though I am not and never was an editor, I know something of the trials to which they are submitted. They have nothing to do but to develope enormous calluses at every point of contact with authorship. Their business is not a matter of sympathy, but of intellect. They must reject the unfit productions of those whom they long to befriend, because it would be a profligate charity to accept them. One cannot burn his house down to warm the hands even of the fatherless and the widow. THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM. - You haven't heard about my friend the Professor's first experiment in the use of anaesthetics, have you? He was mightily pleased with the reception of that poem of his about the chaise. He spoke to me once or twice about another poem of similar character he wanted to read me, which I told him I would listen to and criticize. One day, after dinner, he came in with his face tied up, looking very red in the cheeks and heavy about the eyes. - Hy'r'ye? - he said, and made for an arm-chair, in which he placed first his hat and then his person, going smack through the crown of the former as neatly as they do the trick at the circus. The Professor jumped at the explosion as if he had sat down on one of those small CALTHROPS our grandfathers used to sow round in the grass when there were Indians about, - iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn an inch and a half long, - stick through moccasins into feet, - cripple 'em on the spot, and give 'em lockjaw in a day or two. At the same time he let off one of those big words which lie at the bottom of the best man's vocabulary, but perhaps never turn up in his life, - just as every man's hair MAY stand on end, but in most men it never does. After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or two of manuscript, together with a smaller scrap, on which, as he said, he had just been writing an introduction or prelude to the main performance. A certain suspicion had come into my mind that the Professor was not quite right, which was confirmed by the way he talked; but I let him begin. This is the way he read it:- PRELUDE. I'M the fellah that tole one day The tale of the won'erful one-hoss-shay. Wan' to hear another? Say. - Funny, wasn'it? Made ME laugh, - I'm too modest, I am, by half, - Made me laugh'S THOUGH I SH'D SPLIT, - Cahn' a fellah like fellah's own wit? - - Fellahs keep sayin', - "Well, now that's nice; Did it once, but cahn' do it twice." - Don' you b'lieve the'z no more fat; Lots in the kitch'n 'z good 'z that. Fus'-rate throw, 'n' no mistake, - Han' us the props for another shake; - Know I'll try, 'n' guess I'll win; Here sh' goes for hit 'm ag'in! Here I thought it necessary to interpose. - Professor, - I said, - you are inebriated. The style of what you call your "Prelude" shows that it was written under cerebral excitement. Your articulation is confused. You have told me three times in succession, in exactly the same words, that I was the only true friend you had in the world that you would unbutton your heart to. You smell distinctly and decidedly of spirits. - I spoke, and paused; tender, but firm. Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the Professor's lids, - in obedience to the principle of gravitation celebrated in that delicious bit of bladdery bathos, "The very law that moulds a tear," with which the "Edinburgh Review" attempted to put down Master George Gordon when that young man was foolishly trying to make himself conspicuous. One of these tears peeped over the edge of the lid until it lost its balance, - slid an inch and waited for reinforcements, - swelled again, - rolled down a little further, - stopped, - moved on, - and at last fell on the back of the Professor's hand. He held it up for me to look at, and lifted his eyes, brimful, till they met mine. I couldn't stand it, - I always break down when folks cry in my face, - so I hugged him, and said he was a dear old boy, and asked him kindly what was the matter with him, and what made him smell so dreadfully strong of spirits. Upset his alcohol lamp, - he said, - and spilt the alcohol on his legs. That was it. - But what had he been doing to get his head into such a state? - had he really committed an excess? What was the matter? - Then it came out that he had been taking chloroform to have a tooth out, which had left him in a very queer state, in which he had written the "Prelude" given above, and under the influence of which he evidently was still. I took the manuscript from his hands and read the following continuation of the lines he had begun to read me, while he made up for two or three nights' lost sleep as he best might. PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY: OR THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR. A MATHEMATICAL STORY. FACTS respecting an old arm-chair. At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. Seems but little the worse for wear. That's remarkable when I say It was old in President Holyoke's day. (One of his boys, perhaps you know, Died, AT ONE HUNDRED, years ago.) HE took lodging for rain or shine Under green bed-clothes in '69. Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. - Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, - Standing still, if you must have proof. - "Gambrel? - Gambrel?" - Let me beg You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, - First great angle above the hoof, - That's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.) - Nicest place that ever was seen, - Colleges red and Common green, Sidewalks brownish with trees between. Sweetest spot beneath the skies When the canker-worms don't rise, - When the dust, that sometimes flies Into your mouth and ears and eyes. In a quiet slumber lies, NOT in the shape of unbaked pies Such as barefoot children prize. A kind of harber it seems to be, Facing the flow of a boundless sea. Rows of gray old Tutors stand Ranged like rocks above the sand; Rolling beneath them, soft and green, Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, - One wave, two waves, three waves, four, Sliding up the sparkling floor; Then it ebbs to flow no more, Wandering off from shore to shore With its freight of golden ore! - Pleasant place for boys to play; - Better keep your girls away; Hearts get rolled as pebbles do Which countless fingering waves pursue, And every classic beach is strown With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone. But this is neither here nor there; - I'm talking about an old arm-chair. You've heard, no doubt, of PARSON TURELL? Over at Medford he used to dwell; Married one of the Mathers' folk; Got with his wife a chair of oak, - Funny old chair, with seat like wedge, Sharp behind and broad front edge, - One of the oddest of human things, Turned all over with knobs and rings, - But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand, - Fit for the worthies of the land, - Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in, Or Cotton Mather to sit - and lie - in. - Parson Turell bequeathed the same To a certain student, - SMITH by name; These were the terms, as we are told: "Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde; When he doth graduate, then to passe To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Classe. On Payment of" -(naming a certain sum) - "By him to whom ye Chaire shall come; He to ye oldest Senior next, And soe forever," - (thus runs the text,) - "But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, That being his Debte for use of same." SMITH transferred it to one of the BROWNS, And took his money, - five silver crowns. BROWN delivered it up to MOORE, Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. MOORE made over the chair to LEE, Who gave him crowns of silver three. LEE conveyed it unto DREW, And now the payment, of course, was two. DREW gave up the chair to DUNN, - All he got, as you see, was one. DUNN released the chair to HALL, And got by the bargain no crown at all. - And now it passed to a second BROWN, Who took it, and likewise CLAIMED A CROWN. When BROWN conveyed it unto WARE, Having had one crown, to make it fair, He paid him two crowns to take the chair; And WARE, being honest, (as all Wares be,) He paid one POTTER, who took it, three. Four got ROBINSON; five got DIX; JOHNSON PRIMUS demanded six; And so the sum kept gathering still Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill - When paper money became so cheap, Folks wouldn't count it, but said "a heap," A certain RICHARDS, the books declare, (A. M. in '90? I've looked with care Through the Triennial, - NAME NOT THERE.) This person, Richards, was offered then Eight score pounds, but would have ten; Nine, I think, was the sum he took, - Not quite certain, - but see the book. - By and by the wars were still, But nothing had altered the Parson's will. The old arm-chair was solid yet, But saddled with such a monstrous debt! Things grew quite too bad to bear, Paying such sums to get rid of the chair! But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell. What should be done no man could tell, For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, And every season but made it worse. As a last resort, to clear the doubt, They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. - The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said, - "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, - "There is your p'int. And here's my fee. These are the terms you must fulfil, - On such conditions I BREAK THE WILL!" The Governor mentioned what these should be. (Just wait a minute and then you'll see.) The President prayed. Then all was still, And the Governor rose and BROKE THE WILL! - "About those conditions?" Well, now you go And do as I tell you, and then you'll know. Once a year, on Commencement-day, If you'll only take the pains to stay, You'll see the President in the CHAIR, Likewise the Governor sitting there. The President rises; both old and young May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair? And then his Excellency bows, As much as to say that he allows. The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; He bows like t'other, which means the same. And all the officers round 'em bow, As much as to say that THEY allow. And a lot of parchments about the chair Are handed to witnesses then and there, And then the lawyers hold it clear That the chair is safe for another year. God bless you, Gentlemen! Learn to give Money to colleges while you live. Don't be silly and think you'll try To bother the colleges, when you die, With codicil this, and codicil that, That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat; For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill, And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will! - Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, I suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves an African for a hut; his dwelling is all door and no walls; everybody can come in. To make a morning call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep through a long tunnel; his house is all walls and no door, except such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has. One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation between these two extremes. In cities where the evenings are generally hot, the people have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, a provocative to the interchange of civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to mean temperature. Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at noon, in a very hot summer's day, one may realize, by a sudden extension in his sphere of consciousness, how closely he is shut up for the most part. - Do you not remember something like this? July, between 1 and 2, P. M., Fahrenheit 96 degrees, or thereabout. Windows all gaping, like the mouths of panting dogs. Long, stinging cry of a locust comes in from a tree, half a mile off; had forgotten there was such a tree. Baby's screams from a house several blocks distant; - never knew there were any babies in the neighborhood before. Tinman pounding something that clatters dreadfully, - very distinct, but don't remember any tinman's shop near by. Horses stamping on pavement to get off flies. When you hear these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume, - buy a water-melon for a halfpenny, - split it, and scoop out the middle, - sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and feast upon the pulp. - I see some of the London journals have been attacking some of their literary people for lecturing, on the ground of its being a public exhibition of themselves for money. A popular author can print his lecture; if he deliver it, it is a case of QUAESTUM CORPORE, or making profit of his person. None but "snobs" do that. ERGO, etc. To this I reply, - NEGATUR MINOR. Her Most Gracious Majesty, the Queen, exhibits herself to the public as a part of the service for which she is paid. We do not consider it low-bred in her to pronounce her own speech, and should prefer it so to hearing it from any other person, or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship exhibit themselves very often for popularity, and their houses every day for money. - No, if a man shows himself other than he is, if he belittles himself before an audience for hire, then he acts unworthily. But a true word, fresh from the lips of a true man, is worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt must be an outbreak of jealousy against the renowned authors who have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieutenants (of the press) stick a too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in England, instead of with a rapier, as in France. - Poh! All England is one great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's being willing to become a part of the exhibition! THE LONG PATH. (LAST OF THE PARENTHESES.) Yes, that was my last walk with the SCHOOLMISTRESS. It happened to be the end of a term; and before the next began, a very nice young woman, who had been her assistant, was announced as her successor, and she was provided for elsewhere. So it was no longer the schoolmistress that I walked with, but - Let us not be in unseemly haste. I shall call her the schoolmistress still; some of you love her under that name. When it became known among the boarders that two of their number had joined hands to walk down the long path of life side by side, there was, as you may suppose, no small sensation. I confess I pitied our landlady. It took her all of a suddin, - she said. Had not known that we was keepin company, and never mistrusted anything particular. Ma'am was right to better herself. Didn't look very rugged to take care of a femily, but could get hired haalp, she calc'lated. - The great maternal instinct came crowding up in her soul just then, and her eyes wandered until they settled on her daughter. - No, poor, dear woman, - that could not have been. But I am dropping one of my internal tears for you, with this pleasant smile on my face all the time. The great mystery of God's providence is the permitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of as that experiment of putting an animal under the bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw the accursed trick performed. LAUS DEO!] There comes a time when the souls of human beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections they were made to breathe. Then it is that Society places its transparent bell-glass over the young woman who is to be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls; - her bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization! Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you foolish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, now reading this, - little thinking you are what I describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of such multitudes worthier than yourself. But it is only my surface- thought which laughs. For that great procession of the UNLOVED, who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the locks of brown or gray, - under the snowy cap, under the chilling turban, - hide it even from themselves, - perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills them, - there is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere, - somewhere, - love is in store for them, - the universe must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half- unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their God- given instincts! Read what the singing-women - one to ten thousand of the suffering women - tell us, and think of the griefs that die unspoken! Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman; and there are women enough lying in the next churchyard with very commonplace blue slate- stones at their head and feet, for whom it was just as true that "all sounds of life assumed one tone of love," as for Letitia Landon, of whom Elizabeth Browning said it; but she could give words to her grief, and they could not. - Will you hear a few stanzas of mine? THE VOICELESS. WE count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, - But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild flowers who will stoop to number? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; - Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, - Weep for the voiceless, who have known The cross without the crown of glory! Not where Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his cordial wine Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, - If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven! I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badly off, after all. That young man from another city who made the remark which you remember about Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared at our table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to me rather attentive to this young lady. Only last evening I saw him leaning over her while she was playing the accordion, - indeed, I undertook to join them in a song, and got as far as "Come rest in this boo-oo," when, my voice getting tremulous, I turned off, as one steps out of a procession, and left the basso and soprano to finish it. I see no reason why this young woman should not be a very proper match for a man that laughs about Boston State-house. He can't be very particular. The young fellow whom I have so often mentioned was a little free in his remarks, but very good-natured. - Sorry to have you go, - he said. - School-ma'am made a mistake not to wait for me. Haven't taken anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since I heard of it. - MOURNING fruit, - said I, - what's that? - Huckleberries and blackberries, - said he; - couldn't eat in colors, raspberries, currants, and such, after a solemn thing like this happening. - The conceit seemed to please the young fellow. If you will believe it, when we came down to breakfast the next morning, he had carried it out as follows. You know those odious little "saas-plates" that figure so largely at boarding-houses, and especially at taverns, into which a strenuous attendant female trowels little dabs, sombre of tint and heterogeneous of composition, which it makes you feel homesick to look at, and into which you poke the elastic coppery tea-spoon with the air of a cat dipping her foot into a wash-tub, - (not that I mean to say anything against them, for, when they are of tinted porcelain or starry many-faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin honey, or "lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of white silver, with the Tower- stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy, - as people in the green stage of millionism will have them, - I can dally with their amber semi-fluids or glossy spherules without a shiver,) - you know these small, deep dishes, I say. When we came down the next morning, each of these (two only excepted) was covered with a broad leaf. On lifting this, each boarder found a small heap of solemn black huckleberries. But one of those plates held red currants, and was covered with a red rose; the other held white currants, and was covered with a white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, and then a short silence, and I noticed that her lip trembled, and the old gentleman opposite was in trouble to get at his bandanna handkerchief - "What was the use in waiting? We should be too late for Switzerland, that season, if we waited much longer." - The hand I held trembled in mine, and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed herself before the feet of Ahasuerus. - She had been reading that chapter, for she looked up, - if there was a film of moisture over her eyes there was also the faintest shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not enough to accent the dimples, - and said, in her pretty, still way, - "If it please the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes" - I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or said when Esther got just to that point of her soft, humble words, - but I know what I did. That quotation from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. We came to a compromise on the great question, and the time was settled for the last day of summer. In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, much as usual, as you may see by what I have reported. I must say, I was pleased with a certain tenderness they all showed toward us, after the first excitement of the news was over. It came out in trivial matters, - but each one, in his or her way, manifested kindness. Our landlady, for instance, when we had chickens, sent the LIVER instead of the GIZZARD, with the wing, for the schoolmistress. This was not an accident; the two are never mistaken, though some landladies APPEAR as if they did not know the difference. The whole of the company were even more respectfully attentive to my remarks than usual. There was no idle punning, and very little winking on the part of that lively young gentleman who, as the reader may remember, occasionally interposed some playful question or remark, which could hardly be considered relevant, - except when the least allusion was made to matrimony, when he would look at the landlady's daughter, and wink with both sides of his face, until she would ask what he was pokin' his fun at her for, and if he wasn't ashamed of himself. In fact, they all behaved very handsomely, so that I really felt sorry at the thought of leaving my boarding-house. I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what GREAT MERCHANTS call very rich, I was comfortable, - comfortable, - so that most of those moderate luxuries I described in my verses on CONTENTMENT - MOST of them, I say - were within our reach, if we chose to have them. But I found out that the schoolmistress had a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto been worked on a small silver and copper basis, which made her think less, perhaps, of luxuries than even I did, - modestly as I have expressed my wishes. It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young woman, whom one has contrived to win without showing his rent-roll, that she has found what the world values so highly, in following the lead of her affections. That was an enjoyment I was now ready for. I began abruptly:- Do you know that you are a rich young person? I know that I am very rich, - she said. - Heaven has given me more than I ever asked; for I had not thought love was ever meant for me. It was a woman's confession, and her voice fell to a whisper as it threaded the last words. I don't mean that, - I said, - you blessed little saint and seraph! - if there's an angel missing in the New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this boarding house! - I don't mean that! I mean that I - that is, you - am - are - confound it! - I mean that you'll be what most people call a lady of fortune. And I looked full in her eyes for the effect of the announcement. There wasn't any. She said she was thankful that I had what would save me from drudgery, and that some other time I should tell her about it. - I never made a greater failure in an attempt to produce a sensation. So the last day of summer came. It was our choice to go to the church, but we had a kind of reception at the boarding-house. The presents were all arranged, and among them none gave more pleasure than the modest tributes of our fellow-boarders, - for there was not one, I believe, who did not send something. The landlady would insist on making an elegant bride-cake, with her own hands; to which Master Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain embellishments out of his private funds, - namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and two miniature flags with the stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I assure you. The landlady's daughter sent a richly bound copy of Tupper's Poems. On a blank leaf was the following, written in a very delicate and careful hand:- Presented to . . . by . . . On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony. May sunshine ever beam o'er her! Even the poor relative thought she must do something, and sent a copy of "The Whole Duty of Man," bound in very attractive variegated sheepskin, the edges nicely marbled. From the divinity- student came the loveliest English edition of "Keble's Christian Year." I opened it, when it came, to the FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT, and read that angelic poem, sweeter than anything I can remember since Xavier's "My God, I love thee." - I am not a Churchman, - I don't believe in planting oaks in flower-pots, - but such a poem as "The Rosebud" makes one's heart a proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk about it as much as you like, - one's breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion. A man should be a gentleman in his hymns and prayers; the fondness for "scenes," among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with that - "God only and good angels look Behind the blissful scene,"- and that other, - "He could not trust his melting soul But in his Maker's sight," - that I hope some of them will see this, and read the poem, and profit by it. My laughing and winking young friend undertook to procure and arrange the flowers for the table, and did it with immense zeal. I never saw him look happier than when he came in, his hat saucily on one side, and a cheroot in his mouth, with a huge bunch of tea- roses, which he said were for "Madam." One of the last things that came was an old square box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed. It bore, in faded ink, the marks, "Calcutta, 1805." On opening it, we found a white Cashmere shawl with a very brief note from the dear old gentleman opposite, saying that he had kept this some years, thinking he might want it, and many more, not knowing what to do with it, - that he had never seen it unfolded since he was a young supercargo, - and now, if she would spread it on her shoulders, it would make him feel young to look at it. Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of all work! What must she do but buy a small copper breast-pin and put it under "Schoolma'am's" plate that morning, at breakfast? And Schoolma'am would wear it, - though I made her cover it, as well as I could, with a tea-rose. It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could not leave them in utter silence. Good-by, - I said, - my dear friends, one and all of you! I have been long with you, and I find it hard parting. I have to thank you for a thousand courtesies, and above all for the patience and indulgence with which you have listened to me when I have tried to instruct or amuse you. My friend the Professor (who, as well as my friend the Poet, is unavoidably absent on this interesting occasion) has given me reason to suppose that he would occupy my empty chair about the first of January next. If he comes among you, be kind to him, as you have been to me. May the Lord bless you all! - And we shook hands all round the table. Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and the cloth were gone. I looked up and down the length of the bare boards over which I had so often uttered my sentiments and experiences - and - Yes, I am a man, like another. All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I have not introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her away. And now we two are walking the long path in peace together. The "schoolmistress" finds her skill in teaching called for again, without going abroad to seek little scholars. Those visions of mine have all come true. I hope you all love me none the less for anything I have told you. Farewell! End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table Etext prepared for Gutenberg by David Widger, widger@cecomet.net THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE by Oliver Wendell Holmes PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION. The reader of to-day will not forget, I trust, that it is nearly a quarter of a century since these papers were written. Statements which were true then are not necessarily true now. Thus, the speed of the trotting horse has been so much developed that the record of the year when the fastest time to that date was given must be very considerably altered, as may be seen by referring to a note on page 49 of the "Autocrat." No doubt many other statements and opinions might be more or less modified if I were writing today instead of having written before the war, when the world and I were both more than a score of years younger. These papers followed close upon the track of the "Autocrat." They had to endure the trial to which all second comers are subjected, which is a formidable ordeal for the least as well as the greatest. Paradise Regained and the Second Part of Faust are examples which are enough to warn every one who has made a jingle fair hit with his arrow of the danger of missing when he looses "his fellow of the selfsame flight." There is good reason why it should be so. The first juice that runs of itself from the grapes comes from the heart of the fruit, and tastes of the pulp only; when the grapes are squeezed in the press the flow betrays the flavor of the skin. If there is any freshness in the original idea of the work, if there is any individuality in the method or style of a new author, or of an old author on a new track, it will have lost much of its first effect when repeated. Still, there have not been wanting readers who have preferred this second series of papers to the first. The new papers were more aggressive than the earlier ones, and for that reason found a heartier welcome in some quarters, and met with a sharper antagonism in others. It amuses me to look back on some of the attacks they called forth. Opinions which do not excite the faintest show of temper at this time from those who do not accept them were treated as if they were the utterances of a nihilist incendiary. It required the exercise of some forbearance not to recriminate. How a stray sentence, a popular saying, the maxim of some wise man, a line accidentally fallen upon and remembered, will sometimes help one when he is all ready to be vexed or indignant! One day, in the time when I was young or youngish, I happened to open a small copy of "Tom Jones," and glance at the title-page. There was one of those little engravings opposite, which bore the familiar name of "T. Uwins," as I remember it, and under it the words "Mr. Partridge bore all this patiently." How many times, when, after rough usage from ill-mannered critics, my own vocabulary of vituperation was simmering in such a lively way that it threatened to boil and lift its lid and so boil over, those words have calmed the small internal effervescence! There is very little in them and very little of them; and so there is not much in a linchpin considered by itself, but it often keeps a wheel from coming off and prevents what might be a catastrophe. The chief trouble in offering such papers as these to the readers of to-day is that their heresies have become so familiar among intelligent people that they have too commonplace an aspect. All the lighthouses and land-marks of belief bear so differently from the way in which they presented themselves when these papers were written that it is hard to recognize that we and our fellow- passengers are still in the same old vessel sailing the same unfathomable sea and bound to the same as yet unseen harbor. But after all, there is not enough theology, good or bad, in these papers to cause them to be inscribed on the Protestant Index Expurgatorius; and if they are medicated with a few questionable dogmas or antidogmas, the public has become used to so much rougher treatments, that what was once an irritant may now act as an anodyne, and the reader may nod over pages which, when they were first written, would have waked him into a paroxysm of protest and denunciation. November, 1882. PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION This book is one of those which, if it lives for a number of decades, and if it requires any Preface at all, wants a new one every ten years. The first Preface to a book is apt to be explanatory, perhaps apologetic, in the expectation of attacks from various quarters. If the book is in some points in advance of public opinion, it is natural that the writer should try to smooth the way to the reception of his more or less aggressive ideas. He wishes to convince, not to offend,--to obtain a hearing for his thought, not to stir up angry opposition in those who do not accept it. There is commonly an anxious look about a first Preface. The author thinks he shall be misapprehended about this or that matter, that his well-meant expressions will probably be invidiously interpreted by those whom he looks upon as prejudiced critics, and if he deals with living questions that he will be attacked as a destructive by the conservatives and reproached for his timidity by the noisier radicals. The first Preface, therefore, is likely to be the weakest part of a work containing the thoughts of an honest writer. After a time the writer has cooled down from his excitement,--has got over his apprehensions, is pleased to find that his book is still read, and that he must write a new Preface. He comes smiling to his task. How many things have explained themselves in the ten or twenty or thirty years since he came before his untried public in those almost plaintive paragraphs in which he introduced himself to his readers,--for the Preface writer, no matter how fierce a combatant he may prove, comes on to the stage with his shield on his right arm and his sword in his left hand. The Professor at the Breakfast-Table came out in the "Atlantic Monthly" and introduced itself without any formal Preface. A quarter of a century later the Preface of 1882, which the reader has just had laid before him, was written. There is no mark of worry, I think, in that. Old opponents had come up and shaken hands with the author they had attacked or denounced. Newspapers which had warned their subscribers against him were glad to get him as a contributor to their columns. A great change had come over the community with reference to their beliefs. Christian believers were united as never before in the feeling that, after all, their common object was to elevate the moral and religious standard of humanity. But within the special compartments of the great Christian fold the marks of division have pronounced themselves in the most unmistakable manner. As an example we may take the lines of cleavage which have shown themselves in the two great churches, the Congregational and the Presbyterian, and the very distinct fissure which is manifest in the transplanted Anglican church of this country. Recent circumstances have brought out the fact of the great change in the dogmatic communities which has been going on silently but surely. The licensing of a missionary, the transfer of a Professor from one department to another, the election of a Bishop,--each of these movements furnishes evidence that there is no such thing as an air- tight reservoir of doctrinal finalities. The folding-doors are wide open to every Protestant to enter all the privileged precincts and private apartments of the various exclusive religious organizations. We may demand the credentials of every creed and catechise all the catechisms. So we may discuss the gravest questions unblamed over our morning coffee-cups or our evening tea-cups. There is no rest for the Protestant until he gives up his legendary anthropology and all its dogmatic dependencies. It is only incidentally, however, that the Professor at the Breakfast-Table handles matters which are the subjects of religious controversy. The reader who is sensitive about having his fixed beliefs dealt with as if they were open to question had better skip the pages which look as if they would disturb his complacency. "Faith" is the most precious of possessions, and it dislikes being meddled with. It means, of course, self-trust,--that is, a belief in the value of our, own opinion of a doctrine, of a church, of a religion, of a Being, a belief quite independent of any evidence that we can bring to convince a jury of our fellow beings. Its roots are thus inextricably entangled with those of self-love and bleed as mandrakes were said to, when pulled up as weeds. Some persons may even at this late day take offence at a few opinions expressed in the following pages, but most of these passages will be read without loss of temper by those who disagree with them, and by-and-by they may be found too timid and conservative for intelligent readers, if they are still read by any. BEVERLY FARM, MASS., June 18, 1891. O. W. H. THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. What he said, what he heard, and what he saw. I I intended to have signalized my first appearance by a certain large statement, which I flatter myself is the nearest approach to a universal formula, of life yet promulgated at this breakfast-table. It would have had a grand effect. For this purpose I fixed my eyes on a certain divinity-student, with the intention of exchanging a few phrases, and then forcing my court-card, namely, The great end of being. --I will thank you for the sugar,--I said. --Man is a dependent creature. It is a small favor to ask,--said the divinity-student,--and passed the sugar to me. --Life is a great bundle of little things,--I said. The divinity-student smiled, as if that were the concluding epigram of the sugar question. You smile,--I said. --Perhaps life seems to you a little bundle of great things? The divinity-student started a laugh, but suddenly reined it back with a pull, as one throws a horse on his haunches. --Life is a great bundle of great things,--he said. (NOW, THEN!) The great end of being, after all, is.... Hold on! --said my neighbor, a young fellow whose name seems to be John, and nothing else,--for that is what they all call him,--hold on! the Sculpin is go'n' to say somethin'. Now the Sculpin (Cottus Virginianus) is a little water-beast which pretends to consider itself a fish, and, under that pretext, hangs about the piles upon which West-Boston Bridge is built, swallowing the bait and hook intended for flounders. On being drawn from the water, it exposes an immense head, a diminutive bony carcass, and a surface so full of spines, ridges, ruffles, and frills, that the naturalists have not been able to count them without quarrelling about the number, and that the colored youth, whose sport they spoil, do not like to touch them, and especially to tread on them, unless they happen to have shoes on, to cover the thick white soles of their broad black feet. When, therefore, I heard the young fellow's exclamation, I looked round the table with curiosity to see what it meant. At the further end of it I saw a head, and a--a small portion of a little deformed body, mounted on a high chair, which brought the occupant up to a fair level enough for him to get at his food. His whole appearance was so grotesque, I felt for a minute as if there was a showman behind him who would pull him down presently and put up Judy, or the hangman, or the Devil, or some other wooden personage of the famous spectacle. I contrived to lose the first of his sentence, but what I heard began so: --by the Frog-Pond, when there were frogs in and the folks used to come down from the tents on section and Independence days with their pails to get water to make egg-pop with. Born in Boston; went to school in Boston as long as the boys would let me. --The little man groaned, turned, as if to look around, and went on. --Ran away from school one day to see Phillips hung for killing Denegri with a logger-head. That was in flip days, when there were always two three loggerheads in the fire. I'm a Boston boy, I tell you,--born at North End, and mean to be buried on Copp's Hill, with the good old underground people,--the Worthylakes, and the rest of 'em. Yes,--up on the old hill, where they buried Captain Daniel Malcolm in a stone grave, ten feet deep, to keep him safe from the red-coats, in those old times when the world was frozen up tight and there was n't but one spot open, and that was right over Faneuil all,--and black enough it looked, I tell you! There 's where my bones shall lie, Sir, and rattle away when the big guns go off at the Navy Yard opposite! You can't make me ashamed of the old place! Full crooked little streets;--I was born and used to run round in one of 'em-- --I should think so,--said that young man whom I hear them call "John,"--softly, not meaning to be heard, nor to be cruel, but thinking in a half-whisper, evidently. --I should think so; and got kinked up, turnin' so many corners. --The little man did not hear what was said, but went on,-- --full of crooked little streets; but I tell you Boston has opened, and kept open, more turnpikes that lead straight to free thought and free speech and free deeds than any other city of live men or dead men,--I don't care how broad their streets are, nor how high their steeples! --How high is Bosting meet'n'-house?--said a person with black whiskers and imperial, a velvet waistcoat, a guard-chain rather too massive, and a diamond pin so very large that the most trusting nature might confess an inward suggestion,--of course, nothing amounting to a suspicion. For this is a gentleman from a great city, and sits next to the landlady's daughter, who evidently believes in him, and is the object of his especial attention. How high?--said the little man. --As high as the first step of the stairs that lead to the New Jerusalem. Is n't that high enough? It is,--I said. --The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still. But who shall tune the pitch-pipe? Quis cus-(On the whole, as this quotation was not entirely new, and, being in a foreign language, might not be familiar to all the boarders, I thought I would not finish it.) --Go to the Bible! --said a sharp voice from a sharp-faced, sharp- eyed, sharp-elbowed, strenuous-looking woman in a black dress, appearing as if it began as a piece of mourning and perpetuated itself as a bit of economy. You speak well, Madam,--I said;--yet there is room for a gloss or commentary on what you say. "He who would bring back the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies." What you bring away from the Bible depends to some extent on what you carry to it.- Benjamin Franklin! Be so good as to step up to my chamber and bring me down the small uncovered pamphlet of twenty pages which you will find lying under the "Cruden's Concordance." [The boy took a large bite, which left a very perfect crescent in the slice of bread-and- butter he held, and departed on his errand, with the portable fraction of his breakfast to sustain him on the way.] --Here it is. "Go to the Bible. A Dissertation, ,etc., etc. By J. J. Flournoy. Athens, Georgia, 1858." Mr. Flournoy, Madam, has obeyed the precept which you have judiciously delivered. You may be interested, Madam, to know what are the conclusions at which Mr. J. J. Flournoy of Athens, Georgia, has arrived. You shall hear, Madam. He has gone to the Bible, and he has come back from the Bible, bringing a remedy for existing social evils, which, if it is the real specific, as it professes to be, is of great interest to humanity, and to the female part of humanity in particular. It is what he calls TRIGAMY, Madam, or the marrying of three wives, so that "good old men" may be solaced at once by the companionship of the wisdom of maturity, and of those less perfected but hardly less engaging qualities which are found at an earlier period of life. He has followed your precept, Madam; I hope you accept his conclusions. The female boarder in black attire looked so puzzled, and, in fact, "all abroad," after the delivery of this "counter" of mine, that I left her to recover her wits, and went on with the conversation, which I was beginning to get pretty well in hand. But in the mean time I kept my eye on the female boarder to see what effect I had produced. First, she was a little stunned at having her argument knocked over. Secondly, she was a little shocked at the tremendous character of the triple matrimonial suggestion. Thirdly. --I don't like to say what I thought. Something seemed to have pleased her fancy. Whether it was, that, if trigamy should come into fashion, there would be three times as many chances to enjoy the luxury of saying, "No!" is more than I, can tell you. I may as well mention that B. F. came to me after breakfast to borrow the pamphlet for "a lady,"--one of the boarders, he said,--looking as if he had a secret he wished to be relieved of. --I continued. --If a human soul is necessarily to be trained up in the faith of those from whom it inherits its body, why, there is the end of all reason. If, sooner or later, every soul is to look for truth with its own eyes, the first thing is to recognize that no presumption in favor of any particular belief arises from the fact of our inheriting it. Otherwise you would not give the Mahometan a fair chance to become a convert to a better religion. The second thing would be to depolarize every fixed religious idea in the mind by changing the word which stands for it. --I don't know what you mean by "depolarizing" an idea,--said the divinity-student. I will tell you,--I said. ---When a given symbol which represents a thought has lain for a certain length of time in the mind, it undergoes a change like that which rest in a certain position gives to iron. It becomes magnetic in its relations,--it is traversed by strange forces which did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea it represents, is polarized. The religious currency of mankind, in thought, in speech, and in print, consists entirely of polarized words. Borrow one of these from another language and religion, and you will find it leaves all its magnetism behind it. Take that famous word, O'm, of the Hindoo mythology. Even a priest cannot pronounce it without sin; and a holy Pundit would shut his ears and run away from you in horror, if you should say it aloud. What do you care for O'm? If you wanted to get the Pundit to look at his religion fairly, you must first depolarize this and all similar words for him. The argument for and against new translations of the Bible really turns on this. Skepticism is afraid to trust its truths in depolarized words, and so cries out against a new translation. I think, myself, if every idea our Book contains could be shelled out of its old symbol and put into a new, clean, unmagnetic word, we should have some chance of reading it as philosophers, or wisdom-lovers, ought to read it,--which we do not and cannot now any more than a Hindoo can read the "Gayatri" as a fair man and lover of truth should do. When society has once fairly dissolved the New Testament, which it never has done yet, it will perhaps crystallize it over again in new forms of language. I did n't know you was a settled minister over this parish,--said the young fellow near me. A sermon by a lay-preacher may be worth listening--I replied, calmly. --It gives the parallax of thought and feeling as they appear to the observers from two very different points of view. If you wish to get the distance of a heavenly body, you know that you must take two observations from remote points of the earth's orbit,--in midsummer and midwinter, for instance. To get the parallax of heavenly truths, you must take an observation from the position of the laity as well as of the clergy. Teachers and students of theology get a certain look, certain conventional tones of voice, a clerical gait, a professional neckcloth, and habits of mind as professional as their externals. They are scholarly men and read Bacon, and know well enough what the "idols of the tribe" are. Of course they have their false gods, as all men that follow one exclusive calling are prone to do. --The clergy have played the part of the flywheel in our modern civilization. They have never suffered it to stop. They have often carried on its movement, when other moving powers failed, by the momentum stored in their vast body. Sometimes, too, they have kept it back by their vis inertia, when its wheels were like to grind the bones of some old canonized error into fertilizers for the soil that yields the bread of life. But the mainspring of the world's onward religious movement is not in them, nor in any one body of men, let me tell you. It is the people that makes the clergy, and not the clergy that makes the people. Of course, the profession reacts on its source with variable energy. --But there never was a guild of dealers or a company of craftsmen that did not need sharp looking after. Our old friend, Dr. Holyoke, whom we gave the dinner to some time since, must have known many people that saw the great bonfire in Harvard College yard. --Bonfire?--shrieked the little man. --The bonfire when Robert Calef's book was burned? The same,--I said,--when Robert Calef the Boston merchant's book was burned in the yard of Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather, President of the College and Minister of the Gospel. You remember the old witchcraft revival of '92, and how stout Master Robert Calef, trader of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and judges what a set of fools and worse than fools they were- Remember it?--said the little man. --I don't think I shall forget it, as long as I can stretch this forefinger to point with, and see what it wears. There was a ring on it. May I look at it?--I said. Where it is,--said the little man;--it will never come off, till it falls off from the bone in the darkness and in the dust. He pushed the high chair on which he sat slightly back from the table, and dropped himself, standing, to the floor,--his head being only a little above the level of the table, as he stood. With pain and labor, lifting one foot over the other, as a drummer handles his sticks, he took a few steps from his place,--his motions and the deadbeat of the misshapen boots announcing to my practised eye and ear the malformation which is called in learned language talipes varus, or inverted club-foot. Stop! stop! --I said,--let me come to you. The little man hobbled back, and lifted himself by the left arm, with an ease approaching to grace which surprised me, into his high chair. I walked to his side, and he stretched out the forefinger of his right hand, with the ring upon it. The ring had been put on long ago, and could not pass the misshapen joint. It was one of those funeral rings which used to be given to relatives and friends after the decease of persons of any note or importance. Beneath a round fit of glass was a death's head. Engraved on one side of this, "L. B. AEt. 22,"--on the other, "Ob. 1692 My grandmother's grandmother,--said the little man. --Hanged for a witch. It does n't seem a great while ago. I knew my grandmother, and loved her. Her mother was daughter to the witch that Chief Justice Sewall hanged and Cotton Mather delivered over to the Devil.- -That was Salem, though, and not Boston. No, not Boston. Robert Calef, the Boston merchant, it was that blew them all to- Never mind where he blew them to,--I said; for the little man was getting red in the face, and I did n't know what might come next. This episode broke me up, as the jockeys say, out of my square conversational trot; but I settled down to it again. --A man that knows men, in the street, at their work, human nature in its shirt-sleeves, who makes bargains with deacons, instead of talking over texts with them, a man who has found out that there are plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world,--above all, who has found out, by living into the pith and core of life, that all of the Deity which can be folded up between the sheets of any human book is to the Deity of the firmament, of the strata, of the hot aortic flood of throbbing human life, of this infinite, instantaneous consciousness in which the soul's being consists,--an incandescent point in the filament connecting the negative pole of a past eternity with the positive pole of an eternity that is to come,- -that all of the Deity which any human book can hold is to this larger Deity of the working battery of the universe only as the films in a book of gold-leaf are to the broad seams and curdled lumps of ore that lie in unsunned mines and virgin placers,--Oh!--I was saying that a man who lives out-of-doors, among live people, gets some things into his head he might not find in the index of his "Body of Divinity." I tell you what,--the idea of the professions' digging a moat round their close corporations, like that Japanese one at Jeddo, on the bottom of which, if travellers do not lie, you could put Park Street Church and look over the vane from its side, and try to stretch another such spire across it without spanning the chasm,--that idea, I say, is pretty nearly worn out. Now when a civilization or a civilized custom falls into senile dementia, there is commonly a judgment ripe for it, and it comes as plagues come, from a breath,-- as fires come, from a spark. Here, look at medicine. Big wigs, gold-headed canes, Latin prescriptions, shops full of abominations, recipes a yard long, "curing" patients by drugging as sailors bring a wind by whistling, selling lies at a guinea apiece,--a routine, in short, of giving unfortunate sick people a mess of things either too odious to swallow or too acrid to hold, or, if that were possible, both at once. --You don't know what I mean, indignant and not unintelligent country-practitioner? Then you don't know the history of medicine,-- and that is not my fault. But don't expose yourself in any outbreak of eloquence; for, by the mortar in which Anaxarchus was pounded! I did not bring home Schenckius and Forestus and Hildanus, and all the old folios in calf and vellum I will show you, to be bullied by the proprietor, of a "Wood and Bache," and a shelf of peppered sheepskin reprints by Philadelphia Editors. Besides, many of the profession and I know a little something of each other, and you don't think I am such a simpleton as to lose their good opinion by saying what the better heads among them would condemn as unfair and untrue? Now mark how the great plague came on the generation of drugging doctors, and in what form it fell. A scheming drug-vender, (inventive genius,) an utterly untrustworthy and incompetent observer, (profound searcher of Nature,) a shallow dabbler in erudition, (sagacious scholar,) started the monstrous fiction (founded the immortal system) of Homoeopathy. I am very fair, you see,---you can help yourself to either of these sets of phrases. All the reason in the world would not have had so rapid and general an effect on the public mind to disabuse it of the idea that a drug is a good thing in itself, instead of being, as it is, a bad thing, as was produced by the trick (system) of this German charlatan (theorist). Not that the wiser part of the profession needed him to teach them; but the routinists and their employers, the "general practitioners," who lived by selling pills and mixtures, and their drug-consuming customers, had to recognize that people could get well, unpoisoned. These dumb cattle would not learn it of themselves, and so the murrain of Homoeopathy fell on them. --You don't know what plague has fallen on the practitioners of theology? I will tell you, then. It is Spiritualism. While some are crying out against it as a delusion of the Devil, and some are laughing at it as an hysteric folly, and some are getting angry with it as a mere trick of interested or mischievous persons, Spiritualism is quietly undermining the traditional ideas of the future state which have been and are still accepted,--not merely in those who believe in it, but in the general sentiment of the community, to a larger extent than most good people seem to be aware of. It need n't be true, to do this, any more than Homoeopathy need, to do its work. The Spiritualists have some pretty strong instincts to pry over, which no doubt have been roughly handled by theologians at different times. And the Nemesis of the pulpit comes, in a shape it little thought of, beginning with the snap of a toe-joint, and ending with such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of it is heard in all the ministers' studies of Christendom? Sir, you cannot have people of cultivation, of pure character, sensible enough in common things, large-hearted women, grave judges, shrewd business-men, men of science, professing to be in communication with the spiritual world and keeping up constant intercourse with it, without its gradually reacting on the whole conception of that other life. It is the folly of the world, constantly, which confounds its wisdom. Not only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get our truest lessons. For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them,--so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points of the compass. --Amen! --said the young fellow called John-- Ten minutes by the watch. Those that are unanimous will please to signify by holding up their left foot! I looked this young man steadily in the face for about thirty seconds. His countenance was as calm as that of a reposing infant. I think it was simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp short whinny,--by no means intending to put their heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a familiar word, frisky. This, I think, is the physiological condition of the young person, John. I noticed, however, what I should call a palpebral spasm, affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side, which, if it were intended for the facial gesture called a wink, might lead me to suspect a disposition to be satirical on his part. --Resuming the conversation, I remarked,--I am, ex officio, as a Professor, a conservative. For I don't know any fruit that clings to its tree so faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, as a Professor to the bough of which his chair is made. You can't shake him off, and it is as much as you can do to pull him off. Hence, by a chain of induction I need not unwind, he tends to conservatism generally. But then, you know, if you are sailing the Atlantic, and all at once find yourself in a current, and the sea covered with weeds, and drop your Fahrenheit over the side and find it eight or ten degrees higher than in the ocean generally, there is no use in flying in the face of facts and swearing there is no such thing as a Gulf-Stream, when you are in it. You can't keep gas in a bladder, and you can't keep knowledge tight in a profession. Hydrogen will leak out, and air will leak in, through India-rubber; and special knowledge will leak out, and general knowledge will leak in, though a profession were covered with twenty thicknesses of sheepskin diplomas. By Jove, Sir, till common sense is well mixed up with medicine, and common manhood with theology, and common honesty with law, We the people, Sir, some of us with nut-crackers, and some of us with trip- hammers, and some of us with pile-drivers, and some of us coming with a whish! like air-stones out of a lunar volcano, will crash down on the lumps of nonsense in all of them till we have made powder of them--like Aaron's calf [See Holmes poem: "When doctor's take what they would give and lawyers give what they would take and strawberries grow larger down through the box." D.W.] If to be a conservative is to let all the drains of thought choke up and keep all the soul's windows down,--to shut out the sun from the east and the wind from the west,--to let the rats run free in the cellar, and the moths feed their fill in the chambers, and the spiders weave their lace before the mirrors, till the soul's typhus is bred out of our neglect, and we begin to snore in its coma or rave in its delirium,--I, Sir, am a bonnet-rouge, a red cap of the barricades, my friends, rather than a conservative. --Were you born in Boston, Sir?--said the little man,--looking eager and excited. I was not,--I replied. It's a pity,--it's a pity,--said the little man;--it 's the place to be born in. But if you can't fix it so as to be born here, you can come and live here. Old Ben Franklin, the father of American science and the American Union, was n't ashamed to be born here. Jim Otis, the father of American Independence, bothered about in the Cape Cod marshes awhile, but he came to Boston as soon as he got big enough. Joe Warren, the first bloody ruffed-shirt of the Revolution, was as good as born here. Parson Charming strolled along this way from Newport, and stayed here. Pity old Sam Hopkins hadn't come, too;-- we'd have made a man of him,--poor, dear, good old Christian heathen! There he lies, as peaceful as a young baby, in the old burying- ground! I've stood on the slab many a time. Meant well,--meant well. Juggernaut. Parson Charming put a little oil on one linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down. T' other fellow's at work now, but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,--hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,--always cracking up something. Cracking up Boston folks,--said the gentleman with the diamond-pin, whom, for convenience' sake, I shall hereafter call the Koh-i-noor. The little man turned round mechanically towards him, as Maelzel's Turk used to turn, carrying his head slowly and horizontally, as if it went by cogwheels. --Cracking up all sorts of things,--native and foreign vermin included,--said the little man. This remark was thought by some of us to have a hidden personal application, and to afford a fair opening for a lively rejoinder, if the Koh-i-noor had been so disposed. The little man uttered it with the distinct wooden calmness with which the ingenious Turk used to exclaim, E-chec! so that it must have been heard. The party supposed to be interested in the remark was, however, carrying a large knife- bladeful of something to his mouth just then, which, no doubt, interfered with the reply he would have made. --My friend who used to board here was accustomed sometimes, in a pleasant way, to call himself the Autocrat of the table,--meaning, I suppose, that he had it all his own way among the boarders. I think our small boarder here is like to prove a refractory subject, if I undertake to use the sceptre my friend meant to bequeath me, too magisterially. I won't deny that sometimes, on rare occasions, when I have been in company with gentlemen who preferred listening, I have been guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my friend openly justified. But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a good listener. If a man can tell me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle in the horizon of thought, I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a congregation of colored brethren. If, when I am exposing my intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will have them all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth "says he," and listen like a three-years' child, as the author of the "Old Sailor" says. I had rather hear one of those grand elemental laughs from either of our two Georges, (fictitious names, Sir or Madam,) glisten to one of those old playbills of our College days, in which "Tom and Jerry" ("Thomas and Jeremiah," as the old Greek Professor was said to call it) was announced to be brought on the stage with whole force of the Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such person, of course,) than say the best things I might by any chance find myself capable of saying. Of course, if I come across a real thinker, a suggestive, acute, illuminating, informing talker, I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for a while as much as another. Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things,--things he did not mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note sometimes. Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops of thought. I can't answer for what will turn up. If I could, it would n't be talking, but "speaking my piece." Better, I think, the hearty abandonment of one's self to the suggestions of the moment at the risk of an occasional slip of the tongue, perceived the instant it escapes, but just one syllable too late, than the royal reputation of never saying a foolish thing. --What shall I do with this little man?--There is only one thing to do,--and that is to let him talk when he will. The day of the "Autocrat's" monologues is over. --My friend,--said I to the young fellow whom, as I have said, the boarders call "John,"--My friend,--I said, one morning, after breakfast,--can you give me any information respecting the deformed person who sits at the other end of the table? What! the Sculpin?--said the young fellow. The diminutive person, with angular curvature of the spine,--I said,- -and double talipes varus,--I beg your pardon,--with two club-feet. Is that long word what you call it when a fellah walks so?--said the young man, making his fists revolve round an imaginary axis, as you may have seen youth of tender age and limited pugilistic knowledge, when they show how they would punish an adversary, themselves protected by this rotating guard,--the middle knuckle, meantime, thumb-supported, fiercely prominent, death-threatening. It is,--said I. --But would you have the kindness to tell me if you know anything about this deformed person? About the Sculpin?--said the young fellow. My good friend,--said I,--I am sure, by your countenance, you would not hurt the feelings of one who has been hardly enough treated by Nature to be spared by his fellows. Even in speaking of him to others, I could wish that you might not employ a term which implies contempt for what should inspire only pity. A fellah 's no business to be so crooked,--said the young man called John. Yes, yes,--I said, thoughtfully,--the strong hate the weak. It's all right. The arrangement has reference to the race, and not to the individual. Infirmity must be kicked out, or the stock run down. Wholesale moral arrangements are so different from retail! --I understand the instinct, my friend,--it is cosmic,--it is planetary,- -it is a conservative principle in creation. The young fellow's face gradually lost its expression as I was speaking, until it became as blank of vivid significance as the countenance of a gingerbread rabbit with two currants in the place of eyes. He had not taken my meaning. Presently the intelligence came back with a snap that made him wink, as he answered,--Jest so. All right. A 1. Put her through. That's the way to talk. Did you speak to me, Sir?--Here the young man struck up that well-known song which I think they used to sing at Masonic festivals, beginning, "Aldiborontiphoscophornio, Where left you Chrononhotonthologos? " I beg your pardon,--I said;--all I meant was, that men, as temporary occupants of a permanent abode called human life, which is improved or injured by occupancy, according to the style of tenant, have a natural dislike to those who, if they live the life of the race as well as of the individual, will leave lasting injurious effects upon the abode spoken of, which is to be occupied by countless future generations. This is the final cause of the underlying brute instinct which we have in common with the herds. --The gingerbread-rabbit expression was coming on so fast, that I thought I must try again. --It's a pity that families are kept up, where there are such hereditary infirmities. Still, let us treat this poor man fairly, and not call him names. Do you know what his name is? I know what the rest of 'em call him,--said the young fellow. --They call him Little Boston. There's no harm in that, is there? It is an honorable term,--I replied. --But why Little Boston, in a place where most are Bostonians? Because nobody else is quite so Boston all over as he is,--said the young fellow. "L. B. Ob. 1692."--Little Boston let him be, when we talk about him. The ring he wears labels him well enough. There is stuff in the little man, or he would n't stick so manfully by this crooked, crotchety old town. Give him a chance. --You will drop the Sculpin, won't you?--I said to the young fellow. Drop him?--he answered,--I ha'n't took him up yet. No, no,--the term,--I said,--the term. Don't call him so any more, if you please. Call him Little Boston, if you like. All right,--said the young fellow. --I would n't be hard on the poor little- The word he used was objectionable in point of significance and of grammar. It was a frequent termination of certain adjectives among the Romans,--as of those designating a person following the sea, or given to rural pursuits. It is classed by custom among the profane words; why, it is hard to say,--but it is largely used in the street by those who speak of their fellows in pity or in wrath. I never heard the young fellow apply the name of the odious pretended fish to the little man from that day forward. --Here we are, then, at our boarding--house. First, myself, the Professor, a little way from the head of the table, on the right, looking down, where the "Autocrat" used to sit. At the further end sits the Landlady. At the head of the table, just now, the Koh-i- noor, or the gentleman with the diamond. Opposite me is a Venerable Gentleman with a bland countenance, who as yet has spoken little. The Divinity Student is my neighbor on the right,--and further down, that Young Fellow of whom I have repeatedly spoken. The Landlady's Daughter sits near the Koh-i-noor, as I said. The Poor Relation near the Landlady. At the right upper corner is a fresh-looking youth of whose name and history I have as yet learned nothing. Next the further left-hand corner, near the lower end of the table, sits the deformed person. The chair at his side, occupying that corner, is empty. I need not specially mention the other boarders, with the exception of Benjamin Franklin, the landlady's son, who sits near his mother. We are a tolerably assorted set,--difference enough and likeness enough; but still it seems to me there is something wanting. The Landlady's Daughter is the prima donna in the way of feminine attractions. I am not quite satisfied with this young lady. She wears more "jewelry," as certain young ladies call their trinkets, than I care to see on a person in her position. Her voice is strident, her laugh too much like a giggle, and she has that foolish way of dancing and bobbing like a quill-float with a "minnum" biting the hook below it, which one sees and weeps over sometimes in persons of more pretensions. I can't help hoping we shall put something into that empty chair yet which will add the missing string to our social harp. I hear talk of a rare Miss who is expected. Something in the schoolgirl way, I believe. We shall see. --My friend who calls himself The Autocrat has given me a caution which I am going to repeat, with my comment upon it, for the benefit of all concerned. Professor,--said he, one day,--don't you think your brain will run dry before a year's out, if you don't get the pump to help the cow? Let me tell you what happened to me once. I put a little money into a bank, and bought a check-book, so that I might draw it as I wanted, in sums to suit. Things went on nicely for a time; scratching with a pen was as easy as rubbing Aladdin's Lamp; and my blank check-book seemed to be a dictionary of possibilities, in which I could find all the synonymes of happiness, and realize any one of them on the spot. A check came back to me at last with these two words on it,--NO FUNDS. My check-book was a volume of waste-paper. Now, Professor,--said he,--I have drawn something out of your bank, you know; and just so sure as you keep drawing out your soul's currency without making new deposits, the next thing will be, NO FUNDS,--and then where will you be, my boy? These little bits of paper mean your gold and your silver and your copper, Professor; and you will certainly break up and go to pieces, if you don't hold on to your metallic basis. There is something in that,--said I. --Only I rather think life can coin thought somewhat faster than I can count it off in words. What if one shall go round and dry up with soft napkins all the dew that falls of a June evening on the leaves of his garden? Shall there be no more dew on those leaves thereafter? Marry, yea,--many drops, large and round and full of moonlight as those thou shalt have absterged! Here am I, the Professor,--a man who has lived long enough to have plucked the flowers of life and come to the berries,--which are not always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April, or rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against books as a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepitude; with a brain full of tingling thoughts, such as they are, as a limb which we call "asleep," because it is so particuly awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned or ossified, to finger-touch of all outward agencies; knowing nothing of the filmy threads of this web of life in which we insects buzz awhile, waiting for the gray old spider to come along; contented enough with daily realities, but twirling on his finger the key of a private Bedlam of ideals; in knowledge feeding with the fox oftener than with the stork,--loving better the breadth of a fertilizing inundation than the depth of narrow artesian well; finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the markings of the grammatophora subtilissima, and nothing too large in the movement of the solar system towards the star Lambda of the constellation Hercules;--and the question is, whether there is anything left for me, the Professor, to suck out of creation, after my lively friend has had his straw in the bung-hole of the Universe! A man's mental reactions with the atmosphere of life must go on, whether he will or no, as between his blood and the air he breathes. As to catching the residuum of the process, or what we call thought,- -the gaseous ashes of burned-out thinking,--the excretion of mental respiration,--that will depend on many things, as, on having a favorable intellectual temperature about one, and a fitting receptacle. --I sow more thought-seeds in twenty-four hours' travel over the desert-sand along which my lonely consciousness paces day and night, than I shall throw into soil where it will germinate, in a year. All sorts of bodily and mental perturbations come between us and the due projection of our thought. The pulse-like "fits of easy and difficult transmission" seem to reach even the transparent medium through which our souls are seen. We know our humanity by its often intercepted rays, as we tell a revolving light from a star or meteor by its constantly recurring obscuration. An illustrious scholar once told me, that, in the first lecture he ever delivered, he spoke but half his allotted time, and felt as if he had told all he knew. Braham came forward once to sing one of his most famous and familiar songs, and for his life could not recall the first line of it;--he told his mishap to the audience, and they screamed it at him in a chorus of a thousand voices. Milton could not write to suit himself, except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. One in the clothing-business, who, there is reason to suspect, may have inherited, by descent, the great poet's impressible temperament, let a customer slip through his fingers one day without fitting him with a new garment. "Ah!" said he to a friend of mine, who was standing by, "if it hadn't been for that confounded headache of mine this morning, I'd have had a coat on that man, in spite of himself, before he left-the store." A passing throb, only,--but it deranged the nice mechanism required to persuade the accidental human being, X, into a given piece of broadcloth, A. We must take care not to confound this frequent difficulty of transmission of our ideas with want of ideas. I suppose that a man's mind does in time form a neutral salt with the elements in the universe for which it has special elective affinities. In fact, I look upon a library as a kind of mental chemist's shop filled with the crystals of all forms and hues which have come from the union of individual thought with local circumstances or universal principles. When a man has worked out his special affinities in this way, there is an end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and hissing tumult--as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting alkaline unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets covered with lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning them, first into clear solutions, and then into lustrous prisms! I, the Professor, am very much like other men: I shall not find out when I have used up my affinities. What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left! Painful as the task is, they never fail to warn the author, in the most impressive manner, of the probabilities of failure in what he has undertaken. Sad as the necessity is to their delicate sensibilities, they never hesitate to advertise him of the decline of his powers, and to press upon him the propriety of retiring before he sinks into imbecility. Trusting to their kind offices, I shall endeavor to fulfil- --Bridget enters and begins clearing the table. --The following poem is my (The Professor's) only contribution to the great department of Ocean-Cable literature. As all the poets of this country will be engaged for the next six weeks in writing for the premium offered by the Crystal-Palace Company for the Burns Centenary, (so called, according to our Benjamin Franklin, because there will be nary a cent for any of us,) poetry will be very scarce and dear. Consumers may, consequently, be glad to take the present article, which, by the aid of a Latin tutor--and a Professor of Chemistry, will be found intelligible to the educated classes. DE SAUTY AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE. Professor. Blue-Nose. PROFESSOR. Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! Lives there one De Sauty extant now among yon, Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, Holding talk with nations ? Is there a De Sauty, ambulant on Tellus, Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in night-cap, Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature Three times daily patent ? Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? Or is he a mythus,--ancient word for "humbug,"-- Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed Romulus and Remus? Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the status bred in Crosses flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal! BLUE-NOSE. Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, Thou shalt hear them answered. When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, At the polar focus of the wire electric Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us Called himself "DE SAUTY." As the small opossum held in pouch maternal Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, Sucking in the current. When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger, Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy, And from time to time, in sharp articulation, Said, "All right! DE SAUTY." >From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples Till the land was filled with loud reverberations Of "All right! DE SAUTY." When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger, Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker, Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor Of disintegration. Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead, Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence, Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, There was no De Sauty. Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chor. Flu. Sil. Potassa, Calc. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang.(?) Alumin.(?) Cuprum,(?) Such as man is made of. Born of stream galvanic, with it be had perished! There is no De Sauty now there is no current! Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him Cry, "All right! DE SAUTY." II Back again! --A turtle--which means a tortoise--is fond of his shell; but if you put a live coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the boys say. It is a libel on the turtle. He grows to his shell, and his shell is in his body as much as his body is in his shell. --I don't think there is one of our boarders quite so testudineous as I am. Nothing but a combination of motives, more peremptory than the coal on the turtle's back, could have got me to leave the shelter of my carapace; and after memorable interviews, and kindest hospitalities, and grand sights, and huge influx of patriotic pride,--for every American owns all America,-- "Creation's heir,--the world, the world is" his, if anybody's,--I come back with the feeling which a boned turkey might experience, if, retaining his consciousness, he were allowed to resume his skeleton. Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recumbent Cleopatra, and Dying Warrior, whose classic outlines (reproduced in the calcined mineral of Lutetia) crown my loaded shelves! Welcome, ye triumphs of pictorial art (repeated by the magic graver) that look down upon me from the walls of my sacred cell! Vesalius, as Titian drew him, high-fronted, still-eyed, thick-bearded, with signet-ring, as beseems a gentleman, with book and carelessly-held eyeglass, marking him a scholar; thou, too, Jan Kuyper, commonly called Jan Praktiseer, old man of a century and seven years besides, father of twenty sons and two daughters, cut in copper by Houbraken, bought from a portfolio on one of the Paris quais; and ye Three Trees of Rembrandt, black in shadow against the blaze of light; and thou Rosy Cottager of Sir Joshua, roses hinted by the peppery burin of Bartolozzi; ye, too, of lower grades in nature, yet not unlovely for unrenowned, Young Bull of Paulus Potter, and sleeping Cat of Cornelius Visscher; welcome once more to my eyes! The old books look out from the shelves, and I seem to read on their backs something asides their titles,--a kind of solemn greeting. The crimson carpet flushes warm under my feet. The arm-chair hugs me; the swivel-chair spins round with me, as if it were giddy with pleasure; the vast recumbent fauteuil stretches itself out under my weight, as one joyous with food and wine stretches in after-dinner laughter. The boarders were pleased to say that they were glad to get me back. One of them ventured a compliment, namely,--that I talked as if I believed what I said. --This was apparently considered something unusual, by its being mentioned. One who means to talk with entire sincerity,--I said,--always feels himself in danger of two things, namely,--an affectation of bluntness, like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and actual rudeness. What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to give as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two talkers as the time will let him. Life is short, and conversation apt to run to mere words. Mr. Hue I think it is, who tells us some very good stories about the way in which two Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up a long talk without saying a word which has any meaning in it. Something like this is occasionally heard on this side of the Great Wall. The best Chinese talkers I know are some pretty women whom I meet from time to time. Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de Dantzic; their accents flowing on in a soft ripple,--never a wave, and never a calm ; words nicely fitted, but never a colored phrase or a highly-flavored epithet; they turn air into syllables so gracefully, that we find meaning for the music they make as we find faces in the coals and fairy palaces in the clouds. There is something very odd, though, about this mechanical talk. You have sometimes been in a train on the railroad when the engine was detached a long way from the station you were approaching? Well, you have noticed how quietly and rapidly the cars kept on, just as if the locomotive were drawing them? Indeed, you would not have suspected that you were travelling on the strength of a dead fact, if you had not seen the engine running away from you on a side-track. Upon my conscience, I believe some of these pretty women detach their minds entirely, sometimes, from their talk,--and, what is more, that we never know the difference. Their lips let off the fluty syllables just as their fingers would sprinkle the music-drops from their pianos; unconscious habit turns the phrase of thought into words just as it does that of music into notes. --Well, they govern the world for all that, these sweet-lipped women,--because beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom. --The Bombazine wanted an explanation. Madam,--said I,--wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. --All this, however, is not what I was going to say. Here am I, suppose, seated--we will say at a dinner-table--alongside of an intelligent Englishman. We look in each other's faces,--we exchange a dozen words. One thing is settled: we mean not to offend each other,--to be perfectly courteous,--more than courteous; for we are the entertainer and the entertained, and cherish particularly amiable feelings, to each other. The claret is good; and if our blood reddens a little with its warm crimson, we are none the less kind for it. I don't think people that talk over their victuals are like to say anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with strong drink before they begin jabberin'. The Bombazine uttered this with a sugary sourness, as if the words had been steeped in a solution of acetate of lead. --The boys of my time used to call a hit like this a "side-winder." --I must finish this woman.-- Madam,--I said,--the Great Teacher seems to have been fond of talking as he sat at meat. Because this was a good while ago, in a far-off place, you forget what the true fact of it was,--that those were real dinners, where people were hungry and thirsty, and where you met a very miscellaneous company. Probably there was a great deal of loose talk among the guests; at any rate, there was always wine, we may believe. Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or disadvantages of wine,-- and I for one, except for certain particular ends, believe in water, and, I blush to say it, in black tea,--there is no doubt about its being the grand specific against dull dinners. A score of people come together in all moods of mind and body. The problem is, in the space of one hour, more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly exalted life. Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,--talk, alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now just where it was when The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed, --when six great vessels containing water, the whole amounting to more than a hogshead-full, were changed into the best of wine. I once wrote a song about wine, in which I spoke so warmly of it, that I was afraid some would think it was written inter pocula; whereas it was composed in the bosom of my family, under the most tranquillizing domestic influences. --The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous. --Can you tell me,--he said,--who wrote a song for a temperance celebration once, of which the following is a verse? Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair The joys of the banquet to chasten and share! Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine, And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine! I did,--I answered. --What are you going to do about it?--I will tell you another line I wrote long ago:-- Don't be "consistent,"--but be simply true. The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to resist this grinding-down action. --Now give me a chance. Better eternal and universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made wives and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they should have honored, as they came reeling home from their debauches! Yet better even excess than lying and hypocrisy; and if wine is upon all our tables, let us praise it for its color and fragrance and social tendency, so far as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the closet and pretend not to know the use of a wine-glass at a public dinner! I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent." But a great many things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply because they are partial views of a truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a front view of a face and its profile often do. Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have great respect, for I owe him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he has often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend the "Autocrat,"--which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by omitting the very word which gives it its significance,--the word fluid, intended to typify the mobility of the restricted will,--holds it up, I say, as if it attacked the reality of the self-determining principle, instead of illustrating its limitations by an image. Now I will not explain any farther, still less defend, and least of all attack, but simply quote a few lines from one of my friend's poems, printed more than ten years ago, and ask the distinguished gentleman where he has ever asserted more strongly or absolutely the independent will of the "subcreative centre," as my heretical friend has elsewhere called man. --Thought, conscience, will, to make them all thy own He rent a pillar from the eternal throne! --Made in His image, thou must nobly dare The thorny crown of sovereignty to share. --Think not too meanly of thy low estate; Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create! If he will look a little closely, he will see that the profile and the full-face views of the will are both true and perfectly consistent! Now let us come back, after this long digression, to the conversation with the intelligent Englishman. We begin skirmishing with a few light ideas,--testing for thoughts,--as our electro-chemical friend, De Sauty, if there were such a person, would test for his current; trying a little litmus-paper for acids, and then a slip of turmeric- paper for alkalies, as chemists do with unknown compounds; flinging the lead, and looking at the shells and sands it brings up to find out whether we are like to keep in shallow water, or shall have to drop the deep-sea line;--in short, seeing what we have to deal with. If the Englishman gets his H's pretty well placed, he comes from one of the higher grades of the British social order, and we shall find him a good companion. But, after all, here is a great fact between us. We belong to two different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe, without any hole in the wall to talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow, incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I would let out the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks. They are children to us in certain points of view. They are playing with toys we have done with for whole-generations. -------- FOOTNOTE: The more I have observed and reflected, the more limited seems to me the field of action of the human will. Every act of choice involves a special relation between the ego and the conditions before it. But no man knows what forces are at work in the determination of his ego. The bias which decides his choice between two or more motives may come from some unsuspected ancestral source, of which he knows nothing at all. He is automatic in virtue of that hidden spring of reflex action, all the time having the feeling that he is self- determining. The Story of Elsie Yenner, written-soon after this book was published, illustrates the direction in which my thought was moving. 'The imaginary subject of the story obeyed her will, but her will Obeyed the mysterious antenatal poisoning influence. -------- That silly little drum they are always beating on, and the trumpet and the feather they make so much noise and cut such a figure with, we have not quite outgrown, but play with much less seriously and constantly than they do. Then there is a whole museum of wigs, and masks, and lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and grimaces, and phrases, which we laugh at honestly, without affectation, that are still used in the Old-World puppet-shows. I don't think we on our part ever understand the Englishman's concentrated loyalty and specialized reverence. But then we do think more of a man, as such, (barring some little difficulties about race and complexion which the Englishman will touch us on presently,) than any people that ever lived did think of him. Our reverence is a great deal wider, if it is less intense. We have caste among us, to some extent; it is true; but there is never a collar on the American wolf-dog such as you often see on the English mastiff, notwithstanding his robust, hearty individuality. This confronting of two civilizations is always a grand sensation to me; it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as when he talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the Peruvians. Then you get the real British flavor, which the cosmopolite Englishman loses. How much better this thorough interpenetration of ideas than a barren interchange of courtesies, or a bush-fighting argument, in which each man tries to cover as much of himself and expose as much of his opponent as the tangled thicket of the disputed ground will let him! ---My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at least three deep. I follow a slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my own beneath it. Under both runs obscurely a consciousness belonging to a third train of reflections, independent of the two others. I will try to write out a Mental movement in three parts. A. ---First voice, or Mental Soprano,--thought follows a woman talking. B. --Second voice, or Mental Barytone,--my running accompaniment. C. --Third voice, or Mental Basso,--low grumble of importunate self- repeating idea. A. --White lace, three skirts, looped with flowers, wreath of apple- blossoms, gold bracelets, diamond pin and ear-rings, the most delicious berthe you ever saw, white satin slippers- B. --Deuse take her! What a fool she is! Hear her chatter! (Look out of window just here. --Two pages and a half of description, if it were all written out, in one tenth of a second.)--Go ahead, old lady! (Eye catches picture over fireplace.) There's that infernal family nose! Came over in the "Mayflower" on the first old fool's face. Why don't they wear a ring in it? C. --You 'll be late at lecture,--late at lecture,--late,--late- I observe that a deep layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt through the superincumbent strata, thus:--The usual single or double currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,-- Oh, there! I knew there was something troubling me,--and the thought which had been working through comes up to the surface clear, definite, and articulates itself,--a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or an unpleasant recollection. The inner world of thought and the outer world of events are alike in this, that they are both brimful. There is no space between consecutive thoughts, or between the never-ending series of actions. All pack tight, and mould their surfaces against each other, so that in the long run there is a wonderful average uniformity in the forms of both thoughts and actions, just as you find that cylinders crowded all become hexagonal prisms, and spheres pressed together are formed into regular polyhedra. Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him. So, to carry out, with another comparison, my remark about the layers of thought, we may consider the mind as it moves among thoughts or events, like a circus-rider whirling round with a great troop of horses. He can mount a fact or an idea, and guide it more or less completely, but he cannot stop it. So, as I said in another way at the beginning, he can stride two or three thoughts at once, but not break their steady walk, trot, or gallop. He can only take his foot from the saddle of one thought and put it on that of another. --What is the saddle of a thought? Why, a word, of course. --Twenty years after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to you through the press, as if it had been steadily galloping round and round all that time without a rider. The will does not act in the interspaces of thought, for there are no such interspaces, but simply steps from the back of one moving thought upon that of another. --I should like to ask,--said the divinity-student,--since we are getting into metaphysics, how you can admit space, if all things are in contact, and how you can admit time, if it is always now to something? --I thought it best not to hear this question. --I wonder if you know this class of philosophers in books or elsewhere. One of them makes his bow to the public, and exhibits an unfortunate truth bandaged up so that it cannot stir hand or foot,-- as helpless, apparently, and unable to take care of itself, as an Egyptian mummy. He then proceeds, with the air and method of a master, to take off the bandages. Nothing can be neater than the way in which he does it. But as he takes off layer after layer, the truth seems to grow smaller and smaller, and some of its outlines begin to look like something we have seen before. At last, when he has got them all off, and the truth struts out naked, we recognize it as a diminutive and familiar acquaintance whom we have known in the streets all our lives. The fact is, the philosopher has coaxed the truth into his study and put all those bandages on; or course it is not very hard for him to take them off. Still, a great many people like to watch the process,--he does it so neatly! Dear! dear! I am ashamed to write and talk, sometimes, when I see how those functions of the large-brained, thumb-opposing plantigrade are abused by my fellow-vertebrates,--perhaps by myself. How they spar for wind, instead of hitting from the shoulder! --The young fellow called John arose and placed himself in a neat fighting attitude. --Fetch on the fellah that makes them long words! --he said,--and planted a straight hit with the right fist in the concave palm of the left hand with a click like a cup and ball. --You small boy there, hurry up that "Webster's Unabridged!" The little gentleman with the malformation, before described, shocked the propriety of the breakfast-table by a loud utterance of three words, of which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the first was an emphatic monosyllable. --Beg pardon,--he added,--forgot myself. But let us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house, Sir, I want it to tell which way the wind blows up aloft,--off from the prairies to the ocean, or off from the ocean to the prairies, or any way it wants to blow! I don't want a weathercock with a winch in an old gentleman's study that he can take hold of and turn, so that the vane shall point west when the great wind overhead is blowing east with all its might, Sir! Wait till we give you a dictionary; Sir! It takes Boston to do that thing, Sir! --Some folks think water can't run down-hill anywhere out of Boston, --remarked the Koh-i-noor. I don't know what some folks think so well as I know what some fools say,--rejoined the Little Gentleman. --If importing most dry goods made the best scholars, I dare say you would know where to look for 'em. --Mr. Webster could n't spell, Sir, or would n't spell, Sir,--at any rate, he did n't spell; and the end of it was a fight between the owners of some copyrights and the dignity of this noble language which we have inherited from our English fathers. Language! --the blood of the soul, Sir! into which our thoughts run and out of which they grow! We know what a word is worth here in Boston. Young Sam Adams got up on the stage at Commencement, out at Cambridge there, with his gown on, the Governor and Council looking on in the name of his Majesty, King George the Second, and the girls looking down out of the galleries, and taught people how to spell a word that was n't in the Colonial dictionaries ! R-e, re, s-i-s, sis, t-a-n-c-e, tance, Resistance! That was in '43, and it was a good many years before the Boston boys began spelling it with their muskets;--but when they did begin, they spelt it so loud that the old bedridden women in the English almshouses heard every syllable! Yes, yes, yes,--it was a good while before those other two Boston boys got the class so far along that it could spell those two hard words, Independence and Union! I tell you what, Sir, there are a thousand lives, aye, sometimes a million, go to get a new word into a language that is worth speaking. We know what language means too well here in Boston to play tricks with it. We never make a new word til we have made a new thing or a new thought, Sir! then we shaped the new mould of this continent, we had to make a few. When, by God's permission, we abrogated the primal curse of maternity, we had to make a word or two. The cutwater of this great Leviathan clipper, the OCCIDENTAL,-- this thirty-wasted wind-and-steam wave-crusher,--must throw a little spray over the human vocabulary as it splits the waters of a new world's destiny! He rose as he spoke, until his stature seemed to swell into the fair human proportions. His feet must have been on the upper round of his high chair; that was the only way I could account for it. Puts her through fast-rate,--said the young fellow whom the boarders call John. The venerable and kind-looking old gentleman who sits opposite said he remembered Sam Adams as Governor. An old man in a brown coat. Saw him take the Chair on Boston Common. Was a boy then, and remembers sitting on the fence in front of the old Hancock house. Recollects he had a glazed 'lectionbun, and sat eating it and looking down on to the Common. Lalocks flowered late that year, and he got a great bunch off from the bushes in the Hancock front-yard. Them 'lection-buns are no go,--said the young man John, so called. --I know the trick. Give a fellah a fo'penny bun in the mornin', an' he downs the whole of it. In about an hour it swells up in his stomach as big as a football, and his feedin' 's spilt for that day. That's the way to stop off a young one from eatin' up all the 'lection dinner. Salem! Salem! not Boston,--shouted the little man. But the Koh-i-noor laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy Benjamin Franklin looked sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the bun-experiment as a part of his past personal history. The Little Gentleman was holding a fork in his left hand. He stabbed a boulder of home-made bread with it, mechanically, and looked at it as if it ought to shriek. It did not,--but he sat as if watching it. --Language is a solemn thing,--I said. --It grows out of life,--out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves. --A friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,--a "bull's eye," with a loose silver case that came off like an oyster-shell from its contents; you know them,--the cases that you hang on your thumb, while the core, or the real watch, lies in your hand as naked as a peeled apple. Well, he began with taking off the case, and so on from one liberty to another, until he got it fairly open, and there were the works, as good as if they were alive,-- crown-wheel, balance-wheel, and all the rest. All right except one thing,--there was a confounded little hair had got tangled round the balance-wheel. So my young Solomon got a pair of tweezers, and caught hold of the hair very nicely, and pulled it right out, without touching any of the wheels,--when,--buzzzZZZ! and the watch had done up twenty-four hours in double magnetic-telegraph time! --The English language was wound up to run some thousands of years, I trust; but if everybody is to be pulling at everything he thinks is a hair, our grandchildren will have to make the discovery that it is a hair- spring, and the old Anglo-Norman soul's-timekeeper will run down, as so many other dialects have done before it. I can't stand this meddling any better than you, Sir. But we have a great deal to be proud of in the lifelong labors of that old lexicographer, and we must n't be ungrateful. Besides, don't let us deceive ourselves,-- the war of the dictionaries is only a disguised rivalry of cities, colleges, and especially of publishers. After all, it is likely that the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterwards, if you can,--but the moon will still lead the tides, and the winds will form their surface. --Do you know Richardson's Dictionary?--I said to my neighbor the divinity-student. Haow?--said the divinity-student. --He colored, as he noticed on my face a twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth, (zygomaticus major,) and which I could not hold back from making a little movement on its own account. It was too late. --A country-boy, lassoed when he was a half-grown colt. Just as good as a city-boy, and in some ways, perhaps, better,--but caught a little too old not to carry some marks of his earlier ways of life. Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives, return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,--but it lay there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the odd old family names, particularly those of the Hebrew prophets, which the good old people have saddled them with. --Boston has enough of England about it to make a good English dictionary,--said that fresh-looking youth whom I have mentioned as sitting at the right upper corner of the table. I turned and looked him full in the face,--for the pure, manly intonations arrested me. The voice was youthful, but full of character. --I suppose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in the matter of voice. --Hear this. Not long after the American Revolution, a young lady was sitting in her father's chaise in a street of this town of Boston. She overheard a little girl talking or singing, and was mightily taken with the tones of her voice. Nothing would satisfy her but she must have that little girl come and live in her father's house. So the child came, being then nine years old. Until her marriage she remained under the same roof with the young lady. Her children became successively inmates of the lady's dwelling; and now, seventy years, or thereabouts, since the young lady heard the child singing, one of that child's children and one of her grandchildren are with her in that home, where she, no longer young, except in heart, passes her peaceful days. --Three generations linked together by so light a breath of accident! I liked--the sound of this youth's voice, I said, and his look when I came to observe him a little more closely. His complexion had something better than ,the bloom and freshness which had first attracted me;--it had that diffused tone which is a sure index of wholesome, lusty life. A fine liberal style of nature seemed to be: hair crisped, moustache springing thick and dark, head firmly planted, lips finished, as is commonly sees them in gentlemen's families, a pupil well contracted, and a mouth that opened frankly with a white flash of teeth that looked as if they could serve him as they say Ethan Allen's used to serve their owner,--to draw nails with. This is the kind of fellow to walk a frigate's deck and bowl his broadsides into the "Gadlant Thudnder-bomb," or any forty-port- holed adventurer who would like to exchange a few tons of iron compliments. --I don't know what put this into my head, for it was not till some time afterward I learned the young fellow had been in the naval school at Annapolis. Something had happened to change his plan of life, and he was now studying engineering and architecture in Boston. When the youth made the short remark which drew my attention to him, the little deformed gentleman turned round and took a long look at him. Good for the Boston boy! --he said. I am not a Boston boy,--said the youth, smiling,--I am a Marylander. I don't care where you come from,--we'll make a Boston man of you,-- said the little gentleman. Pray, what part of Maryland did you come from, and how shall I call you? The poor youth had to speak pretty loud, as he was at the right upper corner of the table, and the little gentleman next the lower left- hand corner. His face flushed a little, but he answered pleasantly, telling who he was, as if the little man's infirmity gave him a right to ask any questions he wanted to. Here is the place for you to sit,--said the little gentleman, pointing to the vacant chair next his own, at the corner. You're go'n' to have a young lady next you, if you wait till to- morrow,--said the landlady to him. He did not reply, but I had a fancy that he changed color. It can't be that he has susceptibilities with reference to a contingent young lady! It can't be that he has had experiences which make him sensitive! Nature could not be quite so cruel as to set a heart throbbing in that poor little cage of ribs! There is no use in wasting notes of admiration. I must ask the landlady about him. These are some of the facts she furnished. --Has not been long with her. Brought a sight of furniture,--could n't hardly get some of it upstairs. Has n't seemed particularly attentive to the ladies. The Bombazine (whom she calls Cousin something or other) has tried to enter into conversation with him, but retired with the impression that he was indifferent to ladies' society. Paid his bill the other day without saying a word about it. Paid it in gold,--had a great heap of twenty-dollar pieces. Hires her best room. Thinks he is a very nice little man, but lives dreadful lonely up in his chamber. Wants the care of some capable nuss. Never pitied anybody more in her life--never see a more interestin' person. --My intention was, when I began making these notes, to let them consist principally of conversations between myself and the other boarders. So they will, very probably; but my curiosity is excited about this little boarder of ours, and my reader must not be disappointed, if I sometimes interrupt a discussion to give an account of whatever fact or traits I may discover about him. It so happens that his room is next to mine, and I have the opportunity of observing many of his ways without any active movements of curiosity. That his room contains heavy furniture, that he is a restless little body and is apt to be up late, that he talks to himself, and keeps mainly to himself, is nearly all I have yet found out. One curious circumstance happened lately which I mention without drawing an absolute inference. Being at the studio of a sculptor with whom I am acquainted, the other day, I saw a remarkable cast of a left arm. On my asking where the model came from, he said it was taken direct from the arm of a deformed person, who had employed one of the Italian moulders to make the cast. It was a curious case, it should seem, of one beautiful limb upon a frame otherwise singularly imperfect--I have repeatedly noticed this little gentleman's use of his left arm. Can he have furnished the model I saw at the sculptor's? --So we are to have a new boarder to-morrow. I hope there will be something pretty and pleasing about her. A woman with a creamy voice, and finished in alto rilievo, would be a variety in the boarding-house,--a little more marrow and a little less sinew than our landlady and her daughter and the bombazine-clad female, all of whom are of the turkey-drumstick style of organization. I don't mean that these are our only female companions; but the rest being conversational non-combatants, mostly still, sad feeders, who take in their food as locomotives take in wood and water, and then wither away from the table like blossoms that never came to fruit, I have not yet referred to them as individuals. I wonder what kind of young person we shall see in that empty chair to-morrow! --I read this song to the boarders after breakfast the other morning. It was written for our fellows;--you know who they are, of course. THE BOYS. Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise! Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night! We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more? He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door!-- "Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! white, if we please; Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze! Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake; We want some new garlands for those we have shed, And these are white roses in place of the red! We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told. Of talking (in public) as if we were old; That boy we call Doctor," (1) and this we call Judge (2)-- It's a neat little fiction,--of course it's all fudge. That fellow's the Speaker,"(3)--the one on the right; Mr. Mayor,"(4) my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress,"(5) we say when we chaff; There's the "Reverend"(6) What's his name?--don't make me laugh! That boy with the grave mathematical look(7) Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too. There's a boy,--we pretend,--with a three-decker-brain That could harness a team with a logical chain: When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice,"--but now he's "The Squire."(1) And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,(2) Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith, But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, --Just read on his medal,--My country,--of thee! " You hear that boy laughing?--you think he's all fun, But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!(3) Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,-- And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May! And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys! 1 Francis Thomas. 2 George Tyler Bigelow. 3 Francis Boardman Crowninshield. 4 G. W. Richardson. 5 George Thomas Davis. 6 James Freeman Clarke. 7 Benjamin Peirce. III [The Professor talks with the Reader. He tells a Young Girl's Story.] When the elements that went to the making of the first man, father of mankind, had been withdrawn from the world of unconscious matter, the balance of creation was disturbed. The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man's-worth of masculine constituents. These combined to make our first mother, by a logical necessity involved in the previous creation of our common father. All this, mythically, illustratively, and by no means doctrinally or polemically. The man implies the woman, you will understand. The excellent gentleman whom I had the pleasure of setting right in a trifling matter a few weeks ago believes in the frequent occurrence of miracles at the present day. So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm- trees arm in arm with a pretty woman. Where would she come from? Oh, that 's the miracle! --I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant, seeing it all beforehand. --I have a fancy that those Marylanders are just about near enough to the sun to ripen well. --How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry, Baltimoreans, both! Joe, with his cheeks like lady-apples, and his eyes like black-heart cherries, and his teeth like the whiteness of the flesh of cocoanuts, and his laugh that set the chandelier-drops rattling overhead, as we sat at our sparkling banquets in those gay ,times! Harry, champion, by acclamation, of the college heavy-weights, broad-shouldered, bull-necked, square- jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots of pluck, good- natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle! Who forgets the great muster-day, and the collision of the classic with the democratic forces? The huge butcher, fifteen stone,--two hundred and ten pounds,--good weight,-- steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry, the Baltimorean,--one of the quiet sort, who strike first; and do the talking, if there is any, afterwards. No words, but, in the place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,--followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, where everything was done decently and in order; and the fight began and ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson need hardly have hesitated to open it with a devout petition, and, after it was over, dismiss the ring with a benediction. I can't help telling one more story about this great field-day, though it is the most wanton and irrelevant digression. But all of us have a little speck of fight underneath our peace and good-will to men, just a speck, for revolutions and great emergencies, you know,-- so that we should not submit to be trodden quite flat by the first heavy-heeled aggressor that came along. You can tell a portrait from an ideal head, I suppose, and a true story from one spun out of the writer's invention. See whether this sounds true or not. Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine blood-horses, Barefoot and Serab by name, to Massachusetts, something before the time I am talking of. With them came a Yorkshire groom, a stocky little fellow, in velvet breeches, who made that mysterious hissing noise, traditionary in English stables, when he rubbed down the silken- skinned racers, in great perfection. After the soldiers had come from the muster-field, and some of the companies were on the village- common, there was still some skirmishing between a few individuals who had not had the fight taken out of them. The little Yorkshire groom thought he must serve out somebody. So he threw himself into an approved scientific attitude, and, in brief, emphatic language, expressed his urgent anxiety to accommodate any classical young gentleman who chose to consider himself a candidate for his attentions. I don't suppose there were many of the college boys that would have been a match for him in the art which Englishmen know so much more of than Americans, for the most part. However, one of the Sophomores, a very quiet, peaceable fellow, just stepped out of the crowd, and, running straight at the groom, as he stood there, sparring away, struck him with the sole of his foot, a straight blow, as if it had been with his fist, and knocked him heels over head and senseless, so that he had to be carried off from the field. This ugly way of hitting is the great trick of the French gavate, which is not commonly thought able to stand its ground against English pugilistic science. These are old recollections, with not much to recommend them, except, perhaps, a dash of life, which may be worth a little something. The young Marylander brought them all up, you may remember. He recalled to my mind those two splendid pieces of vitality I told you of. Both have been long dead. How often we see these great red- flaring flambeaux of life blown out, as it were, by a puff of wind, --and the little, single-wicked night-lamp of being, which some white-faced and attenuated invalid shades with trembling fingers, flickering on while they go out one after another, until its glimmer is all that is left to us of the generation to which it belonged! I told you that I was perfectly sure, beforehand, we should find some pleasing girlish or womanly shape to fill the blank at our table and match the dark-haired youth at the upper corner. There she sits, at the very opposite corner, just as far off as accident could put her from this handsome fellow, by whose side she ought, of course, to be sitting. One of the "positive" blondes, as my friend, you may remember, used to call them. Tawny-haired, amber-eyed, full-throated, skin as white as a blanched almond. Looks dreamy to me, not self-conscious, though a black ribbon round her neck sets it off as a Marie-Antoinette's diamond-necklace could not do. So in her dress, there is a harmony of tints that looks as if an artist had run his eye over her and given a hint or two like the finishing touch to a picture. I can't help being struck with her, for she is at once rounded and fine in feature, looks calm, as blondes are apt to, and as if she might run wild, if she were trifled with. It is just as I knew it would be,--and anybody can see that our young Marylander will be dead in love with her in a week. Then if that little man would only turn out immensely rich and have the good-nature to die and leave them all his money, it would be as nice as a three-volume novel. The Little Gentleman is in a flurry, I suspect, with the excitement of having such a charming neighbor next him. I judge so mainly by his silence and by a certain rapt and serious look on his face, as if he were thinking of something that had happened, or that might happen, or that ought to happen,--or how beautiful her young life looked, or how hardly Nature had dealt with him, or something which struck him silent, at any rate. I made several conversational openings for him, but he did not fire up as he often does. I even went so far as to indulge in, a fling at the State House, which, as we all know, is in truth a very imposing structure, covering less ground than St. Peter's, but of similar general effect. The little man looked up, but did not reply to my taunt. He said to the young lady, however, that the State House was the Parthenon of our Acropolis, which seemed to please her, for she smiled, and he reddened a little,--so I thought. I don't think it right to watch persons who are the subjects of special infirmity,--but we all do it. I see that they have crowded the chairs a little at that end of the table, to make room for another newcomer of the lady sort. A well- mounted, middle-aged preparation, wearing her hair without a cap,-- pretty wide in the parting, though,--contours vaguely hinted,-- features very quiet,--says little as yet, but seems to keep her eye on the young lady, as if having some responsibility for her My record is a blank for some days after this. In the mean time I have contrived to make out the person and the story of our young lady, who, according to appearances, ought to furnish us a heroine for a boarding-house romance before a year is out. It is very curious that she should prove connected with a person many of us have heard of. Yet, curious as it is, I have been a hundred times struck with the circumstance that the most remote facts are constantly striking each other; just as vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked breadth of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch, in the dark, with a crack of timbers, a gurgling of water, a cry of startled sleepers,--a cry mysteriously echoed in warning dreams, as the wife of some Gloucester fisherman, some coasting skipper, wakes with a shriek, calls the name of her husband, and sinks back to uneasy slumbers upon her lonely pillow,--a widow. Oh, these mysterious meetings! Leaving all the vague, waste, endless spaces of the washing desert, the ocean-steamer and the fishing-smack sail straight towards each other as if they ran in grooves ploughed for them in the waters from the beginning of creation! Not only things and events, but our own thoughts, are so full of these surprises, that, if there were a reader in my parish who did not recognize the familiar occurrence of what I am now going to mention, I should think it a case for the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of Intelligence among the Comfortable Classes. There are about as many twins in the births of thought as of children. For the first time in your lives you learn some fact or come across some idea. Within an hour, a day, a week, that same fact or idea strikes you from another quarter. It seems as if it had passed into space and bounded back upon you as an echo from the blank wall that shuts in the world of thought. Yet no possible connection exists between the two channels by which the thought or the fact arrived. Let me give an infinitesimal illustration. One of the Boys mentioned, the other evening, in the course of a very pleasant poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons-table boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of. Young fellows being always hungry--Allow me to stop dead-short, in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the cavity of a geode. Aphorism by the Professor. In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night. If old, it observes stated periods, and you might as well attempt to regulate the time of highwater to suit a fishing-party as to change these periods. The crucial experiment is this. Offer a bulky and boggy bun to the suspected individual just ten minutes before dinner. If this is eagerly accepted and devoured, the fact of youth is established. If the subject of the question starts back and expresses surprise and incredulity, as if you could not possibly be in earnest, the fact of maturity is no less clear. --Excuse me,--I return to my story of the Commons-table. --Young fellows being always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre fare of the evening meal, it was a trick of some of the Boys to impale a slice of meat upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the fork holding it beneath the table, so that they could get it at tea- time. The dragons that guarded this table of the Hesperides found out the trick at last, and kept a sharp look-out for missing forks;-- they knew where to find one, if it was not in its place. --Now the odd thing was, that, after waiting so many years to hear of this college trick, I should hear it mentioned a second time within the same twenty-four hours by a college youth of the present generation. Strange, but true. And so it has happened to me and to every person, often and often, to be hit in rapid succession by these twinned facts or thoughts, as if they were linked like chain-shot. I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it. --The explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the enormous number of impressions which pass through our consciousness, until in some future life we see the photographic record of our thoughts and the stereoscopic picture of our actions. There go more pieces to make up a conscious life or a living body than you think for. Why, some of you were surprised when a friend of mine told you there were fifty-eight separate pieces in a fiddle. How many "swimming glands"--solid, organized, regularly formed, rounded disks taking an active part in all your vital processes, part and parcel, each one of them, of your corporeal being--do you suppose are whirled along, like pebbles in a stream, with the blood which warms your frame and colors your cheeks?--A noted German physiologist spread out a minute drop of blood, under the microscope, in narrow streaks, and counted the globules, and then made a calculation. The counting by the micrometer took him a week. --You have, my full-grown friend, of these little couriers in crimson or scarlet livery, running on your vital errands day and night as long as you live, sixty-five billions, five hundred and seventy thousand millions. Errors excepted. --Did I hear some gentleman say, "Doubted? "--I am the Professor. I sit in my chair with a petard under it that will blow me through the skylight of my lecture-room, if I do not know what I am talking about and whom I am quoting. Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheads, and saying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if you had been waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, is it possible that you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of all that I have been saying, and its bearing on what is now to come? Listen, then. The number of these living elements in our bodies illustrates the incalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number of our thoughts accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of; these coincidences in the world of thought illustrate those which we constantly observe in the world of outward events, of which the presence of the young girl now at our table, and proving to be the daughter of an old acquaintance some of us may remember, is the special example which led me through this labyrinth of reflections, and finally lands me at the commencement of this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and felt the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell without wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation. IRIS. You remember, perhaps, in some papers published awhile ago, an odd poem written by an old Latin tutor? He brought up at the verb amo, I love, as all of us do, and by and by Nature opened her great living dictionary for him at the word , filia, a daughter. The poor man was greatly perplexed in choosing a name for her. Lucretia and Virginia were the first that he thought of; but then came up those pictured stories of Titus Livius, which he could never read without crying, though he had read them a hundred times. --Lucretia sending for her husband and her father, each to bring one friend with him, and awaiting them in her chamber. To them her wrongs briefly. Let them see to the wretch,--she will take care of herself. Then the hidden knife flashes out and sinks into her heart. She slides from her seat, and falls dying. "Her husband and her father cry aloud."--No, not Lucretia. -Virginius,--a brown old soldier, father of a nice girl. She engaged to a very promising young man. Decemvir Appius takes a violent fancy to her,--must have her at any rate. Hires a lawyer to present the arguments in favor of the view that she was another man's daughter. There used to be lawyers in Rome that would do such things. --All right. There are two sides to everything. Audi alteram partem. The legal gentleman has no opinion,--he only states the evidence. --A doubtful case. Let the young lady be under the protection of the Honorable Decemvir until it can be looked up thoroughly. --Father thinks it best, on the whole, to give in. Will explain the matter, if the young lady and her maid will step this way. That is the explanation,--a stab with a butcher's knife, snatched from a stall, meant for other lambs than this poor bleeding Virginia The old man thought over the story. Then he must have one look at the original. So he took down the first volume and read it over. When he came to that part where it tells how the young gentleman she was engaged to and a friend of his took up the poor girl's bloodless shape and carried it through the street, and how all the women followed, wailing, and asking if that was what their daughters were coming to,--if that was what they were to get for being good girls,-- he melted down into his accustomed tears of pity and grief, and, through them all, of delight at the charming Latin of the narrative. But it was impossible to call his child Virginia. He could never look at her without thinking she had a knife sticking in her bosom. Dido would be a good name, and a fresh one. She was a queen, and the founder of a great city. Her story had been immortalized by the greatest of poets,--for the old Latin tutor clove to "Virgilius Maro," as he called him, as closely as ever Dante did in his memorable journey. So he took down his Virgil, it was the smooth- leafed, open-lettered quarto of Baskerville,--and began reading the loves and mishaps of Dido. It would n't do. A lady who had not learned discretion by experience, and came to an evil end. He shook his head, as he sadly repeated, "---misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore;" but when he came to the lines, "Ergo Iris croceis per coelum roscida pennis Mille trahens varios adverso Sole colores," he jumped up with a great exclamation, which the particular recording angel who heard it pretended not to understand, or it might have gone hard with the Latin tutor some time or other. "Iris shall be her name!"--he said. So her name was Iris. --The natural end of a tutor is to perish by starvation. It is only a question of time, just as with the burning of college libraries. These all burn up sooner or later, provided they are not housed in brick or stone and iron. I don't mean that you will see in the registry of deaths that this or that particular tutor died of well- marked, uncomplicated starvation. They may, even, in extreme cases, be carried off by a thin, watery kind of apoplexy, which sounds very well in the returns, but means little to those who know that it is only debility settling on the head. Generally, however, they fade and waste away under various pretexts,--calling it dyspepsia, consumption, and so on, to put a decent appearance upon the case and keep up the credit of the family and the institution where they have passed through the successive stages of inanition. In some cases it takes a great many years to kill a tutor by the process in question. You see they do get food and clothes and fuel, in appreciable quantities, such as they are. You will even notice rows of books in their rooms, and a picture or two,--things that look as if they had surplus money; but these superfluities are the water of crystallization to scholars, and you can never get them away till the poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with milk watered to the verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for summer. The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen from the air he breathes in his recitation-room. In short, he undergoes a process of gentle and gradual starvation. --The mother of little Iris was not called Electra, like hers of the old story, neither was her grandfather Oceanus. Her blood-name, which she gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was a plain old English one, and her water-name was Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of Samuel, and admirable as reading equally well from the initial letter forwards and from the terminal letter backwards. The poor lady, seated with her companion at the chessboard of matrimony, had but just pushed forward her one little white pawn upon an empty square, when the Black Knight, that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, swooped down upon her and swept her from the larger board of life. The old Latin tutor put a modest blue stone at the head of his late companion, with her name and age and Eheu! upon it,--a smaller one at her feet, with initials; and left her by herself, to be rained and snowed on,--which is a hard thing to do for those whom we have cherished tenderly. About the time that the lichens, falling on the stone, like drops of water, had spread into fair, round rosettes, the tutor had starved into a slight cough. Then he began to draw the buckle of his black trousers a little tighter, and took in another reef in his never- ample waistcoat. His temples got a little hollow, and the contrasts of color in his cheeks more vivid than of old. After a while his walks fatigued him, and he was tired, and breathed hard after going up a flight or two of stairs. Then came on other marks of inward trouble and general waste, which he spoke of to his physician as peculiar, and doubtless owing to accidental causes; to all which the doctor listened with deference, as if it had not been the old story that one in five or six of mankind in temperate climates tells, or has told for him, as if it were something new. As the doctor went out, he said to himself,--"On the rail at last. Accommodation train. A good many stops, but will get to the station by and by." So the doctor wrote a recipe with the astrological sign of Jupiter before it, (just as your own physician does, inestimable reader, as you will see, if you look at his next prescription,) and departed, saying he would look in occasionally. After this, the Latin tutor began the usual course of "getting better," until he got so much better that his face was very sharp, and when he smiled, three crescent lines showed at each side of his lips, and when he spoke; it was in a muffled whisper, and the white of his eye glistened as pearly as the purest porcelain,--so much better, that he hoped--by spring--he---- might be able--to--attend------to his class again. --But he was recommended not to expose himself, and so kept his chamber, and occasionally, not having anything to do, his bed. The unmarried sister with whom he lived took care of him; and the child, now old enough to be manageable and even useful in trifling offices, sat in the chamber, or played, about. Things could not go on so forever, of course. One morning his face was sunken and his hands were very, very cold. He was "better," he whispered, but sadly and faintly. After a while he grew restless and seemed a little wandering. His mind ran on his classics, and fell back on the Latin grammar. "Iris! " he said,--",filiola mea!"--The child knew this meant my dear little daughter as well as if it had been English. --"Rainbow! "for he would translate her name at times,--"come to me,--veni"--and his lips went on automatically, and murmured," vel venito!" --The child came and sat by his bedside and took his hand, which she could not warm, but which shot its rays of cold all through her slender frame. But there she sat, looking steadily at him. Presently he opened his lips feebly, and whispered, "Moribundus." She did not know what that meant, but she saw that there was something new and sad. So she began to cry; but presently remembering an old book that seemed to comfort him at times, got up and brought a Bible in the Latin version, called the Vulgate. "Open it," he said,--"I will read, segnius irritant,--don't put the light out,--ah! hoeret lateri,--I am going,--vale, vale, vale, goodbye, good-bye,--the Lord take care of my child! Domine, audi-- vel audito!" His face whitened suddenly, and he lay still, with open eyes and mouth. He had taken his last degree. --Little Miss Iris could not be said to begin life with a very brilliant rainbow over her, in a worldly point of view. A limited wardrobe of man's attire, such as poor tutors wear,--a few good books, principally classics,--a print or two, and a plaster model of the Pantheon, with some pieces of furniture which had seen service,-- these, and a child's heart full of tearful recollections and strange doubts and questions, alternating with the cheap pleasures which are the anodynes of childish grief; such were the treasures she inherited. --No,--I forgot. With that kindly sentiment which all of us feel for old men's first children,--frost-flowers of the early winter season, the old tutor's students had remembered him at a time when he was laughing and crying with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib in which his alter egg, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,--in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood which there is one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life. There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with classical figures, and bearing on a shield the graver words, Ex dono pupillorum. The handle on its side showed what use the boys had meant it for; and a kind letter in it, written with the best of feeling, in the worst of Latin, pointed delicately to its destination. Out of this silver vessel, after a long, desperate, strangling cry, which marked her first great lesson in the realities of life, the child took the blue milk, such as poor tutors and their children get, tempered with water, and sweetened a little, so as to bring it nearer the standard established by the touching indulgence and partiality of Nature,--who had mingled an extra allowance of sugar in the blameless food of the child at its mother's breast, as compared with that of its infant brothers and sisters of the bovine race. But a willow will grow in baked sand wet with rainwater. An air- plant will grow by feeding on the winds. Nay, those huge forests that overspread great continents have built themselves up mainly from the air-currents with which they are always battling. The oak is but a foliated atmospheric crystal deposited from the aerial ocean that holds the future vegetable world in solution. The storm that tears its leaves has paid tribute to its strength, and it breasts the tornado clad in the spoils of a hundred hurricanes. Poor little Iris! What had she in common with the great oak in the shadow of which we are losing sight of her?--She lived and grew like that,--this was all. The blue milk ran into her veins and filled them with thin, pure blood. Her skin was fair, with a faint tinge, such as the white rosebud shows before it opens. The doctor who had attended her father was afraid her aunt would hardly be able to "raise " her,--"delicate child,"--hoped she was not consumptive,-- thought there was a fair chance she would take after her father. A very forlorn-looking person, dressed in black, with a white neckcloth, sent her a memoir of a child who died at the age of two years and eleven months, after having fully indorsed all the doctrines of the particular persuasion to which he not only belonged himself, but thought it very shameful that everybody else did not belong. What with foreboding looks and dreary death-bed stories, it was a wonder the child made out to live through it. It saddened her early years, of course,--it distressed her tender soul with thoughts which, as they cannot be fully taken in, should be sparingly used as instruments of torture to break down the natural cheerfulness of a healthy child, or, what is infinitely worse, to cheat a dying one out of the kind illusions with which the Father of All has strewed its downward path. The child would have died, no doubt, and, if properly managed, might have added another to the long catalogue of wasting children who have been as cruelly played upon by spiritual physiologists, often with the best intentions, as ever the subject of a rare disease by the curious students of science. Fortunately for her, however, a wise instinct had guided the late Latin tutor in the selection of the partner of his life, and the future mother of his child. The deceased tutoress was a tranquil, smooth woman, easily nourished, as such people are,--a quality which is inestimable in a tutor's wife,--and so it happened that the daughter inherited enough vitality from the mother to live through childhood and infancy and fight her way towards womanhood, in spite of the tendencies she derived from her other parent. --Two and two do not always make four, in this matter of hereditary descent of qualities. Sometimes they make three, and sometimes five. It seems as if the parental traits at one time showed separate, at another blended,--that occasionally, the force of two natures is represented in the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original line of living movement,--that sometimes there is a loss of vitality hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable intensity in some new and unforeseen direction. So it was with this child. She had glanced off from her parental probabilities at an unexpected angle. Instead of taking to classical learning like her father, or sliding quietly into household duties like her mother, she broke out early in efforts that pointed in the direction of Art. As soon as she could hold a pencil she began to sketch outlines of objects round her with a certain air and spirit. Very extraordinary horses, but their legs looked as if they could move. Birds unknown to Audubon, yet flying, as it were, with a rush. Men with impossible legs, which did yet seem to have a vital connection with their most improbable bodies. By-and-by the doctor, on his beast,--an old man with a face looking as if Time had kneaded it like dough with his knuckles, with a rhubarb tint and flavor pervading himself and his sorrel horse and all their appurtenances. A dreadful old man! Be sure she did not forget those saddle-bags that held the detestable bottles out of which he used to shake those loathsome powders which, to virgin childish palates that find heaven in strawberries and peaches, are-- Well, I suppose I had better stop. Only she wished she was dead sometimes when she heard him coming. On the next leaf would figure the gentleman with the black coat and white cravat, as he looked when he came and entertained her with stories concerning the death of various little children about her age, to encourage her, as that wicked Mr. Arouet said about shooting Admiral Byng. Then she would take her pencil, and with a few scratches there would be the outline of a child, in which you might notice how one sudden sweep gave the chubby cheek, and two dots darted at the paper looked like real eyes. By-and-by she went to school, and caricatured the schoolmaster on the leaves of her grammars and geographies, and drew the faces of her companions, and, from time to time, heads and figures from her fancy, with large eyes, far apart, like those of Raffaelle's mothers and children, sometimes with wild floating hair, and then with wings and heads thrown back in ecstasy. This was at about twelve years old, as the dates of these drawings show, and, therefore, three or four years before she came among us. Soon after this time, the ideal figures began to take the place of portraits and caricatures, and a new feature appeared in her drawing-books in the form of fragments of verse and short poems. It was dull work, of course, for such a young girl to live with an old spinster and go to a village school. Her books bore testimony to this; for there was a look of sadness in the faces she drew, and a sense of weariness and longing for some imaginary conditions of blessedness or other, which began to be painful. She might have gone through this flowering of the soul, and, casting her petals, subsided into a sober, human berry, but for the intervention of friendly assistance and counsel. In the town where she lived was a lady of honorable condition, somewhat past middle age, who was possessed of pretty ample means, of cultivated tastes, of excellent principles, of exemplary character, and of more than common accomplishments. The gentleman in black broadcloth and white neckerchief only echoed the common voice about her, when he called her, after enjoying, beneath her hospitable roof, an excellent cup of tea, with certain elegancies and luxuries he was. unaccustomed to, "The Model of all the Virtues." She deserved this title as well as almost any woman. She did really bristle with moral excellences. Mention any good thing she had not done; I should like to see you try! There was no handle of weakness to take hold of her by; she was as unseizable, except in her totality, as a billiard-ball; and on the broad, green, terrestrial table, where she had been knocked about, like all of us, by the cue of Fortune, she glanced from every human contact, and "caromed" from one relation to another, and rebounded from the stuffed cushion of temptation, with such exact and perfect angular movements, that the Enemy's corps of Reporters had long given up taking notes of her conduct, as there was no chance for their master. What an admirable person for the patroness and directress of a slightly self-willed child, with the lightning zigzag line of genius running like a glittering vein through the marble whiteness of her virgin nature! One of the lady-patroness's peculiar virtues was calmness. She was resolute and strenuous, but still. You could depend on her for every duty; she was as true as steel. She was kind-hearted and serviceable in all the relations of life. She had more sense, more knowledge, more conversation, as well as more goodness, than all the partners you have waltzed with this winter put together. Yet no man was known to have loved her, or even to have offered himself to her in marriage. It was a great wonder. I am very anxious to vindicate my character as a philosopher and an observer of Nature by accounting for this apparently extraordinary fact. You may remember certain persons who have the misfortune of presenting to the friends whom they meet a cold, damp hand. There are states of mind in which a contact of this kind has a depressing effect on the vital powers that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a powerful negative battery, carried about by an overgrown human torpedo. "The Model of all the Virtues" had a pair of searching eyes as clear as Wenham ice; but they were slower to melt than that fickle jewelry. Her features disordered themselves slightly at times in a surface- smile, but never broke loose from their corners and indulged in the riotous tumult of a laugh,--which, I take it, is the mob-law of the features;--and propriety the magistrate who reads the riot-act. She carried the brimming cup of her inestimable virtues with a cautious, steady hand, and an eye always on them, to see that they did not spill. Then she was an admirable judge of character. Her mind was a perfect laboratory of tests and reagents; every syllable you put into breath went into her intellectual eudiometer, and all your thoughts were recorded on litmus-paper. I think there has rarely been a more admirable woman. Of course, Miss Iris was immensely and passionately attached to her. --Well,--these are two highly oxygenated adverbs,-- grateful,--suppose we say,--yes,--grateful, dutiful, obedient to her wishes for the most part,--perhaps not quite up to the concert pitch of such a perfect orchestra of the virtues. We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is good for them, or use anything but dictionary-words, are admirable subjects for biographies. But we don't always care most for those flat-pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium. This immaculate woman,--why could n't she have a fault or two? Is n't there any old whisper which will tarnish that wearisome aureole of saintly perfection? Does n't she carry a lump of opium in her pocket? Is n't her cologne-bottle replenished oftener than its legitimate use would require? It would be such a comfort! Not for the world would a young creature like Iris have let such words escape her, or such thoughts pass through her mind. Whether at the bottom of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an oppressive presence, it is hard to say, until we know more about her. Iris sits between the Little Gentleman and the "Model of all the Virtues," as the black-coated personage called her. --I will watch them all. --Here I stop for the present. What the Professor said has had to make way this time for what he saw and heard. -And now you may read these lines, which were written for gentle souls who love music, and read in even tones, and, perhaps, with something like a smile upon the reader's lips, at a meeting where these musical friends had gathered. Whether they were written with smiles or not, you can guess better after you have read them. THE OPENING OF THE PIANO. In the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green, At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right, Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night. Ah me! how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, When the wondrous boa was opened that had come from over seas, With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys! Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy, For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy, Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way, But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, Mary, play." For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm; She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm, In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills, Or caroling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills. So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please, Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys. Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim, As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn." --Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red, (Wedded since, and a widow,--something like ten years dead,) Hearing a gush of music such as none before, Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open door. Just as the "Jubilate " in threaded whisper dies, --"Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries, (For she thought't was a singing creature caged in a box she heard,) "Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the bird!" IV I don't know whether our literary or professional people are more amiable than they are in other places, but certainly quarrelling is out of fashion among them. This could never be, if they were in the habit of secret anonymous puffing of each other. That is the kind of underground machinery which manufactures false reputations and genuine hatreds. On the other hand, I should like to know if we are not at liberty to have a good time together, and say the pleasantest things we can think of to each other, when any of us reaches his thirtieth or fortieth or fiftieth or eightieth birthday. We don't have "scenes," I warrant you, on these occasions. No "surprise" parties! You understand these, of course. In the rural districts, where scenic tragedy and melodrama cannot be had, as in the city, at the expense of a quarter and a white pocket- handkerchief, emotional excitement has to be sought in the dramas of real life. Christenings, weddings, and funerals, especially the latter, are the main dependence; but babies, brides, and deceased citizens cannot be had at a day's notice. Now, then, for a surprise- party! A bag of flour, a barrel of potatoes, some strings of onions, a basket of apples, a big cake and many little cakes, a jug of lemonade, a purse stuffed with bills of the more modest denominations, may, perhaps, do well enough for the properties in one of these private theatrical exhibitions. The minister of the parish, a tender-hearted, quiet, hard-working man, living on a small salary, with many children, sometimes pinched to feed and clothe them, praying fervently every day to be blest in his "basket and store," but sometimes fearing he asks amiss, to judge by the small returns, has the first role,--not, however, by his own choice, but forced upon him. The minister's wife, a sharp-eyed, unsentimental body, is first lady; the remaining parts by the rest of the family. If they only had a playbill, it would run thus: ON TUESDAY NEXT WILL BE PRESENTED THE AFFECTING SCENE CALLED THE SURPRISE-PARTY OR THE OVERCOME FAMILY; WITH THE FOLLOWING STRONG CAST OF CHARACTERS. The Rev. Mr. Overcome, by the Clergyman of this Parish. Mrs. Overcome, by his estimable lady. Masters Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Overcome, Misses Dorcas, Tabitha, Rachel, and Hannah, Overcome, by their interesting children. Peggy, by the female help. The poor man is really grateful;--it is a most welcome and unexpected relief. He tries to express his thanks,--his voice falters,--he chokes,--and bursts into tears. That is the great effect of the evening. The sharp-sighted lady cries a little with one eye, and counts the strings of onions, and the rest of the things, with the other. The children stand ready for a spring at the apples. The female help weeps after the noisy fashion of untutored handmaids. Now this is all very well as charity, but do let the kind visitors remember they get their money's worth. If you pay a quarter for dry crying, done by a second-rate actor, how much ought you to pay for real hot, wet tears, out of the honest eyes of a gentleman who is not acting, but sobbing in earnest? All I meant to say, when I began, was, that this was not a surprise- party where I read these few lines that follow: We will not speak of years to-night; For what have years to bring, But larger floods of love and light And sweeter songs to sing? We will not drown in wordy praise The kindly thoughts that rise; If friendship owns one tender phrase, He reads it in our eyes. We need not waste our schoolboy art To gild this notch of time; Forgive me, if my wayward heart Has throbbed in artless rhyme. Enough for him the silent grasp That knits us hand in hand, And he the bracelet's radiant clasp That locks our circling band. Strength to his hours of manly toil! Peace to his starlit dreams! Who loves alike the furrowed soil, The music-haunted streams! Sweet smiles to keep forever bright The sunshine on his lips, And faith, that sees the ring of light Round Nature's last eclipse! --One of our boarders has been talking in such strong language that I am almost afraid to report it. However, as he seems to be really honest and is so very sincere in his local prejudices, I don't believe anybody will be very angry with him. It is here, Sir! right here!--said the little deformed gentleman,-- in this old new city of Boston,--this remote provincial corner of a provincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, and was fighting before we were born, and will be fighting when we are dead and gone,--please God! The battle goes on everywhere throughout civilization; but here, here, here is the broad white flag flying which proclaims, first of all, peace and good-will to men, and, next to that, the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual immortal soul! The three-hilled city against the seven- hilled city! That is it, Sir,--nothing less than that; and if you know what that means, I don't think you'll ask for anything more. I swear to you, Sir, I believe that these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,--ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,--looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery fusion, the accidents and hindrances of humanity or man himself, Sir,--the stupendous abortion, the illustrious failure that he is, if the three-hilled city does not ride down and trample out the seven-hilled city! --Steam 's up!--said the young man John, so called, in a low tone. --Three hundred and sixty-five tons to the square inch. Let him blow her off, or he'll bu'st his b'iler. The divinity-student took it calmly, only whispering that he thought there was a little confusion of images between a galvanic battery and a charge of cavalry. But the Koh-i-noor--the gentleman, you remember, with a very large diamond in his shirt-front laughed his scornful laugh, and made as if to speak. Sail in, Metropolis!--said that same young man John, by name. And then, in a lower lane, not meaning to be heard,--Now, then, Ma'am Allen! But he was heard,--and the Koh-i-noor's face turned so white with rage, that his blue-black moustache and beard looked fearful, seen against it. He grinned with wrath, and caught at a tumbler, as if he would have thrown it or its contents at the speaker. The young Marylander fixed his clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand on his arm, carelessly almost, but the Jewel found it was held so that he could not move it. It was of no use. The youth was his master in muscle, and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;--over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for threescore years and ten;--one trial enough,--settles the whole matter,--just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come together,-after a jump or two at each other, and a few sharp kicks, there is the end of it; and it is, Apres vous, Monsieur, with the beaten party in all the social relations for all the rest of his days. I cannot philosophically account for the Koh-i-noor's wrath. For though a cosmetic is sold, bearing the name of the lady to whom reference was made by the young person John, yet, as it is publicly asserted in respectable prints that this cosmetic is not a dye, I see no reason why he should have felt offended by any suggestion that he was indebted to it or its authoress. I have no doubt that there are certain exceptional complexions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, is natural. Nature is fertile in variety. I saw an albiness in London once, for sixpence, (including the inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,) who looked as if she had been boiled in milk. A young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair all in little pellets of the size of marrow-fat peas. One of my own classmates has undergone a singular change of late years,--his hair losing its original tint, and getting a remarkable discolored look; and another has ceased to cultivate any hair at all over the vertex or crown of the head. So I am perfectly willing to believe that the purple-black of the Koh-i-noor's moustache and whiskers is constitutional and not pigmentary. But I can't think why he got so angry. The intelligent reader will understand that all this pantomime of the threatened onslaught and its suppression passed so quickly that it was all over by the time the other end of the table found out there was a disturbance; just as a man chopping wood half a mile off may be seen resting on his axe at the instant you hear the last blow he struck. So you will please to observe that the Little Gentleman was not, interrupted during the time implied by these ex-post-facto remarks of mine, but for some ten or fifteen seconds only. He did not seem to mind the interruption at all, for he started again. The "Sir" of his harangue was no doubt addressed to myself more than anybody else, but he often uses it in discourse as if he were talking with some imaginary opponent. --America, Sir,--he exclaimed,--is the only place where man is full- grown! He straightened himself up, as he spoke, standing on the top round of his high chair, I suppose, and so presented the larger part of his little figure to the view of the boarders. It was next to impossible to keep from laughing. The commentary was so strange an illustration of the text! I thought it was time to put in a word; for I have lived in foreign parts, and am more or less cosmopolitan. I doubt if we have more practical freedom in America than they have in England,---I said. --An Englishman thinks as he likes in religion and politics. Mr. Martineau speculates as freely as ever Dr. Channing did, and Mr. Bright is as independent as Mr. Seward. Sir,--said he,--it is n't what a man thinks or says; but when and where and to whom he thinks and says it. A man with a flint and steel striking sparks over a wet blanket is one thing, and striking them over a tinder-box is another. The free Englishman is born under protest; he lives and dies under protest,--a tolerated, but not a welcome fact. Is not freethinker a term of reproach in England? The same idea in the soul of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You may teach a quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all fours. Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. The American baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he hangs. --That's a good joke,--said the young fellow John,--considerin' it commonly belongs to a female Paddy. I thought--I will not be certain--that the Little Gentleman winked, as if he had been hit somewhere--as I have no doubt Dr. Darwin did when the wooden-spoon suggestion upset his theory about why, etc. If he winked, however, he did not dodge. A lively comment!--he said. --But Rome, in her great founder, sucked the blood of empire out of the dugs of a brute, Sir! The Milesian wet-nurse is only a convenient vessel through which the American infant gets the life-blood of this virgin soil, Sir, that is making man over again, on the sunset pattern! You don't think what we are doing and going to do here. Why, Sir, while commentators are bothering themselves with interpretation of prophecies, we have got the new heavens and the new earth over us and under us! Was there ever anything in Italy, I should like to know, like a Boston sunset? --This time there was a laugh, and the little man himself almost smiled. Yes,--Boston sunsets;--perhaps they're as good in some other places, but I know 'em best here. Anyhow, the American skies are different from anything they see in the Old World. Yes, and the rocks are different, and the soil is different, and everything that comes out of the soil, from grass up to Indians, is different. And now that the provisional races are dying out- --What do you mean by the provisional races, Sir?--said the divinity- student, interrupting him. Why, the aboriginal bipeds, to be sure,--he answered,--the red-crayon sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before the colors for the real manhood were ready. I hope they will come to something yet,--said the divinity-student. Irreclaimable, Sir,--irreclaimable!--said the Little Gentleman. --Cheaper to breed white men than domesticate a nation of red ones. When you can get the bitter out of the partridge's thigh, you can make an enlightened commonwealth of Indians. A provisional race, Sir,--nothing more. Exhaled carbonic acid for the use of vegetation, kept down the bears and catamounts, enjoyed themselves in scalping and being scalped, and then passed away or are passing away, according to the programme. Well, Sir, these races dying out, the white man has to acclimate himself. It takes him a good while; but he will come all right by- and-by, Sir,--as sound as a woodchuck,--as sound as a musquash! A new nursery, Sir, with Lake Superior and Huron and all the rest of 'em for wash-basins! A new race, and a whole new world for the new- born human soul to work in! And Boston is the brain of it, and has been any time these hundred years! That's all I claim for Boston,-- that it is the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of the planet. --And the grand emporium of modesty,--said the divinity-student, a little mischievously. Oh, don't talk to me of modesty!--answered the Little Gentleman,--I 'm past that! There is n't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore into tatters and flung into the dock, that was n't thought very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it. --No, Sir,--show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between the stationary and the progressive classes! Show me any other place where every other drawing-room is not a chamber of the Inquisition, with papas and mammas for inquisitors,--and the cold shoulder, instead of the "dry pan and the gradual fire," the punishment of "heresy"! --We think Baltimore is a pretty civilized kind of a village,--said the young Marylander, good-naturedly. --But I suppose you can't forgive it for always keeping a little ahead of Boston in point of numbers,--tell the truth now. Are we not the centre of something? Ah, indeed, to be sure you are. You are the gastronomic metropolis of the Union. Why don't you put a canvas-back-duck on the top of the Washington column? Why don't you get that lady off from Battle Monument and plant a terrapin in her place? Why will you ask for other glories when you have soft crabs? No, Sir,--you live too well to think as hard as we do in Boston. Logic comes to us with the salt-fish of Cape Ann; rhetoric is born of the beans of Beverly; but you--if you open your mouths to speak, Nature stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice of the breast of your divine bird, and silences all your aspirations. And what of Philadelphia?--said the Marylander. Oh, Philadelphia?--Waterworks,--killed by the Croton and Cochituate;- -Ben Franklin,--borrowed from Boston;--David Rittenhouse,--made an orrery;--Benjamin Rush,--made a medical system;--both interesting to antiquarians;--great Red-river raft of medical students,--spontaneous generation of professors to match;--more widely known through the Moyamensing hose-company, and the Wistar parties;-for geological section of social strata, go to The Club. --Good place to live in, --first-rate market,--tip-top peaches. --What do we know about Philadelphia, except that the engine-companies are always shooting each other? And what do you say to New York?--asked the Koh-i-noor. A great city, Sir,--replied the Little Gentleman,--a very opulent, splendid city. A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of permanence for much that is respectable. A great money-centre. San Francisco with the mines above-ground,--and some of 'em under the sidewalks. I have seen next to nothing grandiose, out of New York, in all our cities. It makes 'em all look paltry and petty. Has many elements of civilization. May stop where Venice did, though, for aught we know. --The order of its development is just this:--Wealth; architecture; upholstery; painting; sculpture. Printing, as a mechanical art,--just as Nicholas Jepson and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for it. Journalism, which is the accident of business and crowded populations, in great perfection. Venice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,--great colorists, mark you, magnificent on the flesh-and-blood side of Art,- -but look over to Florence and see who lie in Santa Crocea, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung! Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of St. Mark, and her Casa d' Or, and the rest of her golden houses; and Venice had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book, in which all the large tax-payers had their names written;--but all that did not make Venice the brain of Italy. I tell you what, Sir,--with all these magnificent appliances of civilization, it is time we began to hear something from the djinnis donee whose names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous, splendid, marble-placed Venice,--something in the higher walks of literature,-- something in the councils of the nation. Plenty of Art, I grant you, Sir; now, then, for vast libraries, and for mighty scholars and thinkers and statesmen,--five for every Boston one, as the population is to ours,--ten to one more properly, in virtue of centralizing attraction as the alleged metropolis, and not call our people provincials, and have to come begging to us to write the lives of Hendrik Hudson and Gouverneur Morris! --The Little Gentleman was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the expense of every other place. I have my doubts if he had been in either of the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say something to sober him down, if I could, when the young Marylander spoke up. Come, now,--he said,--what's the use of these comparisons? Did n't I hear this gentleman saying, the other day, that every American owns all America? If you have really got more brains in Boston than other folks, as you seem to think, who hates you for it, except a pack of scribbling fools? If I like Broadway better than Washington Street, what then? I own them both, as much as anybody owns either. I am an American,--and wherever I look up and see the stars and stripes overhead, that is home to me! He spoke, and looked up as if he heard the emblazoned folds crackling over him in the breeze. We all looked up involuntarily, as if we should see the national flag by so doing. The sight of the dingy ceiling and the gas-fixture depending therefrom dispelled the illusion. Bravo! bravo!--said the venerable gentleman on the other side of the table. --Those are the sentiments of Washington's Farewell Address. Nothing better than that since the last chapter in Revelations. Five-and-forty years ago there used to be Washington societies, and little boys used to walk in processions, each little boy having a copy of the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck by a ribbon. Why don't they now? Why don't they now? I saw enough of hating each other in the old Federal times; now let's love each other, I say,-- let's love each other, and not try to make it out that there is n't any place fit to live in except the one we happen to be born in. It dwarfs the mind, I think,--said I,--to feed it on any localism. The full stature of manhood is shrivelled-- The color burst up into my cheeks. What was I saying,--I, who would not for the world have pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allusion? I will go,--he said,--and made a movement with his left arm to let himself down from his high chair. No,--no,--he does n't mean it,--you must not go,--said a kind voice next him; and a soft, white hand was laid upon his arm. Iris, my dear!--exclaimed another voice, as of a female, in accents that might be considered a strong atmospheric solution of duty with very little flavor of grace. She did not move for this address, and there was a tableau that lasted some seconds. For the young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood, and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little creature covered with Nature's insults, looked straight into each other's eyes. Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever looked at him so in his life. Certainly the young girl never had looked into eyes that reached into her soul as these did. It was not that they were in themselves supernaturally bright,--but there was the sad fire in them that flames up from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope, but, alas! not without emotion. To him it seemed as if those amber gates had been translucent as the brown water of a mountain brook, and through them he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the sunrise of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers to ring with melody. That is my image, of course,--not his. It was not a simile that was in his mind, or is in anybody's at such a moment,--it was a pang of wordless passion, and then a silent, inward moan. A lady's wish,--he said, with a certain gallantry of manner,--makes slaves of us all. --And Nature, who is kind to all her children, and never leaves the smallest and saddest of all her human failures without one little comfit of self-love at the bottom of his poor ragged pocket,--Nature suggested to him that he had turned his sentence well; and he fell into a reverie, in which the old thoughts that were always hovering dust outside the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watching for a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly well they would be ignominiously kicked out again as soon as Common Sense saw them, flocked in pell-mell,--misty, fragmentary, vague, half-ashamed of themselves, but still shouldering up against his inner consciousness till it warmed with their contact:--John Wilkes's--the ugliest man's in England--saying, that with half-an- hour's start he would cut out the handsomest man in all the land in any woman's good graces; Cadenus--old and savage--leading captive Stella and Vanessa; and then the stray line of a ballad, "And a winning tongue had he,"--as much as to say, it is n't looks, after all, but cunning words, that win our Eves over,--just as of old when it was the worst-looking brute of the lot that got our grandmother to listen to his stuff and so did the mischief. Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules with his club, subjugating man and woman in our fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the second by our handling of it,--we rehearse it, I say, by our own hearth-stones, with the cold poker as our club, and the exercise is easy. But when we come to real life, the poker is in the fore, and, ten to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;--lucky for us, if it is not white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our hands sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or silent cry! --I am frightened when I find into what a labyrinth of human character and feeling I am winding. I meant to tell my thoughts, and to throw in a few studies of manner and costume as they pictured themselves for me from day to day. Chance has thrown together at the table with me a number of persons who are worth studying, and I mean not only to look on them, but, if I can, through them. You can get any man's or woman's secret, whose sphere is circumscribed by your own, if you will only look patiently on them long enough. Nature is always applying her reagents to character, if you will take the pains to watch her. Our studies of character, to change the image, are very much like the surveyor's triangulation of a geographical province. We get a base-line in organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our observation are tending; then another;--and so we construct our first triangle. Once fix a man's ideals, and for the most part the rest is easy. A wants to die worth half a million. Good. B (female) wants to catch him,--and outlive him. All right. Minor details at our leisure. What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike to tell your nearest friend?--Be so good as to pause for a brief space, and shut the volume you hold with your finger between the pages. --Oh, that is it! What a confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a cry among the craggy bills! At the house of a friend where I once passed the night was one of those stately upright cabinet desks and cases of drawers which were not rare in prosperous families during the last century. It had held the clothes and the books and the papers of generation after generation. The hands that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last been folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had got tall enough to open the desk, to reach the upper shelves behind the folding-doors,--grown bent after a while,--and then followed those who had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new generation. A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing which, a secret drawer flew from its hiding- place. It had never been opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it as when the artisan closed it,-- and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if that day finished. Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seem to have suspected? What does it hold?--A sin?--I hope not. What a strange thing an old dead sin laid away in a secret drawer of the soul is! Must it some time or other be moistened with tears, until it comes to life again and begins to stir in our consciousness,--as the dry wheel-animalcule, looking like a grain of dust, becomes alive, if it is wet with a drop of water? Or is it a passion? There are plenty of withered men and women walking about the streets who have the secret drawer in their hearts, which, if it were opened, would show as fresh as it was when they were in the flush of youth and its first trembling emotions. What it held will, perhaps, never be known, until they are dead and gone, and same curious eye lights on an old yellow letter with the fossil footprints of the extinct passion trodden thick all over it. There is not a boarder at our table, I firmly believe, excepting the young girl, who has not a story of the heart to tell, if one could only get the secret drawer open. Even this arid female, whose armor of black bombazine looks stronger against the shafts of love than any cuirass of triple brass, has had her sentimental history, if I am not mistaken. I will tell you my reason for suspecting it. Like many other old women, she shows a great nervousness and restlessness whenever I venture to express any opinion upon a class of subjects which can hardly be said to belong to any man or set of men as their strictly private property,--not even to the clergy, or the newspapers commonly called "religious." Now, although it would be a great luxury to me to obtain my opinions by contract, ready- made, from a professional man, and although I have a constitutional kindly feeling to all sorts of good people which would make me happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that were possible, still I must have an idea, now and then, as to the meaning of life; and though the only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least, not to express them, with reference to such subjects, I can't afford to pay quite so much as that even for peace. I find that there is a very prevalent opinion among the dwellers on the shores of Sir Isaac Newton's Ocean of Truth, that salt, fish, which have been taken from it a good while ago, split open, cured and dried, are the only proper and allowable food for reasonable people. I maintain, on the other hand, that there are a number of live fish still swimming in it, and that every one of us has a right to see if he cannot catch some of them. Sometimes I please myself with the idea that I have landed an actual living fish, small, perhaps, but with rosy gills and silvery scales. Then I find the consumers of nothing but the salted and dried article insist that it is poisonous, simply because it is alive, and cry out to people not to touch it. I have not found, however, that people mind them much. The poor boarder in bombazine is my dynamometer. I try every questionable proposition on her. If she winces, I must be prepared for an outcry from the other old women. I frightened her, the other day, by saying that faith, as an intellectual state, was self- reliance, which, if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox as it sounds at first. So she sent me a book to read which was to cure me of that error. It was an old book, and looked as if it had not been opened for a long time. What should drop out of it, one day, but a small heart-shaped paper, containing a lock of that straight, coarse, brown hair which sets off the sharp faces of so many thin-flanked, large-handed bumpkins! I read upon the paper the name "Hiram." --Love! love! love!--everywhere! everywhere!--under diamonds and housemaids' "jewelry,"--lifting the marrowy camel's-hair, and rustling even the black bombazine! --No, no,--I think she never was pretty, but she was young once, and wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos. We shall find that the poor little crooked man has been in love, or is in love, or will be in love before we have done with him, for aught that I know! Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background, where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt- out passions? You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of your neighbor, and no more think of the real life that underlies this despoiled and dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite as having once been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of throbbing and self-conscious being. There is a wild creature under that long yellow pin which serves as brooch for the bombazine cuirass,--a wild creature, which I venture to say would leap in his cage, if I should stir him, quiet as you think him. A heart which has been domesticated by matrimony and maternity is as tranquil as a tame bullfinch; but a wild heart which has never been fairly broken in flutters fiercely long after you think time has tamed it down,--like that purple finch I had the other day, which could not be approached without such palpitations and frantic flings against the bars of his cage, that I had to send him back and get a little orthodox canary which had learned to be quiet and never mind the wires or his keeper's handling. I will tell you my wicked, but half involuntary experiment on the wild heart under the faded bombazine. Was there ever a person in the room with you, marked by any special weakness or peculiarity, with whom you could be two hours and not touch the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful tendency to do just this thing. If a man has a brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it. If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than that, go before him, limping. I could never meet an Irish gentleman--if it had been the Duke of Wellington himself--without stumbling upon the word "Paddy,"--which I use rarely in my common talk. I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct, which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was not answerable. It is, I am convinced, a kind of physical fact like endosmosis, with which some of you are acquainted. A thin film of politeness separates the unspoken and unspeakable current of thought from the stream of conversation. After a time one begins to soak through and mingle with the other. We were talking about names, one day. --Was there ever anything,--I said,--like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations,--inventing or finding them,--since the time of Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridge is common enough, but this sounded oddly. It seems the boy was christened Lord Pitt,--and called for convenience, as above. I have heard a charming little girl, belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called Anges invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes. Names are cheap. How can a man name an innocent new-born child, that never did him any harm, Hiram?--The poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, turned toward me, but I was stupid, and went on. -- To think of a man going through life saddled with such an abominable name as that! --The poor relation grew very uneasy. --I continued; for I never thought of all this till afterwards. --I knew one young fellow, a good many years ago, by the name of Hiram-- What's got into you, Cousin,--said our landlady,--to look so?--There! you 've upset your teacup! It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the "hysteric ball,"--a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women often complain of. What business had I to be trying experiments on this forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better be watching that young girl. Ah, the young girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me. Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either. I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote, uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand of man, show no alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his presence. The first thing will be to see how she and our little deformed gentleman get along together; for, as I have told you, they sit side by side. The next thing will be to keep an eye on the duenna,--the "Model" and so forth, as the white-neck-cloth called her. The intention of that estimable lady is, I understand, to launch her and leave her. I suppose there is no help for it, and I don't doubt this young lady knows how to take care of herself, but I do not like to see young girls turned loose in boarding-houses. Look here now! There is that jewel of his race, whom I have called for convenience the Koh-i-noor, (you understand it is quite out of the question for me to use the family names of our boarders, unless I want to get into trouble,)--I say, the gentleman with the diamond is looking very often and very intently, it seems to me, down toward the farther corner of the table, where sits our amber-eyed blonde. The landlady's daughter does not look pleased, it seems to me, at this, nor at those other attentions which the gentleman referred to has, as I have learned, pressed upon the newly-arrived young person. The landlady made a communication to me, within a few days after the arrival of Miss Iris, which I will repeat to the best of my remembrance. He, (the person I have been speaking of,)--she said,--seemed to be kinder hankerin' round after that young woman. It had hurt her daughter's feelin's a good deal, that the gentleman she was a-keepin' company with should be offerin' tickets and tryin' to send presents to them that he'd never know'd till jest a little spell ago,--and he as good as merried, so fur as solemn promises went, to as respectable a young lady, if she did say so, as any there was round, whosomever they might be. Tickets! presents!--said I. --What tickets, what presents has he had the impertinence to be offering to that young lady? Tickets to the Museum,--said the landlady. There is them that's glad enough to go to the Museum, when tickets is given 'em; but some of 'em ha'n't had a ticket sence Cenderilla was played,--and now he must be offerin' 'em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is, that's come to make more mischief than her board's worth. But it a'n't her fault,--said the landlady, relenting;--and that aunt of hers, or whatever she is, served him right enough. Why, what did she do? Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and dropped it out o' winder. Dropped? dropped what?--I said. Why, the soap,--said the landlady. It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate himself, had sent an elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition. After watching daily for a time, I think I can see clearly into the relation which is growing up between the little gentleman and the young lady. She shows a tenderness to him that I can't help being interested in. If he was her crippled child, instead of being more than old enough to be her father, she could not treat him more kindly. The landlady's daughter said, the other day, she believed that girl was settin' her cap for the Little Gentleman. Some of them young folks is very artful,--said her mother,--and there is them that would merry Lazarus, if he'd only picked up crumbs enough. I don't think, though, this is one of that sort; she's kinder childlike,--said the landlady,--and maybe never had any dolls to play with; for they say her folks was poor before Ma'am undertook to see to her teachin' and board her and clothe her. I could not help overhearing this conversation. "Board her and clothe her!"--speaking of such a young creature! Oh, dear!--Yes,-- she must be fed,--just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this establishment. Somebody must pay for it. Somebody has a right to watch her and see how much it takes to "keep" her, and growl at her, if she has too good an appetite. Somebody has a right to keep an eye on her and take care that she does not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over again in these fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured womanhood, and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of neutral-tinted propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments to find for her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of ear-rings,--those golden lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of young beauties,--swinging in a semi- barbaric splendor that carries the wild fancy to Abyssinian queens and musky Odalisques! I don't believe any woman has utterly given up the great firm of Mundus & Co., so long as she wears ear-rings. I think Iris loves to hear the Little Gentleman talk. She smiles sometimes at his vehement statements, but never laughs at him. When he speaks to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon him. This may be only natural good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing. I have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of inferior collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing draws off their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this young creature's rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor while he is speaking. He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or two after she came, he was silent and seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting the talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at least one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special attention to personal adornment, a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a diamond pin in it,--not so very large as the Koh-i-noor's, but more lustrous. I mentioned the death's-head ring he wears on his right hand. I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or something of the sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is a handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion that the cast mentioned was taken from his arm. After all, this is just what I should expect. It is not very uncommon to see the upper limbs, or one of them, running away with the whole strength, and, therefore, with the whole beauty, which we should never have noticed, if it had been divided equally between all four extremities. If it is so, of course he is proud of his one strong and beautiful arm; that is human nature. I am afraid he can hardly help betraying his favoritism, as people who have any one showy point are apt to do,--especially dentists with handsome teeth, who always smile back to their last molars. Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the calm lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations to each other. That is an admirable woman, Sir,--he said to me one day, as we sat alone at the table after breakfast,--an admirable woman, Sir,--and I hate her. Of course, I begged an explanation. An admirable woman, Sir, because she does good things, and even kind things,--takes care of this--this--young lady--we have here, talks like a sensible person, and always looks as if she was doing her duty with all her might. I hate her because her voice sounds as if it never trembled and her eyes look as if she never knew what it was to cry. Besides, she looks at me, Sir, stares at me, as if she wanted to get an image of me for some gallery in her brain,--and we don't love to be looked at in this way, we that have--I hate her,--I hate her,--her eyes kill me,--it is like being stabbed with icicles to be looked at so,--the sooner she goes home, the better. I don't want a woman to weigh me in a balance; there are men enough for that sort of work. The judicial character is n't captivating in females, Sir. A woman fascinates a man quite as often by what she overlooks as by what she sees. Love prefers twilight to daylight; and a man doesn't think much of, nor care much for, a woman outside of his household, unless he can couple the idea of love, past, present, or future, with her. I don't believe the Devil would give half as much for the services of a sinner as he would for those of one of these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make them unpleasing. --That young girl wants a tender nature to cherish her and give her a chance to put out her leaves,--sunshine, and not east winds. He was silent,--and sat looking at his handsome left hand with the red stone ring upon it. --Is he going to fall in love with Iris? Here are some lines I read to the boarders the other day:-- THE CROOKED FOOTPATH Ah, here it is! the sliding rail That marks the old remembered spot,-- The gap that struck our schoolboy trail,-- The crooked path across the lot. It left the road by school and church, A pencilled shadow, nothing more, That parted from the silver birch And ended at the farmhouse door. No line or compass traced its plan; With frequent bends to left or right, In aimless, wayward curves it ran, But always kept the door in sight. The gabled porch, with woodbine green,-- The broken millstone at the sill,-- Though many a rood might stretch between, The truant child could see them still. No rocks, across the pathway lie,-- No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown,-- And yet it winds, we know not why, And turns as if for tree or stone. Perhaps some lover trod the way With shaking knees and leaping heart,-- And so it often runs astray With sinuous sweep or sudden start. Or one, perchance, with clouded brain >From some unholy banquet reeled,-- And since, our devious steps maintain His track across the trodden field. Nay, deem not thus,--no earthborn will Could ever trace a faultless line; Our truest steps are human still,-- To walk unswerving were divine! Truants from love, we dream of wrath;-- Oh, rather let us trust the more! Through all the wanderings of the path, We still can see our Father's door! V The Professor finds a Fly in his Teacup. I have a long theological talk to relate, which must be dull reading to some of my young and vivacious friends. I don't know, however, that any of them have entered into a contract to read all that I write, or that I have promised always to write to please them. What if I should sometimes write to please myself? Now you must know that there are a great many things which interest me, to some of which this or that particular class of readers may be totally indifferent. I love Nature, and human nature, its thoughts, affections, dreams, aspirations, delusions,--Art in all its forms,-- virtu in all its eccentricities,--old stories from black-letter volumes and yellow manuscripts, and new projects out of hot brains not yet imbedded in the snows of age. I love the generous impulses of the reformer; but not less does my imagination feed itself upon the old litanies, so often warmed by the human breath upon which they were wafted to Heaven that they glow through our frames like our own heart's blood. I hope I love good men and women; I know that they never speak a word to me, even if it be of question or blame, that I do not take pleasantly, if it is expressed with a reasonable amount of human kindness. I have before me at this time a beautiful and affecting letter, which I have hesitated to answer, though the postmark upon it gave its direction, and the name is one which is known to all, in some of its representatives. It contains no reproach, only a delicately-hinted fear. Speak gently, as this dear lady has spoken, and there is no heart so insensible that it does not answer to the appeal, no intellect so virile that it does not own a certain deference to the claims of age, of childhood, of sensitive and timid natures, when they plead with it not to look at those sacred things by the broad daylight which they see in mystic shadow. How grateful would it be to make perpetual peace with these pleading saints and their confessors, by the simple act that silences all complainings! Sleep, sleep, sleep! says the Arch-Enchantress of them all,--and pours her dark and potent anodyne, distilled over the fires that consumed her foes,--its large, round drops changing, as we look, into the beads of her convert's rosary! Silence! the pride of reason! cries another, whose whole life is spent in reasoning down reason. I hope I love good people, not for their sake, but for my own. And most assuredly, if any deed of wrong or word of bitterness led me into an act of disrespect towards that enlightened and excellent class of men who make it their calling to teach goodness and their duty to practise it, I should feel that I had done myself an injury rather than them. Go and talk with any professional man holding any of the medieval creeds, choosing one who wears upon his features the mark of inward and outward health, who looks cheerful, intelligent, and kindly, and see how all your prejudices melt away in his presence! It is impossible to come into intimate relations with a large, sweet nature, such as you may often find in this class, without longing to be at one with it in all its modes of being and believing. But does it not occur to you that one may love truth as he sees it, and his race as he views it, better than even the sympathy and approbation of many good men whom he honors,--better than sleeping to the sound of the Miserere or listening to the repetition of an effete Confession of Faith? The three learned professions have but recently emerged from a state of quasi-barbarism. None of them like too well to be told of it, but it must be sounded in their ears whenever they put on airs. When a man has taken an overdose of laudanum, the doctors tell us to place him between two persons who shall make him walk up and down incessantly; and if he still cannot be kept from going to sleep, they say that a lash or two over his back is of great assistance. So we must keep the doctors awake by telling them that they have not yet shaken off astrology and the doctrine of signatures, as is shown by the form of their prescriptions, and their use of nitrate of silver, which turns epileptics into Ethiopians. If that is not enough, they must be given over to the scourgers, who like their task and get good fees for it. A few score years ago, sick people were made to swallow burnt toads and powdered earthworms and the expressed juice of wood-lice. The physician of Charles I. and II. prescribed abominations not to be named. Barbarism, as bad as that of Congo or Ashantee. Traces of this barbarism linger even in the greatly improved medical science of our century. So while the solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the world over, the harlequin pseudo- science jumps on to the stage, whip in hand, with half-a-dozen somersets, and begins laying about him. In 1817, perhaps you remember, the law of wager by battle was unrepealed, and the rascally murderous, and worse than murderous, clown, Abraham Thornton, put on his gauntlet in open court and defied the appellant to lift the other which he threw down. It was not until the reign of George II. that the statutes against witchcraft were repealed. As for the English Court of Chancery, we know that its antiquated abuses form one of the staples of common proverbs and popular literature. So the laws and the lawyers have to be watched perpetually by public opinion as much as the doctors do. I don't think the other profession is an exception. When the Reverend Mr. Cauvin and his associates burned my distinguished scientific brother,--he was burned with green fagots, which made it rather slow and painful,--it appears to me they were in a state of religious barbarism. The dogmas of such people about the Father of Mankind and his creatures are of no more account in my opinion than those of a council of Aztecs. If a man picks your pocket, do you not consider him thereby disqualified to pronounce any authoritative opinion on matters of ethics? If a man hangs my ancient female relatives for sorcery, as they did in this neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my instructor for not believing as he does, I care no more for his religious edicts than I should for those of any other barbarian. Of course, a barbarian may hold many true opinions; but when the ideas of the healing art, of the administration of justice, of Christian love, could not exclude systematic poisoning, judicial duelling, and murder for opinion's sake, I do not see how we can trust the verdict of that time relating to any subject which involves the primal instincts violated in these abominations and absurdities. --What if we are even now in a state of semi-barbarism? [This physician believes we "are even now in a state of semi- barbarism": invasive procedures for the prolongation of death rather than prolongation of life; "faith",as slimly based as medieval faith in minute differences between control and treated groups; statistical manipulation to prove a prejudice. Medicine has a good deal to answer for! D.W.] Perhaps some think we ought not to talk at table about such things. --I am not so sure of that. Religion and government appear to me the two subjects which of all others should belong to the common talk of people who enjoy the blessings of freedom. Think, one moment. The earth is a great factory-wheel, which, at every revolution on its axis, receives fifty thousand raw souls and turns off nearly the same number worked up more or less completely. There must be somewhere a population of two hundred thousand million, perhaps ten or a hundred times as many, earth-born intelligences. Life, as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence where it comes on soundings. In this view, I do not see anything so fit to talk about, or half so interesting, as that which relates to the innumerable majority of our fellow-creatures, the dead-living, who are hundreds of thousands to one of the live-living, and with whom we all potentially belong, though we have got tangled for the present in some parcels of fibrine, albumen, and phosphates, that keep us on the minority side of the house. In point of fact, it is one of the many results of Spiritualism to make the permanent destiny of the race a matter of common reflection and discourse, and a vehicle for the prevailing disbelief of the Middle-Age doctrines on the subject. I cannot help thinking, when I remember how many conversations my friend and myself have sported, that it would be very extraordinary, if there were no mention of that class of subjects which involves all that we have and all that we hope, not merely for ourselves, but for the dear people whom we love best,--noble men, pure and lovely women, ingenuous children, about the destiny of nine tenths of whom you know the opinions that would have been taught by those old man-roasting, woman-strangling dogmatists. --However, I fought this matter with one of our boarders the other day, and I am going to report the conversation. The divinity-student came down, one morning, looking rather more serious than usual. He said little at breakfast-time, but lingered after the others, so that I, who am apt to be long at the table, found myself alone with him. When the rest were all gone, he turned his chair round towards mine, and began. I am afraid,--he said,--you express yourself a little too freely on a most important class of subjects. Is there not danger in introducing discussions or allusions relating to matters of religion into common discourse? Danger to what?--I asked. Danger to truth,--he replied, after a slight pause. I didn't know Truth was such an invalid,' I said. --How long is it since she could only take the air in a close carriage, with a gentleman in a black coat on the box? Let me tell you a story, adapted to young persons, but which won't hurt older ones. --There was a very little boy who had one of those balloons you may have seen, which are filled with light gas, and are held by a string to keep them from running off in aeronautic voyages on their own account. This little boy had a naughty brother, who said to him, one day,--Brother, pull down your balloon, so that I can look at it and take hold of it. Then the little boy pulled it down. Now the naughty brother had a sharp pin in his hand, and he thrust it into the balloon, and all the gas oozed out, so that there was nothing left but a shrivelled skin. One evening, the little boy's father called him to the window to see the moon, which pleased him very much; but presently he said,-- Father, do not pull the string and bring down the moon, for my naughty brother will prick it, and then it will all shrivel up and we shall not see it any more. Then his father laughed, and told him how the moon had been shining a good while, and would shine a good while longer, and that all we could do was to keep our windows clean, never letting the dust get too thick on them, and especially to keep our eyes open, but that we could not pull the moon down with a string, nor prick it with a pin. --Mind you this, too, the moon is no man's private property, but is seen from a good many parlor-windows. --Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say, that Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger? [Would that this was so:--error, superstition, mysticism, authoritarianism, pseudo-science all have a tenacity that survives inexplicably. D.W.] I never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for the safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, generally, that fear of open discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, and great sensitiveness to the expression of individual opinion is a mark of weakness. --I am not so much afraid for truth,--said the divinity-student,--as for the conceptions of truth in the minds of persons not accustomed to judge wisely the opinions uttered before them. Would you, then, banish all allusions to matters of this nature from the society of people who come together habitually? I would be very careful in introducing them,--said the divinity- student. Yes, but friends of yours leave pamphlets in people's entries, to be picked up by nervous misses and hysteric housemaids, full of doctrines these people do not approve. Some of your friends stop little children in the street, and give them books, which their parents, who have had them baptized into the Christian fold and give them what they consider proper religious instruction, do not think fit for them. One would say it was fair enough to talk about matters thus forced upon people's attention. The divinity-student could not deny that this was what might be called opening the subject to the discussion of intelligent people. But,--he said,--the greatest objection is this, that persons who have not made a professional study of theology are not competent to speak on such subjects. Suppose a minister were to undertake to express opinions on medical subjects, for instance, would you not think he was going beyond his province? I laughed,--for I remembered John Wesley's "sulphur and supplication," and so many other cases where ministers had meddled with medicine,--sometimes well and sometimes ill, but, as a general rule, with a tremendous lurch to quackery, owing to their very loose way of admitting evidence,--that I could not help being amused. I beg your pardon,--I said,--I do not wish to be impolite, but I was thinking of their certificates to patent medicines. Let us look at this matter. If a minister had attended lectures on the theory and practice of medicine, delivered by those who had studied it most deeply, for thirty or forty years, at the rate of from fifty to one hundred a year,--if he had been constantly reading and hearing read the most approved text-books on the subject,--if he had seen medicine actually practised according to different methods, daily, for the same length of time,--I should think, that if a person of average understanding, he was entitled to express an opinion on the subject of medicine, or else that his instructors were a set of ignorant and incompetent charlatans. If, before a medical practitioner would allow me to enjoy the full privileges of the healing art, he expected me to affirm my belief in a considerable number of medical doctrines, drugs, and formulae, I should think that he thereby implied my right to discuss the same, and my ability to do so, if I knew how to express myself in English. Suppose, for instance, the Medical Society should refuse to give us an opiate, or to set a broken limb, until we had signed our belief in a certain number of propositions,--of which we will say this is the first: I. All men's teeth are naturally in a state of total decay or caries, and, therefore, no man can bite until every one of them is extracted and a new set is inserted according to the principles of dentistry adopted by this Society. I, for one, should want to discuss that before signing my name to it, and I should say this:--Why, no, that is n't true. There are a good many bad teeth, we all know, but a great many more good ones. You must n't trust the dentists; they are all the time looking at the people who have bad teeth, and such as are suffering from toothache. The idea that you must pull out every one of every nice young man and young woman's natural teeth! Poh, poh! Nobody believes that. This tooth must be straightened, that must be filled with gold, and this other perhaps extracted, but it must be a very rare case, if they are all so bad as to require extraction; and if they are, don't blame the poor soul for it! Don't tell us, as some old dentists used to, that everybody not only always has every tooth in his head good for nothing, but that he ought to have his head cut off as a punishment for that misfortune! No, I can't sign Number One. Give us Number Two. II. We hold that no man can be well who does not agree with our views of the efficacy of calomel, and who does not take the doses of it prescribed in our tables, as there directed. To which I demur, questioning why it should be so, and get for answer the two following: III. Every man who does not take our prepared calomel, as prescribed by us in our Constitution and By-Laws, is and must be a mass of disease from head to foot; it being self-evident that he is simultaneously affected with Apoplexy, Arthritis, Ascites, Asphyxia, and Atrophy; with Borborygmus, Bronchitis, and Bulimia; with Cachexia, Carcinoma, and Cretinismus; and so on through the alphabet, to Xerophthahnia and Zona, with all possible and incompatible diseases which are necessary to make up a totally morbid state; and he will certainly die, if he does not take freely of our prepared calomel, to be obtained only of one of our authorized agents. IV. No man shall be allowed to take our prepared calomel who does not give in his solemn adhesion to each and all of the above-named and the following propositions (from ten to a hundred) and show his mouth to certain of our apothecaries, who have not studied dentistry, to examine whether all his teeth have been extracted and a new set inserted according to our regulations. Of course, the doctors have a right to say we sha'n't have any rhubarb, if we don't sign their articles, and that, if, after signing them, we express doubts (in public, about any of them, they will cut us off from our jalap and squills,--but then to ask a fellow not to discuss the propositions before he signs them is what I should call boiling it down a little too strong! If we understand them, why can't we discuss them? If we can't understand them, because we have n't taken a medical degree, what the Father of Lies do they ask us to sign them for? Just so with the graver profession. Every now and then some of its members seem to lose common sense and common humanity. The laymen have to keep setting the divines right constantly. Science, for instance,--in other words, knowledge,--is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance: But it is often the antagonist of school-divinity. Everybody knows the story of early astronomy and the school-divines. Come down a little later, Archbishop Usher, a very learned Protestant prelate, tells us that the world was created on Sunday, the twenty- third of October, four thousand and four years before the birth of Christ. Deluge, December 7th, two thousand three hundred and forty- eight years B. C. Yes, and the earth stands on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise. One statement is as near the truth as the other. Again, there is nothing so brutalizing to some natures as moral surgery. I have often wondered that Hogarth did not add one more picture to his four stages of Cruelty. Those wretched fools, reverend divines and others, who were strangling men and women for imaginary crimes a little more than a century ago among us, were set right by a layman, and very angry it made them to have him meddle. The good people of Northampton had a very remarkable man for their clergyman,--a man with a brain as nicely adjusted for certain mechanical processes as Babbage's calculating machine. The commentary of the laymen on the preaching and practising of Jonathan Edwards was, that, after twenty-three years of endurance, they turned him out by a vote of twenty to one, and passed a resolve that he should never preach for them again. A man's logical and analytical adjustments are of little consequence, compared to his primary relations with Nature and truth: and people have sense enough to find it out in the long ran; they know what "logic" is worth. In that miserable delusion referred to above, the reverend Aztecs and Fijians argued rightly enough from their premises, no doubt, for many men can do this. But common sense and common humanity were unfortunately left out from their premises, and a layman had to supply them. A hundred more years and many of the barbarisms still lingering among us will, of course, have disappeared like witch- hanging. But people are sensitive now, as they were then. You will see by this extract that the Rev. Cotton Mather did not like intermeddling with his business very well. "Let the Levites of the Lord keep close to their Instructions," he says, "and God will smite thro' the loins of those that rise up against them. I will report unto you a Thing which many Hundreds among us know to be true. The Godly Minister of a certain Town in Connecticut, when he had occasion to be absent on a Lord's Day from his Flock, employ'd an honest Neighbour of some small Talents for a Mechanick, to read a Sermon out of some good Book unto 'em. This Honest, whom they ever counted also a Pious Man, had so much conceit of his Talents, that instead of Reading a Sermon appointed, he to the Surprize of the People, fell to preaching one of his own. For his Text he took these Words, 'Despise not Prophecyings'; and in his Preachment he betook himself to bewail the Envy of the Clergy in the Land, in that they did not wish all the Lord's People to be Prophets, and call forth Private Brethren publickly to prophesie. While he was thus in the midst of his Exercise, God smote him with horrible Madness; he was taken ravingly distracted; the People were forc'd with violent Hands to carry him home. I will not mention his Name: He was reputed a Pious Man."--This is one of Cotton Mather's "Remarkable Judgments of God, on Several Sorts of Offenders,"--and the next cases referred to are the Judgments on the " Abominable Sacrilege" of not paying the Ministers' Salaries. This sort of thing does n't do here and now, you see, my young friend! We talk about our free institutions;--they are nothing but a coarse outside machinery to secure the freedom of individual thought. The President of the United States is only the engine driver of our broad-gauge mail-train; and every honest, independent thinker has a seat in the first-class cars behind him. --There is something in what you say,--replied the divinity-student;- -and yet it seems to me there are places and times where disputed doctrines of religion should not be introduced. You would not attack a church dogma--say Total Depravity--in a lyceum-lecture, for instance? Certainly not; I should choose another place,--I answered. --But, mind you, at this table I think it is very different. I shall express my ideas on any subject I like. The laws of the lecture- room, to which my friends and myself are always amenable, do not hold here. I shall not often give arguments, but frequently opinions,--I trust with courtesy and propriety, but, at any rate, with such natural forms of expression as it has pleased the Almighty to bestow upon me. A man's opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his arguments. These last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not believe the proposition they tend to prove,--as is often the case with paid lawyers; but opinions are formed by our whole nature,-- brain, heart, instinct, brute life, everything all our experience has shaped for us by contact with the whole circle of our being. --There is one thing more,--said the divinity-student,--that I wished to speak of; I mean that idea of yours, expressed some time since, of depolarizing the text of sacred books in order to judge them fairly. May I ask why you do not try the experiment yourself? Certainly,--I replied,--if it gives you any pleasure to ask foolish questions. I think the ocean telegraph-wire ought to be laid and will be laid, but I don't know that you have any right to ask me to go and lay it. But, for that matter, I have heard a good deal of Scripture depolarized in and out of the pulpit. I heard the Rev. Mr. F. once depolarize the story of the Prodigal Son in Park-Street Church. Many years afterwards, I heard him repeat the same or a similar depolarized version in Rome, New York. I heard an admirable depolarization of the story of the young man who "had great possessions" from the Rev. Mr. H. in another pulpit, and felt that I had never half understood it before. All paraphrases are more or less perfect depolarizations. But I tell you this: the faith of our Christian community is not robust enough to bear the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized equivalents. You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's famous Baltimore discourse and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, to satisfy yourself on this point. Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper by nature, which, of course, is no fault of his; but sooner or later all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden calf,--word-images as well as metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,--but the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie occupation; veritas odium parit, truth never goeth without a scratcht face; he that will be busie with voe vobis, let him looke shortly for coram nobas." The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think. --Think what we like! --said the divinity-student;--think what we like! What! against all human and divine authority? Against all human versions of its own or any other authority. At our own peril always, if we do not like the right,--but not at the risk of being hanged and quartered for political heresy, or broiled on green fagots for ecclesiastical treason! Nay, we have got so far, that the very word heresy has fallen into comparative disuse among us. And now, my young friend, let-us shake hands and stop our discussion, which we will not make a quarrel. I trust you know, or will learn, a great many things in your profession which we common scholars do not know; but mark this: when the common people of New England stop talking politics and theology, it will be because they have got an Emperor to teach them the one, and a Pope to teach them the other! That was the end of my long conference with the divinity-student. The next morning we got talking a little on the same subject, very good-naturedly, as people return to a matter they have talked out. You must look to yourself,--said the divinity-student,--if your democratic notions get into print. You will be fired into from all quarters. If it were only a bullet, with the marksman's name on it! --I said. --I can't stop to pick out the peep-shot of the anonymous scribblers. Right, Sir! right!--said the Little Gentleman. The scamps! I know the fellows. They can't give fifty cents to one of the Antipodes, but they must have it jingled along through everybody's palms all the way, till it reaches him,--and forty cents of it gets spilt, like the water out of the fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;--but when it comes to anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then advertising those people through the country as the authors of them,--oh, then it is that they let not their left hand know what their right hand doeth! I don't like Ehud's style of doing business, Sir. He comes along with a very sanctimonious look, Sir, with his "secret errand unto thee," and his "message from God unto thee," and then pulls out his hidden knife with that unsuspected hand of his,---(the Little Gentleman lifted his clenched left hand with the blood-red jewel on the ring-finger,)--and runs it, blade and haft, into a man's stomach! Don't meddle with these fellows, Sir. They are read mostly by persons whom you would not reach, if you were to write ever so much. Let 'em alone. A man whose opinions are not attacked is beneath contempt. I hope so,--I said. --I got three pamphlets and innumerable squibs flung at my head for attacking one of the pseudo-sciences, in former years. When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison from one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else good should ever come of my life,--I had to bear the sneers of those whose position I had assailed, and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among the ruins. --What would you do, if the folks without names kept at you, trying to get a San Benito on to your shoulders that would fit you?--Would you stand still in fly-time, or would you give a kick now and then? Let 'em bite! --said the Little Gentleman,--let 'em bite! It makes 'em hungry to shake 'em off, and they settle down again as thick as ever and twice as savage. Do you know what meddling with the folks without names, as you call 'em, is like?--It is like riding at the quintaan. You run full tilt at the board, but the board is on a pivot, with a bag of sand on an arm that balances it. The board gives way as soon as you touch it; and before you have got by, the bag of sand comes round whack on the back of your neck. "Ananias," for instance, pitches into your lecture, we will say, in some paper taken by the people in your kitchen. Your servants get saucy and negligent. If their newspaper calls you names, they need not be so particular about shutting doors softly or boiling potatoes. So you lose your temper, and come out in an article which you think is going to finish "Ananias," proving him a booby who doesn't know enough to understand even a lyceum-lecture, or else a person that tells lies. Now you think you 've got him! Not so fast. "Ananias " keeps still and winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they take in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If you meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears "Rab-shakeh," an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not."--No, no,-- keep your temper. --So saying, the Little Gentleman doubled his left fist and looked at it as if he should like to hit something or somebody a most pernicious punch with it. Good!--said I. --Now let me give you some axioms I have arrived at, after seeing something of a great many kinds of good folks. --Of a hundred people of each of the different leading religious sects, about the same proportion will be safe and pleasant persons to deal and to live with. --There are, at least, three real saints among the women to one among the men, in every denomination. --The spiritual standard of different classes I would reckon thus: 1. The comfortably rich. 2. The decently comfortable. 3. The very rich, who are apt to be irreligious. 4. The very poor, who are apt to be immoral. --The cut nails of machine-divinity may be driven in, but they won't clinch. --The arguments which the greatest of our schoolmen could not refute were two: the blood in men's veins, and the milk in women's breasts. --Humility is the first of the virtues--for other people. --Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief of a large one. The Poor Relation had been fidgeting about and working her mouth while all this was going on. She broke out in speech at this point. I hate to hear folks talk so. I don't see that you are any better than a heathen. I wish I were half as good as many heathens have been,--I said. --Dying for a principle seems to me a higher degree of virtue than scolding for it; and the history of heathen races is full of instances where men have laid down their lives for the love of their kind, of their country, of truth, nay, even for simple manhood's sake, or to show their obedience or fidelity. What would not such beings have done for the souls of men, for the Christian commonwealth, for the King of Kings, if they had lived in days of larger light? Which seems to you nearest heaven, Socrates drinking his hemlock, Regulus going back to the enemy's camp, or that old New England divine sitting comfortably in his study and chuckling over his conceit of certain poor women, who had been burned to death in his own town, going "roaring out of one fire into another"? I don't believe he said any such thing,--replied the Poor Relation. It is hard to believe,--said I,--but it is true for all that. In another hundred years it will be as incredible that men talked as we sometimes hear them now. Pectus est quod facit theologum. The heart makes the theologian. Every race, every civilization, either has a new revelation of its own or a new interpretation of an old one. Democratic America, has a different humanity from feudal Europe, and so must have a new divinity. See, for one moment, how intelligence reacts on our faiths. The Bible was a divining-book to our ancestors, and is so still in the hands of some of the vulgar. The Puritans went to the Old Testament for their laws; the Mormons go to it for their patriarchal institution. Every generation dissolves something new and precipitates something once held in solution from that great storehouse of temporary and permanent truths. You may observe this: that the conversation of intelligent men of the stricter sects is strangely in advance of the formula that belong to their organizations. So true is this, that I have doubts whether a large proportion of them would not have been rather pleased than offended, if they could have overheard our, talk. For, look you, I think there is hardly a professional teacher who will not in private conversation allow a large part of what we have said, though it may frighten him in print; and I know well what an under-current of secret sympathy gives vitality to those poor words of mine which sometimes get a hearing. I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira worth from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own premises, a dozen souls a year in the cigars with which he muddles his brains. But as for the good and true and intelligent men whom we see all around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful,--men who know that the active mind of the century is tending more and more to the two poles, Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may by accident stand half-way between these two points, he must look one way or the other,--I don't believe they would take offence at anything I have reported of our late conversation. But supposing any one do take offence at first sight, let him look over these notes again, and see whether he is quite sure he does not agree with most of these things that were said amongst us. If he agrees with most of them, let him be patient with an opinion he does not accept, or an expression or illustration a little too vivacious. I don't know that I shall report any more conversations on these topics; but I do insist on the right to express a civil opinion on this class of subjects without giving offence, just when and where I please,---unless, as in the lecture-room, there is an implied contract to keep clear of doubtful matters. You did n't think a man could sit at a breakfast-table doing nothing but making puns every morning for a year or two, and never give a thought to the two thousand of his fellow-creatures who are passing into another state during every hour that he sits talking and laughing. Of course, the one matter that a real human being cares for is what is going to become of them and of him. And the plain truth is, that a good many people are saying one thing about it and believing another. --How do I know that? Why, I have known and loved to talk with good people, all the way from Rome to Geneva in doctrine, as long as I can remember. Besides, the real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men,--from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms. It is in their hearts that the "sentimental" religion some people are so fond of sneering at has its source. The sentiment of love, the sentiment of maternity, the sentiment of the paramount obligation of the parent to the child as having called it into existence, enhanced just in proportion to the power and knowledge of the one and the weakness and ignorance of the other,--these are the "sentiments" that have kept our soulless systems from driving men off to die in holes like those that riddle the sides of the hill opposite the Monastery of St. Saba, where the miserable victims of a falsely-interpreted religion starved and withered in their delusion. I have looked on the face of a saintly woman this very day, whose creed many dread and hate, but whose life is lovely and noble beyond all praise. When I remember the bitter words I have heard spoken against her faith, by men who have an Inquisition which excommunicates those who ask to leave their communion in peace, and an Index Expurgatorius on which this article may possibly have the honor of figuring,--and, far worse than these, the reluctant, pharisaical confession, that it might perhaps be possible that one who so believed should be accepted of the Creator,--and then recall the sweet peace and love that show through all her looks, the price of untold sacrifices and labors, and again recollect how thousands of women, filled with the same spirit, die, without a murmur, to earthly life, die to their own names even, that they may know nothing but their holy duties,--while men are torturing and denouncing their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the clinking of the hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the "Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast of human nature,--I have been ready to believe that we have even now a new revelation, and the name of its Messiah is WOMAN! --I should be sorry,--I remarked, a day or two afterwards, to the divinity-student,--if anything I said tended in any way to foster any jealousy between the professions, or to throw disrespect upon that one on whose counsel and sympathies almost all of us lean in our moments of trial. But we are false to our new conditions of life, if we do not resolutely maintain our religious as well as our political freedom, in the face of any and all supposed monopolies. Certain men will, of course, say two things, if we do not take their views: first, that we don't know anything about these matters; and, secondly, that we are not so good as they are. They have a polarized phraseology for saying these things, but it comes to precisely that. To which it may be answered, in the first place, that we have good authority for saying that even babes and sucklings know something; and, in the second, that, if there is a mote or so to be removed from our premises, the courts and councils of the last few years have found beams enough in some other quarters to build a church that would hold all the good people in Boston and have sticks enough left to make a bonfire for all the heretics. As to that terrible depolarizing process of mine, of which we were talking the other day, I will give you a specimen of one way of managing it, if you like. I don't believe it will hurt you or anybody. Besides, I had a great deal rather finish our talk with pleasant images and gentle words than with sharp sayings, which will only afford a text, if anybody repeats them, for endless relays of attacks from Messrs. Ananias, Shimei, and Rabshakeh. [I must leave such gentry, if any of them show themselves, in the hands of my clerical friends, many of whom are ready to stand up for the rights of the laity,--and to those blessed souls, the good women, to whom this version of the story of a mother's hidden hopes and tender anxieties is dedicated by their peaceful and loving servant.] A MOTHER'S SECRET. How sweet the sacred legend--if unblamed In my slight verse such holy things are named-- Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy, Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy! Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song! The choral host had closed the angel's strain Sung to the midnight watch on Bethlehem's plain; And now the shepherds, hastening on their way, Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay. They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled O'er, They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn, Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn; And some remembered how the holy scribe, Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe, Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won. So fared they on to seek the promised sign That marked the anointed heir of David's line. At last, by forms of earthly semblance led, They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed. No pomp was there, no glory shone around On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground; One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed, In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid! The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale; Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed; Told how the shining multitude proclaimed "Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn! In David's city Christ the Lord is born! 'Glory to God!' let angels shout on high, 'Good-will to men!' the listening Earth reply!" They spoke with hurried words and accents wild; Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child. No trembling word the mother's joy revealed, One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed; Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart, But kept their words to ponder in her heart. Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall, Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all. The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill, The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun, Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son. No voice had reached the Galilean vale Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds' tale; In the meek, studious child they only saw The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law. So grew the boy; and now the feast was near, When at the holy place the tribes appear. Scarce had the home-bred child of Nazareth seen Beyond the hills that girt the village-green, Save when at midnight, o'er the star-lit sands, Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands, A babe, close-folded to his mother's breast, Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West. Then Joseph spake : "Thy boy hath largely grown; Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown; Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest Goes he not with us to the holy feast?" And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white; Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light. The thread was twined; its parting meshes through >From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew, Till the full web was wound upon the beam, Love's curious toil,--a vest without a seam! They reach the holy place, fulfil the days To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise. At last they turn, and far Moriah's height Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight. All day the dusky caravan has flowed In devious trails along the winding road, (For many a step their homeward path attends, And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.) Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy; Hush! hush!--that whisper,-"Where is Mary's boy?" O weary hour! O aching days that passed Filled with strange fears, each wilder than the last: The soldier's lance,--the fierce centurion's sword, The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord, The midnight crypt that suck's the captive's breath, The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death! Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light, Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; They found him seated with the ancient men, The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen, Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near; Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise That lips so fresh should utter words so wise. And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long, Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong, What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done? Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son! "Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone, Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; Then turned with them and left the holy hill, To all their mild commands obedient still. The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men, And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again; The maids retold it at the fountain's side; The youthful shepherds doubted or denied; It passed around among the listening friends, With all that fancy adds and fiction fends, Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down. But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard, Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, And shuddering Earth confirmed the wondrous tale. Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all. VI You don't look so dreadful poor in the face as you did a while back. Bloated some, I expect. This was the cheerful and encouraging and elegant remark with which the Poor Relation greeted the divinity-student one morning. Of course every good man considers it a great sacrifice on his part to continue living in this transitory, unsatisfactory, and particularly unpleasant world. This is so much a matter of course, that I was surprised to see the divinity-student change color. He took a look at a small and uncertain-minded glass which hung slanting forward over the chapped sideboard. The image it returned to him had the color of a very young pea somewhat overboiled. The scenery of a long tragic drama flashed through his mind as the lightning-express- train whishes by a station: the gradual dismantling process of disease; friends looking on, sympathetic, but secretly chuckling over their own stomachs of iron and lungs of caoutchouc; nurses attentive, but calculating their crop, and thinking how soon it will be ripe, so that they can go to your neighbor, who is good for a year or so longer; doctors assiduous, but giving themselves a mental shake, as they go out of your door, which throws off your particular grief as a duck sheds a raindrop from his oily feathers; undertakers solemn, but happy; then the great subsoil cultivator, who plants, but never looks for fruit in his garden; then the stone-cutter, who puts your name on the slab which has been waiting for you ever since the birds or beasts made their tracks on the new red sandstone; then the grass and the dandelions and the buttercups,----Earth saying to the mortal body, with her sweet symbolism, "You have scarred my bosom, but you are forgiven"; then a glimpse of the soul as a floating consciousness without very definite form or place, but dimly conceived of as an upright column of vapor or mist several times larger than life-size, so far as it could be said to have any size at all, wandering about and living a thin and half-awake life for want of good old-fashioned solid matter to come down upon with foot and fist,--in fact, having neither foot nor fist, nor conveniences for taking the sitting posture. And yet the divinity-student was a good Christian, and those heathen images which remind one of the childlike fancies of the dying Adrian were only the efforts of his imagination to give shape to the formless and position to the placeless. Neither did his thoughts spread themselves out and link themselves as I have displayed them. They came confusedly into his mind like a heap of broken mosaics,-- sometimes a part of the picture complete in itself, sometimes connected fragments, and sometimes only single severed stones. They did not diffuse a light of celestial joy over his countenance. On the contrary, the Poor Relation's remark turned him pale, as I have said; and when the terrible wrinkled and jaundiced looking-glass turned him green in addition, and he saw himself in it, it seemed to him as if it were all settled, and his book of life were to be shut not yet half-read, and go back to the dust of the under-ground archives. He coughed a mild short cough, as if to point the direction in which his downward path was tending. It was an honest little cough enough, so far as appearances went. But coughs are ungrateful things. You find one out in the cold, take it up and nurse it and make everything of it, dress it up warm, give it all sorts of balsams and other food it likes, and carry it round in your bosom as if it were a miniature lapdog. And by-and-by its little bark grows sharp and savage, and--confound the thing! --you find it is a wolf's whelp that you have got there, and he is gnawing in the breast where he has been nestling so long. --The Poor Relation said that somebody's surrup was good for folks that were gettin' into a bad way. --The landlady had heard of desperate cases cured by cherry- pictorial. Whiskey's the fellah,--said the young man John. --Make it into punch, cold at dinner-time 'n' hot at bed-time. I'll come up 'n' show you how to mix it. Have n't any of you seen the wonderful fat man exhibitin' down in Hanover Street? Master Benjamin Franklin rushed into the dialogue with a breezy exclamation, that he had seen a great picter outside of the place where the fat man was exhibitin'. Tried to get in at half-price, but the man at the door looked at his teeth and said he was more'n ten year old. It is n't two years,--said the young man John, since that fat fellah was exhibitin' here as the Livin' Skeleton. Whiskey--that's what did it,--real Burbon's the stuff. Hot water, sugar, 'n' jest a little shavin' of lemon-skin in it,--skin, mind you, none o' your juice; take it off thin,--shape of one of them flat curls the factory-girls wear on the sides of their foreheads. But I am a teetotaller,--said the divinity-student in a subdued tone;--not noticing the enormous length of the bow-string the young fellow had just drawn. He took up his hat and went out. I think you have worried that young man more than you meant,--I said. --I don't believe he will jump off one of the bridges, for he has too much principle; but I mean to follow him and see where he goes, for he looks as if his mind were made up to something. I followed him at a reasonable distance. He walked doggedly along, looking neither to the right nor the left, turned into State Street, and made for a well-known Life-Insurance Office. Luckily, the doctor was there and overhauled him on the spot. There was nothing the matter with him, he said, and he could have his life insured as a sound one. He came out in good spirits, and told me this soon after. This led me to make some remarks the next morning on the manners of well-bred and ill-bred people. I began,--The whole essence of true gentle-breeding (one does not like to say gentility) lies in the wish and the art to be agreeable. Good-breeding is surface-Christianity. Every look, movement, tone, expression, subject of discourse, that may give pain to another is habitually excluded from conversational intercourse. This is the reason why rich people are apt to be so much more agreeable than others. --I thought you were a great champion of equality,--said the discreet and severe lady who had accompanied our young friend, the Latin Tutor's daughter. I go politically for equality,--I said,--and socially for the quality. Who are the "quality,"--said the Model, etc., in a community like ours? I confess I find this question a little difficult to answer,--I said. --Nothing is better known than the distinction of social ranks which exists in every community, and nothing is harder to define. The great gentlemen and ladies of a place are its real lords and masters and mistresses; they are the quality, whether in a monarchy or a republic; mayors and governors and generals and senators and ex- presidents are nothing to them. How well we know this, and how seldom it finds a distinct expression! Now I tell you truly, I believe in man as man, and I disbelieve in all distinctions except such as follow the natural lines of cleavage in a society which has crystallized according to its own true laws. But the essence of equality is to be able to say the truth; and there is nothing more curious than these truths relating to the stratification of society. Of all the facts in this world that do not take hold of immortality, there is not one so intensely real, permanent, and engrossing as this of social position,--as you see by the circumstances that the core of all the great social orders the world has seen has been, and is still, for the most part, a privileged class of gentlemen and ladies arranged in a regular scale of precedence among themselves, but superior as a body to all else. Nothing but an ideal Christian equality, which we have been getting farther away from since the days of the Primitive Church, can prevent this subdivision of society into classes from taking place everywhere,--in the great centres of our republic as much as in old European monarchies. Only there position is more absolutely hereditary,--here it is more completely elective. --Where is the election held? and what are the qualifications? and who are the electors?--said the Model. Nobody ever sees when the vote is taken; there never is a formal vote. The women settle it mostly; and they know wonderfully well what is presentable, and what can't stand the blaze of the chandeliers and the critical eye and ear of people trained to know a staring shade in a ribbon, a false light in a jewel, an ill-bred tone, an angular movement, everything that betrays a coarse fibre and cheap training. As a general thing, you do not get elegance short of two or three removes from the soil, out of which our best blood doubtless comes,--quite as good, no doubt, as if it came from those old prize-fighters with iron pots on their heads, to whom some great people are so fond of tracing their descent through a line of small artisans and petty shopkeepers whose veins have held "base" fluid enough to fill the Cloaca Maxima! Does not money go everywhere?--said the Model. Almost. And with good reason. For though there are numerous exceptions, rich people are, as I said, commonly altogether the most agreeable companions. The influence of a fine house, graceful furniture, good libraries, well-ordered tables, trim servants, and, above all, a position so secure that one becomes unconscious of it, gives a harmony and refinement to the character and manners which we feel, if we cannot explain their charm. Yet we can get at the reason of it by thinking a little. All these appliances are to shield the sensibility from disagreeable contacts, and to soothe it by varied natural and artificial influences. In this way the mind, the taste, the feelings, grow delicate, just as the hands grow white and soft when saved from toil and incased in soft gloves. The whole nature becomes subdued into suavity. I confess I like the quality ladies better than the common kind even of literary ones. They have n't read the last book, perhaps, but they attend better to you when you are talking to them. If they are never learned, they make up for it in tact and elegance. Besides, I think, on the whole, there is less self-assertion in diamonds than in dogmas. I don't know where you will find a sweeter portrait of humility than in Esther, the poor play-girl of King Ahasuerus; yet Esther put on her royal apparel when she went before her lord. I have no doubt she was a more gracious and agreeable person than Deborah, who judged the people and wrote the story of Sisera. The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance. Dowdyism is clearly an expression of imperfect vitality. The highest fashion is intensely alive,--not alive necessarily to the truest and best things, but with its blood tingling, as it were, in all its extremities and to the farthest point of its surface, so that the feather in its bonnet is as fresh as the crest of a fighting-cock, and the rosette on its slipper as clean-cut and pimpant (pronounce it English fashion,--it is a good word) as a dahlia. As a general rule, that society where flattery is acted is much more agreeable than that where it is spoken. Don't you see why? Attention and deference don't require you to make fine speeches expressing your sense of unworthiness (lies) and returning all the compliments paid you. This is one reason. --A woman of sense ought to be above flattering any man,--said the Model. [My reflection. Oh! oh! no wonder you did n't get married. Served you right.] My remark. Surely, Madam,--if you mean by flattery telling people boldly to their faces that they are this or that, which they are not. But a woman who does not carry about with her wherever she goes a halo of good feeling and desire to make everybody contented,--an atmosphere of grace, mercy, and peace, of at least six feet radius, which wraps every human being upon whom she voluntarily bestows her presence, and so flatters him with the comfortable thought that she is rather glad he is alive than otherwise, isn't worth the trouble of talking to, as a woman; she may do well enough to hold discussions with. --I don't think the Model exactly liked this. She said,--a little spitefully, I thought,--that a sensible man might stand a little praise, but would of course soon get sick of it, if he were in the habit of getting much. Oh, yes,--I replied,--just as men get sick of tobacco. It is notorious how apt they are to get tired of that vegetable. --That 's so!--said the young fellow John,--I've got tired of my cigars and burnt 'em all up. I am heartily glad to hear it,--said the Model,--I wish they were all disposed of in the same way. So do I,--said the young fellow John. Can't you get your friends to unite with you in committing those odious instruments of debauchery to the flames in which you have consumed your own? I wish I could,--said the young fellow John. It would be a noble sacrifice,--said the Model, and every American woman would be grateful to you. Let us burn them all in a heap out in the yard. That a'n't my way,--said the young fellow John;--I burn 'em one 't' time,--little end in my mouth and big end outside. --I watched for the effect of this sudden change of programme, when it should reach the calm stillness of the Model's interior apprehension, as a boy watches for the splash of a stone which he has dropped into a well. But before it had fairly reached the water, poor Iris, who had followed the conversation with a certain interest until it turned this sharp corner, (for she seems rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of which she had been cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that swept all before it. So we had a great laugh all round, in which the Model--who, if she had as many virtues as there are spokes to a wheel, all compacted with a personality as round and complete as its tire, yet wanted that one little addition of grace, which seems so small, and is as important as the linchpin in trundling over the rough ways of life-- had not the tact to join. She seemed to be "stuffy" about it, as the young fellow John said. In fact, I was afraid the joke would have cost us both our new lady-boarders. It had no effect, however, except, perhaps, to hasten the departure of the elder of the two, who could, on the whole, be spared. --I had meant to make this note of our conversation a text for a few axioms on the matter of breeding. But it so happened, that, exactly at this point of my record, a very distinguished philosopher, whom several of our boarders and myself go to hear, and whom no doubt many of my readers follow habitually, treated this matter of manners. Up to this point, if I have been so fortunate as to coincide with him in opinion, and so unfortunate as to try to express what he has more felicitously said, nobody is to blame; for what has been given thus far was all written before the lecture was delivered. But what shall I do now? He told us it was childish to lay down rules for deportment,--but he could not help laying down a few. Thus,--Nothing so vulgar as to be in a hurry. True, but hard of application. People with short legs step quickly, because legs are pendulums, and swing more times in a minute the shorter they are. Generally a natural rhythm runs through the whole organization: quick pulse, fast breathing, hasty speech, rapid trains of thought, excitable temper. Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good-breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or, at least, they must work their limbs or features. Talking of one's own ails and grievances. --Bad enough, but not so bad as insulting the person you talk with by remarking on his ill- looks, or appealing to notice any of his personal peculiarities. Apologizing. --A very desperate habit,--one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man's companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology. It is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so much consequence that you must make a talk about them. Good dressing, quiet ways, low tones of voice, lips that can wait, and eyes that do not wander,--shyness of personalities, except in certain intimate communions,--to be light in hand in conversation, to have ideas, but to be able to make talk, if necessary, without them,--to belong to the company you are in, and not to yourself,--to have nothing in your dress or furniture so fine that you cannot afford to spoil it and get another like it, yet to preserve the harmonies, throughout your person and--dwelling: I should say that this was a fair capital of manners to begin with. Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts its superior breeding. Among truly elegant people of the highest ton, you will find more real equality in social intercourse than in a country village. As nuns drop their birth-names and become Sister Margaret and Sister Mary, so high-bred people drop their personal distinctions and become brothers and sisters of conversational charity. Nor are fashionable people without their heroism. I believe there are men who have shown as much self- devotion in carrying a lone wall-flower down to the supper-table as ever saint or martyr in the act that has canonized his name. There are Florence Nightingales of the ballroom, whom nothing can hold back from their errands of mercy. They find out the red-handed, gloveless undergraduate of bucolic antecedents, as he squirms in his corner, and distill their soft words upon him like dew upon the green herb. They reach even the poor relation, whose dreary apparition saddens the perfumed atmosphere of the sumptuous drawing- room. I have known one of these angels ask, of her own accord, that a desolate middle-aged man, whom nobody seemed to know, should be presented to her by the hostess. He wore no shirt-collar,--he had on black gloves,--and was flourishing a red bandanna handkerchief! Match me this, ye proud children of poverty, who boast of your paltry sacrifices for each other! Virtue in humble life! What is that to the glorious self-renunciation of a martyr in pearls and diamonds? As I saw this noble woman bending gracefully before the social mendicant,--the white billows of her beauty heaving under the foam of the traitorous laces that half revealed them,--I should have wept with sympathetic emotion, but that tears, except as a private demonstration, are an ill-disguised expression of self-consciousness and vanity, which is inadmissible in good society. I have sometimes thought, with a pang, of the position in which political chance or contrivance might hereafter place some one of our fellow-citizens. It has happened hitherto, so far as my limited knowledge goes, that the President of the United States has always been what might be called in general terms a gentleman. But what if at some future time the choice of the people should fall upon one on whom that lofty title could not, by any stretch of charity, be bestowed? This may happen,--how soon the future only knows. Think of this miserable man of coming political possibilities,--an unpresentable boor sucked into office by one of those eddies in the flow of popular sentiment which carry straws and chips into the public harbor, while the prostrate trunks of the monarchs of the forest hurry down on the senseless stream to the gulf of political oblivion! Think of him, I say, and of the concentrated gaze of good society through its thousand eyes, all confluent, as it were, in one great burning-glass of ice that shrivels its wretched object in fiery torture, itself cold as the glacier of an unsunned cavern! No,--there will be angels of good-breeding then as now, to shield the victim of free institutions from himself and from his torturers. I can fancy a lovely woman playfully withdrawing the knife which he would abuse by making it an instrument for the conveyance of food,-- or, failing in this kind artifice, sacrificing herself by imitating his use of that implement; how much harder than to plunge it into her bosom, like Lucretia! I can see her studying in his provincial dialect until she becomes the Champollion of New England or Western or Southern barbarisms. She has learned that haow means what; that think-in' is the same thing as thinking, or she has found out the meaning of that extraordinary mono syllable, which no single-tongued phonographer can make legible, prevailing on the banks of the Hudson and at its embouchure, and elsewhere,--what they say when they think they say first, (fe-eest,--fe as in the French le),--or that cheer means chair,--or that urritation means irritation,--and so of other enormities. Nothing surprises her. The highest breeding, you know, comes round to the Indian standard,--to take everything coolly,--nil admirari,--if you happen to be learned and like the Roman phrase for the same thing. If you like the company of people that stare at you from head to foot to see if there is a hole in your coat, or if you have not grown a little older, or if your eyes are not yellow with jaundice, or if your complexion is not a little faded, and so on, and then convey the fact to you, in the style in which the Poor Relation addressed the divinity-student,--go with them as much as you like. I hate the sight of the wretches. Don't for mercy's sake think I hate them; the distinction is one my friend or I drew long ago. No matter where you find such people; they are clowns. The rich woman who looks and talks in this way is not half so much a lady as her Irish servant, whose pretty "saving your presence," when she has to say something which offends her natural sense of good manners, has a hint in it of the breeding of courts, and the blood of old Milesian kings, which very likely runs in her veins,--thinned by two hundred years of potato, which, being an underground fruit, tends to drag down the generations that are made of it to the earth from which it came, and, filling their veins with starch, turn them into a kind of human vegetable. I say, if you like such people, go with them. But I am going to make a practical application of the example at the beginning of this particular record, which some young people who are going to choose professional advisers by-and-by may remember and thank me for. If you are making choice of a physician, be sure you get one, if possible, with a cheerful and serene countenance. A physician is not--at least, ought not to be--an executioner; and a sentence of death on his face is as bad as a warrant for execution signed by the Governor. As a general rule, no man has a right to tell another by word or look that he is going to die. It may be necessary in some extreme cases; but as a rule, it is the last extreme of impertinence which one human being can offer to another. "You have killed me," said a patient once to a physician who had rashly told him he was incurable. He ought to have lived six months, but he was dead in six' weeks. If we will only let Nature and the God of Nature alone, persons will commonly learn their condition as early as they ought to know it, and not be cheated out of their natural birthright of hope of recovery, which is intended to accompany sick people as long as life is comfortable, and is graciously replaced by the hope of heaven, or at least of rest, when life has become a burden which the bearer is ready to let fall. Underbred people tease their sick and dying friends to death. The chance of a gentleman or lady with a given mortal ailment to live a certain time is as good again as that of the common sort of coarse people. As you go down the social scale, you reach a point at length where the common talk in sick rooms is of churchyards and sepulchres, and a kind of perpetual vivisection is forever carried on, upon the person of the miserable sufferer. And so, in choosing your clergyman, other things being equal, prefer the one of a wholesome and cheerful habit of mind and body. If you can get along with people who carry a certificate in their faces that their goodness is so great as to make them very miserable, your children cannot. And whatever offends one of these little ones cannot be right in the eyes of Him who loved them so well. After all, as you are a gentleman or a lady, you will probably select gentlemen for your bodily and spiritual advisers, and then all will be right. This repetition of the above words,--gentleman and lady,--which could not be conveniently avoided, reminds me what strange uses are made of them by those who ought to know what they mean. Thus, at a marriage ceremony, once, of two very excellent persons who had been at service, instead of, Do you take this man, etc.? and, Do you take this woman? how do you think the officiating clergyman put the questions? It was, Do you, Miss So and So, take this GENTLEMAN? and, Do you, Mr. This or That, take this LADY?! What would any English duchess, ay, or the Queen of England herself, have thought, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had called her and her bridegroom anything but plain woman and man at such a time? I don't doubt the Poor Relation thought it was all very fine, if she happened to be in the church; but if the worthy man who uttered these monstrous words--monstrous in such a connection--had known the ludicrous surprise, the convulsion of inward disgust and contempt, that seized upon many of the persons who were present,--had guessed what a sudden flash of light it threw on the Dutch gilding, the pinchbeck, the shabby, perking pretension belonging to certain social layers,--so inherent in their whole mode of being, that the holiest offices of religion cannot exclude its impertinences,--the good man would have given his marriage-fee twice over to recall that superb and full-blown vulgarism. Any persons whom it could please could have no better notion of what the words referred to signify than of the meaning of apsides and asymptotes. MAN! Sir! WOMAN! Sir! Gentility is a fine thing, not to be undervalued, as I have been trying to explain; but humanity comes before that. "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" The beauty of that plainness of speech and manners which comes from the finest training is not to be understood by those whose habitat is below a certain level. Just as the exquisite sea-anemones and all the graceful ocean-flowers die out at some fathoms below the surface, the elegances and suavities of life die out one by one as we sink through the social scale. Fortunately, the virtues are more tenacious of life, and last pretty well until we get down to the mud of absolute pauperism, where they do not flourish greatly. --I had almost forgotten about our boarders. As the Model of all the Virtues is about to leave us, I find myself wondering what is the reason we are not all very sorry. Surely we all like good persons. She is a good person. Therefore we like her. --Only we don't. This brief syllogism, and its briefer negative, involving the principle which some English conveyancer borrowed from a French wit and embodied in the lines by which Dr. Fell is made unamiably immortal, this syllogism, I say, is one that most persons have had occasion to construct and demolish, respecting somebody or other, as I have done for the Model. "Pious and painefull." Why has that excellent old phrase gone out of use? Simply because these good painefull or painstaking persons proved to be such nuisances in the long run, that the word "painefull" came, before people thought of it, to mean pain-giving instead of painstaking. --So, the old fellah's off to-morrah,--said the young man John. Old fellow?--said I,--whom do you mean? Why, the one that came with our little beauty, the old fellah in petticoats. --Now that means something,--said I to myself. --These rough young rascals very often hit the nail on the head, if they do strike with their eyes shut. A real woman does a great many things without knowing why she does them; but these pattern machines mix up their intellects with everything they do, just like men. They can't help it, no doubt; but we can't help getting sick of them, either. Intellect is to a woman's nature what her watch-spring skirt is to her dress; it ought to underlie her silks and embroideries, but not to show itself too staringly on the outside. ---You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace. The young man John did not hear my soliloquy, of course, but sent up one more bubble from our sinking conversation, in the form of a statement, that she was at liberty to go to a personage who receives no visits, as is commonly supposed, from virtuous people. Why, I ask again, (of my reader,) should a person who never did anybody any wrong, but, on the contrary, is an estimable and intelligent, nay, a particularly enlightened and exemplary member of society, fail to inspire interest, love, and devotion? Because of the reversed current in the flow of thought and emotion. The red heart sends all its instincts up to the white brain to be analyzed, chilled, blanched, and so become pure reason, which is just exactly what we do not want of woman as woman. The current should run the other-way. The nice, calm, cold thought, which in women shapes itself so rapidly that they hardly know it as thought, should always travel to the lips via the heart. It does so in those women whom all love and admire. It travels the wrong way in the Model. That is the reason why the Little Gentleman said "I hate her, I hate her." That is the reason why the young man John called her the "old fellah," and banished her to the company of the great Unpresentable. That is the reason why I, the Professor, am picking her to pieces with scalpel and forceps. That is the reason why the young girl whom she has befriended repays her kindness with gratitude and respect, rather than with the devotion and passionate fondness which lie sleeping beneath the calmness of her amber eyes. I can see her, as she sits between this estimable and most correct of personages and the misshapen, crotchety, often violent and explosive little man on the other side of her, leaning and swaying towards him as she speaks, and looking into his sad eyes as if she found some fountain in them at which her soul could quiet its thirst. Women like the Model are a natural product of a chilly climate and high culture. It is not "The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr with Aurora playing," when the two meet "---on beds of violets blue, And fresh-blown roses washed in dew," that claim such women as their offspring. It is rather the east wind, as it blows out of the fogs of Newfoundland, and clasps a clear-eyed wintry noon on the chill bridal couch of a New England ice-quarry. --Don't throw up your cap now, and hurrah as if this were giving up everything, and turning against the best growth of our latitudes,--the daughters of the soil. The brain-women never interest us like the heart women; white roses please less than red. But our Northern seasons have a narrow green streak of spring, as well as a broad white zone of winter,--they have a glowing band of summer and a golden stripe of autumn in their many-colored wardrobe; and women are born to us that wear all these hues of earth and heaven in their souls. Our ice-eyed brain-women are really admirable, if we only ask of them just what they can give, and no more. Only compare them, talking or writing, with one of those babbling, chattering dolls, of warmer latitudes, who do not know enough even to keep out of print, and who are interesting to us only as specimens of arrest of development for our psychological cabinets. Good-bye, Model of all the Virtues! We can spare you now. A little clear perfection, undiluted with human weakness, goes a great way. Go! be useful, be honorable and honored, be just, be charitable, talk pure reason, and help to disenchant the world by the light of an achromatic understanding. Goodbye! Where is my Beranger? I must read a verse or two of "Fretillon." Fair play for all. But don't claim incompatible qualities for anybody. Justice is a very rare virtue in our community. Everything that public sentiment cares about is put into a Papin's digester, and boiled under high pressure till all is turned into one homogeneous pulp, and the very bones give up their jelly. What are all the strongest epithets of our dictionary to us now? The critics and politicians, and especially the philanthropists, have chewed them, till they are mere wads of syllable-fibre, without a suggestion of their old pungency and power. Justice! A good man respects the rights even of brute matter and arbitrary symbols. If he writes the same word twice in succession, by accident, he always erases the one that stands second; has not the first-comer the prior right? This act of abstract justice, which I trust many of my readers, like myself, have often performed, is a curious anti-illustration, by the way, of the absolute wickedness of human dispositions. Why doesn't a man always strike out the first of the two words, to gratify his diabolical love of injustice? So, I say, we owe a genuine, substantial tribute of respect to these filtered intellects which have left their womanhood on the strainer. They are so clear that it is a pleasure at times to look at the world of thought through them. But the rose and purple tints of richer natures they cannot give us, and it is not just to them to ask it. Fashionable society gets at these rich natures very often in a way one would hardly at first think of. It loves vitality above all things, sometimes disguised by affected languor, always well kept under by the laws of good-breeding,--but still it loves abundant life, opulent and showy organizations,--the spherical rather than the plane trigonometry of female architecture,--plenty of red blood, flashing eyes, tropical voices, and forms that bear the splendors of dress without growing pale beneath their lustre. Among these you will find the most delicious women you will ever meet,--women whom dress and flattery and the round of city gayeties cannot spoil,-- talking with whom, you forget their diamonds and laces,--and around whom all the nice details of elegance, which the cold-blooded beauty next them is scanning so nicely, blend in one harmonious whole, too perfect to be disturbed by the petulant sparkle of a jewel, or the yellow glare of a bangle, or the gay toss of a feather. There are many things that I, personally, love better than fashion or wealth. Not to speak of those highest objects of our love and loyalty, I think I love ease and independence better than the golden slavery of perpetual matinees and soirees, or the pleasures of accumulation. But fashion and wealth are two very solemn realities, which the frivolous class of moralists have talked a great deal of silly stuff about. Fashion is only the attempt to realize Art in living forms and social intercourse. What business has a man who knows nothing about the beautiful, and cannot pronounce the word view, to talk about fashion to a set of people who, if one of the quality left a card at their doors, would contrive to keep it on the very top of their heap of the names of their two-story acquaintances, till it was as yellow as the Codex Vaticanus? Wealth, too,--what an endless repetition of the same foolish trivialities about it! Take the single fact of its alleged uncertain tenure and transitory character. In old times, when men were all the time fighting and robbing each other,--in those tropical countries where the Sabeans and the Chaldeans stole all a man's cattle and camels, and there were frightful tornadoes and rains of fire from heaven, it was true enough that riches took wings to themselves not unfrequently in a very unexpected way. But, with common prudence in investments, it is not so now. In fact, there is nothing earthly that lasts so well, on the whole, as money. A man's learning dies with him; even his virtues fade out of remembrance, but the dividends on the stocks he bequeaths to his children live and keep his memory green. I do not think there is much courage or originality in giving utterance to truths that everybody knows, but which get overlaid by conventional trumpery. The only distinction which it is necessary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one, nor the meanness which often degrades the other. A remark which seems to contradict a universally current opinion is not generally to be taken "neat," but watered with the ideas of common-sense and commonplace people. So, if any of my young friends should be tempted to waste their substance on white kids and "all- rounds," or to insist on becoming millionaires at once, by anything I have said, I will give them references to some of the class referred to, well known to the public as providers of literary diluents, who will weaken any truth so that there is not an old woman in the land who cannot take it with perfect impunity. I am afraid some of the blessed saints in diamonds will think I mean to flatter them. I hope not;--if I do, set it down as a weakness. But there is so much foolish talk about wealth and fashion, (which, of course, draw a good many heartless and essentially vulgar people into the glare of their candelabra, but which have a real respectability and meaning, if we will only look at them stereoscopically, with both eyes instead of one,) that I thought it a duty to speak a few words for them. Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks? Lest my parish should suppose we have forgotten graver matters in these lesser topics, I beg them to drop these trifles and read the following lesson for the day. THE TWO STREAMS. Behold the rocky wall That down its sloping sides Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall, In rushing river-tides! Yon stream, whose sources run Turned by a pebble's edge, Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun Through the cleft mountain-ledge. The slender rill had strayed, But for the slanting stone, To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid Of foam-flecked Oregon. So from the heights of Will Life's parting stream descends, And, as a moment turns its slender rill, Each widening torrent bends, >From the same cradle's side, >From the same mother's knee,-- One to long darkness and the frozen tide, One to the Peaceful Sea! VII Our landlady's daughter is a young lady of some pretensions to gentility. She wears her bonnet well back on her head, which is known by all to be a mark of high breeding. She wears her trains very long, as the great ladies do in Europe. To be sure, their dresses are so made only to sweep the tapestried floors of chateaux and palaces; as those odious aristocrats of the other side do not go draggling through the mud in silks and satins, but, forsooth, must ride in coaches when they are in full dress. It is true, that, considering various habits of the American people, also the little accidents which the best-kept sidewalks are liable to, a lady who has swept a mile of them is not exactly in such a condition that one would care to be her neighbor. But then there is no need of being so hard on these slight weaknesses of the poor, dear women as our little deformed gentleman was the other day. --There are no such women as the Boston women, Sir,--he said. Forty-two degrees, north latitude, Rome, Sir, Boston, Sir! They had grand women in old Rome, Sir,--and the women bore such men--children as never the world saw before. And so it was here, Sir. I tell you, the revolution the Boston boys started had to run in woman's milk before it ran in man's blood, Sir! But confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets! --where do they come from? Not out of Boston parlors, I trust. Why, there is n't a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses. Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up and carrying about with her pah! --that's what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow. Making believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. I wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,--cut off his skirts, Sir! cut off his skirts! I suggested, that I had seen some pretty stylish ladies who offended in the way he condemned. Stylish women, I don't doubt,--said the Little Gentleman. --Don't tell me that a true lady ever sacrifices the duty of keeping all about her sweet and clean to the wish of making a vulgar show. I won't believe it of a lady. There are some things that no fashion has any right to touch, and cleanliness is one of those things. If a woman wishes to show that her husband or her father has got money, which she wants and means to spend, but doesn't know how, let her buy a yard or two of silk and pin it to her dress when she goes out to walk, but let her unpin it before she goes into the house;--there may be poor women that will think it worth disinfecting. It is an insult to a respectable laundress to carry such things into a house for her to deal with. I don't like the Bloomers any too well,--in fact, I never saw but one, and she--or he, or it--had a mob of boys after her, or whatever you call the creature, as if she had been a----- The Little Gentleman stopped short,--flushed somewhat, and looked round with that involuntary, suspicious glance which the subjects of any bodily misfortune are very apt to cast round them. His eye wandered over the company, none of whom, excepting myself and one other, had, probably, noticed the movement. They fell at last on Iris,--his next neighbor, you remember. --We know in a moment, on looking suddenly at a person, if that person's eyes have been fixed on us. Sometimes we are conscious of it before we turn so as to see the person. Strange secrets of curiosity, of impertinence, of malice, of love, leak out in this way. There is no need of Mrs. Felix Lorraine's reflection in the mirror, to tell us that she is plotting evil for us behind our backs. We know it, as we know by the ominous stillness of a child that some mischief or other is going-on. A young girl betrays, in a moment, that her eyes have been feeding on. the face where you find them fixed, and not merely brushing over it with their pencils of blue or brown light. A certain involuntary adjustment assimilates us, you may also observe, to that upon which we look. Roses redden the cheeks of her who stoops to gather them, and buttercups turn little people's chins yellow. When we look at a vast landscape, our chests expand as if we would enlarge to fill it. When we examine a minute object, we naturally contract, not only our foreheads, but all our dimensions. If I see two men wrestling, I wrestle too, with my limbs and features. When a country-fellow comes upon the stage, you will see twenty faces in the boxes putting on the bumpkin expression. There is no need of multiplying instances to reach this generalization; every person and thing we look upon puts its special mark upon us. If this is repeated often enough, we get a permanent resemblance to it, or, at least, a fixed aspect which we took from it. Husband and wife come to look alike at last, as has often been noticed. It is a common saying of a jockey, that he is "all horse"; and I have often fancied that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an angular movement of the arm, that remind one of a pump and the working of its handle. All this came in by accident, just because I happened to mention that the Little Gentleman found that Iris had been looking at him with her soul in her eyes, when his glance rested on her after wandering round the company. What he thought, it is hard to say; but the shadow of suspicion faded off from his face, and he looked calmly into the amber eyes, resting his cheek upon the hand that wore the red jewel. --If it were a possible thing,--women are such strange creatures! Is there any trick that love and their own fancies do not play them? Just see how they marry! A woman that gets hold of a bit of manhood is like one of those Chinese wood-carvers who work on any odd, fantastic root that comes to hand, and, if it is only bulbous above and bifurcated below, will always contrive to make a man--such as he is--out of it. I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a Gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of. --A child,--yes, if you choose to call her so, but such a child! Do you know how Art brings all ages together? There is no age to the angels and ideal human forms among which the artist lives, and he shares their youth until his hand trembles and his eye grows dim. The youthful painter talks of white-bearded Leonardo as if he were a brother, and the veteran forgets that Raphael died at an age to which his own is of patriarchal antiquity. But why this lover of the beautiful should be so drawn to one whom Nature has wronged so deeply seems hard to explain. Pity, I suppose. They say that leads to love. --I thought this matter over until I became excited and curious, and determined to set myself more seriously at work to find out what was going on in these wild hearts and where their passionate lives were drifting. I say wild hearts and passionate lives, because I think I can look through this seeming calmness of youth and this apparent feebleness of organization, and see that Nature, whom it is very hard to cheat, is only waiting as the sapper waits in his mine, knowing that all is in readiness and the slow-match burning quietly down to the powder. He will leave it by-and-by, and then it will take care of itself. One need not wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous- acid pungency in the air that stings one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going on. --Oh,--oh,--oh! do you know what has got hold of you? It is the great red dragon that is born of the little red eggs we call sparks, with his hundred blowing red manes, and his thousand lashing red tails, and his multitudinous red eyes glaring at every crack and key-hole, and his countless red tongues lapping the beams he is going to crunch presently, and his hot breath warping the panels and cracking the glass and making old timber sweat that had forgotten it was ever alive with sap. Run for your life! leap! or you will be a cinder in five minutes, that nothing but a coroner would take for the wreck of a human being! If any gentleman will have the kindness to stop this run-away comparison, I shall be much obliged to him. All I intended to say was, that we need not wait for hearts to break out in flames to know that they are full of combustibles and that a spark has got among them. I don't pretend to say or know what it is that brings these two persons together;--and when I say together, I only mean that there is an evident affinity of some kind or other which makes their commonest intercourse strangely significant, as that each seems to understand a look or a word of the other. When the young girl laid her hand on the Little Gentleman's arm,--which so greatly shocked the Model, you may remember,--I saw that she had learned the lion- tamer's secret. She masters him, and yet I can see she has a kind of awe of him, as the man who goes into the cage has of the monster that he makes a baby of. One of two things must happen. The first is love, downright love, on the part of this young girl, for the poor little misshapen man. You may laugh, if you like. But women are apt to love the men who they think have the largest capacity of loving;--and who can love like one that has thirsted all his life long for the smile of youth and beauty, and seen it fly his presence as the wave ebbed from the parched lips of him whose fabled punishment is the perpetual type of human longing and disappointment? What would become of him, if this fresh soul should stoop upon him in her first young passion, as the flamingo drops out of the sky upon some lonely and dark lagoon in the marshes of Cagliari, with a flutter of scarlet feathers and a kindling of strange fires in the shadowy waters that hold her burning image? --Marry her, of course?--Why, no, not of course. I should think the chance less, on the whole, that he would be willing to marry her than she to marry him. There is one other thing that might happen. If the interest he awakes in her gets to be a deep one, and yet has nothing of love in it, she will glance off from him into some great passion or other. All excitements run to love in women of a certain--let us not say age, but youth. An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if she did not turn so as to point north and south,--as she would, if the love-currents are like those of the earth our mother. Pray, do you happen to remember Wordsworth's "Boy of Windermere"? This boy used to put his hands to his mouth, and shout aloud, mimicking the hooting of the owls, who would answer him "with quivering peals, And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud Redoubled and redoubled." When they failed to answer him, and he hung listening intently for their voices, he would sometimes catch the faint sound of far distant waterfalls, or the whole scene around him would imprint itself with new force upon his perceptions. --Read the sonnet, if you please;--it is Wordsworth all over,--trivial in subject, solemn in style, vivid in description, prolix in detail, true meta- physically, but immensely suggestive of "imagination," to use a mild term, when related as an actual fact of a sprightly youngster. All I want of it is to enforce the principle, that, when the door of the soul is once opened to a guest, there is no knowing who will come in next. --Our young girl keeps up her early habit of sketching heads and characters. Nobody is, I should think, more faithful and exact in the drawing of the academical figures given her as lessons, but there is a perpetual arabesque of fancies that runs round the margin of her drawings, and there is one book which I know she keeps to run riot in, where, if anywhere, a shrewd eye would be most likely to read her thoughts. This book of hers I mean to see, if I can get at it honorably. I have never yet crossed the threshold of the Little Gentleman's chamber. How he lives, when he once gets within it, I can only guess. His hours are late, as I have said; often, on waking late in the night, I see the light through cracks in his window-shutters on the wall of the house opposite. If the times of witchcraft were not over, I should be afraid to be so close a neighbor to a place from which there come such strange noises. Sometimes it is the dragging of something heavy over the floor, that makes me shiver to hear it,- -it sounds so like what people that kill other people have to do now and then. Occasionally I hear very sweet strains of music,--whether of a wind or stringed instrument, or a human voice, strange as it may seem, I have often tried to find out, but through the partition I could not be quite sure. If I have not heard a woman cry and moan, and then again laugh as though she would die laughing, I have heard sounds so like them that--I am a fool to confess it--I have covered my head with the bedclothes; for I have had a fancy in my dreams, that I could hardly shake off when I woke up, about that so- called witch that was his great-grandmother, or whatever it was,--a sort of fancy that she visited the Little Gentleman,--a young woman in old-fashioned dress, with a red ring round her white neck,--not a neck-lace, but a dull-stain. Of course you don't suppose that I have any foolish superstitions about the matter,--I, the Professor, who have seen enough to take all that nonsense out of any man's head! It is not our beliefs that frighten us half so much as our fancies. A man not only believes, but knows he runs a risk, whenever he steps into a railroad car; but it does n't worry him much. On the other hand, carry that man across a pasture a little way from some dreary country-village, and show him an old house where there were strange deaths a good many years ago, and there are rumors of ugly spots on the walls,--the old man hung himself in the garret, that is certain, and ever since the country-people have called it "the haunted house,"--the owners have n't been able to let it since the last tenants left on account of the noises,--so it has fallen into sad decay, and the moss grows on the rotten shingles of the roof, and the clapboards have turned black, and the windows rattle like teeth that chatter with fear, and the walls of the house begin to lean as if its knees were shaking,-- take the man who did n't mind the real risk of the cars to that old house, on some dreary November evening, and ask him to sleep there alone,--how do you think he will like it? He doesn't believe one word of ghosts,--but then he knows, that, whether waking or sleeping, his imagination will people the haunted chambers with ghostly images. It is not what we believe, as I said before, that frightens us commonly, but what we conceive. A principle that reaches a good way if I am not mistaken. I say, then, that, if these odd sounds coming from the Little Gentleman's chamber sometimes make me nervous, so that I cannot get to sleep, it is not because I suppose he is engaged in any unlawful or mysterious way. The only wicked suggestion that ever came into my head was one that was founded on the landlady's story of his having a pile of gold; it was a ridiculous fancy; besides, I suspect the story of sweating gold was only one of the many fables got up to make the Jews odious and afford a pretext for plundering them. As for the sound like a woman laughing and crying, I never said it was a woman's voice; for, in the first place, I could only hear indistinctly; and, secondly, he may have an organ, or some queer instrument or other, with what they call the vox humana stop. If he moves his bed round to get away from the window, or for any such reason, there is nothing very frightful in that simple operation. Most of our foolish conceits explain themselves in some such simple way. And, yet, for all that, I confess, that, when I woke up the other evening, and heard, first a sweet complaining cry, and then footsteps, and then the dragging sound,--nothing but his bed, I am quite sure,--I felt a stirring in the roots of my hair as the feasters did in Keats's terrible poem of "Lamia." There is nothing very odd in my feeling nervous when I happen to lie awake and get listening for sounds. Just keep your ears open any time after midnight, when you are lying in bed in a lone attic of a dark night. What horrid, strange, suggestive, unaccountable noises you will hear! The stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead things seem to be alive. Crack! That is the old chest of drawers; you never hear it crack in the daytime. Creak! There's a door ajar; you know you shut them all. Where can that latch be that rattles so? Is anybody trying it softly? or, worse than any body, is----? (Cold shiver.) Then a sudden gust that jars all the windows;--very strange!--there does not seem to be any wind about that it belongs to. When it stops, you hear the worms boring in the powdery beams overhead. Then steps outside,--a stray animal, no doubt. All right,--but a gentle moisture breaks out all over you; and then something like a whistle or a cry,--another gust of wind, perhaps; that accounts for the rustling that just made your heart roll over and tumble about, so that it felt more like a live rat under your ribs than a part of your own body; then a crash of something that has fallen,--blown over, very likely---- Pater noster, qui es in coelis! for you are damp and cold, and sitting bolt upright, and the bed trembling so that the death-watch is frightened and has stopped ticking! No,--night is an awful time for strange noises and secret doings. Who ever dreamed, till one of our sleepless neighbors told us of it, of that Walpurgis gathering of birds and beasts of prey,--foxes, and owls, and crows, and eagles, that come from all the country round on moonshiny nights to crunch the clams and muscles, and pick out the eyes of dead fishes that the storm has thrown on Chelsea Beach? Our old mother Nature has pleasant and cheery tones enough for us when she comes in her dress of blue and gold over the eastern hill-tops; but when she follows us up-stairs to our beds in her suit of black velvet and diamonds, every creak of her sandals and every whisper of her lips is full of mystery and fear. You understand, then, distinctly, that I do not believe there is anything about this singular little neighbor of mine which is as it should not be. Probably a visit to his room would clear up all that has puzzled me, and make me laugh at the notions which began, I suppose, in nightmares, and ended by keeping my imagination at work so as almost to make me uncomfortable at times. But it is not so easy to visit him as some of our other boarders, for various reasons which I will not stop to mention. I think some of them are rather pleased to get "the Professor" under their ceilings. The young man John, for instance, asked me to come up one day and try some "old Burbon," which he said was A 1. On asking him what was the number of his room, he answered, that it was forty-'leven, sky-parlor floor, but that I shouldn't find it, if he did n't go ahead to show me the way. I followed him to his habitat, being very willing to see in what kind of warren he burrowed, and thinking I might pick up something about the boarders who had excited my curiosity. Mighty close quarters they were where the young man John bestowed himself and his furniture; this last consisting of a bed, a chair, a bureau, a trunk, and numerous pegs with coats and "pants" and "vests,"--as he was in the habit of calling waist-coats and pantaloons or trousers,--hanging up as if the owner had melted out of them. Several prints were pinned up unframed,--among them that grand national portrait-piece, "Barnum presenting Ossian E. Dodge to Jenny Lind," and a picture of a famous trot, in which I admired anew the cabalistic air of that imposing array of expressions, and especially the Italicized word, "Dan Mace names b. h. Major Slocum," and "Hiram Woodruff names g. m. Lady Smith." "Best three in five. Time: 2.40, 2.46, 2.50." That set me thinking how very odd this matter of trotting horses is, as an index of the mathematical exactness of the laws of living mechanism. I saw Lady Suffolk trot a mile in 2.26. Flora Temple has trotted close down to 2.20; and Ethan Allen in 2.25, or less. Many horses have trotted their mile under 2.30; none that I remember in public as low down as 2.20. From five to ten seconds, then, in about a hundred and sixty is the whole range of the maxima of the present race of trotting horses. The same thing is seen in the running of men. Many can run a mile in five minutes; but when one comes to the fractions below, they taper down until somewhere about 4.30 the maximum is reached. Averages of masses have been studied more than averages of maxima and minima. We know from the Registrar-General's Reports, that a certain number of children--say from one to two dozen--die every year in England from drinking hot water out of spouts of teakettles. We know, that, among suicides, women and men past a certain age almost never use fire-arms. A woman who has made up her mind to die is still afraid of a pistol or a gun. Or is it that the explosion would derange her costume? I say, averages of masses we have, but our tables of maxima we owe to the sporting men more than to the philosophers. The lesson their experience teaches is, that Nature makes no leaps,--does nothing per saltum. The greatest brain that ever lived, no doubt, was only a small fraction of an idea ahead of the second best. Just look at the chess-players. Leaving out the phenomenal exceptions, the nice shades that separate the skilful ones show how closely their brains approximate,--almost as closely as chronometers. Such a person is a "knight-player,"--he must have that piece given him. Another must have two pawns. Another, "pawn and two," or one pawn and two moves. Then we find one who claims "pawn and move," holding himself, with this fractional advantage, a match for one who would be pretty sure to beat him playing even. --So much are minds alike; and you and I think we are "peculiar,"--that Nature broke her jelly-mould after shaping our cerebral convolutions. So I reflected, standing and looking at the picture. --I say, Governor,--broke in the young man John,--them bosses '11 stay jest as well, if you'll only set down. I've had 'em this year, and they haven't stirred. --He spoke, and handed the chair towards me,--seating himself, at the same time, on the end of the bed. You have lived in this house some time?--I said,--with a note of interrogation at the end of the statement. Do I look as if I'd lost much flesh--said he, answering my question by another. No,--said I;--for that matter, I think you do credit to "the bountifully furnished table of the excellent lady who provides so liberally for the company that meets around her hospitable board." [The sentence in quotation-marks was from one of those disinterested editorials in small type, which I suspect to have been furnished by a friend of the landlady's, and paid for as an advertisement. This impartial testimony to the superior qualities of the establishment and its head attracted a number of applicants for admission, and a couple of new boarders made a brief appearance at the table. One of them was of the class of people who grumble if they don't get canvas-backs and woodcocks every day, for three-fifty per week. The other was subject to somnambulism, or walking in the night, when he ought to have been asleep in his bed. In this state he walked into several of the boarders' chambers, his eyes wide open, as is usual with somnambulists, and, from some odd instinct or other, wishing to know what the hour was, got together a number of their watches, for the purpose of comparing them, as it would seem. Among them was a repeater, belonging to our young Marylander. He happened to wake up while the somnambulist was in his chamber, and, not knowing his infirmity, caught hold of him and gave him a dreadful shaking, after which he tied his hands and feet, and so left him till morning, when he introduced him to a gentleman used to taking care of such cases of somnambulism.] If you, my reader, will please to skip backward, over this parenthesis, you will come to our conversation, which it has interrupted. It a'n't the feed,--said the young man John,--it's the old woman's looks when a fellah lays it in too strong. The feed's well enough. After geese have got tough, 'n' turkeys have got strong, 'n' lamb's got old, 'n' veal's pretty nigh beef, 'n' sparragrass 's growin' tall 'n' slim 'n' scattery about the head, 'n' green peas are gettin' so big 'n' hard they'd be dangerous if you fired 'em out of a revolver, we get hold of all them delicacies of the season. But it's too much like feedin' on live folks and devourin' widdah's substance, to lay yourself out in the eatin' way, when a fellah 's as hungry as the chap that said a turkey was too much for one 'n' not enough for two. I can't help lookin' at the old woman. Corned- beef-days she's tolerable calm. Roastin'-days she worries some, 'n' keeps a sharp eye on the chap that carves. But when there's anything in the poultry line, it seems to hurt her feelin's so to see the knife goin' into the breast and joints comin' to pieces, that there's no comfort in eatin'. When I cut up an old fowl and help the boarders, I always feel as if I ought to say, Won't you have a slice of widdah?--instead of chicken. The young man John fell into a train of reflections which ended in his producing a Bologna sausage, a plate of "crackers," as we Boston folks call certain biscuits, and the bottle of whiskey described as being A 1. Under the influence of the crackers and sausage, he grew cordial and communicative. It was time, I thought, to sound him as to those of our boarders who had excited my curiosity. What do you think of our young Iris?--I began. Fust-rate little filly;-he said. --Pootiest and nicest little chap I've seen since the schoolma'am left. Schoolma'am was a brown- haired one,--eyes coffee-color. This one has got wine-colored eyes,--'n' that 's the reason they turn a fellah's head, I suppose. This is a splendid blonde,--I said,--the other was a brunette. Which style do you like best? Which do I like best, boiled mutton or roast mutton?--said the young man John. Like 'em both,--it a'n't the color of 'em makes the goodness. I 've been kind of lonely since schoolma'am went away. Used to like to look at her. I never said anything particular to her, that I remember, but--- I don't know whether it was the cracker and sausage, or that the young fellow's feet were treading on the hot ashes of some longing that had not had time to cool, but his eye glistened as he stopped. I suppose she wouldn't have looked at a fellah like me,--he said,-- but I come pretty near tryin'. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn't have known what to have done with her. Can't marry a woman now-a-days till you're so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she says, and so longsighted you can't see what she looks like nearer than arm's-length. Here is another chance for you,--I said. --What do you want nicer than such a young lady as Iris? It's no use,--he answered. --I look at them girls and feel as the fellah did when he missed catchin' the trout. --'To'od 'a' cost more butter to cook him 'n' he's worth,--says the fellah. --Takes a whole piece o' goods to cover a girl up now-a-days. I'd as lief undertake to keep a span of elephants,--and take an ostrich to board, too,--as to marry one of 'em. What's the use? Clerks and counter-jumpers ain't anything. Sparragrass and green peas a'n't for them,--not while they're young and tender. Hossback-ridin' a'n't for them,-- except once a year, on Fast-day. And marryin' a'n't for them. Sometimes a fellah feels lonely, and would like to have a nice young woman, to tell her how lonely he feels. And sometimes a fellah,-- here the young man John looked very confidential, and, perhaps, as if a little ashamed of his weakness,--sometimes a fellah would like to have one o' them small young ones to trot on his knee and push about in a little wagon,--a kind of a little Johnny, you know;--it's odd enough, but, it seems to me, nobody can afford them little articles, except the folks that are so rich they can buy everything, and the folks that are so poor they don't want anything. It makes nice boys of us young fellahs, no doubt! And it's pleasant to see fine young girls sittin', like shopkeepers behind their goods, waitin', and waitin', and waitin', 'n' no customers,--and the men lingerin' round and lookin' at the goods, like folks that want to be customers, but have n't the money! Do you think the deformed gentleman means to make love to Iris?--I said. What! Little Boston ask that girl to marry him! Well, now, that's cumin' of it a little too strong. Yes, I guess she will marry him and carry him round in a basket, like a lame bantam: Look here!--he said, mysteriously;--one of the boarders swears there's a woman comes to see him, and that he has heard her singin' and screechin'. I should like to know what he's about in that den of his. He lays low 'n' keeps dark,--and, I tell you, there's a good many of the boarders would like to get into his chamber, but he don't seem to want 'em. Biddy could tell somethin' about what she's seen when she 's been to put his room to rights. She's a Paddy 'n' a fool, but she knows enough to keep her tongue still. All I know is, I saw her crossin' herself one day when she came out of that room. She looked pale enough, 'n' I heard her mutterin' somethin' or other about the Blessed Virgin. If it had n't been for the double doors to that chamber of his, I'd have had a squint inside before this; but, somehow or other, it never seems to happen that they're both open at once. What do you think he employs himself about? said I. The young man John winked. I waited patiently for the thought, of which this wink was the blossom, to come to fruit in words. I don't believe in witches,--said the young man John. Nor I. We were both silent for a few minutes. --Did you ever see the young girl's drawing-books,--I said, presently. All but one,--he answered;--she keeps a lock on that, and won't show it. Ma'am Allen, (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the gentleman with the diamond,) Ma'am Allen tried to peek into it one day when she left it on the sideboard. "If you please," says she,--'n' took it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar on a hot shovel. I only wished he had n't, and had jest given her a little sass, for I've been takin' boxin'- lessons, 'n' I 've got a new way of counterin' I want to try on to somebody. --The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow's room, feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live for, for the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long. These were, to get a sight of the young girl's drawing. book, which I suspected had her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little Gentleman's room. I don't doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I shall find in the young girl's--book will be some outlines of angels with immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures, among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features figuring. Very likely. But I'll tell you what I think I shall find. If this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,--if, in one of those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles, depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of hers,--if I can ever get a look at it,--fairly, of course, for I would not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity. Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman's room under any fair pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about him. The night after my visit to the young man John, I made all these and many more reflections. It was about two o'clock in the morning,-- bright starlight,--so light that I could make out the time on my alarm-clock,--when I woke up trembling and very moist. It was the heavy dragging sound, as I had often heard it before that waked me. Presently a window was softly closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation with which we always awake from nightmare dreams, when I heard the sound which seemed to me as of a woman's voice,--the clearest, purest soprano which one could well conceive of. It was not loud, and I could not distinguish a word, if it was a woman's voice; but there were recurring phrases of sound and snatches of rhythm that reached me, which suggested the idea of complaint, and sometimes, I thought, of passionate grief and despair. It died away at last,--and then I heard the opening of a door, followed by a low, monotonous sound, as of one talking,--and then the closing of a door,--and presently the light on the opposite wall disappeared and all was still for the night. By George! this gets interesting,--I said, as I got out of bed for a change of night-clothes. I had this in my pocket the other day, but thought I would n't read it at our celebration. So I read it to the boarders instead, and print it to finish off this record with. ROBINSON OF LEYDEN. He sleeps not here; in hope and prayer His wandering flock had gone before, But he, the shepherd, might not share Their sorrows on the wintry shore. Before the Speedwell's anchor swung, Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread, While round his feet the Pilgrims clung, The pastor spake, and thus he said:-- "Men, brethren, sisters, children dear! God calls you hence from over sea; Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer, Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee. "Ye go to bear the saving word To tribes unnamed and shores untrod: Heed well the lessons ye have heard >From those old teachers taught of God. "Yet think not unto them was lent All light for all the coming days, And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent In making straight the ancient ways. "The living fountain overflows For every flock, for every lamb, Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam." He spake; with lingering, long embrace, With tears of love and partings fond, They floated down the creeping Maas, Along the isle of Ysselmond. They passed the frowning towers of Briel, The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand, And grated soon with lifting keel The sullen shores of Fatherland. No home for these! --too well they knew The mitred king behind the throne; The sails were set, the pennons flew, And westward ho! for worlds unknown. --And these were they who gave us birth, The Pilgrims of the sunset wave, Who won for us this virgin earth, And freedom with the soil they gave. The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,-- In alien earth the exiles lie,-- Their nameless graves our holiest shrine, His words our noblest battle-cry! Still cry them, and the world shall hear, Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea! Ye have not built by Haerlem Meer, Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee! VIII There has been a sort of stillness in the atmosphere of our boarding-house since my last record, as if something or other were going on. There is no particular change that I can think of in the aspect of things; yet I have a feeling as if some game of life were quietly playing and strange forces were at work, underneath this smooth surface of every-day boardinghouse life, which would show themselves some fine morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,--a beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to Nature's women, turned loose among live men. -Terrible fact? Very terrible. Nothing more so. Do you forget the angels who lost heaven for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women who made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,--if pangs that waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping melancholy,--if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities, then there is always something frightful about a lovely young woman. --I love to look at this "Rainbow," as her father used sometimes to call her, of ours. Handsome creature that she is in forms and colors,--the very picture, as it seems to me, of that "golden blonde" my friend whose book you read last year fell in love with when he was a boy, (as you remember, no doubt,)--handsome as she is, fit for a sea-king's bride, it is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will understand the strange sort of fascination she has for me. It is in the hearts of many men and women--let me add children--that there is a Great Secret waiting for them,--a secret of which they get hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than in later years. These hints come sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sudden startling flashes,--second wakings, as it were,--a waking out of the waking state, which last is very apt to be a half-sleep. I have many times stopped short and held my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, in one of these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of course I cannot tell what kind of a secret this is, but I think of it as a disclosure of certain relations of our personal being to time and space, to other intelligences, to the procession of events, and to their First Great Cause. This secret seems to be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so that we find here a word and there a syllable, and then again only a letter of it; but it never is written out for most of us as a complete sentence, in this life. I do not think it could be; for I am disposed to consider our beliefs about such a possible disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an enlargement of our faculties in some future state than as an expectation to be fulfilled for most of us in this life. Persons, however, have fallen into trances,--as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many others,--and learned some things which they could not tell in our human words. Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite secret for which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery. There are women's faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something in them that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and palpable a revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember two faces of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico,--and I just now came across a print of Raphael's Santa Apollina, with something of the same quality,--which I was sure had their prototypes in the world above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is, that it has no women to be worshipped. But mind you, it is not every beautiful face that hints the Great Secret to us, nor is it only in beautiful faces that we find traces of it. Sometimes it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only beauty of a plain countenance; sometimes there is so much meaning in the lips of a woman, not otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a message for us, and wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has at once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression. Can she tell me anything? Is her life a complement of mine, with the missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many friendships that I have tired of, and through--Hush! Is the door fast? Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses. You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of and to use for a special illustration. Riding along over a rocky road, suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes to a deep heavy rumble. There is a great hollow under your feet,--a huge unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you in the core of the living rock, it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless. So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding over the same thoughts, the gravel of the soul's highway,-- now and then jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment, but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground reverberation that reveals the unsuspected depth of some abyss of thought or passion beneath us. I wish the girl would go. I don't like to look at her so much, and yet I cannot help it. Always that same expression of something that I ought to know,--something that she was made to tell and I to hear,--lying there ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in an hour of passion. It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put you on the wrong track. The Great Secret that I refer to has nothing to do with the Three Words. Set your mind at ease about that,--there are reasons I could give you which settle all that matter. I don't wonder, however, that you confounded the Great Secret with the Three Words. I LOVE YOU is all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell. When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic implement is made with a slender train which leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl's eye or lip to the "I love you" in her heart. But the Three Words are not the Great Secret I mean. No, women's faces are only one of the tablets on which that is written in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies deeper than Love, though very probably Love is a part of it. Some, I think,-- Wordsworth might be one of them,--spell out a portion of it from certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others. I can mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to me to come near the region where I think it lies. I have known two persons who pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,--all wrong evidently, but infatuated, and never giving up the daily search for it until they got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of things that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings, and so they died. The vulgar called them drunkards. I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this young girl's face produces on me. It is akin to those influences a friend of mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain voices. I cannot translate it into words,--only into feelings; and these I have attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next. You shake your head at the vagueness and fanciful incomprehensibleness of my description of the expression in a young girl's face. You forget what a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless scribbler's impertinence into our waste-baskets, to the gravest utterances which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need, is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of clickings, hissings, lispings, and so on, mean very little, compared to tones and expression of the features. I give it up; I thought I could shadow forth in some feeble way, by their aid, the effect this young girl's face produces on my imagination; but it is of no use. No doubt your head aches, trying to make something of my description. If there is here and there one that can make anything intelligible out of my talk about the Great Secret, and who has spelt out a syllable or two of it on some woman's face, dead or living, that is all I can expect. One should see the person with whom he converses about such matters. There are dreamy-eyed people to whom I should say all these things with a certainty of being understood;-- That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me To him my tale I teach. --I am afraid some of them have not got a spare quarter of a dollar for this August number, so that they will never see it. --Let us start again, just as if we had not made this ambitious attempt, which may go for nothing, and you can have your money refunded, if you will make the change. This young girl, about whom I have talked so unintelligibly, is the unconscious centre of attraction to the whole solar system of our breakfast-table. The Little Gentleman leans towards her, and she again seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side, is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all the men's eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if all their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely placed, so as to favor the direction in which their occupants love to look. That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman. --Sarvant, Ma'am I Much obleeged,--he said, and put it gallantly in his button-hole. --After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very fine performances,--very fine! --truly elegant productions, truly elegant! --Had seen Miss Linwood's needlework in London, in the year (eighteen hundred and little or nothing, I think he said,)- patronized by the nobility and gentry, and Her Majesty,--elegant, truly elegant productions, very fine performances; these drawings reminded him of them;--wonderful resemblance to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting; Mr. Copley made some very fine pictures that he remembered seeing when he was a boy. Used to remember some lines about a portrait Written by Mr. Cowper, beginning, Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd With me but roughly since I heard thee last." And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if in a waking dream, his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the glimmering light through which he saw them. --What is there quite so profoundly human as an old man's memory of a mother who died in his earlier years? Mother she remains till manhood, and by-and-by she grows to be as a sister; and at last, when, wrinkled and bowed and broken, he looks back upon her in her fair youth, he sees in the sweet image he caresses, not his parent, but, as it were, his child. If I had not seen all this in the old gentleman's face, the words with which he broke his silence would have betrayed his train of thought. --If they had only taken pictures then as they do now!--he said. --All gone! all gone! nothing but her face as she leaned on the arms of her great chair; and I would give a hundred pound for the poorest little picture of her, such as you can buy for a shilling of anybody that you don't want to see. --The old gentleman put his hand to his forehead so as to shade his eyes. I saw he was looking at the dim photograph of memory, and turned from him to Iris. How many drawing-books have you filled,--I said,--since you began to take lessons? --This was the first,--she answered,--since she was here; and it was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had covered with drawings. I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies, principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb drawing of an arm! I don't remember it among the figures from Michel Angelo, which seem to have been her patterns mainly. >From Nature, I think, or after a cast from Nature. --Oh! --Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,--I said, taking up the drawing-book with a lock on it,--Yes,--she said. --I should like to see her style of working on a small scale. --There was nothing in it worth showing,--she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which proved to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven't the least doubt. I think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what her fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her thoughts seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else. The young fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I think he has once or twice sent her what the landlady's daughter calls bo-kays of flowers,--somebody has, at any rate. --I saw a book she had, which must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary title-page, which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the author,--a face from memory, apparently,--one of those faces that small children loathe without knowing why, and which give them that inward disgust for heaven so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear that these are "good men," and that heaven is full of such. --The gentleman with the diamond--the Koh-i-noor, so called by us--was not encouraged, I think, by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He pulls his purple moustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never sees him, as it should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would have been in love with her before this time, sometimes looks from his corner across the long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish you were up here by me, or I were down there by you,-- which would, perhaps, be a more natural arrangement than the present one. But nothing comes of all this,--and nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding out the girl's fancies by looking into her locked drawing-book. Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an attempt also to work into the Little Gentleman's chamber. For this purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just ready to go up-stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed him as he toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready. --No answer. --Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were unfastened,--with unnecessary noise, I thought,--and he came into the passage. He pulled the inner door after him and opened the outer one at which I stood. He had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as "Mr. Copley" used to paint his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a quaint-looking key in his hand. Our conversation was short, but long enough to convince me that the Little Gentleman did not want my company in his chamber, and did not mean to have it. I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,--a schoolgirl's secrets and a whimsical man's habits. I mean to give up such nonsense and mind my own business. --Hark! What the deuse is that odd noise in his chamber? --I think I am a little superstitious. There were two things, when I was a boy, that diabolized my imagination,--I mean, that gave me a distinct apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round the neighborhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of marks called the "Devil's footsteps." These were patches of sand in the pastures, where no grass grew, where the low-bush blackberry, the "dewberry," as our Southern neighbors call it, in prettier and more Shakspearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers,--where even the pale, dry, sadly-sweet "everlasting" could not grow, but all was bare and blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings near my home,--the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I do not think many persons are aware of the existence of this mark,--little having been said about the story in print, as it was considered very desirable, for the sake of the Institution, to hush it up. In the northwest corner, and on the level of the third or fourth story, there are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but not to be mistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been carried away, from within outward. It was an unpleasant affair; and I do not care to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using sacred things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which was variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the building there could be no question; and the zig-zag line, where the mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. The queer burnt spots, called the "Devil's footsteps," had never attracted attention before this time, though there is no evidence that they had not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a "Goody," so called, or sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know something. --I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with untenanted, locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,--with the "Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house and in front of it the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was epileptic from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned for his ascetic sanctity. There were other circumstances that kept up the impression produced by these two singular facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark storeroom, on looking through the key-hole of which, I could dimly see a heap of chairs and tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed to me to have rushed in there, frightened, and in their fright to have huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs,--as the people did in that awful crush where so many were killed, at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. Then the Lady's portrait, up-stairs, with the sword-thrusts through it,--marks of the British officers' rapiers,--and the tall mirror in which they used to look at their red coats,--confound them for smashing its mate?--and the deep, cunningly wrought arm-chair in which Lord Percy used to sit while his hair was dressing;--he was a gentleman, and always had it covered with a large peignoir, to save the silk covering my grandmother embroidered. Then the little room downstairs from which went the orders to throw up a bank of earth on the hill yonder, where you may now observe a granite obelisk,--"the study" in my father's time, but in those days the council-chamber of armed men,--sometimes filled with soldiers; come with me, and I will show you the "dents" left by the butts of their muskets all over the floor. With all these suggestive objects round me, aided by the wild stories those awful country-boys that came to live in our service brought with them;--of contracts written in blood and left out over night, not to be found the next morning, (removed by the Evil One, who takes his nightly round among our dwellings, and filed away for future use,)--of dreams coming true,--of death-signs,--of apparitions, no wonder that my imagination got excited, and I was liable to superstitious fancies. Jeremy Bentham's logic, by which he proved that he couldn't possibly see a ghost is all very well-in the day-time. All the reason in the world will never get those impressions of childhood, created by just such circumstances as I have been telling, out of a man's head. That is the only excuse I have to give for the nervous kind of curiosity with which I watch my little neighbor, and the obstinacy with which I lie awake whenever I hear anything going on in his chamber after midnight. But whatever further observations I may have made must be deferred for the present. You will see in what way it happened that my thoughts were turned from spiritual matters to bodily ones, and how I got my fancy full of material images,--faces, heads, figures, muscles, and so forth,--in such a way that I should have no chance in this number to gratify any curiosity you may feel, if I had the means of so doing. Indeed, I have come pretty near omitting my periodical record this time. It was all the work of a friend of mine, who would have it that I should sit to him for my portrait. When a soul draws a body in the great lottery of life, where every one is sure of a prize, such as it is, the said soul inspects the said body with the same curious interest with which one who has ventured into a "gift enterprise" examines the "massive silver pencil-case" with the coppery smell and impressible tube, or the "splendid gold ring" with the questionable specific gravity, which it has been his fortune to obtain in addition to his purchase. The soul, having studied the article of which it finds itself proprietor, thinks, after a time, it knows it pretty well. But there is this difference between its view and that of a person looking at us:--we look from within, and see nothing but the mould formed by the elements in which we are incased; other observers look from without, and see us as living statues. To be sure, by the aid of mirrors, we get a few glimpses of our outside aspect; but this occasional impression is always modified by that look of the soul from within outward which none but ourselves can take. A portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to us. The artist looks only from without. He sees us, too, with a hundred aspects on our faces we are never likely to see. No genuine expression can be studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass. More than this; he sees us in a way in which many of our friends or acquaintances never see us. Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. For, in the first place, each puts a special reflection of himself upon us, on the principle of assimilation you found referred to in my last record, if you happened to read that document. And secondly, each of our friends is capable of seeing just so far, and no farther, into our face, and each sees in it the particular thing that he looks for. Now the artist, if he is truly an artist, does not take any one of these special views. Suppose he should copy you as you appear to the man who wants your name to a subscription-list, you could hardly expect a friend who entertains you to recognize the likeness to the smiling face which sheds its radiance at his board. Even within your own family, I am afraid there is a face which the rich uncle knows, that is not so familiar to the poor relation. The artist must take one or the other, or something compounded of the two, or something different from either. What the daguerreotype and photograph do is to give the features and one particular look, the very look which kills all expression, that of self-consciousness. The artist throws you off your guard, watches you in movement and in repose, puts your face through its exercises, observes its transitions, and so gets the whole range of its expression. Out of all this he forms an ideal portrait, which is not a copy of your exact look at any one time or to any particular person. Such a portrait cannot be to everybody what the ungloved call "as nat'ral as life." Every good picture, therefore, must be considered wanting in resemblance by many persons. There is one strange revelation which comes out, as the artist shapes your features from his outline. It is that you resemble so many relatives to whom you yourself never had noticed any particular likeness in your countenance. He is at work at me now, when I catch some of these resemblances, thus: There! that is just the look my father used to have sometimes; I never thought I had a sign of it. The mother's eyebrow and grayish- blue eye, those I knew I had. But there is a something which recalls a smile that faded away from my sister's lips--how many years ago! I thought it so pleasant in her, that I love myself better for having a trace of it. Are we not young? Are we not fresh and blooming? Wait, a bit. The artist takes a mean little brush and draws three fine lines, diverging outwards from the eye over the temple. Five years. --The artist draws one tolerably distinct and two faint lines, perpendicularly between the eyebrows. Ten years. --The artist breaks up the contours round the mouth, so that they look a little as a hat does that has been sat upon and recovered itself, ready, as one would say, to crumple up again in the same creases, on smiling or other change of feature. --Hold on! Stop that! Give a young fellow a chance! Are we not whole years short of that interesting period of life when Mr. Balzac says that a man, etc., etc., etc.? There now! That is ourself, as we look after finishing an article, getting a three-mile pull with the ten-foot sculls, redressing the wrongs of the toilet, and standing with the light of hope in our eye and the reflection of a red curtain on our cheek. Is he not a POET that painted us? "Blest be the art that can immortalize!" COWPER. --Young folks look on a face as a unit; children who go to school with any given little John Smith see in his name a distinctive appellation, and in his features as special and definite an expression of his sole individuality as if he were the first created of his race: As soon as we are old enough to get the range of three or four generations well in hand, and to take in large family histories, we never see an individual in a face of any stock we know, but a mosaic copy of a pattern, with fragmentary tints from this and that ancestor. The analysis of a face into its ancestral elements requires that it should be examined in the very earliest infancy, before it has lost that ancient and solemn look it brings with it out of the past eternity; and again in that brief space when Life, the mighty sculptor, has done his work, and Death, his silent servant, lifts the veil and lets us look at the marble lines he has wrought so faithfully; and lastly, while a painter who can seize all the traits of a countenance is building it up, feature after feature, from the slight outline to the finished portrait. --I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we learn to look upon our bodies more and more as a temporary possession and less and less as identified with ourselves. In early years, while the child "feels its life in every limb," it lives in the body and for the body to a very great extent. It ought to be so. There have been many very interesting children who have shown a wonderful indifference to the things of earth and an extraordinary development of the spiritual nature. There is a perfect literature of their biographies, all alike in their essentials; the same "disinclination to the usual amusements of childhood "; the same remarkable sensibility; the same docility; the same conscientiousness; in short, an almost uniform character, marked by beautiful traits, which we look at with a painful admiration. It will be found that most of these children are the subjects of some constitutional unfitness for living, the most frequent of which I need not mention. They are like the beautiful, blushing, half-grown fruit that falls before its time because its core is gnawed out. They have their meaning,--they do not-live in vain,--but they are windfalls. I am convinced that many healthy children are injured morally by being forced to read too much about these little meek sufferers and their spiritual exercises. Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest- angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind " anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in his own words, "blow for tub No. 11," or whatever it may be;--isn't that a pretty nice sort of a boy, though he has not got anything the matter with him that takes the taste of this world out? Now, when you put into such a hot-blooded, hard- fisted, round-cheeked little rogue's hand a sad-looking volume or pamphlet, with the portrait of a thin, white-faced child, whose life is really as much a training for death as the last month of a condemned criminal's existence, what does he find in common between his own overflowing and exulting sense of vitality and the experiences of the doomed offspring of invalid parents? The time comes when we have learned to understand the music of sorrow, the beauty of resigned suffering, the holy light that plays over the pillow of those who die before their time, in humble hope and trust. But it is not until he has worked his way through the period of honest hearty animal existence, which every robust child should make the most of,--not until he has learned the use of his various faculties, which is his first duty,--that a boy of courage and animal vigor is in a proper state to read these tearful records of premature decay. I have no doubt that disgust is implanted in the minds of many healthy children by early surfeits of pathological piety. I do verily believe that He who took children in His arms and blessed them loved the healthiest and most playful of them just as well as those who were richest in the tuberculous virtues. I know what I am talking about, and there are more parents in this country who will be willing to listen to what I say than there are fools to pick a quarrel with me. In the sensibility and the sanctity which often accompany premature decay I see one of the most beautiful instances of the principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence. But to get the spiritual hygiene of robust natures out of the exceptional regimen of invalids is just simply what we Professors call "bad practice"; and I know by experience that there are worthy people who not only try it on their own children, but actually force it on those of their neighbors. --Having been photographed, and stereographed, and chromatographed, or done in colors, it only remained to be phrenologized. A polite note from Messrs. Bumpus and Crane, requesting our attendance at their Physiological Emporium, was too tempting to be resisted. We repaired to that scientific Golgotha. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane are arranged on the plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,--so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice versa. The more particular speciality of one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,--that of the other to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counterful of books with taking titles. I wonder if the picture of the brain is there, "approved" by a noted Phrenologist, which was copied from my, the Professor's, folio plate, in the work of Gall and Spurzheim. An extra convolution, No. 9, Destructiveness, according to the list beneath, which was not to be seen in the plate, itself a copy of Nature, was very liberally supplied by the artist, to meet the wants of the catalogue of "organs." Professor Bumpus is seated in front of a row of women,-- horn-combers and gold-beaders, or somewhere about that range of life,--looking so credulous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe Smith should come along, he could string the whole lot of them on his cheapest lie, as a boy strings a dozen "shiners" on a stripped twig of willow. The Professor (meaning ourselves) is in a hurry, as usual; let the horn-combers wait,--he shall be bumped without inspecting the antechamber. Tape round the head,--22 inches. (Come on, old 23 inches, if you think you are the better man!) Feels thorax and arm, and nuzzles round among muscles as those horrid old women poke their fingers into the salt-meat on the provision-stalls at the Quincy Market. Vitality, No. 5 or 6, or something or other. Victuality, (organ at epigastrium,) some other number equally significant. Mild champooing of head now commences. 'Extraordinary revelations! Cupidiphilous, 6! Hymeniphilous, 6 +! Paediphilous, 5! Deipniphilous, 6! Gelasmiphilous, 6! Musikiphilous, 5! Uraniphilous, 5! Glossiphilous, 8!! and so on. Meant for a linguist. --Invaluable information. Will invest in grammars and dictionaries immediately. --I have nothing against the grand total of my phrenological endowments. I never set great store by my head, and did not think Messrs. Bumpus and Crane would give me so good a lot of organs as they did, especially considering that I was a dead-head on that occasion. Much obliged to them for their politeness. They have been useful in their way by calling attention to important physiological facts. (This concession is due to our immense bump of Candor.) A short Lecture on Phrenology, read to the Boarders at our Breakfast-Table. I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of a Pseudo-science. A Pseudo-science consists of a nomenclature, with a self-adjusting arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some lucrative practical application. Its professors and practitioners are usually shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink and laugh a good deal among themselves. The believing multitude consists of women of both sexes, feeble minded inquirers, poetical optimists, people who always get cheated in buying horses, philanthropists who insist on hurrying up the millennium, and others of this class, with here and there a clergyman, less frequently a lawyer, very rarely a physician, and almost never a horse-jockey or a member of the detective police. --I do not say that Phrenology was one of the Pseudo-sciences. A Pseudo-science does not necessarily consist wholly of lies. It may contain many truths, and even valuable ones. The rottenest bank starts with a little specie. It puts out a thousand promises to pay on the strength of a single dollar, but the dollar is very commonly a good one. The practitioners of the Pseudo-sciences know that common minds, after they have been baited with a real fact or two, will jump at the merest rag of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we have one fact found us, we are very apt to supply the next out of our own imagination. (How many persons can read Judges xv. 16 correctly the first time?) The Pseudo-sciences take advantage of this. --I did not say that it was so with Phrenology. I have rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was something in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly agreed, promises intellect; one that is "villanous low" and has a huge hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as rarely met an unbiassed and sensible man who really believed in the bumps. It is observed, however, that persons with what the Phrenologists call "good heads" are more prone than others toward plenary belief in the doctrine. It is so hard to prove a negative, that, if a man should assert that the moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulable substance of the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, I might be puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunar cheese, I call on him to prove the truth of the Gaseous nature of our satellite, before I purchase. It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological statement. It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved, and cannot be, by the common course of argument. The walls of the head are double, with a great air-chamber between them, over the smallest and most closely crowded "organs." Can you tell how much money there is in a safe, which also has thick double walls, by kneading its knobs with your fingers? So when a man fumbles about my forehead, and talks about the organs of Individuality, Size, etc., I trust him as much as I should if he felt of the outside of my strong-box and told me that there was a five-dollar or a ten- dollar-bill under this or that particular rivet. Perhaps there is; only he does n't know anything about at. But this is a point that I, the Professor, understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, better than you do. The next argument you will all appreciate. I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of Phrenology, which is very similar to that of the Pseudo-sciences. An example will show it most conveniently. A. is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him and find a good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact for Phrenology. Casts and drawings of A. are multiplied, and the bump does not lose in the act of copying. --I did not say it gained. -- What do you look so for? (to the boarders.) Presently B. turns up, a bigger thief than A. But B. has no bump at all over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology. --Not a bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is? That's the reason B. stole. And then comes C., ten times as much a thief as either A. or B.,-- used to steal before he was weaned, and would pick one of his own pockets and put its contents in another, if he could find no other way of committing petty larceny. Unfortunately, C. has a hollow, instead of a bump, over Acquisitiveness. Ah, but just look and see what a bump of Alimentiveness! Did not C. buy nuts and gingerbread, when a boy, with the money he stole? Of course you see why he is a thief, and how his example confirms our noble science. At last comes along a case which is apparently a settler, for there is a little brain with vast and varied powers,--a case like that of Byron, for instance. Then comes out the grand reserve-reason which covers everything and renders it simply impossible ever to corner a Phrenologist. "It is not the size alone, but the quality of an organ, which determines its degree of power." Oh! oh! I see. --The argument may be briefly stated thus by the Phrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient. It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to the Pseudo-sciences. I did not say it was a Pseudo-science. I have often met persons who have been altogether struck up and amazed at the accuracy with which some wandering Professor of Phrenology had read their characters written upon their skulls. Of course the Professor acquires his information solely through his cranial inspections and manipulations. --What are you laughing at? (to the boarders.)--But let us just suppose, for a moment, that a tolerably cunning fellow, who did not know or care anything about Phrenology, should open a shop and undertake to read off people's characters at fifty cents or a dollar apiece. Let us see how well he could get along without the "organs." I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I would invest one hundred dollars, more or less, in casts of brains, skulls, charts, and other matters that would make the most show for the money. That would do to begin with. I would then advertise myself as the celebrated Professor Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, and wait for my first customer. My first customer is a middle-aged man. I look at him,--ask him a question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hang of him, I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his skull, dictating as follows: SCALE FROM 1 TO 10. LIST OF FACULTIES FOR PRIVATE NOTES FOR MY PUPIL. CUSTOMER. Each to be accompanied with a wink. Amativeness, 7. Most men love the conflicting sex, and all men love to be told they do. Alimentiveness, 8. Don't you see that he has burst off his lowest waistcoat-button with feeding,--hey Acquisitiveness, 8. Of course. A middle-aged Yankee. Approbativeness 7+. Hat well brushed. Hair ditto. Mark the effect of that plus sign. Self-Esteem 6. His face shows that. Benevolence 9. That'll please him. Conscientiousness 8« That fraction looks first-rate. Mirthfulness 7 Has laughed twice since he came in. Ideality 9 That sounds well. Form, Size, Weight, 4 to 6. Average everything that Color, Locality, cannot be guessed. Eventuality, etc. etc. And so of the other faculties. Of course, you know, that isn't the way the Phrenologists do. They go only by the bumps. --What do you keep laughing so for? (to the boarders.) I only said that is the way I should practise "Phrenology" for a living. End of my Lecture. --The Reformers have good heads, generally. Their faces are commonly serene enough, and they are lambs in private intercourse, even though their voices may be like The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore, when heard from the platform. Their greatest spiritual danger is from the perpetual flattery of abuse to which they are exposed. These lines are meant to caution them. SAINT ANTHONY THE REFORMER. HIS TEMPTATION. No fear lest praise should make us proud! We know how cheaply that is won; The idle homage of the crowd Is proof of tasks as idly done. A surface-smile may pay the toil That follows still the conquering Right, With soft, white hands to dress the spoil That sunbrowned valor clutched in fight. Sing the sweet song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways Thy verse distils like evening dew. But speak in words of living power,-- They fall like drops of scalding rain That plashed before the burning shower Swept o'er the cities of the plain! Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,-- Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, And, smitten through their leprous mail, Strike right and left in hope to sting. If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath, Thy feet on earth, thy heart above, Canst walk in peace thy kingly path, Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,-- Too kind for bitter words to grieve, Too firm for clamor to dismay, When Faith forbids thee to believe, And Meekness calls to disobey, -- Ah, then beware of mortal pride! The smiling pride that calmly scorns Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed In laboring on thy crown of thorns! IX One of our boarders--perhaps more than one was concerned in it--sent in some questions to me, the other day, which, trivial as some of them are, I felt bound to answer. 1.--Whether a lady was ever known to write a letter covering only a single page? To this I answered, that there was a case on record where a lady had but half a sheet of paper and no envelope; and being obliged to send through the post-office, she covered only one side of the paper (crosswise, lengthwise, and diagonally). 2.--What constitutes a man a gentleman? To this I gave several answers, adapted to particular classes of questioners. a. Not trying to be a gentleman. b. Self-respect underlying courtesy. c. Knowledge and observance of the fitness of things in social intercourse. d. f. s. d. (as many suppose.) 3.--Whether face or figure is most attractive in the female sex? Answered in the following epigram, by a young man about town: Quoth Tom, "Though fair her features be, It is her figure pleases me." "What may her figure be?" I cried. "One hundred thousand!" he replied. When this was read to the boarders, the young man John said he should like a chance to "step up" to a figger of that kind, if the girl was one of the right sort. The landlady said them that merried for money didn't deserve the blessin' of a good wife. Money was a great thing when them that had it made a good use of it. She had seen better days herself, and knew what it was never to want for anything. One of her cousins merried a very rich old gentleman, and she had heerd that he said he lived ten year longer than if he'd staid by himself without anybody to take care of him. There was nothin' like a wife for nussin' sick folks and them that couldn't take care of themselves. The young man John got off a little wink, and pointed slyly with his thumb in the direction of our diminutive friend, for whom he seemed to think this speech was intended. If it was meant for him, he did n't appear to know that it was. Indeed, he seems somewhat listless of late, except when the conversation falls upon one of those larger topics that specially interest him, and then he grows excited, speaks loud and fast, sometimes almost savagely,--and, I have noticed once or twice, presses his left hand to his right side, as if there were something that ached, or weighed, or throbbed in that region. While he speaks in this way, the general conversation is interrupted, and we all listen to him. Iris looks steadily in his face, and then he will turn as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes with his own melancholy gaze. I do believe that they have some kind of understanding together, that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and that there is a mystery, which is going to break upon us all of a sudden, involving the relations of these two persons. From the very first, they have taken to each other. The one thing they have in common is the heroic will. In him, it shows itself in thinking his way straightforward, in doing battle for "free trade and no right of search" on the high seas of religious controversy, and especially in fighting the battles of his crooked old city. In her, it is standing up for her little friend with the most queenly disregard of the code of boarding-house etiquette. People may say or look what they like,--she will have her way about this sentiment of hers. The Poor Relation is in a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,--and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind blows from, she will catch her "death o' cold." The landlady herself came to him one day, as I have found out, and tried to persuade him to hold his tongue. --The boarders was gettin' uneasy,--she said,--and some of 'em would go, she mistrusted, if he talked any more about things that belonged to the ministers to settle. She was a poor woman, that had known better days, but all her livin' depended on her boarders, and she was sure there was n't any of 'em she set so much by as she did by him; but there was them that never liked to hear about sech things, except on Sundays. The Little Gentleman looked very smiling at the landlady, who smiled even more cordially in return, and adjusted her cap-ribbon with an unconscious movement,--a reminiscence of the long-past pairing-time, when she had smoothed her locks and softened her voice, and won her mate by these and other bird-like graces. --My dear Madam,--he said,--I will remember your interests, and speak only of matters to which I am totally indifferent. --I don't doubt he meant this; but a day or two after, something stirred him up, and I heard his voice uttering itself aloud, thus: -It must be done, Sir! --he was saying,--it must be done! Our religion has been Judaized, it has been Romanized, it has been Orientalized, it has been Anglicized, and the time is at hand when it must be AMERICANIZED! Now, Sir, you see what Americanizing is in politics;--it means that a man shall have a vote because he is a man,--and shall vote for whom he pleases, without his neighbor's interference. If he chooses to vote for the Devil, that is his lookout;--perhaps he thinks the Devil is better than the other candidates; and I don't doubt he's often right, Sir. Just so a man's soul has a vote in the spiritual community; and it doesn't do, Sir, or it won't do long, to call him "schismatic" and "heretic" and those other wicked names that the old murderous Inquisitors have left us to help along "peace and goodwill to men"! As long as you could catch a man and drop him into an oubliette, or pull him out a few inches longer by machinery, or put a hot iron through his tongue, or make him climb up a ladder and sit on a board at the top of a stake so that he should be slowly broiled by the fire kindled round it, there was some sense in these words; they led to something. But since we have done with those tools, we had better give up those words. I should like to see a Yankee advertisement like this! --(the Little Gentleman laughed fiercely as he uttered the words,--) --Patent thumb-screws,--will crush the bone in three turns. --The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet, only five dollars! --The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to stretch a man six inches in twenty minutes,--money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory. I should like to see such an advertisement, I say, Sir! Now, what's the use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and bodice, and the dry pan and gradual fire, if we can't have the things themselves, Sir? What's the use of painting the fire round a poor fellow, when you think it won't do to kindle one under him,--as they did at Valencia or Valladolid, or wherever it was? --What story is that?--I said. Why,--he answered,--at the last auto-da-fe, in 1824 or '5, or somewhere there,--it's a traveller's story, but a mighty knowing traveller he is,--they had a "heretic" to use up according to the statutes provided for the crime of private opinion. They could n't quite make up their minds to burn him, so they only hung him in a hogshead painted all over with flames! No, Sir! when a man calls you names because you go to the ballot- box and vote for your candidate, or because you say this or that is your opinion, he forgets in which half of the world he was born, Sir! It won't be long, Sir, before we have Americanized religion as we have Americanized government; and then, Sir, every soul God sends into the world will be good in the face of all men for just so much of His "inspiration" as "giveth him understanding"! --None of my words, Sir! none of my words! --If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, what does love look like when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,-- That all her features were resigned To this sole image in her mind. But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he says anything about the soul and the soul's atmosphere, religion. Women are twice as religious as men;--all the world knows that. Whether they are any better, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,--from their teachings, from their example,--above all, from their pure affections. Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood. Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,--which every sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children, to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long a period. The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements as to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle of spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she did was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else the disapproving conscience, when she had done "right" or "wrong"? No "shoulder-striker" hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why, I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is no better than a plastic image. -- How old was I at the time?--I suppose about 5823 years old,--that is, counting from Archbishop Usher's date of the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulated intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and most of the world's teachers. --Old books, as you well know, are books of the world's youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has passed out of them long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with which it was mingled. And so Iris--having thrown off that first lasso which not only fetters, but chokes those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by the windpipe had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of the neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of the Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround us in our early years. The child must have some place of worship. What would a young girl be who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to choose. Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her to this or that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably opened, she would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact, that two churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be divided her affections. The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look of a Roman Catholic chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there were reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant arrangements. Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs responsive to each other, and there was much bowing, with very loud responding, and a long service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as Judas used to hold in the old pictures, was carried round to receive contributions. Everything was done not only "decently and in order," but, perhaps one might say, with a certain air of magnifying their office on the part of the dignified clergymen, often two or three in number. The music and the free welcome were grateful to Iris, and she forgot her prejudices at the door of the chapel. For this was a church with open doors, with seats for all classes and all colors alike,--a church of zealous worshippers after their faith, of charitable and serviceable men and women, one that took care of its children and never forgot its poor, and whose people were much more occupied in looking out for their own souls than in attacking the faith of their neighbors. In its mode of worship there was a union of two qualities,--the taste and refinement, which the educated require just as much in their churches as elsewhere, and the air of stateliness, almost of pomp, which impresses the common worshipper, and is often not without its effect upon those who think they hold outward forms as of little value. Under the half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint Polycarp, the young girl found a devout and loving and singularly cheerful religious spirit. The artistic sense, which betrayed itself in the dramatic proprieties of its ritual, harmonized with her taste. The mingled murmur of the loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of its dull tic-tac, articulated itself as "Good Lord, deliver us! "--the sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side to side, the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,--why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of Saint Polycarp? The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship, had introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such of our boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking over the same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking that two such young and handsome persons could hardly worship together in safety for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their prayer-book. By-and-by the silken bag was handed round. --I don't believe she will; so awkward, you know;- besides, she only came by invitation. There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,--and sure enough, her little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless her! she has n't much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it, and that is all Heaven asks. --That was the first time I noticed these young people together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming propriety,--in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with them, whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good behavior. A day or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had left his seat, which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that of Iris, so that they have been as far removed from each other as they could be at the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down the table. Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid not to see it! How could it be otherwise?--Did you speak, Madam? I beg your pardon. (To my lady-reader.) I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not with the throng of men and women and staring children. I, the Professor, on the other hand, am a regular church-goer. I should go for various reasons if I did not love it; but I am happy enough to find great pleasure in the midst of devout multitudes, whether I can accept all their creeds or not. One place of worship comes nearer than the rest to my ideal standard, and to this it was that I carried our young girl. The Church of the Galileans, as it is called, is even humbler in outside pretensions than the Church of Saint Polycarp. Like that, it is open to all comers. The stranger who approaches it looks down a quiet street and sees the plainest of chapels,--a kind of wooden tent, that owes whatever grace it has to its pointed windows and the high, sharp roofs--traces, both, of that upward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which soared aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the sky as the spike of a flowering aloe from the cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below. This suggestion of medieval symbolism, aided by a minute turret in which a hand-bell might have hung and found just room enough to turn over, was all of outward show the small edifice could boast. Within there was very little that pretended to be attractive. A small organ at one side, and a plain pulpit, showed that the building was a church; but it was a church reduced to its simplest expression: Yet when the great and wise monarch of the East sat upon his throne, in all the golden blaze of the spoils of Ophir and the freights of the navy of Tarshish, his glory was not like that of this simple chapel in its Sunday garniture. For the lilies of the field, in their season, and the fairest flowers of the year, in due succession, were clustered every Sunday morning over the preacher's desk. Slight, thin-tissued blossoms of pink and blue and virgin white in early spring, then the full-breasted and deep-hearted roses of summer, then the velvet-robed crimson and yellow flowers of autumn, and in the winter delicate exotics that grew under skies of glass in the false summers of our crystal palaces without knowing that it was the dreadful winter of New England which was rattling the doors and frosting the panes,--in their language the whole year told its history of life and growth and beauty from that simple desk. There was always at least one good sermon,--this floral homily. There was at least one good prayer,--that brief space when all were silent, after the manner of the Friends at their devotions. Here, too, Iris found an atmosphere of peace and love. The same gentle, thoughtful faces, the same cheerful but reverential spirit, the same quiet, the same life of active benevolence. But in all else how different from the Church of Saint Polycarp! No clerical costume, no ceremonial forms, no carefully trained choirs. A liturgy they have, to be sure, which does not scruple to borrow from the time-honored manuals of devotion, but also does not hesitate to change its expressions to its own liking. Perhaps the good people seem a little easy with each other;--they are apt to nod familiarly, and have even been known to whisper before the minister came in. But it is a relief to get rid of that old Sunday--no,--Sabbath face, which suggests the idea that the first day of the week is commemorative of some most mournful event. The truth is, these brethren and sisters meet very much as a family does for its devotions, not putting off their humanity in the least, considering it on the whole quite a delightful matter to come together for prayer and song and good counsel from kind and wise lips. And if they are freer in their demeanor than some very precise congregations, they have not the air of a worldly set of people. Clearly they have not come to advertise their tailors and milliners, nor for the sake of exchanging criticisms on the literary character of the sermon they may hear. There is no restlessness and no restraint among these quiet, cheerful worshippers. One thing that keeps them calm and happy during the season so evidently trying to many congregations is, that they join very generally in the singing. In this way they get rid of that accumulated nervous force which escapes in all sorts of fidgety movements, so that a minister trying to keep his congregation still reminds one of a boy with his hand over the nose of a pump which another boy is working,--this spirting impatience of the people is so like the jets that find their way through his fingers, and the grand rush out at the final Amen! has such a wonderful likeness to the gush that takes place when the boy pulls his hand away, with immense relief, as it seems, to both the pump and the officiating youngster. How sweet is this blending of all voices and all hearts in one common song of praise! Some will sing a little loud, perhaps,--and now and then an impatient chorister will get a syllable or two in advance, or an enchanted singer so lose all thought of time and place in the luxury of a closing cadence that he holds on to the last semi-breve upon his private responsibility; but how much more of the spirit of the old Psalmist in the music of these imperfectly trained voices than in the academic niceties of the paid performers who take our musical worship out of our hands! I am of the opinion that the creed of the Church of the Galileans is not laid down in as many details as that of the Church of Saint Polycarp. Yet I suspect, if one of the good people from each of those churches had met over the bed of a suffering fellow-creature, or for the promotion of any charitable object, they would have found they had more in common than all the special beliefs or want of beliefs that separated them would amount to. There are always many who believe that the fruits of a tree afford a better test of its condition than a statement of the composts with which it is dressed, though the last has its meaning and importance, no doubt. Between these two churches, then, our young Iris divides her affections. But I doubt if she listens to the preacher at either with more devotion than she does to her little neighbor when he talks of these matters. What does he believe? In the first place, there is some deep-rooted disquiet lying at the bottom of his soul, which makes him very bitter against all kinds of usurpation over the right of private judgment. Over this seems to lie a certain tenderness for humanity in general, bred out of life-long trial, I should say, but sharply streaked with fiery lines of wrath at various individual acts of wrong, especially if they come in an ecclesiastical shape, and recall to him the days when his mother's great-grandmother was strangled on Witch Hill, with a text from the Old Testament for her halter. With all this, he has a boundless belief in the future of this experimental hemisphere, and especially in the destiny of the free thought of its northeastern metropolis. --A man can see further, Sir,--he said one day,--from the top of Boston State House, and see more that is worth seeing, than from all the pyramids and turrets and steeples in all the places in the world! No smoke, Sir; no fog, Sir; and a clean sweep from the Outer Light and the sea beyond it to the New Hampshire mountains! Yes, Sir,--and there are great truths that are higher than mountains and broader than seas, that people are looking for from the tops of these hills of ours;--such as the world never saw, though it might have seen them at Jerusalem, if its eyes had been open! --Where do they have most crazy people? Tell me that, Sir! I answered, that I had heard it said there were more in New England than in most countries, perhaps more than in any part of the world. Very good, Sir,--he answered. --When have there been most people killed and wounded in the course of this century? During the wars of the French Empire, no doubt,--I said. That's it! that's it! --said the Little Gentleman;--where the battle of intelligence is fought, there are most minds bruised and broken! We're battling for a faith here, Sir. The divinity-student remarked, that it was rather late in the world's history for men to be looking out for a new faith. I did n't say a new faith,--said the Little Gentleman;--old or new, it can't help being different here in this American mind of ours from anything that ever was before; the people are new, Sir, and that makes the difference. One load of corn goes to the sty, and makes the fat of swine,--another goes to the farm-house, and becomes the muscle that clothes the right arms of heroes. It is n't where a pawn stands on the board that makes the difference, but what the game round it is when it is on this or that square. Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing, and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society, without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world sails, and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was a great raft built about two thousand years ago,-- call it an ark, rather,--the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made to be launched right out into the open waves of life,--and here it has been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the water, men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who should have the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side because they could not agree about the points of compass, but the great vessel never getting afloat with its freight of nations and their rulers;--and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where it is lying!" It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan was n't deep enough, and the Tiber was n't deep enough, and the Rhone was n't deep enough, and the Thames was n't deep enough, and perhaps the Charles is n't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I love to hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and making the ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't know, Sir,--but I do think she stirs a little,-- I do believe she slides;--and when I think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted mother of American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the greatest cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little Boston! --Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism, especially when it finished with the last two words. And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the part which, as he pleases himself with believing, his own city is to take in that consummation of human development to which he looks forward. Presently she looked into his face with a changed expression,--the anxiety of a mother that sees her child suffering. You are not well,--she said. I am never well,--he answered. --His eyes fell mechanically on the death's-head ring he wore on his right hand. She took his hand as if it had been a baby's, and turned the grim device so that it should be out of sight. One slight, sad, slow movement of the head seemed to say, "The death-symbol is still there!" A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to know what is going on,-- reads books, old and new,--has many recent publications sent him, they tell me, but, what is more curious, keeps up with the everyday affairs of the world, too. Whether he hears everything that is said with preternatural acuteness, or whether some confidential friend visits him in a quiet way, is more than I can tell. I can make nothing more of the noises I hear in his room than my old conjectures. The movements I mention are less frequent, but I often hear the plaintive cry,--I observe that it is rarely laughing of late;--I never have detected one articulate word, but I never heard such tones from anything but a human voice. There has been, of late, a deference approaching to tenderness, on the part of the boarders generally so far as he is concerned. This is doubtless owing to the air of suffering which seems to have saddened his look of late. Either some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or some hidden disease is at work upon him. --What 's the matter with Little Boston?--said the young man John to me one day. --There a'n't much of him, anyhow; but 't seems to me he looks peakeder than ever. The old woman says he's in a bad way, 'n' wants a puss to take care of him. Them pusses that take care of old rich folks marry 'em sometimes,--'n' they don't commonly live a great while after that. No, Sir! I don't see what he wants to die for, after he's taken so much trouble to live in such poor accommodations as that crooked body of his. I should like to know how his soul crawled into it, 'n' how it's goin' to get out. What business has he to die, I should like to know? Let Ma'am Allen (the gentleman with the diamond) die, if he likes, and be (this is a family-magazine); but we a'n't goin' to have him dyin'. Not by a great sight. Can't do without him anyhow. A'n't it fun to hear him blow off his steam? I believe the young fellow would take it as a personal insult, if the Little Gentleman should show any symptoms of quitting our table for a better world. --In the mean time, what with going to church in company with our young lady, and taking every chance I could get to talk with her, I have found myself becoming, I will not say intimate, but well acquainted with Miss Iris. There is a certain frankness and directness about her that perhaps belong to her artist nature. For, you see, the one thing that marks the true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp, well- defined mental physiognomy. Besides this, many young girls have a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find few among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity. One of these young girls, as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to the top of a jagged, slippery rock lying out in the waves,--an ugly height to get up, and a worse one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of sixteen. Another was in the way of climbing tall trees for crows' nests,--and crows generally know about how far boys can "shin up," and set their household establishments above that high- water mark. Still another of these young ladies I saw for the first time in an open boat, tossing on the ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off a lonely island. She lost all her daring, after she had some girls of her own to look out for. Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible, unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running through them, are often full of character. They come, probably enough, from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such strong colors. The negative blondes, or those women whose tints have faded out as their line of descent has become impoverished, are of various blood, and in them the soul has often become pale with that blanching of the hair and loss of color in the eyes which makes them approach the character of Albinesses. I see in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which, when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward aspiration,--the elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,-- a lift to them, as if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the Gods. I hear her singing sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is there a wild sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic melodies,--such as can come only from the inspiration of the moment,--strangely enough, reminding me of those long passages I have heard from my little neighbor's room, yet of different tone, and by no means to be mistaken for those weird harmonies. I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone, unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding- houses, the centre of all the men's eyes that surround the table, watched with jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation of our landlady, who belongs to the class of women that like to catch others in mischief when they themselves are too mature for indiscretions, (as one sees old rogues turn to thief- catchers,) one of Nature's gendarmerie, clad in a complete suit of wrinkles, the cheapest coat-of-mail against the shafts of the great little enemy,--so surrounded, Iris spans this commonplace household- life of ours with her arch of beauty, as the rainbow, whose name she borrows, looks down on a dreary pasture with its feeding flocks and herds of indifferent animals. These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they will. The female gendarmes are off guard occasionally. The sitting-room has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may come together accidentally, (accidentally, I said, Madam, and I had not the slightest intention of Italicizing the word,) and discuss the social or political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch of a door,--in the shadow of porticoes, and especially on those outside balconies which some of our Southern neighbors call "stoops," the most charming places in the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are in full blow,--as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention it. On such a balcony or "stoop," one evening, I walked with Iris. We were on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,- -my left arm, of course. That leaves one's right arm free to defend the lovely creature, if the rival--odious wretch! attempt, to ravish her from your side. Likewise if one's heart should happen to beat a little, its mute language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the arm you hold begins to tremble, a circumstance like to occur, if you happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the "stoop" to yourselves. We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-inoor, as we called him, was in a corner with our landlady's daughter. The young fellow John was smoking out in the yard. The gendarme was afraid of the evening air, and kept inside, The young Marylander came to the door, looked out and saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and stalked off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and saw the girl's head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind creature this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she does not like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he were not wanted. She had her locked drawing-book under her arm. --Let me take it,--I said. She gave it to me to carry. This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,--said I. She laughed, and said,--No,--not all of you. I was there, of course? Why, no,--she had never taken so much pains with me. Then she would let me see the inside of it? She would think of it. Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it to me. This unlocks my naughty book,--she said,--you shall see it. I am not afraid of you. I don't know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand. --I have no verses for you this month, except these few lines suggested by the season. MIDSUMMER. Here! sweep these foolish leaves away, I will not crush my brains to-day! Look! are the southern curtains drawn? Fetch me a fan, and so begone! Not that,--the palm-tree's rustling leaf Brought from a parching coral-reef! Its breath is heated;--I would swing The broad gray plumes,--the eagle's wing. I hate these roses' feverish blood! Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud, A long-stemmed lily from the lake, Cold as a coiling water-snake. Rain me sweet odors on the air, And wheel me up my Indian chair, And spread some book not overwise Flat out before my sleepy eyes. --Who knows it not,--this dead recoil Of weary fibres stretched with toil, The pulse that flutters faint and low When Summer's seething breezes blow? O Nature! bare thy loving breast And give thy child one hour of rest, One little hour to lie unseen Beneath thy scarf of leafy green! So, curtained by a singing pine, Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay In sweeter music dies away. X IRIS, HER BOOK I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee, By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee, Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee! For Iris had no mother to infold her, Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder, Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her. She had not learned the mystery of awaking Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching, Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking. Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token! Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken, Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken? She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies, Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances, And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances. Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing, Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring, Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing. Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her? What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her? Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor. And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven, Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven, Save me! oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven? And then--Ah, God! But nay, it little matters Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters, The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters! If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore Had the world nothing she might live to care for? No second self to say her evening prayer for? She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming, Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming. Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher. What if a lonely and unsistered creature Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature, Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded, And double-hued the shining tresses braided, And all the sunlight of the morning shaded? --This her poor book is full of saddest follies, Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies, With summer roses twined and wintry hollies. In the strange crossing of uncertain chances, Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances May fall her little book of dreams and fancies. Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee, Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee, Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee. Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping, Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping. No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping. These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume. As I turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment. Is it quite fair to take advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of a young girl's nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted me with such artless confessions,--self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging a sacred confidence? To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought. She did not know how fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having nobody to tell her story to,--having, as she said in her verses, no musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,--nothing, in short, but the language of pen and pencil,--all the veinings of her nature were impressed on these pages as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the blank sheets which inclose it. It was the same thing which I remember seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years we had one day at our boarding- house. The child was a deaf mute. But its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I have never seen in any other human countenance. I wonder if something of spiritual transparency is not typified in the golden-blonde organization. There are a great many little creatures,--many small fishes, for instance,--which are literally transparent, with the exception of some of the internal organs. The heart can be seen beating as if in a case of clouded crystal. The central nervous column with its sheath runs as a dark stripe through the whole length of the diaphanous muscles of the body. Other little creatures are so darkened with pigment that we can see only their surface. Conspirators and poisoners are painted with black, beady-eyes and swarthy hue; Judas, in Leonardo's picture, is the model of them all. However this may be, I should say there never had been a book like this of Iris,--so full of the heart's silent language, so transparent that the heart itself could be seen beating through it. I should say there never could have been such a book, but for one recollection, which is not peculiar to myself, but is shared by a certain number of my former townsmen. If you think I over-color this matter of the young girl's book, hear this, which there are others, as I just said, besides myself, will tell you is strictly true. THE BOOK OF THE THREE MAIDEN SISTERS. In the town called Cantabridge, now a city, water-veined and gas windpiped, in the street running down to the Bridge, beyond which dwelt Sally, told of in a book of a friend of mine, was of old a house inhabited by three maidens. They left no near kinsfolk, I believe; whether they did or not, I have no ill to speak of them; for they lived and died in all good report and maidenly credit. The house they lived in was of the small, gambrel-roofed cottage pattern, after the shape of Esquires' houses, but after the size of the dwellings of handicraftsmen. The lower story was fitted up as a shop. Specially was it provided with one of those half-doors now so rarely met with, which are to whole doors as spencers worn by old folk are to coats. They speak of limited commerce united with a social or observing disposition--on the part of the shopkeeper,-- allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping off such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. On the door-posts, at either side, above the half-door, hung certain perennial articles of merchandise, of which my memory still has hanging among its faded photographs a kind of netted scarf and some pairs of thick woollen stockings. More articles, but not very many, were stored inside; and there was one drawer, containing children's books, out of which I once was treated to a minute quarto ornamented with handsome cuts. This was the only purchase I ever knew to be made at the shop kept by the three maiden ladies, though it is probable there were others. So long as I remember the shop, the same scarf and, I should say, the same stockings hung on the door- posts. --You think I am exaggerating again, and that shopkeepers would not keep the same article exposed for years. Come to me, the Professor, and I will take you in five minutes to a shop in this city where I will show you an article hanging now in the very place where more than thirty years ago I myself inquired the price of it of the present head of the establishment. [ This was a glass alembic, which hung up in Daniel Henchman's apothecary shop, corner of Cambridge and Chambers streets.] The three maidens were of comely presence, and one of them had had claims to be considered a Beauty. When I saw them in the old meeting-house on Sundays, as they rustled in through the aisles in silks and satins, not gay, but more than decent, as I remember them, I thought of My Lady Bountiful in the history of "Little King Pippin," and of the Madam Blaize of Goldsmith (who, by the way, must have taken the hint of it from a pleasant poem, "Monsieur de la Palisse," attributed to De la Monnoye, in the collection of French songs before me). There was some story of an old romance in which the Beauty had played her part. Perhaps they all had had lovers; for, as I said, they were shapely and seemly personages, as I remember them; but their lives were out of the flower and in the berry at the time of my first recollections. One after another they all three dropped away, objects of kindly attention to the good people round, leaving little or almost nothing, and nobody to inherit it. Not absolutely nothing, of course. There must have been a few old dresses--perhaps some bits of furniture, a Bible, and the spectacles the good old souls read it through, and little keepsakes, such as make us cry to look at, when we find them in old drawers;--such relics there must have been. But there was more. There was a manuscript of some hundred pages, closely written, in which the poor things had chronicled for many years the incidents of their daily life. After their death it was passed round somewhat freely, and fell into my hands. How I have cried and laughed and colored over it! There was nothing in it to be ashamed of, perhaps there was nothing in it to laugh at, but such a picture of the mode of being of poor simple good old women I do believe was never drawn before. And there were all the smallest incidents recorded, such as do really make up humble life, but which die out of all mere literary memoirs, as the houses where the Egyptians or the Athenians lived crumble and leave only their temples standing. I know, for instance, that on a given day of a certain year, a kindly woman, herself a poor widow, now, I trust, not without special mercies in heaven for her good deeds,--for I read her name on a proper tablet in the churchyard a week ago,--sent a fractional pudding from her own table to the Maiden Sisters, who, I fear, from the warmth and detail of their description, were fasting, or at least on short allowance, about that time. I know who sent them the segment of melon, which in her riotous fancy one of them compared to those huge barges to which we give the ungracious name of mudscows. But why should I illustrate further what it seems almost a breach of confidence to speak of? Some kind friend, who could challenge a nearer interest than the curious strangers into whose hands the book might fall, at last claimed it, and I was glad that it should be henceforth sealed to common eyes. I learned from it that every good and, alas! every evil act we do may slumber unforgotten even in some earthly record. I got a new lesson in that humanity which our sharp race finds it so hard to learn. The poor widow, fighting hard to feed and clothe and educate her children, had not forgotten the poorer ancient maidens. I remembered it the other day, as I stood by her place of rest, and I felt sure that it was remembered elsewhere. I know there are prettier words than pudding, but I can't help it,--the pudding went upon the record, I feel sure, with the mite which was cast into the treasury by that other poor widow whose deed the world shall remember forever, and with the coats and garments which the good women cried over, when Tabitha, called by interpretation Dorcas, lay dead in the upper chamber, with her charitable needlework strewed around her. --Such was the Book of the Maiden Sisters. You will believe me more readily now when I tell you that I found the soul of Iris in the one that lay open before me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes a drawing, angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead bird,--some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in my life I have had a letter sealed,--a round spot where the paper is slightly corrugated, and, if there is writing there, the letters are somewhat faint and blurred. Most of the pages were surrounded with emblematic traceries. It was strange to me at first to see how often she introduced those homelier wild-flowers which we call weeds,--for it seemed there was none of them too humble for her to love, and none too little cared for by Nature to be without its beauty for her artist eye and pencil. By the side of the garden-flowers,--of Spring's curled darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketching maidens, of flower-de-luces and morning-glories, nay, oftener than these, and more tenderly caressed by the colored brush that rendered them,--were those common growths which fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine beauty. Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,--just as we see them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields, to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays; the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the red and white clovers, the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,--"the white man's foot," as the Indians called it,--the wiry, jointed stems of that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-grass," and which loves its life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder it with a hoe, as it clings to the cracks of the pavement;--all these plants, and many more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders. --On one of the pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a piano belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that I have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if they were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor's chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held these notes took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for. Above, a long monotonous sweep of waves, leaden- hued, anxious and jaded and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side an Alpine needle, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops had a strange look,-- one would say the cliff was bleeding;--perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with his wings spread over some unseen object. --And on the very next page a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller's "Holy War," in which I recognized without difficulty every boarder at our table in all the glory of the most resplendent caricature--three only excepted,--the Little Gentleman, myself, and one other. I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the girl's little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him. --There is a left arm again, though;--no,--that is from the "Fighting Gladiator,"the "Jeune Heros combattant" of the Louvre;--there is the broad ring of the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate casts of the "Gladiator's" arm look immense; but in its place the limb looks light, almost slender,--such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I looked on that statue.]--Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,--spray of the dry ocean sailed by the "ship of the desert." A herd of buffaloes, uncouth, shaggy-maned, heavy in the forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The buffalo is the lion of the ruminants.] And there is a Norman horse, with his huge, rough collar, echoing, as it were, the natural form of the other beast. And here are twisted serpents; and stately swans, with answering curves in their bowed necks, as if they had snake's blood under their white feathers; and grave, high-shouldered herons standing on one foot like cripples, and looking at life round them with the cold stare of monumental effigies. --A very odd page indeed! Not a creature in it without a curve or a twist, and not one of them a mean figure to look at. You can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe she is trying to idealize what we vulgarly call deformity, which she strives to look at in the light of one of Nature's eccentric curves, belonging to her system of beauty, as the hyperbola, and parabola belong to the conic sections, though we cannot see them as symmetrical and entire figures, like the circle and ellipse. At any rate, I cannot help referring this paradise of twisted spines to some idea floating in her head connected with her friend whom Nature has warped in the moulding. --That is nothing to another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body at times, --if it does not really get freed or half freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of catalepsy? You know what I mean,--transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talking with him and listening to him one day when the boarders moved from the table nearly all at once. But she sat as before, her cheek resting on her hand, her amber eyes wide open and still. I went to her, she was breathing as usual, and her heart was beating naturally enough,--but she did not answer. I bent her arm; it was as plastic as softened wag, and kept the place I gave it. --This will never do, though, and I sprinkled a few drops of water on her forehead. She started and looked round. --I have been in a dream,-- she said;--I feel as if all my strength were in this arm;--give me your hand! --She took my right hand in her left, which looked soft and white enough, but--Good Heaven! I believe she will crack my bones! All the nervous power in her body must have flashed through those muscles; as when a crazy lady snaps her iron window-bars,--she who could hardly glove herself when in her common health. Iris turned pale, and the tears came to her eyes;--she saw she had given pain. Then she trembled, and might have fallen but for me;--the poor little soul had been in one of those trances that belong to the spiritual pathology of higher natures, mostly those of women. To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was coiled,--what, and whether meant for dead or alive, my eyes could not make out. I told you the young girl's soul was in this book. As I turned over the last leaves I could not help starting. There were all sorts of faces among the arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to me; there were features that did not seem new. --Can it be so? Was there ever such innocence in a creature so full of life? She tells her heart's secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need of being questioned! This was no common miss, such as are turned out in scores from the young-lady- factories, with parchments warranting them accomplished and virtuous,--in case anybody should question the fact. I began to understand her;--and what is so charming as to read the secret of a real femme incomprise?--for such there are, though they are not the ones who think themselves uncomprehended women. Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. I have frequently seen children, long exercised by pain and exhaustion, whose features had a strange look of advanced age. Too often one meets such in our charitable institutions. Their faces are saddened and wrinkled, as if their few summers were threescore years and ten. And so, many youthful poets have written as if their hearts were old before their time; their pensive morning twilight has been as cool and saddening as that of evening in more common lives. The profound melancholy of those lines of Shelley, "I could lie down like a tired child And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear " came from a heart, as he says, "too soon grown old,"--at twenty-six years, as dull people count time, even when they talk of poets. I know enough to be prepared for an exceptional nature,--only this gift of the hand in rendering every thought in form and color, as well as in words, gives a richness to this young girl's alphabet of feeling and imagery that takes me by surprise. And then besides, and most of all, I am puzzled at her sudden and seemingly easy confidence in me. Perhaps I owe it to my--Well, no matter! How one must love the editor who first calls him the venerable So-and-So! --I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train. Talent seems, at first, in one sense, higher than genius,--namely, that it is more uniformly and absolutely submitted to the will, and therefore more distinctly human in its character. Genius, on the other hand, is much more like those instincts which govern the admirable movements of the lower creatures, and therefore seems to have something of the lower or animal character. A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend. A poet, like the goose, sails without visible landmarks to unexplored regions of truth, which philosophy has yet to lay down on its atlas. The philosopher gets his track by observation; the poet trusts to his inner sense, and makes the straighter and swifter line. And yet, to look at it in another light, is not even the lowest instinct more truly divine than any voluntary human act done by the suggestion of reason? What is a bee's architecture but an unobstructed divine thought?--what is a builder's approximative rule but an obstructed thought of the Creator, a mutilated and imperfect copy of some absolute rule Divine Wisdom has established, transmitted through a human soul as an image through clouded glass? Talent is a very common family-trait; genius belongs rather to individuals;--just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody's vested ideas,--blasphemy against somebody's O'm, or intangible private truth. --What is the use of my weighing out antitheses in this way, like a rhetorical grocer?--You know twenty men of talent, who are making their way in the world; you may, perhaps, know one man of genius, and very likely do not want to know any more. For a divine instinct, such as drives the goose southward and the poet heavenward, is a hard thing to manage, and proves too strong for many whom it possesses. It must have been a terrible thing to have a friend like Chatterton or Burns. And here is a being who certainly has more than talent, at once poet and artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed,--a woman, too;--and genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem, as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which cannot keep pace with its evolution. I think now you know something of this young person. She wants nothing but an atmosphere to expand in. Now and then one meets with a nature for which our hard, practical New England life is obviously utterly incompetent. It comes up, as a Southern seed, dropped by accident in one of our gardens, finds itself trying to grow and blow into flower among the homely roots and the hardy shrubs that surround it. There is no question that certain persons who are born among us find themselves many degrees too far north. Tropical by organization, they cannot fight for life with our eastern and northwestern breezes without losing the color and fragrance into which their lives would have blossomed in the latitude of myrtles and oranges. Strange effects are produced by suffering any living thing to be developed under conditions such as Nature had not intended for it. A French physiologist confined some tadpoles under water in the dark. Removed from the natural stimulus of light, they did not develop legs and arms at the proper period of their growth, and so become frogs; they swelled and spread into gigantic tadpoles. I have seen a hundred colossal human tadpoles, overgrown Zarvce or embryos; nay, I am afraid we Protestants should look on a considerable proportion of the Holy Father's one hundred and thirty- nine millions as spiritual larvae, sculling about in the dark by the aid of their caudal extremities, instead of standing on their legs, and breathing by gills, instead of taking the free air of heaven into the lungs made to receive it. Of course we never try to keep young souls in the tadpole state, for fear they should get a pair or two of legs by-and-by and jump out of the pool where they have been bred and fed! Never! Never. Never? Now to go back to our plant. You may know, that, for the earlier stages of development of almost any vegetable, you only want air, water, light, and warmth. But by-and-by, if it is to have special complex principles as a part of its organization, they must be supplied by the soil;--your pears will crack, if the root of the tree gets no iron,--your asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you do. Just at the period of adolescence, the mind often suddenly begins to come into flower and to set its fruit. Then it is that many young natures, having exhausted the spiritual soil round them of all it contains of the elements they demand, wither away, undeveloped and uncolored, unless they are transplanted. Pray for these dear young souls! This is the second natural birth;- for I do not speak of those peculiar religious experiences which form the point of transition in many lives between the consciousness of a general relation to the Divine nature and a special personal relation. The litany should count a prayer for them in the list of its supplications; masses should be said for them as for souls in purgatory; all good Christians should remember them as they remember those in peril through travel or sickness or in warfare. I would transport this child to Rome at once, if I had my will. She should ripen under an Italian sun. She should walk under the frescoed vaults of palaces, until her colors deepened to those of Venetian beauties, and her forms were perfected into rivalry with the Greek marbles, and the east wind was out of her soil. Has she not exhausted this lean soil of the elements her growing nature requires? I do not know. The magnolia grows and comes into full flower on Cape Ann, many degrees out of its proper region. I was riding once along that delicious road between the hills and the sea, when we passed a thicket where there seemed to be a chance of finding it. In five minutes I had fallen on the trees in full blossom, and filled my arms with the sweet, resplendent flowers. I could not believe I was in our cold, northern Essex, which, in the dreary season when I pass its slate-colored, unpainted farm-houses, and huge, square, windy, 'squire-built "mansions," looks as brown and unvegetating as an old rug with its patterns all trodden out and the colored fringe worn from all its border. If the magnolia can bloom in northern New England, why should not a poet or a painter come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, but if the gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only as if by a freak of Nature springs up in a single spot among the beeches and alders, is there not as much reason to think the perfumed flower of imaginative genius will find it hard to be born and harder to spread its leaves in the clear, cold atmosphere of our ultra-temperate zone of humanity? Take the poet. On the one hand, I believe that a person with the poetical faculty finds material everywhere. The grandest objects of sense and thought are common to all climates and civilizations. The sky, the woods, the waters, the storms, life, death love, the hope and vision of eternity,--these are images that write themselves in poetry in every soul which has anything of the divine gift. On the other hand, there is such a thing as a lean, impoverished life, in distinction from a rich and suggestive one. Which our common New England life might be considered, I will not decide. But there are some things I think the poet misses in our western Eden. I trust it is not unpatriotic to mention them in this point of view as they come before us in so many other aspects. There is no sufficient flavor of humanity in the soil out of which we grow. At Cantabridge, near the sea, I have once or twice picked up an Indian arrowhead in a fresh furrow. At Canoe Meadow, in the Berkshire Mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. So everywhere Indian arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows? who cares? There is no history to the red race,--there is hardly an individual in it;--a few instincts on legs and holding a tomahawk--there is the Indian of all time. The story of one red ant is the story of all red ants. So, the poet, in trying to wing his way back through the life that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our watercourses and on our southern hillsides for unknown generations, finds nothing to breathe or fly in; he meets "A vast vacuity! all unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep." But think of the Old World,--that part of it which is the seat of ancient civilization! The stakes of the Britons' stockades are still standing in the bed of the Thames. The ploughman turns up an old Saxon's bones, and beneath them is a tessellated pavement of the time of the Caesars. In Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be of yesterday,--Rome, under her kings, is but an intruding newcomer, as we contemplate her in the shadow of the Cyclopean walls of Fiesole or Volterra. It makes a man human to live on these old humanized soils. He cannot help marching in step with his kind in the rear of such a procession. They say a dead man's hand cures swellings, if laid on them. There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the Past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race. Rousseau came out of one of his sad self-torturing fits, as he cast his eye on the arches of the old Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Gard. I am far from denying that there is an attraction in a thriving railroad village. The new "depot," the smartly-painted pine houses, the spacious brick hotel, the white meeting-house, and the row of youthful and leggy trees before it, are exhilarating. They speak of progress, and the time when there shall be a city, with a His Honor the Mayor, in the place of their trim but transient architectural growths. Pardon me, if I prefer the pyramids. They seem to me crystals formed from a stronger solution of humanity than the steeple of the new meeting-house. I may be wrong, but the Tiber has a voice for me, as it whispers to the piers of the Pons Alius, even more full of meaning than my well-beloved Charles eddying round the piles of West Boston Bridge. Then, again, we Yankees are a kind of gypsies,--a mechanical and migratory race. A poet wants a home. He can dispense with an apple-parer and a reaping-machine. I feel this more for others than for myself, for the home of my birth and childhood has been as yet exempted from the change which has invaded almost everything around it. --Pardon me a short digression. To what small things our memory and our affections attach themselves! I remember, when I was a child, that one of the girls planted some Star-of-Bethlehem bulbs in the southwest gorner of our front-yard. Well, I left the paternal roof and wandered in other lands, and learned to think in the words of strange people. But after many years, as I looked on the little front-yard again, it occurred to me that there used to be some Star- of-Bethlehems in the southwest corner. The grass was tall there, and the blade of the plant is very much like grass, only thicker and glossier. Even as Tully parted the briers and brambles when he hunted for the sphere-containing cylinder that marked the grave of Archimedes, so did I comb the grass with my fingers for my monumental memorial-flower. Nature had stored my keepsake tenderly in her bosom; the glossy, faintly streaked blades were there; they are there still, though they never flower, darkened as they are by the shade of the elms and rooted in the matted turf. Our hearts are held down to our homes by innumerable fibres, trivial as that I have just recalled; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil, you remember, by pinning his head a hair at a time. Even a stone with a whitish band crossing it, belonging to the pavement of the back-yard, insisted on becoming one of the talismans of memory. This intussusception of the ideas of inanimate objects, and their faithful storing away among the sentiments, are curiously prefigured in the material structure of the thinking centre itself. In the very core of the brain, in the part where Des Cartes placed the soul, is a small mineral deposit, consisting, as I have seen it in the microscope, of grape-like masses of crystalline matter. But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the Star-of-Bethlehems, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest home-feeling. Close to our ancient gambrel-roofed house is the dwelling of pleasant old Neighbor Walrus. I remember the sweet honeysuckle that I saw in flower against the wall of his house a few months ago, as long as I remember the sky and stars. That clump of peonies, butting their purple heads through the soil every spring in just the same circle, and by-and-by unpacking their hard balls of buds in flowers big enough to make a double handful of leaves, has come up in just that place, Neighbor Walrus tells me, for more years than I have passed on this planet. It is a rare privilege in our nomadic state to find the home of one's childhood and its immediate neighborhood thus unchanged. Many born poets, I am afraid, flower poorly in song, or not at all, because they have been too often transplanted. Then a good many of our race are very hard and unimaginative;--their voices have nothing caressing; their movements are as of machinery without elasticity or oil. I wish it were fair to print a letter a young girl, about the age of our Iris, wrote a short time since. "I am