OTHER PROSE PIECES (continued 2)

‘Oh, father,’ cried a little sickly voice, ‘let Trumpet sound again.’

‘Crow,’ cried Merrymusk.

The cock threw himself into a posture.

The roof jarred.

‘Does not this disturb Mrs. Merrymusk and the sick children?’

‘Crow again, Trumpet.’

The roof jarred.

‘It does not disturb them, then?’

‘Didn’t you hear ’em ask for it?’

‘How is it, that your sick family like this crowing?’ said I. ‘The cock is a glorious cock, with a glorious 168voice, but not exactly the sort of thing for a sick-chamber, one would suppose. Do they really like it?’

‘Don’t you like it? Don’t it do you good? Ain’t it inspiring? Don’t it impart pluck? give stuff against despair?’

‘All true,’ said I, removing my hat with profound humility before the brave spirit disguised in the base coat.

‘But then,’ said I, still with some misgivings, ‘so loud, so wonderfully clamorous a crow, methinks might be amiss to invalids, and retard their convalescence.’

‘Crow your best now, Trumpet!’

I leaped from my chair. The cock frightened me, like some overpowering angel in the Apocalypse. He seemed crowing over the fall of wicked Babylon, or crowing over the triumph of righteous Joshua in the vale of Askalon. When I regained my composure somewhat, an inquisitive thought occurred to me. I resolved to gratify it.

‘Merrymusk, will you present me to your wife and children?’

‘Yes. Wife, the gentleman wants to step in.’

‘He is very welcome,’ replied a weak voice.

Going behind the curtain, there lay a wasted, but strangely cheerful human face; and that was pretty much all; the body, hid by the counterpane and an old coat, seemed too shrunken to reveal itself through such impediments. At the bedside sat a pale girl, ministering. In another bed lay three children, side by side: three more pale faces.

‘Oh, father, we don’t mislike the gentleman, but let us see Trumpet too.’

At a word, the cock strode behind the screen, and perched himself on the children’s bed. All their wasted eyes gazed at him with a wild and spiritual delight. They 169seemed to sun themselves in the radiant plumage of the cock.

‘Better than a ’pothecary, eh?’ said Merrymusk. ‘This is Dr. Cock himself.’

We retired from the sick ones, and I reseated myself again, lost in thought over this strange household.

‘You seem a glorious independent fellow!’ said I.

‘And I don’t think you a fool, and never did. Sir, you are a trump.’

‘Is there any hope of your wife’s recovery?’ said I, modestly seeking to turn the conversation.

‘Not the least.’

‘The children?’

‘Very little.’

‘It must be a doleful life, then, for all concerned. This lonely solitude—this shanty—hard work—hard times.’

‘Haven’t I Trumpet? He’s the cheerer. He crows through all; crows at the darkest: Glory to God in the highest! Continually he crows it.’

‘Just the import I first ascribed to his crow, Merrymusk, when first I heard it from my hill. I thought some rich nabob owned some costly Shanghai; little weening any such poor man as you owned this lusty cock of a domestic breed.’

‘Poor man like me? Why call me poor? Don’t the cock I own glorify this otherwise inglorious, lean, lantern-jawed land? Didn’t my cock encourage you? And I give you all this glorification away gratis. I am a great philanthropist. I am a rich man—a very rich man, and a very happy one. Crow, Trumpet.’

The roof jarred.

I returned home in a deep mood. I was not wholly at rest concerning the soundness of Merrymusk’s views of things, though full of admiration for him. I was thinking 170on the matter before my door, when I heard the cock crow again. Enough. Merrymusk is right.

Oh, noble cock! oh, noble man!

I did not see Merrymusk for some weeks after this; but hearing the glorious and rejoicing crow, I supposed that all went as usual with him. My own frame of mind remained a rejoicing one. The cock still inspired me. I saw another mortgage piled on my plantation; but only bought another dozen of stout, and a dozen-dozen of Philadelphia porter. Some of my relatives died; I wore no mourning, but for three days drank stout in preference to porter, stout being of the darker colour. I heard the cock crow the instant I received the unwelcome tidings.

‘Your health in this stout, oh, noble cock!’

I thought I would call on Merrymusk again, not having seen or heard of him for some time now. Approaching the place, there were no signs of motion about the shanty. I felt a strange misgiving. But the cock crew from within doors, and the boding vanished. I knocked at the door. A feeble voice bade me enter. The curtain was no longer drawn; the whole house was a hospital now. Merrymusk lay on a heap of old clothes; wife and children were all in their beds. The cock was perched on an old hogshead hoop, swung from the ridge-pole in the middle of the shanty.

‘You are sick, Merrymusk,’ said I, mournfully.

‘No, I am well,’ he feebly answered. ‘Crow, Trumpet.’

I shrunk. The strong soul in the feeble body appalled me.

But the cock crew.

The roof jarred.

‘How is Mrs. Merrymusk?’

‘Well.’

‘And the children?’

‘Well. All well.’

171The last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of triumph over ill. It was too much. His head fell back. A white napkin seemed dropped upon his face. Merrymusk was dead.

An awful fear seized me.

But the cock crew.

The cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. The cock hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome of St. Paul’s. The cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.

I drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. They marked my look of strange affright; they knew what had happened.

‘My good man is just dead,’ breathed the woman lowly. ‘Tell me true?’

‘Dead,’ said I.

The cock crew.

She fell back, without a sigh, and through long-loving sympathy was dead.

The cock crew.

The cock shook sparkles from his golden plumage. The cock seemed in a rapture of benevolent delight. Leaping from the hoop, he strode up majestically to the pile of old clothes, where the wood-sawyer lay, and planted himself, like an armorial supporter, at his side. Then raised one long, musical, triumphant, and final sort of crow, with throat heaved far back, as if he meant the blast to waft the wood-sawyer’s soul sheer up to the seventh heaven. Then he strode, king-like, to the woman’s bed. Another upturned and exultant crow, mated to the former.

The pallor of the children was changed to radiance. Their faces shone celestially through grime and dirt. They seemed children of emperors and kings, disguised. The cock sprang upon their bed, shook himself, and crowed, and crowed again, and still and still again. He 172seemed bent upon crowing the souls of the children out of their wasted bodies. He seemed bent upon rejoining instanter this whole family in the upper air. The children seemed to second his endeavours. Far, deep, intense longings for release transfigured them into spirits before my eyes. I saw angels where they lay.

They were dead.

The cock shook his plumage over them. The cock crew. It was now like a Bravo! like a Hurrah! like a Three-times-three! hip! hip! He strode out of the shanty. I followed. He flew upon the apex of the dwelling, spread wide his wings, sounded one supernatural note, and dropped at my feet.

The cock was dead.

If now you visit that hilly region, you will see, nigh the railroad track, just beneath October Mountain, on the other side of the swamp—there you will see a gravestone, not with skull and cross-bones, but with a lusty cock in act of crowing, chiselled on it, with the words beneath:—

‘O death, where is thy sting?

O grave, where is thy victory?’

The wood-sawyer and his family, with the Signor Beneventano, lie in that spot; and I buried them, and planted the stone, which was a stone made to order; and never since then have I felt the doleful dumps, but under all circumstances crow late and early with a continual crow.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!—oo!—oo!—oo!—oo!

173

THE TWO TEMPLES

(Dedicated to Sheridan Knowles)

[The following letter from the Editor of Putnam’s Monthly was kept by Melville with the rejected MS. of the ‘Two Temples.’

It is now published together with the Essay to which it refers, both for its intrinsic interest and as evidence of the date at which the ‘Two Temples’ was written.]

Office of ‘Putnam’s Monthly,’

10 Park Place, New York,

May 12, 1854.

Dear Sir,—I am very loth to reject the ‘Two Temples’ as the article contains some exquisitely fine description, and some pungent satire, but my editorial experience compels me to be very careful in offending the religious sensibilities of the public, and the moral of the ‘Two Temples’ would sway against us the whole power of the pulpit, to say nothing of Brown, and the congregation of Grace Church.

I will take this opportunity to apologise to you for making a slight alteration in the ‘Encantadas,’ in the last paragraph of the ‘Chola Widow,’ which I thought would be improved by the omission of a few words. That I did not injure the idea, or mutilate the touching figure you introduced, by the slight excision I made, I received good evidence of, in a letter from James R. Lowell, who said that the figure of the cross in the ass’s neck, brought tears into his eyes, and he thought it the finest touch of genius he had seen in prose. The only complaint that I have heard about the ‘Encantadas’ was that it might have been longer.—Very truly, Your obedient, Chas. F. Briggs.

H. Melville, Esq.

Temple First

‘This is too bad,’ said I, ‘here have I tramped this blessed Sunday morning, all the way from the Battery, 174three long miles, for this express purpose, prayer-book under arm; here I am, I say, and, after all, I can’t get in.

‘Too bad. And how disdainful the great, fat-paunched, beadle-faced man looked, when in answer to my humble petition, he said they had no galleries. Just the same as if he’d said, they didn’t entertain poor folks. But I’ll wager something that had my new coat been done last night, as the false tailor promised, and had I, arrayed therein this bright morning, tickled the fat-paunched, beadle-faced man’s palm with a bank-note, then, gallery or no gallery, I would have had a fine seat in this marble-buttressed, stained-glass, spick-and-span new temple.

‘Well, here I am in the porch, very politely bowed out of the nave. I suppose I’m excommunicated; excluded, anyway. That’s a noble string of flashing carriages drawn up along the curb; those champing horses, too, have a haughty curve to their floam-flecked necks. Property of those “miserable sinners” inside, I presume. I don’t a bit wonder they unreservedly confess to such misery as that. See the gold hat-bands too, and other gorgeous trimmings, on those glossy groups of low-voiced gossipers near by. If I were in England now, I should think those chaps a company of royal dukes, right honourable barons, etc. As it is, though, I guess they are only lackeys. By the way, here I dodge about, as if I wanted to get into their aristocratic circle. In fact, it looks a sort of lackeyish to be idly standing outside a fine temple, cooling your heels, during service. I had best move back to the Battery again, peeping into my prayer-book as I go. But hold; don’t I see a small door? Just in there, to one side, if I don’t mistake, is a very low and very narrow vaulted door. None seem to go that way. Ten to one, that identical door leads up into the tower. And now that I think of it, there is usually in these splendid, new-fashioned Gothic temples, 175a curious little window high over the orchestra and everything else, away up among the gilded clouds of the ceiling’s frescoes; and that little window, seems to me, if one could but get there, ought to command a glorious bird’s-eye view of the entire field of operations below. I guess I’ll try it. No one in the porch now. The beadle-faced man is smoothing down some ladies’ cushions, far up the broad aisle, I dare say. Softly now. If the small door ain’t locked, I shall have stolen a march upon the beadle-faced man, and secured a humble seat in the sanctuary, in spite of him. Good! Thanks for this! The door is not locked. Bell-ringer forgot to lock it, no doubt. Now, like any felt-footed grimalkin, up I steal among the leads.’

Ascending some fifty stone steps along a very narrow curving stairway, I found myself on a blank platform forming the second story of the huge square tower. I seemed inside some magic-lantern. On three sides, three gigantic Gothic windows of richly dyed glass, filled the otherwise meagre place with all sorts of sunrises and sunsets, lunar and solar rainbows, falling stars, and other flaming fireworks and pyrotechnics. But after all, it was but a gorgeous dungeon; for I couldn’t look out, any more than if I had been the occupant of a basement cell in ‘the Tombs.’ With some pains, and care not to do any serious harm, I contrived to scratch a minute opening in a great purple star forming the centre of the chief compartment of the middle window; when peeping through, as through goggles, I ducked my head in dismay. The beadle-faced man, with no hat on his head, was just in the act of driving three ragged little boys into the middle of the street; and how could I help trembling at the apprehension of his discovering a rebellious caitiff like me peering down on him from the tower? For, in stealing up here, I had set at naught his high authority. He whom he thought effectually ejected, had burglariously 176returned. For a moment I was almost ready to bide my chance, and get to the side-walk again with all dispatch. But another Jacob’s ladder of lofty steps—wooden ones, this time—allured me to another and still higher flight—in sole hopes of gaining that one secret window where I might, at distance, take part in the proceedings.

Presently I noticed something which, owing to the first marvellous effulgence of the place, had remained unseen till now. Two strong ropes, dropping through holes in the rude ceiling high overhead, fell a sheer length of sixty feet, right through the centre of the space, and dropped in coils upon the floor of the huge magic-lantern. Bell-ropes these, thought I, and quaked. For if the beadle-faced man should learn that a grimalkin was somewhere prowling about the edifice, how easy for him to ring the alarm. Hark!—ah, that’s only the organ—yes—it’s the ‘Venite, exultemus Domino.’ Though an insider in one respect, yet am I but an outsider in another. But for all that, I will not be defrauded of my natural rights. Uncovering my head, and taking out my book, I stood erect, midway up the tall Jacob’s ladder, as if standing among the congregation; and in spirit, if not in place, participated in those devout exultings. That over, I continued my upward path; and after crossing sundry minor platforms and irregular landings all the while on a general ascent, at last I was delighted by catching sight of a small round window in the otherwise dead-wall side of the tower, where the tower attached itself to the main building. In front of the window was a rude narrow gallery, used as a bridge to cross from the lower stairs on one side to the upper stairs on the opposite.

As I drew nigh the spot, I well knew from the added clearness with which the sound of worship came to me, that the window did indeed look down upon the entire 177interior. But I was hardly prepared to find that no pane of glass, stained or unstained, was to stand between me and the far-under aisles and altar. For the purpose of ventilation, doubtless, the opening has been left unsupplied with sash of any sort. But a sheet of fine-woven, gauzy wire-work was in place of that. When, all eagerness, and open book in hand, I first advanced to stand before the window, I involuntarily shrank, as from before the mouth of a furnace, upon suddenly feeling a forceful puff of strange, heated air, blown, as by a blacksmith’s bellows, full into my face and lungs. Yes, thought I, this window is doubtless for ventilation. Nor is it quite so comfortable as I fancied it might be. But beggars must not be choosers. The furnace which makes the people below there feel so snug and cosy in their padded pews, is to me, who stand here upon the naked gallery, cause of grievous trouble. Besides, though my face is scorched, my back is frozen. But I won’t complain. Thanks for this much, anyway, that by hollowing one hand to my ear, and standing a little sideways out of the more violent rush of the torrid current, I can at least hear the priest sufficiently to make my responses in the proper place. Little dream the good congregation away down there, that they have a faithful clerk away up here. Here, too, is a fitter place for sincere devotions, where, though I see, I remain unseen. Depend upon it, no Pharisee would have my pew. I like it, and admire it too, because it is so very high. Height, somehow, hath devotion in it. The arch-angelic anthems are raised in a lofty place. All the good shall go to such an one. Yes, heaven is high.

As thus I mused, the glorious organ burst, like an earthquake, almost beneath my feet; and I heard the invoking cry—‘Govern them and lift them up forever!’ Then down I gazed upon the standing human mass, far, far 178below, whose heads, gleaming in the many-coloured window-stains, showed like beds of spangled pebbles flashing in a Cuban sun. So, at least, I knew they needs would look, if but the wire-woven screen were drawn aside. That wire-woven screen had the effect of casting crape upon all I saw. Only by making allowances for the crape, could I gain a right idea of the scene disclosed.

Surprising, most surprising, too, it was. As said before, the window was a circular one; the part of the tower where I stood was dusky-dark; its height above the congregation-floor could not have been less than ninety or a hundred feet; the whole interior temple was lit by naught but glass dimmed, yet glorified with all imaginable rich and russet hues; the approach to my strange look-out, through perfect solitude, and along rude and dusty ways, enhanced the theatric wonder of the populous spectacle of this sumptuous sanctuary. Book in hand, responses on my tongue, standing in the very posture of devotion, I could not rid my soul of the intrusive thought, that, through some necromancer’s glass, I looked down upon some sly enchanter’s show.

At length the lessons being read, the chants chanted, the white-robed priest, a noble-looking man, with a form like the incomparable Talma’s, gave out from the reading-desk the hymn before the sermon, and then through a side-door vanished from the scene. In good time I saw the same Talma-like and noble-looking man reappear through the same side-door, his white apparel wholly changed for black.

By the melodious tone and persuasive gesture of the speaker, and the all-approving attention of the throng, I knew the sermon must be eloquent and well adapted to an opulent auditory; but owing to the priest’s changed position from the reading-desk to the pulpit, I could not so distinctly hear him now as in the previous 179rites. The text, however, repeated at the outset, and often after quoted, I could not but plainly catch: ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’

At length the benediction was pronounced over the mass of low-inclining foreheads; hushed silence, intense motionlessness followed for a moment, as if the congregation were one of buried, not of living men; when, suddenly, miraculously, like the general rising at the Resurrection, the whole host came to their feet, amid a simultaneous roll, like a great drum-beat, from the enrapturing, overpowering organ. Then, in three freshets—all gay, sprightly nods and becks—the gilded brooks poured down the gilded aisles.

Time for me, too, to go, thought I, as snatching one last look upon the imposing scene, I clasped my book and put it in my pocket. The best thing I can do just now is to slide out unperceived amid the general crowd. Hurrying down the great length of ladder, I soon found myself at the base of the last stone step of the final flight; but started aghast—the door was locked! The bell-ringer, or more probably that for ever prying, suspicious-looking, beadle-faced man has done this. He would not let me in at all at first, and now, with the greatest inconsistency, he will not let me out. But what is to be done? Shall I knock on the door? That will never do. It will only frighten the crowd streaming by, and no one can adequately respond to my summons, except the beadle-faced man; and if he sees me, he will recognise me, and perhaps roundly rate me—poor, humble worshipper—before the entire public. No, I won’t knock. But what then?

For a long time I thought and thought, till at last all was hushed again. Presently a clicking sound admonished me that the church was being closed. In sudden desperation, I gave a rap on the door. But too 180late. It was not heard. I was left alone and solitary in a temple which but a moment before was more populous than many villages.

A strange trepidation of gloom and loneliness gradually stole over me. Hardly conscious of what I did, I reascended the stone steps; higher and higher still, and only paused when once more I felt the hot-air blast from the wire-woven screen. Snatching another peep down into the vast arena, I started at its hushed desertness. The long ranges of grouped columns down the nave, the clusterings of them into copses about the corners of the transept; together with the subdued, dim-streaming light from the autumnal glasses; all assumed a secluded and deep-wooded air. I seemed gazing from Pisgah into the forests of old Canaan. A Puseyitish painting of a Madonna and Child, adorning a lower window, seemed showing to me the sole tenants of this painted wilderness—the true Hagar and her Ishmael.

With added trepidation I stole softly back to the magic-lantern platform; and revived myself a little by peeping through the scratch, upon the unstained light of open day. But what is to be done, thought I again.

I descended to the door; listened there; heard nothing. A third time climbing the stone steps, once more I stood in the magic-lantern, while the full nature of the more than awkwardness of my position came over me.

The first persons who will re-enter the temple, mused I, will doubtless be the beadle-faced man and the bell-ringer. And the first man to come up here, where I am, will be the latter. Now what will be his natural impressions upon first descrying an unknown prowler here? Rather disadvantageous to said prowler’s moral character. Explanations will be vain. Circumstances are against me. True, I may hide, till he retires again. But how do I know that he will then leave the door unlocked? 181Besides, in a position of affairs like this, it is generally best, I think, to anticipate discovery, and by magnanimously announcing yourself, forestall an inglorious detection. But how announce myself? Already have I knocked, and no response. That moment my eye, impatiently ranging round about, fell upon the bell-ropes. They suggested the usual signal made at dwelling-houses to convey tidings of a stranger’s presence. But I was not an outside caller; alas, I was an inside prowler. But one little touch of that bell-rope would be sure to bring relief. I have an appointment at three o’clock. The beadle-faced man must naturally reside very close by the church. He well knows the peculiar ring of his own bell. The slightest possible hum would bring him flying to the rescue. Shall I, or shall I not? But I may alarm the neighbourhood. Ah, no; the merest tingle, not by any means a loud, vociferous peal. Shall I? Better voluntarily bring the beadle-faced man to me, than be involuntarily dragged out from this most suspicious hiding-place. I have to face him, first or last. Better now than later. Shall I?

No more. Creeping to the rope, I gave it a cautious twitch. No sound. A little less warily. All was dumb. Still more strongly. Horrors! My hands, instinctively clapped to my ears, only served to condense the appalling din. Some undreamed-of mechanism seemed to have been touched. The bell must have thrice revolved on its thunderous axis, multiplying the astounding reverberation.

My business is effectually done this time, thought I, all in a tremble. Nothing will serve me now but the reckless confidence of innocence reduced to desperation.

In less than five minutes I heard a running noise beneath me; the lock of the door clicked, and up rushed the beadle-faced man, the perspiration starting from his cheeks.

182‘You! Is it you? The man I turned away this very morning, skulking here? You dare to touch that bell? Scoundrel!’

And ere I could defend myself, seizing me irresistibly in his powerful grasp, he tore me along by the collar, and dragging me down the stairs, thrust me into the arms of three policemen, who, attracted by the sudden toll of the bell, had gathered curiously about the porch.

All remonstrances were vain. The beadle-faced man was bigoted against me. Represented as a lawless violator, and a remorseless disturber of the Sunday peace, I was conducted to the Halls of Justice. Next morning, my rather gentlemanly appearance procured me a private hearing from the judge. But the beadle-faced man must have made a Sunday night call on him. In spite of my coolest explanations, the circumstances of the case were deemed so exceedingly suspicious, that only after paying a round fine, and receiving a stinging reprimand, was I permitted to go at large, and pardoned for having humbly indulged myself in the luxury of public worship.

Temple Second

A stranger in London on Saturday night and without a copper! What hospitalities may such an one expect? What shall I do with myself this weary night? My landlady won’t receive me in her parlour. I owe her money. She looks like flint on me. So in this monstrous rabblement must I crawl about till, say, ten o’clock, and then slink home to my unlighted bed.

The case was this: The week following my inglorious expulsion from the transatlantic temple, I had packed up my trunks and damaged character, and repaired to the paternal, loving town of Philadelphia. There chance threw into my way an interesting young orphan lady 183and her aunt-duenna; the lady rich as Cleopatra, but not as beautiful; the duenna lovely as Charmian, but not so young. For the lady’s health, prolonged travel had been prescribed. Maternally connected in old England, the lady chose London for her primal port. But ere securing their passage, the two were looking around for some young physician, whose disengagement from pressing business might induce him to accept, on a moderate salary, the post of private Esculapius and knightly companion to the otherwise unprotected pair. The more necessary was this, as not only the voyage to England was intended, but an extensive European tour to follow.

Enough. I came; I saw; I was made the happy man. We sailed. We landed on the other side; when, after two weeks of agonised attendance on the vacillations of the lady, I was very cavalierly dismissed, on the score that the lady’s maternal relations had persuaded her to try, through the winter, the salubrious climate of the foggy Isle of Wight, in preference to the fabulous blue atmosphere of the Ionian Isles. So much for national prejudice. Nota Bene.—The lady was in a sad decline.

Having ere sailing been obliged to anticipate nearly a quarter’s pay to foot my outfit bills, I was dismally cut adrift in Fleet Street without a solitary shilling. By disposing, at certain pawnbrokers, of some of my less indispensable apparel, I had managed to stave off the more slaughterous onsets of my landlady, while diligently looking about for any business that might providentially appear.

So on I drifted amid those indescribable crowds which every seventh night pour and roar through each main artery, and block the by-veins of great London, the Leviathan. Saturday night it was; and the markets 184and the shops, and every stall and counter were crushed with the one unceasing tide. A whole Sunday’s victualling for three millions of human bodies, was going on. Few of them equally hungry with my own, as through my spent lassitude, the unscrupulous human whirlpools eddied me aside at corners, as any straw is eddied in the Norway Maelstrom. What dire suckings into oblivion must such swirling billows know! Better perish ’mid myriad sharks in mid Atlantic, than die a penniless stranger in Babylonian London. Forlorn, outcast, without a friend, I staggered on through three millions of my own human kind. The fiendish gas-lights shooting their Tartarean rays across the muddy, sticky streets, lit up the pitiless and pitiable scene.

Well, well, if this were but Sunday now, I might conciliate some kind female pew-opener, and rest me in some inn-like chapel upon some stranger’s outside bench. But it is Saturday night. The end of the weary week, and all but the end of weary me.

Disentangling myself at last from those skeins of Pandemonian lanes which snarl one part of the metropolis between Fleet Street and Holborn, I found myself at last in a wide and far less noisy street, a short and shopless one, leading up from the Strand, and terminating at its junction with a crosswise avenue. The comparative quietude of the place was inexpressively soothing. It was like emerging upon the green enclosure surrounding some cathedral church, where sanctity makes all things still. Two lofty brilliant lights attracted me in this tranquil street. Thinking it might prove some moral or religious meeting, I hurried toward the spot; but was surprised to see two tall placards announcing the appearance that night, of the stately Macready in the part of Cardinal Richelieu. Very few loiterers hung about the place, the hour being rather late, and the play-bill 185hawkers mostly departed, or keeping entirely quiet. This theatre indeed, as I afterwards discovered, was not only one of the best in point of acting, but likewise one of the most decorous in its general management, inside and out. In truth, the whole neighbourhood, as it seemed to me—issuing from the jam and uproar of those turbulent tides against which, or borne on irresistibly by which, I had so long been swimming—the whole neighbourhood, I say, of this pleasing street seemed in good keeping with the character imputed to its theatre.

Glad to find one blessed oasis of tranquillity, I stood leaning against a column of the porch, and striving to lose my sadness in running over one of the huge placards. No one molested me. A tattered little girl, to be sure, approached with a hand-bill extended, but marking me more narrowly, retreated; her strange skill in physiognomy at once enabling her to determine that I was penniless. As I read, and read—for the placard, of enormous dimensions, contained minute particulars of each successive scene in the enacted play—gradually a strong desire to witness this celebrated Macready in this his celebrated part stole over me. By one act, I might rest my jaded limbs, and more than jaded spirits. Where else could I go for rest, unless I crawled into my cold and lonely bed far up in an attic of Craven Street, looking down upon the muddy Phlegethon of the Thames. Besides, what I wanted was not merely rest, but cheer; the making one of many pleased and pleasing human faces; the getting into a genial humane assembly of my kind; such as, at its best and highest, is to be found in the unified multitude of a devout congregation. But no such assemblies were accessible that night, even if my unbefriended and rather shabby air would overcome the scruples of those fastidious gentry with red gowns and long gilded staves, who guard the portals of the first-class 186London tabernacles from all profanation of a poor, forlorn, and fainting wanderer like me. Not inns, but ecclesiastical hotels, where the pews are the rented chambers.

No use to ponder, thought I, at last; it is Saturday night, not Sunday; and so, a theatre only can receive me. So powerfully in the end did the longing to get into the edifice come over me, that I almost began to think of pawning my overcoat for admittance. But from this last infatuation I was providentially withheld by a sudden cheery summons, in a voice unmistakably benevolent. I turned, and saw a man who seemed to be some sort of a working man.

‘Take it,’ said he, holding a plain red ticket toward me, full in the gas-light. ‘You want to go in; I know you do. Take it. I am suddenly called home. There—hope you’ll enjoy yourself. Good-bye.’

Blankly and mechanically I had suffered the ticket to be thrust into my hand, and now stood quite astonished, bewildered, and for the time, ashamed. The plain fact was, I had received charity; and for the first time in my life. Often in the course of my strange wanderings I had needed charity, but never had asked it, and certainly never, ere this blessed night, had been offered it. And a stranger, and in the very maw of the roaring London, too! Next moment my sense of foolish shame departed, and I felt a queer feeling in my left eye, which, as sometimes is the case with people, was the weaker one; probably from being on the same side with the heart.

I glanced round eagerly. But the kind giver was no longer in sight. I looked upon the ticket. I understood. It was one of those checks given to persons inside a theatre when for any cause they desire to step out a moment. Its presentation ensures unquestioned readmittance.

187‘Shall I use it?’ mused I—‘what? It’s charity. But if it be gloriously right to do a charitable deed, can it be ingloriously wrong to receive its benefit? No one knows you; go boldly in. Charity. Why these unvanquishable scruples? All your life, naught but charity sustains you, and all others in the world. Maternal charity nursed you as a babe; paternal charity fed you as a child; friendly charity got you your profession; and to the charity of every man you meet this night in London, are you indebted for your unattempted life. Any knife, any hand of all the millions of knives and hands in London, has you this night at its mercy. You, and all mortals, live but by sufferance of your charitable kind; charitable by omission, not performance. Slush for your self-upbraidings, and pitiful, poor, shabby pride, you friendless man without a purse. Go in.’

Debate was over. Marking the direction from which the stranger had accosted me, I stepped that way; and soon saw a low-vaulted, inferior-looking door on one side of the edifice. Entering, I wandered on and up, and up and on again, through various doubling stairs and wedge-like, ill-lit passages, whose bare boards much reminded me of my ascent of the Gothic tower on the ocean’s far other side. At last I gained a lofty platform, and saw a fixed human countenance facing me from a mysterious window of a sort of sentry-box or closet. Like some saint in a shrine, the countenance was illuminated by two smoky candles. I divined the man. I exhibited my diploma, and he nodded me to a little door beyond; while a sudden burst of orchestral music admonished me. I was now very near my destination, and also revived the memory of the organ anthems I had heard while on the ladder of the tower at home.

Next moment, the wire-woven gauzy screen of the ventilating window in that same tower seemed enchantedly 188reproduced before me. The same hot blast of stifling air once more rushed into my lungs. From the same dizzy altitude, through the same fine-spun, vapoury, crapey air; far, far down upon just such a packed mass of silent human beings; listening to just such grand harmonies; I stood within the topmost gallery of the temple. But hardly alone and silently as before. This time I had company. Not of the first circles, and certainly not of the dress-circle; but most acceptable, right welcome, cheery company, to otherwise uncompanioned me. Quiet, well-pleased working men, and their glad wives and sisters, with here and there an aproned urchin, with all-absorbed, bright face, vermilioned by the excitement and the heated air, hovering like a painted cherub over the vast human firmament below. The height of the gallery was in truth appalling. The rail was low. I thought of deep-sea-leads, and the mariner in the vessel’s chains, drawing up the line, with his long-drawn musical accompaniment. And like beds of glittering coral, through the deep sea of azure smoke, there, far down, I saw the jewelled necks and white sparkling arms of crowds of ladies in the semicirque. But, in the interval of two acts, again the orchestra was heard; some inspiring anthem now was played. As the volumed sound came undulating up, and broke in showery spray and foam of melody against our gallery rail, my head involuntarily was bowed, my hand instinctively sought my pocket. Only by a second thought did I check my momentary lunacy, and remind myself that this time I had no small morocco book with me, and that this was not the house of prayer.

Quickly was my wandering mind—preternaturally affected by the sudden translation from the desolate street to this bewildering and blazing spectacle—arrested in its wanderings, by feeling at my elbow a meaning 189nudge; when turning suddenly, I saw a sort of coffee-pot and pewter mug hospitably presented to me by a ragged, but good-natured-looking boy.

‘Thank you,’ said I, ‘I won’t take any coffee, I guess.’

‘Coffee?—I guess?—ain’t you a Yankee?’

‘Ay, boy; true blue.’

‘Well, dad’s gone to Yankee-land, a-seekin’ of his fortin; so take a penny mug of ale, do, Yankee, for poor dad’s sake.’

Out from the tilted coffee-pot-looking can came a coffee-coloured stream, and a small mug of humming ale was in my hand.

‘I don’t want it, boy. The fact is, my boy, I have no penny by me. I happened to leave my purse at my lodgings.’

‘Never do you mind, Yankee; drink to honest dad.’

‘With all my heart, you generous boy; here’s immortal life to him!’

He stared at my strange burst, smiled merrily, and left me, offering his coffee-pot in all directions, and not in vain.

’Tis not always poverty to be poor, mused I; one may fare well without a penny. A ragged boy may be a prince-like benefactor.

That unpurchased pennyworth of ale revived my drooping spirits strangely. Stuff was in that barley malt; a most sweet bitterness in those blessed hops. God bless the glorious boy!

The more I looked about me in this lofty gallery, the more was I delighted with its occupants. It was not spacious. It was, if anything, rather contracted, being the very cheapest portion of the house, where very limited attendance was expected; embracing merely the very crown of the topmost semicircle; and so commanding, with a sovereign outlook, and imperial downlook, 190the whole theatre, with the expanded stage directly opposite, though some hundred feet below. As at the tower, peeping into the transatlantic temple, so stood I here, at the very mainmast-head of all the interior edifice.

Such was the decorum of this special theatre, that nothing objectionable was admitted within its walls. With an unhurt eye of perfect love, I sat serenely in the gallery, gazing upon the pleasing scene, around me and below. Neither did it abate from my satisfaction to remember that Mr. Macready, the chief actor of the night, was an amiable gentleman, combining the finest qualities of social and Christian respectability with the highest excellence in his particular profession; for which last he had conscientiously done much, in many ways, to refine, elevate, and chasten.

But now the curtain rises, and the robed Cardinal advances. How marvellous this personal resemblance! He looks every inch to be the self-same stately priest I saw irradiated by the glow-worm dyes of the pictured windows from my high tower-pew. And shining as he does, in the rosy reflexes of these stained walls and gorgeous galleries, the mimic priest down there; he, too, seems lit by Gothic blazonings.—Hark! The same measured, courtly, noble tone. See! the same imposing attitude. Excellent actor is this Richelieu!

He disappears behind the scenes. He slips, no doubt, into the Green Room. He reappears somewhat changed in his habiliments. Do I dream, or is it genuine memory that recalls some similar thing seen through the woven wires?

The curtain falls. Starting to their feet, the enraptured thousands sound their responses deafeningly, unmistakably sincere. Right from the undoubted heart. I have no duplicate in my memory of this. In earnestness 191of response, this second temple stands unmatched. And hath mere mimicry done this? What is it then to act a part?

But now the music surges up again, and borne by that rolling billow, I, and all the gladdened crowd, are harmoniously attended to the street.

I went home to my lonely lodging and slept not much that night, for thinking of the First Temple and the Second Temple; and how that, at home in my own land, I was thrust out from the one, and, a stranger in a strange land, found sterling charity in the other.

192

POOR MAN’S PUDDING AND RICH MAN’S CRUMBS

PICTURE FIRST

POOR MAN’S PUDDING

‘You see,’ said poet Blandmour enthusiastically—as some forty years ago we walked along the road in a soft, moist snowfall toward the end of March—‘you see, my friend, that the blessed almoner, Nature, is in all things beneficent; and not only so, but considerate in her charities, as any discreet human philanthropist might be. This snow, now, which seems so unseasonable, is in fact just what a poor husbandman needs. Rightly is this soft March snow, falling just before seed-time, rightly is it called “Poor Man’s Manure.” Distilling from kind heaven upon the soil, by a gentle penetration it nourishes every clod, ridge, and furrow. To the poor farmer it is as good as the rich farmer’s farm-yard enrichments. And the poor man has no trouble to spread it, while the rich man has to spread his.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said I, without equal enthusiasm, brushing some of the damp flakes from my chest. ‘It may be as you say, dear Blandmour. But tell me, how is it that the wind drives yonder drifts of “Poor Man’s Manure” off poor Coulter’s two-acre patch here, and piles it up yonder on rich Squire Teamster’s twenty-acre field?’

‘Ah! to be sure—yes—well; Coulter’s field, I suppose, is sufficiently moist without further moistenings. Enough is as good as a feast, you know.’

193‘Yes,’ replied I, ‘of this sort of damp fare,’ shaking another shower of the damp flakes from my person. ‘But tell me, this warm spring snow may answer very well, as you say; but how is it with the cold snows of the long, long winters here?’

‘Why, do you not remember the words of the Psalmist?—“The Lord giveth snow like wool”; meaning not only that snow is white as wool, but warm, too, as wool. For the only reason, as I take it, that wool is comfortable, is because air is entangled, and therefore warmed among its fibres. Just so, then, take the temperature of a December field when covered with this snow-fleece, and you will no doubt find it several degrees above that of the air. So, you see, the winter’s snow itself is beneficent; under the pretence of frost—a sort of gruff philanthropist—actually warming the earth, which afterward is to be fertilisingly moistened by these gentle flakes of March.’

‘I like to hear you talk, dear Blandmour; and, guided by your benevolent heart, can only wish to poor Coulter plenty of this “Poor Man’s Manure.”’

‘But that is not all,’ said Blandmour eagerly. ‘Did you never hear of the “Poor Man’s Eye-water”?’

‘Never.’

‘Take this soft March snow, melt it, and bottle it. It keeps pure as alcohol. The very best thing in the world for weak eyes. I have a whole demijohn of it myself. But the poorest man, afflicted in his eyes, can freely help himself to this same all-bountiful remedy. Now, what a kind provision is that!’

‘Then “Poor Man’s Manure” is “Poor Man’s Eye-water” too?’

‘Exactly. And what could be more economically contrived? One thing answering two ends—ends so very distinct.’

‘Very distinct, indeed.’

194‘Ah! that is your way. Making sport of earnest. But never mind. We have been talking of snow; but common rain-water—such as falls all the year round—is still more kindly. Not to speak of its known fertilising quality as to fields, consider it in one of its minor lights. Pray, did you ever hear of a “Poor Man’s Egg”?’

‘Never. What is that, now?’

‘Why, in making some culinary preparations of meal and flour, where eggs are recommended in the receipt-book, a substitute for the eggs may be had in a cup of cold rain-water, which acts as leaven. And so a cup of cold rain-water thus used is called by housewives a “Poor Man’s Egg.” And many rich men’s housekeepers sometimes use it.’

‘But only when they are out of hen’s eggs, I presume, dear Blandmour. But your talk is—I sincerely say it—most agreeable to me. Talk on.’

‘Then there’s “Poor Man’s Plaster” for wounds and other bodily harms; an alleviative and curative, compounded of simple, natural things; and so, being very cheap, is accessible to the poorest of sufferers. Rich men often use “Poor Man’s Plaster.”’

‘But not without the judicious advice of a fee’d physician, dear Blandmour.’

‘Doubtless, they first consult the physician; but that may be an unnecessary precaution.’

‘Perhaps so. I do not gainsay it. Go on.’

‘Well, then, did you ever eat of a “Poor Man’s Pudding”?’

‘I never so much as heard of it before.’

‘Indeed! Well, now you shall eat of one; and you shall eat it, too, as made, unprompted, by a poor man’s wife, and you shall eat it at a poor man’s table, and in a poor man’s house. Come now, and if after this eating, you do not say that a “Poor Man’s Pudding” is as 195relishable as a rich man’s, I will give up the point altogether; which briefly is: that, through kind Nature, the poor, out of their very poverty, extract comfort.’

Not to narrate any more of our conversations upon this subject (for we had several—I being at that time the guest of Blandmour in the country, for the benefit of my health), suffice it that, acting upon Blandmour’s hint, I introduced myself into Coulter’s house on a wet Monday noon (for the snow had thawed), under the innocent pretence of craving a pedestrian’s rest and refreshment for an hour or two.

I was greeted, not without much embarrassment—owing, I suppose, to my dress—but still with unaffected and honest kindness. Dame Coulter was just leaving the wash-tub to get ready her one o’clock meal against her good man’s return from a deep wood about a mile distant among the hills, where he was chopping by day’s-work—seventy-five cents per day and found himself. The washing being done outside the main building, under an infirm-looking old shed, the dame stood upon a half-rotten, soaked board to protect her feet, as well as might be, from the penetrating damp of the bare ground; hence she looked pale and chill. But her paleness had still another and more secret cause—the paleness of a mother-to-be. A quiet, fathomless heart-trouble, too, couched beneath the mild, resigned blue of her soft and wife-like eye. But she smiled upon me, as apologising for the unavoidable disorder of a Monday and a washing-day, and, conducting me into the kitchen, set me down in the best seat it had—an old-fashioned chair of an enfeebled constitution.

I thanked her; and sat rubbing my hands before the ineffectual low fire, and—unobservantly as I could—glancing now and then about the room, while the good woman, throwing on more sticks, said she was sorry the 196room was no warmer. Something more she said, too—not repiningly, however—of the fuel, as old and damp; picked-up sticks in Squire Teamster’s forest, where her husband was chopping the sappy logs of the living tree for the Squire’s fires. It needed not her remark, whatever it was, to convince me of the inferior quality of the sticks; some being quite mossy and toad-stooled with long lying bedded among the accumulated dead leaves of many autumns. They made a sad hissing, and vain spluttering enough.

‘You must rest yourself here till dinner-time, at least,’ said the dame; ‘what I have you are heartily welcome to.’

I thanked her again, and begged her not to heed my presence in the least, but go on with her usual affairs.

I was struck by the aspect of the room. The house was old, and constitutionally damp. The window-sills had beads of exuded dampness upon them. The shrivelled sashes shook in their frames, and the green panes of glass were clouded with the long thaw. On some little errand the dame passed into an adjoining chamber, leaving the door partly open. The floor of that room was carpetless, as the kitchen was. Nothing but bare necessaries were about me; and those not of the best sort. Not a print on the wall; but an old volume of Doddridge lay on the smoked chimney-shelf.

‘You must have walked a long way, sir; you sigh so with weariness.’

‘No, I am not nigh so weary as yourself, I dare say.’

‘Oh, but I am accustomed to that; you are not, I should think,’ and her soft, sad, blue eye ran over my dress. ‘But I must sweep these shavings away; husband made him a new ax-helve this morning before sunrise, and I have been so busy washing, that I have had no time to clear up. But now they are just the thing I 197want for the fire. They’d be much better, though, were they not so green.’

Now if Blandmour were here, thought I to myself, he would call those green shavings ‘Poor Man’s Matches,’ or ‘Poor Man’s Tinder,’ or some pleasant name of that sort.

‘I do not know,’ said the good woman, turning round to me again, as she stirred among her pots on the smoky fire—‘I do not know how you will like our pudding. It is only rice, milk, and salt boiled together.’

‘Ah, what they call “Poor Man’s Pudding,” I suppose you mean.’

A quick flush, half resentful, passed over her face.

‘We do not call it so, sir,’ she said, and was silent.

Upbraiding myself for my inadvertence, I could not but again think to myself what Blandmour would have said, had he heard those words and seen that flush.

At last a slow, heavy footfall was heard; then a scraping at the door, and another voice said, ‘Come, wife; come, come—I must be back again in a jiff—if you say I must take all my meals at home, you must be speedy; because the Squire⸺ Good-day, sir,’ he exclaimed, now first catching sight of me as he entered the room. He turned toward his wife, inquiringly, and stood stock-still, while the moisture oozed from his patched boots to the floor.

‘This gentleman stops here a while to rest and refresh: he will take dinner with us, too. All will be ready now in a trice: so sit down on the bench, husband, and be patient, I pray. You see, sir,’ she continued, turning to me, ‘William there wants, of mornings, to carry a cold meal into the woods with him, to save the long one-o’clock walk across the fields to and fro. But I won’t let him. A warm dinner is more than pay for the long walk.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said William, shaking his 198head. ‘I have often debated in my mind whether it really paid. There’s not much odds, either way, between a wet walk after hard work, and a wet dinner before it. But I like to oblige a good wife like Martha. And you know, sir, that women will have their whimseys.’

‘I wish they all had as kind whimseys as your wife has,’ said I.

‘Well, I’ve heard that some women ain’t all maple-sugar; but, content with dear Martha, I don’t know much about others.’

‘You find rare wisdom in the woods,’ mused I.

‘Now, husband, if you ain’t too tired, just lend a hand to draw the table out.’

‘Nay,’ said I; ‘let him rest, and let me help.’

‘No,’ said William, rising.

‘Sit still,’ said his wife to me.

The table set, in due time we all found ourselves with plates before us.

‘You see what we have,’ said Coulter—‘salt pork, rye-bread, and pudding. Let me help you. I got this pork of the Squire; some of his last year’s pork, which he let me have on account. It isn’t quite so sweet as this year’s would be; but I find it hearty enough to work on, and that’s all I eat for. Only let the rheumatiz and other sicknesses keep clear of me, and I ask no flavours or favours from any. But you don’t eat of the pork!’

‘I see,’ said the wife, gently and gravely, ‘that the gentleman knows the difference between this year’s and last year’s pork. But perhaps he will like the pudding.’

I summoned up all my self-control, and smilingly assented to the proposition of the pudding, without by my looks casting any reflections upon the pork. But, to tell the truth, it was quite impossible for me (not being ravenous, but only a little hungry at the time) to eat of the latter. It had a yellowish crust all round it, and was 199rather rankish, I thought, to the taste. I observed, too, that the dame did not eat of it, though she suffered some to be put on her plate, and pretended to be busy with it when Coulter looked that way. But she ate of the rye-bread, and so did I.

‘Now, then, for the pudding,’ said Coulter. ‘Quick, wife; the Squire sits in his sitting-room window, looking far out across the fields. His timepiece is true.’

‘He don’t play the spy on you, does he?’ said I.

‘Oh, no!—I don’t say that. He’s a good enough man. He gives me work. But he’s particular. Wife, help the gentleman. You see, sir, if I lose the Squire’s work, what will become of⸺’ and, with a look for which I honoured humanity, with sly significance he glanced toward his wife; then, a little changing his voice, instantly continued—‘that fine horse I am going to buy.’

‘I guess,’ said the dame, with a strange, subdued sort of inefficient pleasantry—‘I guess that fine horse you sometimes so merrily dream of will long stay in the Squire’s stall. But sometimes his man gives me a Sunday ride.’

‘A Sunday ride!’ said I.

‘You see,’ resumed Coulter, ‘wife loves to go to church; but the nighest is four miles off, over yon snowy hills. So she can’t walk it; and I can’t carry her in my arms, though I have carried her upstairs before now. But, as she says, the Squire’s man sometimes gives her a lift on the road; and for this cause it is that I speak of a horse I am going to have one of these fine sunny days. And already, before having it, I have christened it “Martha.” But what am I about? Come, come, wife! the pudding! Help the gentleman, do! The Squire! the Squire!—think of the Squire! and help round the pudding. There, one—two—three mouthfuls must do me. Good-bye, wife. Good-bye, sir. I’m off.’

200And, snatching his soaked hat, the noble Poor Man hurriedly went out into the soak and the mire.

I suppose now, thinks I to myself, that Blandmour would poetically say, He goes to take a Poor Man’s saunter.

‘You have a fine husband,’ said I to the woman, as we were now left together.

‘William loves me this day as on the wedding-day, sir. Some hasty words, but never a harsh one. I wish I were better and stronger for his sake. And, oh! sir, both for his sake and mine’ (and the soft blue beautiful eyes turned into two well-springs), ‘how I wish little William and Martha lived—it is so lonely-like now. William named after him, and Martha for me.’

When a companion’s heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing. I sat looking down on my as yet untasted pudding.

‘You should have seen little William, sir. Such a bright, manly boy, only six years old—cold, cold now!’

Plunging my spoon into the pudding, I forced some into my mouth to stop it.

‘And little Martha—Oh! sir, she was the beauty! Bitter, bitter! but needs must be borne.’

The mouthful of pudding now touched my palate, and touched it with a mouldy, briny taste. The rice, I knew, was of that damaged sort sold cheap; and the salt from the last year’s pork barrel.

‘Ah, sir, if those little ones yet to enter the world were the same little ones which so sadly have left it; returning friends, not strangers, strangers, always strangers! Yet does a mother soon learn to love them; for certain, sir, they come from where the others have gone. Don’t you believe that, sir? Yes, I know all good people must. But still, still—and I fear it is wicked, and very black-hearted, 201too—still, strive how I may to cheer me with thinking of little William and Martha in heaven, and with reading Dr. Doddridge there—still, still does dark grief leak in, just like the rain through our roof. I am left so lonesome now; day after day, all the day long, dear William is gone; and all the damp day long grief drizzles and drizzles down on my soul. But I pray to God to forgive me for this; and for the rest, manage it as well as I may.’

Bitter and mouldy is the ‘Poor Man’s Pudding,’ groaned I to myself, half choked with but one little mouthful of it, which would hardly go down.

I could stay no longer to hear of sorrows for which the sincerest sympathies could give no adequate relief; of a fond persuasion, to which there could be furnished no further proof than already was had—a persuasion, too, of that sort which much speaking is sure more or less to mar; of causeless self-upbraidings, which no expostulations could have dispelled. I offered no pay for hospitalities gratuitous and honourable as those of a prince. I knew that such offerings would have been more than declined; charity resented.

The native American poor never lose their delicacy or pride; hence, though unreduced to the physical degradation of the European pauper, they yet suffer more in mind than the poor of any other people in the world. Those peculiar social sensibilities nourished by our own peculiar political principles, while they enhance the true dignity of a prosperous American, do but minister to the added wretchedness of the unfortunate; first, by prohibiting their acceptance of what little random relief charity may offer; and, second, by furnishing them with the keenest appreciation of the smarting distinction between their ideal of universal equality and their grindstone experience of the practical misery and infamy of poverty—a 202misery and infamy which is, ever has been, and ever will be, precisely the same in India, England, and America.

Under pretence that my journey called me forthwith, I bade the dame good-bye; shook her cold hand; looked my last into her blue, resigned eye, and went out into the wet. But cheerless as it was, and damp, damp, damp—the heavy atmosphere charged with all sorts of incipiencies—I yet became conscious, by the suddenness of the contrast, that the house air I had quitted was laden down with that peculiar deleterious quality, the height of which—insufferable to some visitants—will be found in a poor-house ward.

This ill-ventilation in winter of the rooms of the poor—a thing, too, so stubbornly persisted in—is usually charged upon them as their disgraceful neglect of the most simple means to health. But the instinct of the poor is wiser than we think. The air which ventilates, likewise cools. And to any shiverer, ill-ventilated warmth is better than well-ventilated cold. Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

‘Blandmour,’ said I that evening, as after tea I sat on his comfortable sofa, before a blazing fire, with one of his two ruddy little children on my knee, ‘you are not what may rightly be called a rich man; you have a fair competence; no more. Is it not so? Well, then, I do not include you, when I say, that if ever a Rich Man speaks prosperously to me of a Poor Man, I shall set it down as⸺I won’t mention the word.’

203PICTURE SECOND

RICH MAN’S CRUMBS

In the year 1814, during the summer following my first taste of the ‘Poor Man’s Pudding,’ a sea voyage was recommended to me by my physician. The battle of Waterloo having closed the long drama of Napoleon’s wars, many strangers were visiting Europe. I arrived in London at the time the victorious princes were there assembled enjoying the Arabian Nights’ hospitalities of a grateful and gorgeous aristocracy, and the courtliest of gentlemen and kings—George the Prince Regent.

I had declined all letters but one to my banker. I wandered about for the best reception an adventurous traveller can have—the reception, I mean, which unsolicited chance and accident throw in his venturous way.

But I omit all else to recount one hour’s hap under the lead of a very friendly man, whose acquaintance I made in the open street of Cheapside. He wore a uniform, and was some sort of a civic subordinate; I forget exactly what. He was off duty that day. His discourse was chiefly of the noble charities of London. He took me to two or three, and made admiring mention of many more.

‘But,’ said he, as we turned into Cheapside again, ‘if you are at all curious about such things, let me take you—if it be not too late—to one of the most interesting of all—our Lord Mayor’s Charities, sir; nay, the charities not only of a Lord Mayor, but, I may truly say, in this one instance, of emperors, regents, and kings. You remember the event of yesterday?’

‘That sad fire on the river-side, you mean, unhousing so many of the poor?’

‘No. The grand Guildhall Banquet to the princes. Who can forget it? Sir, the dinner was served on nothing 204but solid silver and gold plate, worth at the least £200,000—that is, 1,000,000 of your dollars; while the mere expenditure of meats, wines, attendance, and upholstery, etc., cannot be footed under £25,000—125,000 dollars of your hard cash.’

‘But, surely, my friend, you do not call that charity—feeding kings at that rate?’

‘No. The feast came first—yesterday; and the charity after—to-day. How else would you have it, where princes are concerned? But I think we shall be quite in time—come; here we are at King Street, and down there is Guildhall. Will you go?’

‘Gladly, my good friend. Take me where you will. I come but to roam and see.’

Avoiding the main entrance of the hall, which was barred, he took me through some private way, and we found ourselves in a rear blind-walled place in the open air. I looked round amazed. The spot was grimy as a backyard in the Five Points. It was packed with a mass of lean, famished, ferocious creatures, struggling and fighting for some mysterious precedency, and all holding soiled blue tickets in their hands.

‘There is no other way,’ said my guide; ‘we can only get in with the crowd. Will you try it? I hope you have not on your drawing-room suit? What do you say? It will be well worth your sight. So noble a charity does not often offer. The one following the annual banquet of Lord Mayor’s day—fine a charity as that certainly is—is not to be mentioned with what will be seen to-day. Is it, ay?’

As he spoke, a basement door in the distance was thrown open, and the squalid mass made a rush for the dark vault beyond.

I nodded to my guide, and sideways we joined in with the rest. Ere long we found our retreat cut off by the 205yelping crowd behind, and I could not but congratulate myself on having a civic, as well as civil guide; one, too, whose uniform made evident his authority.

It was just the same as if I were pressed by a mob of cannibals on some pagan beach. The beings round me roared with famine. For in this mighty London misery but maddens. In the country it softens. As I gazed on the meagre, murderous pack, I thought of the blue eye of the gentle wife of poor Coulter. Some sort of curved, glittering steel thing (not a sword; I know not what it was), before worn in his belt, was now flourished overhead by my guide, menacing the creatures to forbear offering the stranger violence.

As we drove, slow and wedge-like, into the gloomy vault, the howls of the mass reverberated. I seemed seething in the Pit with the Lost. On and on, through the dark and the damp, and then up a stone stairway to a wide portal; when, diffusing, the pestiferous mob poured in bright day between painted walls and beneath a painted dome. I thought of the anarchic sack of Versailles.

A few moments more and I stood bewildered among the beggars in the famous Guildhall.

Where I stood—where the thronged rabble stood, less than twelve hours before sat His Imperial Majesty, Alexander of Russia; His Royal Majesty, Frederick William, King of Prussia; His Royal Highness, George, Prince Regent of England; His world-renowned Grace, the Duke of Wellington; with a mob of magnificoes made up of conquering field-marshals, earls, counts, and innumerable other nobles of mark.

The walls swept to and fro, like the foliage of a forest with blazonings of conquerors’ flags. Naught outside the hall was visible. No windows were within four-and-twenty feet of the floor. Cut off from all other sights, I was hemmed in by one splendid spectacle—splendid, I 206mean, everywhere, but as the eye fell toward the floor. That was foul as a hovel’s—as a kennel’s; the naked boards being strewed with the smaller and more wasteful fragments of the feast, while the two long parallel lines, up and down the hall, of now unrobed, shabby, dirty pine-tables were piled with less trampled wrecks. The dyed banners were in keeping with the last night’s kings; the floor suited the beggars of to-day. The banners looked down upon the floor as from his balcony Dives upon Lazarus. A line of liveried men kept back with their staves the impatient jamb of the mob, who, otherwise, might have instantaneously converted the Charity into a Pillage. Another body of gowned and gilded officials distributed the broken meats—the cold victuals and crumbs of kings. One after another the beggars held up their dirty blue tickets, and were served with the plundered wreck of a pheasant, or the rim of a pasty—like the detached crown of an old hat—the solids and meats stolen out.

‘What a noble charity!’ whispered my guide. ‘See that pasty now, snatched by that pale girl; I dare say the Emperor of Russia ate of that last night.’

‘Very probably,’ murmured I; ‘it looks as though some omnivorous emperor or other had had a finger in that pie.’

‘And see yon pheasant too—there—that one—the boy in the torn shirt has it now—look! The Prince Regent might have dined off that.’

The two breasts were gouged ruthlessly out, exposing the bare bones, embellished with the untouched pinions and legs.

‘Yes, who knows!’ said my guide, ‘His Royal Highness the Prince Regent might have eaten of that identical pheasant.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ murmured I, ‘he is said to be uncommonly fond of the breast. But where is Napoleon’s 207head in a charger? I should fancy that ought to have been the principal dish.’

‘You are merry. Sir, even Cossacks are charitable here in Guildhall. Look! the famous Platoff, the Hetman himself—(he was here last night with the rest)—no doubt he thrust a lance into yon fat pork-pie there. Look! the old shirtless man has it now. How he licks his chops over it, little thinking of or thanking the good, kind Cossack that left it him! Ah! another—a stouter has grabbed it. It falls; bless my soul!—the dish is quite empty—only a bit of the hacked crust.’

‘The Cossacks, my friend, are said to be immoderately fond of fat,’ observed I. ‘The Hetman was hardly so charitable as you thought.’

‘A noble charity, upon the whole, for all that. See, even Gog and Magog yonder, at the other end of the hall, fairly laugh out their delight at the scene.’

‘But don’t you think, though,’ hinted I, ‘that the sculptor, whoever he was, carved the laugh too much into a grin—a sort of sardonical grin?’

‘Well, that’s as you take it, sir. But see—now I’d wager a guinea the Lord Mayor’s lady dipped her golden spoon into yonder golden-hued jelly. See, the jelly-eyed old body has slipped it, in one broad gulp, down his throat.’

‘Peace to that jelly!’ breathed I.

‘What a generous, noble, magnanimous charity this is! unheard of in any country but England, which feeds her very beggars with golden-hued jellies.’

‘But not three times every day, my friend. And do you really think that jellies are the best sort of relief you can furnish to beggars? Would not plain beef and bread, with something to do, and be paid for, be better?’

‘But plain beef and bread were not eaten here. Emperors, and prince regents, and kings, and field-marshals don’t often dine on plain beef and bread. So the leavings 208are according. Tell me, can you expect that the crumbs of kings can be like the crumbs of squirrels?’

‘You! I mean you! stand aside, or else be served and away! Here, take this pasty, and be thankful that you taste of the same dish with Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire. Graceless ragamuffin, do you hear?’

These words were bellowed at me through the din by a red-gowned official nigh the board.

‘Surely he does not mean me,’ said I to my guide; ‘he has not confounded me with the rest.’

‘One is known by the company he keeps,’ smiled my guide. ‘See! not only stands your hat awry and bunged on your head, but your coat is fouled and torn. Nay,’ he cried to the red-gown, ‘this is an unfortunate friend; a simple spectator, I assure you.’

‘Ah! is that you, old lad!’ responded the red-gown, in familiar recognition of my guide—a personal friend as it seemed; ‘well, convey your friend out forthwith. Mind the grand crash; it will soon be coming; hark! now! away with him!’

Too late. The last dish had been seized. The yet unglutted mob raised a fierce yell, which wafted the banners like a strong gust, and filled the air with a reek as from sewers. They surged against the tables, broke through all barriers, and billowed over the hall—their bare tossed arms like the dashed ribs of a wreck. It seemed to me as if a sudden impotent fury of fell envy possessed them. That one half-hour’s peep at the mere remnants of the glories of the Banquets of Kings; the unsatisfying mouthfuls of disembowelled pasties, plundered pheasants, and half-sacked jellies, served to remind them of the intrinsic contempt of the alms. In this sudden mood, or whatever mysterious thing it was that now seized them, these Lazaruses seemed ready to spew up in repentant scorn the contumelious crumbs of Dives.

209‘This way, this way! stick like a bee to my back,’ intensely whispered my guide. ‘My friend there has answered my beck, and thrown open yon private door for us two. Wedge—wedge in—quick—there goes your bunged hat—never stop for your coat-tail—hit that man—strike him down! hold! jam! now! now! wrench along for your life! ha! here we breathe freely; thank God! You faint. Ho!’

‘Never mind. This fresh air revives me.’

I inhaled a few more breaths of it, and felt ready to proceed.

‘And now conduct me, my good friend, by some front passage into Cheapside, forthwith. I must home.’

‘Not by the side-walk, though. Look at your dress. I must get a hack for you.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said I, ruefully eyeing my tatters, and then glancing in envy at the close-bodied coat and flat cap of my guide, which defied all tumblings and tearings.

‘There, now, sir,’ said the honest fellow, as he put me into the hack, and tucked in me and my rags, ‘when you get back to your own country, you can say you have witnessed the greatest of all England’s noble charities. Of course, you will make reasonable allowances for the unavoidable jam. Good-bye. Mind, Jehu’—addressing the driver on the box—‘this is a gentleman you carry. He is just from the Guildhall Charity, which accounts for his appearance. Go on now. London Tavern, Fleet Street, remember, is the place.’

‘Now, Heaven in its kind mercy save me from the noble charities of London,’ sighed I, as that night I lay bruised and battered on my bed; ‘and Heaven save me equally from the “Poor Man’s Pudding” and the “Rich Man’s Crumbs.”’

210

THE HAPPY FAILURE

A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON

The appointment was that I should meet my elderly uncle at the river-side, precisely at nine in the morning. The skiff was to be ready, and the apparatus to be brought down by his grizzled old black man. As yet, the nature of the wonderful experiment remained a mystery to all but the projector.

I was first on the spot. The village was high up the river, and the inland summer sun was already oppressively warm. Presently, I saw my uncle advancing beneath the trees, hat off, and wiping his brow; while far behind staggered poor old Yorpy, with what seemed one of the gates of Gaza on his back.

‘Come, hurry, stump along, Yorpy!’ cried my uncle, impatiently turning round every now and then.

Upon the black’s staggering up to the skiff, I perceived that the great gate of Gaza was transformed into a huge, shabby, oblong box, hermetically sealed. The sphinx-like blankness of the box quadrupled the mystery in my mind.

‘Is this the wonderful apparatus?’ said I, in amazement. ‘Why, it’s nothing but a battered old dry-goods box, nailed up. And is this the thing, uncle, that is to make you a million of dollars ere the year be out? What a forlorn-looking, lack-lustre, old ash-box it is.’

‘Put it into the skiff!’ roared my uncle to Yorpy, without heeding my boyish disdain. ‘Put it in, you grizzled-headed cherub—put it in carefully, carefully! If that box bursts, my everlasting fortune collapses.’

211‘Bursts?—collapses?’ cried I, in alarm. ‘It ain’t full of combustibles? Quick! let me go to the farther end of the boat!’

‘Sit still, you simpleton!’ cried my uncle again. ‘Jump in, Yorpy, and hold on to the box like grim death while I shove off. Carefully! carefully! you dunder-headed black! Mind t’other side of the box, I say! Do you mean to destroy the box?’

‘Duyvel take te pox!’ muttered old Yorpy, who was a sort of Dutch African. ‘De pox has been my cuss for de ten long ’ear.’

‘Now, then, we’re off—take an oar, youngster; you, Yorpy, clinch the box fast. Here we go now. Carefully! carefully! You, Yorpy, stop shaking the box! Easy! easy! there’s a big snag. Pull now. Hurrah! deep water at last! Now give way, youngster, and away to the island.’

‘The island!’ said I. ‘There’s no island hereabouts.’

‘There is ten miles above the bridge, though,’ said my uncle, determinately.

‘Ten miles off! Pull that old dry-goods box ten miles up the river in this blazing sun!’

‘All that I have to say,’ said my uncle, firmly, ‘is that we are bound to Quash Island.’

‘Mercy, uncle! if I had known of this great long pull of ten mortal miles in this fiery sun, you wouldn’t have juggled me into the skiff so easy. What’s in that box?—paving-stones? See how the skiff settles down under it. I won’t help pull a box of paving-stones ten miles. What’s the use of pulling ’em?’

‘Look you, simpleton,’ quoth my uncle, pausing upon his suspended oar. ‘Stop rowing, will ye! Now then, if you don’t want to share in the glory of my experiment; if you are wholly indifferent to halving its immortal renown; I say, sir, if you care not to be present at the 212first trial of my Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus for draining swamps and marshes, and converting them, at the rate of one acre the hour, into fields more fertile than those of the Genesee; if you care not, I repeat, to have this proud thing to tell—in far future days, when poor old I shall have been long dead and gone, boy—to your children, and your children’s children; in that case, sir, you are free to land forthwith.’

‘Oh, uncle! I did not mean⸺’

‘No words, sir! Yorpy, take this oar, and help pull him ashore.’

‘But, my dear uncle; I declare to you that⸺’

‘Not a syllable, sir: you have cast open scorn upon the Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus. Yorpy, put him ashore, Yorpy. It’s shallow here again. Jump out, Yorpy, and wade with him ashore.’

‘Now, my dear, good, kind uncle, do but pardon me this one time, and I will say just nothing about the apparatus.’

‘Say nothing about it! when it is my express end and aim it shall be famous! Put him ashore, Yorpy.’

‘Nay, uncle, I will not give up my oar. I have an oar in this matter, and I mean to keep it. You shall not cheat me out of my share of your glory.’

‘Ah, now there—that’s sensible. You may stay, youngster. Pull again now.’

We were all silent for a time, steadily plying our way. At last I ventured to break water once more.

‘I am glad, dear uncle, you have revealed to me at last the nature and end of your great experiment. It is the effectual draining of swamps; an attempt, dear uncle, in which, if you do but succeed (as I know you will), you will earn the glory denied to a Roman emperor. He tried to drain the Pontine marsh, but failed.’

‘The world has shot ahead the length of its own 213diameter since then,’ quoth my uncle, proudly. ‘If that Roman emperor were here, I’d show him what can be done in the present enlightened age.’

Seeing my good uncle so far mollified now as to be quite self-complacent, I ventured another remark.

‘This is a rather severe, hot pull, dear uncle.’

‘Glory is not to be gained, youngster, without pulling hard for it—against the stream, too, as we do now. The natural tendency of man, in the mass, is to go down with the universal current into oblivion.’

‘But why pull so far, dear uncle, upon the present occasion? Why pull ten miles for it? You do but propose, as I understand it, to put to the actual test this admirable invention of yours. And could it not be tested almost anywhere?’

‘Simple boy,’ quoth my uncle, ‘would you have some malignant spy steal from me the fruits of ten long years of high-hearted, persevering endeavour? Solitary in my scheme, I go to a solitary place to test it. If I fail—for all things are possible—no one out of the family will know it. If I succeed, secure in the secrecy of my invention, I can boldly demand any price for its publication.’

‘Pardon me, dear uncle; you are wiser than I.’

‘One would think years and gray hairs should bring wisdom, boy.’

‘Yorpy there, dear uncle; think you his grizzled locks thatch a brain improved by long life?’

‘Am I Yorpy, boy? Keep to your oar!’

Thus padlocked again, I said no further word till the skiff grounded on the shallows, some twenty yards from the deep-wooded isle.

‘Hush!’ whispered my uncle, intensely; ‘not a word now!’ and he sat perfectly still, slowly sweeping with his glance the whole country around, even to both banks of the here wide-expanded stream.

214‘Wait till that horseman yonder passes!’ he whispered again, pointing to a speck moving along a lofty, river-side road, which perilously wound on midway up a long line of broken bluffs and cliffs. ‘There—he’s out of sight now, behind the copse. Quick! Yorpy! Carefully, though! Jump overboard, and shoulder the box, and—Hold!’

We were all mute and motionless again.

‘Ain’t that a boy, sitting like Zaccheus in yonder tree of the orchard on the other bank? Look, youngster—young eyes are better than old—don’t you see him?’

‘Dear uncle, I see the orchard, but I can’t see any boy.’

‘He’s a spy—I know he is,’ suddenly said my uncle, disregardful of my answer, and intently gazing, shading his eyes with his flattened hand. ‘Don’t touch the box, Yorpy. Crouch! crouch down, all of ye!’

‘Why, uncle—there—see—the boy is only a withered white bough. I see it very plainly now.’

‘You don’t see the tree I mean,’ quoth my uncle, with a decided air of relief, ‘but never mind; I defy the boy. Yorpy, jump out, and shoulder the box. And now then, youngster, off with your shoes and stockings, roll up your trowser-legs, and follow me. Carefully, Yorpy, carefully. That’s more precious than a box of gold, mind.’

‘Heavy as de gelt, anyhow,’ growled Yorpy, staggering and splashing in the shallows beneath it.

‘There, stop under the bushes there—in among the flags—so—gently, gently—there, put it down just there. Now, youngster, are you ready? Follow—tiptoes, tiptoes!’

‘I can’t wade in this mud and water on my tiptoes, uncle; and I don’t see the need of it either.’

‘Go ashore, sir—instantly!’

‘Why, uncle, I am ashore.’

215‘Peace! follow me, and no more.’

Crouching in the water in complete secrecy, beneath the bushes and among the tall flags, my uncle now stealthily produced a hammer and wrench from one of his enormous pockets, and presently tapped the box. But the sound alarmed him.

‘Yorpy,’ he whispered, ‘go you off to the right, behind the bushes, and keep watch. If you see anyone coming, whistle softly. Youngster, you do the same to the left.’

We obeyed; and presently, after considerable hammering and supplemental tinkering, my uncle’s voice was heard in the utter solitude, loudly commanding our return.

Again we obeyed, and now found the cover of the box removed. All eagerness, I peeped in, and saw a surprising multiplicity of convoluted metal pipes and syringes of all sorts and varieties, all sizes and calibres, inextricably interwreathed together in one gigantic coil. It looked like a huge nest of anacondas and adders.

‘Now then, Yorpy,’ said my uncle, all animation, and flushed with the foretaste of glory, ‘do you stand this side, and be ready to tip when I give the word. And do you, youngster, stand ready to do as much for the other side. Mind, don’t budge it the fraction of a barley-corn till I say the word. All depends on a proper adjustment.’

‘No fear, uncle. I will be careful as a lady’s tweezers.’

‘I s’ant lift de heavy pox,’ growled old Yorpy, ‘till de wort pe given; no fear o’ dat.’

‘Oh, boy,’ said my uncle now, upturning his face devotionally, while a really noble gleam irradiated his gray eyes, locks, and wrinkles! ‘oh, boy! this, this is the hour which for ten long years has, in the prospect, sustained me through all my painstaking obscurity. Fame will be the sweeter because it comes at the last; the truer, because it comes to an old man like me, not to a boy like you. Sustainer! I glorify Thee.’

216He bowed over his venerable head, and—as I live—something like a shower-drop somehow fell from my face into the shallows.

‘Tip!’

We tipped.

‘A little more!’

We tipped a little more.

‘A leetle more!’

We tipped a leetle more.

‘Just a leetle, very leetle bit more.’

With great difficulty we tipped just a leetle, very leetle more.

All this time my uncle was diligently stooping over, and striving to peep in, up, and under the box where the coiled anacondas and adders lay; but the machine being now fairly immersed, the attempt was wholly vain.

He rose erect, and waded slowly all round the box; his countenance firm and reliant, but not a little troubled and vexed.

It was plain something or other was going wrong. But as I was left in utter ignorance as to the mystery of the contrivance, I could not tell where the difficulty lay, or what was the proper remedy.

Once more, still more slowly, still more vexedly, my uncle waded round the box, the dissatisfaction gradually deepening, but still controlled, and still with hope at the bottom of it.

Nothing could be more sure than that some anticipated effect had, as yet, failed to develop itself. Certain I was, too, that the water-line did not lower about my legs.

‘Tip it a leetle bit—very leetle now.’

‘Dear uncle, it is tipped already as far as it can be. Don’t you see it rests now square on its bottom?’

‘You, Yorpy, take your black hoof from under the box!’

217This gust of passion on the part of my uncle made the matter seem still more dubious and dark. It was a bad symptom, I thought.

‘Surely you can tip it just a leetle more!’

‘Not a hair, uncle.’

‘Blast and blister the cursed box, then!’ roared my uncle, in a terrific voice, sudden as a squall. Running at the box he dashed his bare foot into it, and with astonishing power all but crushed in the side. Then seizing the whole box, he disembowelled it of all its anacondas and adders, and, tearing and wrenching them, flung them right and left over the water.

‘Hold, hold, my dear, dear uncle!—do for Heaven’s sake desist. Don’t destroy so, in one frantic moment, all your long, calm years of devotion to one darling scheme. Hold, I conjure!’

Moved by my vehement voice and uncontrollable tears, he paused in his work of destruction, and stood steadfastly eyeing me, or rather blankly staring at me, like one demented.

‘It is not yet wholly ruined, dear uncle; come put it together now. You have hammer and wrench; put it together again, and try it once more. While there is life there is hope.’

‘While there is life hereafter there is despair,’ he howled.

‘Do, do now, dear uncle—here, here, put these pieces together; or, if that can’t be done without more tools, try a section of it—that will do just as well. Try it once; try, uncle.’

My persistent persuasiveness told upon him. The stubborn stump of hope, ploughed at and uprooted in vain, put forth one last miraculous green sprout.

Steadily and carefully culling out of the wreck some of the more curious-looking fragments, he mysteriously 218involved them together, and then, clearing out the box, slowly inserted them there, and ranging Yorpy and me as before, bade us tip the box once again.

We did so; and as no perceptible effect yet followed, I was each moment looking for the previous command to tip the box over yet more, when, glancing into my uncle’s face, I started aghast. It seemed pinched, shrivelled into mouldy whiteness, like a mildewed grape. I dropped the box, and sprang toward him just in time to prevent his fall.

Leaving the woeful box where we had dropped it, Yorpy and I helped the old man into the skiff, and silently pulled from Quash Isle.

How swiftly the current now swept us down! How hardly before had we striven to stem it! I thought of my poor uncle’s saying, not an hour gone by, about the universal drift of the mass of humanity toward utter oblivion.

‘Boy!’ said my uncle at last, lifting his head.

I looked at him earnestly, and was gladdened to see that the terrible blight of his face had almost departed.

‘Boy, there’s not much left in an old world for an old man to invent.’

I said nothing.

‘Boy, take my advice, and never try to invent anything but—happiness.’

I said nothing.

‘Boy, about ship, and pull back for the box.’

‘Dear uncle!’

‘It will make a good wood-box, boy. And faithful old Yorpy can sell the old iron for tobacco-money.’

‘Dear massa! dear old massa! dat be very fust time in de ten long ’ear yoo hab mention kindly old Yorpy. I tank yoo, dear old massa; I tank yoo so kindly. Yoo is yourself agin in de ten long ’ear.’

219‘Ay, long ears enough,’ sighed my uncle; ‘Esopian ears. But it’s all over now. Boy, I’m glad I’ve failed. I say, boy, failure has made a good old man of me. It was horrible at first, but I’m glad I’ve failed. Praise be to God for the failure!’

His face kindled with a strange, rapt earnestness. I have never forgotten that look. If the event made my uncle a good old man, as he called it, it made me a wise young one. Example did for me the work of experience.

When some years had gone by, and my dear old uncle began to fail, and, after peaceful days of autumnal content, was gathered gently to his fathers—faithful old Yorpy closing his eyes—as I took my last look at his venerable face, the pale resigned lips seemed to move. I seemed to hear again his deep, fervent cry—‘Praise be to God for the failure!’

220

THE FIDDLER

So my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody forever and ever. Intolerable fate!

Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticism, and rushed out into Broadway, where enthusiastic throngs were crowding to a circus in a side-street near by, very recently started, and famous for a capital clown.

Presently my old friend Standard rather boisterously accosted me.

‘Well met, Helmstone, my boy! Ah! what’s the matter? Haven’t been committing murder? Ain’t flying justice? You look wild!’

‘You have seen it, then?’ said I, of course referring to the criticism.

‘Oh yes, I was there at the morning performance. Great clown, I assure you. But here comes Hautboy. Hautboy—Helmstone.’

Without having time or inclination to resent so mortifying a mistake, I was instantly soothed as I gazed on the face of the new acquaintance so unceremoniously introduced. His person was short and full, with a juvenile, animated cast to it. His complexion rurally ruddy; his eye sincere, cheery, and gray. His hair alone betrayed that he was not an overgrown boy. From his hair I set him down as forty or more.

‘Come, Standard,’ he gleefully cried to my friend, ‘are you not going to the circus? The clown is inimitable, they say. Come; Mr. Helmstone, too—come both; and circus over, we’ll take a nice stew and punch at Taylor’s.’

221The sterling content, good-humour, and extraordinary ruddy, sincere expression of this most singular new acquaintance acted upon me like magic. It seemed mere loyalty to human nature to accept an invitation from so unmistakably kind and honest a heart.

During the circus performance I kept my eye more on Hautboy than on the celebrated clown. Hautboy was the sight for me. Such genuine enjoyment as his struck me to the soul with a sense of the reality of the thing called happiness. The jokes of the clown he seemed to roll under his tongue as ripe magnum-bonums. Now the foot, now the hand, was employed to attest his grateful applause. At any hit more than ordinary, he turned upon Standard and me to see if his rare pleasure was shared. In a man of forty I saw a boy of twelve; and this, too, without the slightest abatement of my respect. Because all was so honest and natural, every expression and attitude so graceful with genuine good-nature, that the marvellous juvenility of Hautboy assumed a sort of divine and immortal air, like that of some forever youthful god of Greece.

But much as I gazed upon Hautboy, and much as I admired his air, yet that desperate mood in which I had first rushed from the house had not so entirely departed as not to molest me with momentary returns. But from these relapses I would rouse myself, and swiftly glance round the broad amphitheatre of eagerly interested and all-applauding human faces. Hark! claps, thumps, deafening huzzas; the vast assembly seemed frantic with acclamation; and what, mused I, has caused all this? Why, the clown only comically grinned with one of his extra grins.

Then I repeated in my mind that sublime passage in my poem, in which Cleothemes the Argive vindicates the justice of the war. Ay, ay, thought I to myself, did I 222now leap into the ring there and repeat that identical passage, nay, enact the whole tragic poem before them, would they applaud the poet as they applaud the clown? No! They would hoot me, and call me doting or mad. Then what does this prove? Your infatuation or their insensibility? Perhaps both; but indubitably the first. But why wail? Do you seek admiration from the admirers of a buffoon? Call to mind the saying of the Athenian, who, when the people vociferously applauded in the forum, asked his friend in a whisper, what foolish thing had he said?

Again my eye swept the circus, and fell on the ruddy radiance of the countenance of Hautboy. But its clear honest cheeriness disdained my disdain. My intolerant pride was rebuked. And yet Hautboy dreamed not what magic reproof to a soul like mine sat on his laughing brow. At the very instant I felt the dart of the censure, his eye twinkled, his hand waved, his voice was lifted in jubilant delight at another joke of the inexhaustible clown.

Circus over, we went to Taylor’s. Among crowds of others, we sat down to our stews and punches at one of the small marble tables. Hautboy sat opposite to me. Though greatly subdued from its former hilarity, his face still shone with gladness. But added to this was a quality not so prominent before; a certain serene expression of leisurely, deep good sense. Good sense and good humour in him joined hands. As the conversation proceeded between the brisk Standard and him—for I said little or nothing—I was more and more struck with the excellent judgment he evinced. In most of his remarks upon a variety of topics Hautboy seemed intuitively to hit the exact line between enthusiasm and apathy. It was plain that while Hautboy saw the world pretty much as it was, yet he did not theoretically espouse its bright side nor its dark side. Rejecting all solutions, he but acknowledged 223facts. What was sad in the world he did not superficially gainsay; what was glad in it he did not cynically slur; and all which was to him personally enjoyable, he gratefully took to his heart. It was plain, then—so it seemed at that moment, at least—that his extraordinary cheerfulness did not arise either from deficiency of feeling or thought.