OTHER PROSE PIECES (continued 5)

No sooner said than the ticking ceased. Never was responsive obedience more exact. For the life of me, I could not help turning round upon the table, as one would upon some reasonable being, when—could I believe my senses? I saw something moving, or wriggling, or squirming upon the slab of the table. It shone like a glow-worm. Unconsciously, I grasped the poker that stood at hand. But bethinking me how absurd to attack a glow-worm with a poker, I put it down. How long I sat spellbound and staring there, with my body presented one way and my face another, I cannot say; but at length I rose, and, buttoning my coat up and down, made a sudden intrepid forced march full upon the table. And there, near the centre of the slab, as I live, I saw an irregular little hole, or, rather, short nibbled sort of crack, from which (like a butterfly escaping its chrysalis) the sparkling object, whatever it might be, was struggling. 328Its motion was the motion of life. I stood becharmed. Are there, indeed, spirits, thought I; and is this one? No; I must be dreaming. I turned my glance off to the red fire on the hearth, then back to the pale lustre on the table. What I saw was no optical illusion, but a real marvel. The tremor was increasing, when, once again, Democritus befriended me. Supernatural coruscation as it appeared, I strove to look at the strange object in a purely scientific way. Thus viewed, it appeared some new sort of small shining beetle or bug, and, I thought, not without something of a hum to it, too.

I still watched it, and with still increasing self-possession. Sparkling and wriggling, it still continued its throes. In another moment it was just on the point of escaping its prison. A thought struck me. Running for a tumbler, I clapped it over the insect just in time to secure it.

After watching it a while longer under the tumbler, I left all as it was, and, tolerably composed, retired.

Now, for the soul of me, I could not, at that time, comprehend the phenomenon. A live bug come out of a dead table? A fire-fly bug come out of a piece of ancient lumber, for one knows not how many years stored away in an old garret? Was ever such a thing heard of, or even dreamed of? How got the bug there? Never mind. I bethought me of Democritus, and resolved to keep cool. At all events, the mystery of the ticking was explained. It was simply the sound of the gnawing and filing, and tapping of the bug, in eating its way out. It was satisfactory to think, that there was an end forever to the ticking. I resolved not to let the occasion pass without reaping some credit from it.

‘Wife,’ said I, next morning, ‘you will not be troubled with any more ticking in our table. I have put a stop to all that.’

329‘Indeed, husband,’ said she, with some incredulity.

‘Yes, wife,’ returned I, perhaps a little vaingloriously, ‘I have put a quietus upon that ticking. Depend upon it, the ticking will trouble you no more.’

In vain she besought me to explain myself. I would not gratify her; being willing to balance any previous trepidation I might have betrayed, by leaving room now for the imputation of some heroic feat whereby I had silenced the ticking. It was a sort of innocent deceit by implication, quite harmless, and, I thought, of utility.

But when I went to breakfast, I saw my wife kneeling at the table again, and my girls looking ten times more frightened than ever.

‘Why did you tell me that boastful tale,’ said my wife, indignantly. ‘You might have known how easily it would be found out. See this crack, too; and here is the ticking again, plainer than ever.’

‘Impossible,’ I explained; but upon applying my ear, sure enough, tick! tick! tick! The ticking was there.

Recovering myself the best way I might, I demanded the bug.

‘Bug?’ screamed Julia. ‘Good heavens, papa!’

‘I hope, sir, you have been bringing no bugs into this house,’ said my wife, severely.

‘The bug, the bug!’ I cried; ‘the bug under the tumbler.’

‘Bugs in tumblers!’ cried the girls; ‘not our tumblers, papa? You have not been putting bugs into our tumblers? Oh, what does—what does it all mean?’

‘Do you see this hole, this crack here?’ said I, putting my finger on the spot.

‘That I do,’ said my wife, with high displeasure. ‘And how did it come there? What have you been doing to the table?’

‘Do you see this crack?’ repeated I, intensely.

330‘Yes, yes,’ said Julia; ‘that was what frightened me so; it looks so like witch-work.’

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Anna.

‘Silence!’ said my wife. ‘Go on, sir, and tell us what you know of the crack.’

‘Wife and daughters,’ said I, solemnly, ‘out of that crack, or hole, while I was sitting all alone here last night, a wonderful⸺’

Here, involuntarily, I paused, fascinated by the expectant attitudes and bursting eyes of Julia and Anna.

‘What, what?’ cried Julia.

‘A bug, Julia.’

‘Bug?’ cried my wife. ‘A bug come out of this table? And what did you do with it?’

‘Clapped it under a tumbler.’

‘Biddy! Biddy!’ cried my wife, going to the door. ‘Did you see a tumbler here on this table when you swept the room?’

‘Sure I did, marm, and ’bomnable bug under it.’

‘And what did you do with it?’ demanded I.

‘Put the bug in the fire, sir, and rinsed out the tumbler ever so many times, marm.’

‘Where is that tumbler?’ cried Anna. ‘I hope you scratched it—marked it some way. I’ll never drink out of that tumbler; never put it before me, Biddy. A bug—a bug! Oh, Julia! Oh, mamma! I feel it crawling all over me, even now. Haunted table!’

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Julia.

‘My daughters,’ said their mother, with authority in her eyes, ‘go to your chamber till you can behave more like reasonable creatures. Is it a bug—a bug that can frighten you out of what little wits you ever had? Leave the room. I am astonished, I am pained by such childish conduct.’

‘Now tell me,’ said she, addressing me, as soon as they 331had withdrawn, ‘now tell me truly, did a bug really come out of this crack in the table?’

‘Wife, it is even so.’

‘Did you see it come out?’

‘I did.’

She looked earnestly at the crack, leaning over it.

‘Are you sure?’ said she, looking up, but still bent over.

‘Sure, sure.’

She was silent. I began to think that the mystery of the thing began to tell even upon her. Yes, thought I, I shall presently see my wife shaking and shuddering, and, who knows, calling in some old dominie to exorcise the table, and drive out the spirits.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ said she suddenly, and not without excitement.

‘What, wife?’ said I, all eagerness, expecting some mystical proposition; ‘what, wife?’

‘We will rub this table all over with that celebrated “roach powder” I’ve heard of.’

‘Good gracious! Then you don’t think it’s spirits?’

‘Spirits?’

The emphasis of scornful incredulity was worthy of Democritus himself.

‘But this ticking—this ticking?’ said I.

‘I’ll whip that out of it.’

‘Come, come, wife,’ said I, ‘you are going too far the other way, now. Neither roach powder nor whipping will cure this table. It’s a queer table, wife; there’s no blinking it.’

‘I’ll have it rubbed, though,’ she replied, ‘well rubbed’; and calling Biddy, she bade her get wax and brush, and give the table a vigorous manipulation. That done, the cloth was again laid, and we sat down to our morning meal; but my daughters did not make their appearance. Julia and Anna took no breakfast that day.

332When the cloth was removed, in a business-like way my wife went to work with a dark-coloured cement, and hermetically closed the little hole in the table.

My daughters looking pale, I insisted upon taking them out for a walk that morning, when the following conversation ensued:

‘My worst presentiments about that table are being verified, papa,’ said Julia; ‘not for nothing was that intimation of the cloven foot on my shoulder.’

‘Nonsense,’ said I. ‘Let us go into Mrs. Brown’s, and have an ice-cream.’

The spirit of Democritus was stronger on me now. By a curious coincidence, it strengthened with the strength of the sunlight.

‘But is it not miraculous,’ said Anna, ‘how a bug should come out of a table?’

‘Not at all, my daughter. It is a very common thing for bugs to come out of wood. You yourself must have seen them coming out of the ends of the billets on the hearth.’

‘Ah, but that wood is almost fresh from the woodland. But the table is at least a hundred years old.’

‘What of that?’ said I, gaily. ‘Have not live toads been found in the hearts of dead rocks, as old as creation?’

‘Say what you will, papa, I feel it is spirits,’ said Julia. ‘Do, do now, my dear papa, have that haunted table removed from the house.’

‘Nonsense,’ said I.

By another curious coincidence, the more they felt frightened, the more I felt brave.

Evening came.

‘This ticking,’ said my wife; ‘do you think that another bug will come of this continued ticking?’

Curiously enough, that had not occurred to me before. I had not thought of there being twins of bugs. But now, who knew; there might be even triplets.

333I resolved to take precautions, and, if there was to be a second bug, infallibly secure it. During the evening, the ticking was again heard. About ten o’clock I clapped a tumbler over the spot, as near as I could judge of it by my ear. Then we all retired, and locking the door of the cedar-parlour, I put the key in my pocket.

In the morning, nothing was to be seen, but the ticking was heard. The trepidation of my daughters returned. They wanted to call in the neighbours. But to this my wife was vigorously opposed. We should be the laughing-stock of the whole town. So it was agreed that nothing should be disclosed. Biddy received strict charges; and, to make sure, was not allowed that week to go to confession, lest she should tell the priest.

I stayed home all that day; every hour or two bending over the table, both eye and ear. Toward night, I thought the ticking grew more distinct, and seemed divided from my ear by a thinner and thinner partition of the wood. I thought, too, that I perceived a faint heaving up, or bulging of the wood, in the place where I had placed the tumbler. To put an end to the suspense, my wife proposed taking a knife and cutting into the wood there; but I had a less impatient plan; namely, that she and I should sit up with the table that night, as, from present symptoms, the bug would probably make its appearance before morning. For myself, I was curious to see the first advent of the thing—the first dazzle of the chick as it chipped the shell.

The idea struck my wife not unfavourably. She insisted that both Julia and Anna should be of the party, in order that the evidence of their senses should disabuse their minds of all nursery nonsense. For that spirits should tick, and that spirits should take unto themselves the form of bugs, was, to my wife, the most foolish of all foolish imaginations. True, she could not account for 334the thing; but she had all confidence that it could be, and would yet be, somehow explained, and that to her entire satisfaction. Without knowing it herself, my wife was a female Democritus. For my part, my present feelings were of a mixed sort. In a strange and not unpleasing way, I gently oscillated between Democritus and Cotton Mather. But to my wife and daughters I assumed to be pure Democritus—a jeerer at all tea-table spirits whatever.

So, laying in a good supply of candles and crackers, all four of us sat up with the table, and at the same time sat round it. For a while my wife and I carried on an animated conversation. But my daughters were silent. Then my wife and I would have had a rubber of whist, but my daughters could not be prevailed upon to join. So we played whist with two dummies literally; my wife won the rubber and, fatigued with victory, put away the cards.

Half-past eleven o’clock. No sign of the bug. The candles began to burn dim. My wife was just in the act of snuffing them, when a sudden, violent, hollow, resounding, rumbling, thumping was heard.

Julia and Anna sprang to their feet.

‘All well!’ cried a voice from the street. It was the watchman, first ringing down his club on the pavement, and then following it up with this highly satisfactory verbal announcement.

‘All well! Do you hear that, my girls?’ said I, gaily.

Indeed it was astonishing how brave as Bruce I felt in company with three women, and two of them half frightened out of their wits.

I rose for my pipe, and took a philosophic smoke.

Democritus forever, thought I.

In profound silence, I sat smoking, when lo!—pop! pop! pop!—right under the table, a terrible popping.

This time we all four sprang up, and my pipe was broken.

335‘Good heavens! what’s that?’

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Julia.

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ cried Anna.

‘Shame!’ said my wife, ‘it’s that new bottled cider, in the cellar, going off. I told Biddy to wire the bottles to-day.’

I shall here transcribe from memoranda, kept during part of the night.

‘One o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking continues. Wife getting sleepy.

‘Two o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking intermittent. Wife fast asleep.

‘Three o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking pretty steady. Julia and Anna getting sleepy.

‘Four o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking regular, but not spirited. Wife, Julia, and Anna, all fast asleep in their chairs.

‘Five o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking faint. Myself feeling drowsy. The rest still asleep.’

So far the journal.

—Rap! rap! rap!

A terrific, portentous rapping against a door.

Startled from our dreams, we started to our feet.

Rap! rap! rap!

Julia and Anna shrieked.

I cowered in the corner.

‘You fools!’ cried my wife, ‘it’s the baker with the bread.’

Six o’clock.

She went to throw back the shutters, but ere it was done, a cry came from Julia. There, half in and half out its crack, there wriggled the bug, flashing in the room’s general dimness, like a fiery opal.

Had this bug had a tiny sword by its side—a Damascus sword—and a tiny necklace round its neck—a diamond 336necklace—and a tiny gun in its claw—brass gun—and a tiny manuscript in its mouth—a Chaldee manuscript—Julia and Anna could not have stood more charmed.

In truth, it was a beautiful bug—a Jew jeweller’s bug—a bug like a sparkle of a glorious sunset.

Julia and Anna had never dreamed of such a bug. To them, bug had been a word synonymous with hideousness. But this was a seraphical bug; or rather, all it had of the bug was the B, for it was beautiful as a butterfly.

Julia and Anna gazed and gazed. They were no more alarmed. They were delighted.

‘But how got this strange, pretty creature into the table?’ cried Julia.

‘Spirits can get anywhere,’ replied Anna.

‘Pshaw!’ said my wife.

‘Do you hear any more ticking?’ said I.

They all applied their ears, but heard nothing.

‘Well, then, wife and daughters, now that it is all over, this very morning I will go and make inquiries about it.’

‘Oh do, papa,’ cried Julia, ‘do go and consult Madame Pazzi, the conjuress.’

‘Better go and consult Professor Johnson, the naturalist,’ said my wife.

‘Bravo, Mrs. Democritus!’ said I. ‘Professor Johnson is the man.’

By good fortune I found the professor in. Informing him briefly of the incident, he manifested a cool, collected sort of interest, and gravely accompanied me home. The table was produced, the two openings pointed out, the bug displayed, and the details of the affair set forth; my wife and daughters being present.

‘And now, Professor,’ said I, ‘what do you think of it?’

Putting on his spectacles, the learned professor looked 337hard at the table, and gently scraped with his penknife into the holes, but said nothing.

‘Is it not an unusual thing, this?’ anxiously asked Anna.

‘Very unusual, Miss.’

At which Julia and Anna exchanged significant glances.

‘But is it not wonderful, very wonderful?’ demanded Julia.

‘Very wonderful, Miss.’

My daughters exchanged still more significant glances, and Julia, emboldened, again spoke.

‘And must you not admit, sir, that it is the work of—of—of sp⸺?’

‘Spirits? No,’ was the crusty rejoinder.

‘My daughters,’ said I, mildly, ‘you should remember that this is not Madame Pazzi, the conjuress, you put your questions to, but the eminent naturalist, Professor Johnson. And now, Professor,’ I added, ‘be pleased to explain. Enlighten our ignorance.’

Without repeating all the learned gentleman said—for, indeed, though lucid, he was a little prosy—let the following summary of his explication suffice.

The incident was not wholly without example. The wood of the table was apple-tree, a sort of tree much fancied by various insects. The bugs had come from eggs laid inside the bark of the living tree in the orchard. By careful examination of the position of the hole from which the last bug had emerged, in relation to the cortical layers of the slab, and then allowing for the inch and a half along the grain, ere the bug had eaten its way entirely out, and then computing the whole number of cortical layers in the slab, with a reasonable conjecture for the number cut off from the outside, it appeared that the egg must have been laid in the tree some ninety years, more or less, before the tree could have been felled. But between the felling of the tree and the present 338time, how long might that be? It was a very old-fashioned table. Allow eighty years for the age of the table, which would make one hundred and fifty years that the bug had lain in the egg. Such, at least, was Professor Johnson’s computation.

‘Now, Julia,’ said I, ‘after that scientific statement of the case (though, I confess, I don’t exactly understand it) where are your spirits? It is very wonderful as it is, but where are your spirits?’

‘Where, indeed?’ said my wife.

‘Why, now, she did not really associate this purely natural phenomenon with any crude, spiritual hypothesis, did she?’ observed the learned professor, with a slight sneer.

‘Say what you will,’ said Julia, holding up, in the covered tumbler, the glorious, lustrous, flashing, live opal, ‘say what you will, if this beauteous creature be not a spirit, it yet teaches a spiritual lesson. For if, after one hundred and fifty years’ entombment, a mere insect comes forth at last into light, itself an effulgence, shall there be no glorified resurrection for the spirit of man? Spirits! spirits!’ she exclaimed, with rapture, ‘I still believe in them with delight, when before I but thought of them with terror.’

The mysterious insect did not long enjoy its radiant life; it expired the next day. But my girls have preserved it. Embalmed in a silver vinaigrette, it lies on the little apple-tree table in the pier of the cedar-parlour.

And whatever lady doubts this story, my daughters will be happy to show her both the bug and the table, and point out to her, in the repaired slab of the latter, the two sealing-wax drops designating the exact place of the two holes made by the two bugs, something in the same way in which are marked the spots where the cannon balls struck Brattle Street church.

339

UNDER THE ROSE

(Being an extract from an old MS. entitled ‘Travels in Persia (Iran)

by a servant of My Lord the Ambassador.’)

… These roses of divers hues, red, yellow, pink, and white, the black slave, a clean-limbed adolescent, and comely for all his flat nose; he, before offering them to My Lord to refresh him with their colour and scent, did, at the Azem’s bidding, drop them into a delicate vase of amber; and so cunningly, withal, that they fell as of themselves into the attitude of young damsels leaning over the balustrade of a dome and gazing downward; so that the vase itself was all but hidden from view, at least, much of the upper part thereof, where I noted that certain relievos were, though truly I could get but a peep thereof at that time.

On the next day but one repairing to the same villa where the Azem made abode for that month, and there waiting to convey a reply to a missive from My Lord; I saw by chance on a marble buffet the same vase then empty; and going up to it, curiously observed the relievos, before hidden by the flowers. They were of a mystical type, methought, something like certain pictures in the great Dutch Bible in a library at Oxon, setting forth the enigmas of the Song of the Wise Man, to wit, King Solomon. I hardly knew what to make of them; and so would as lief have seen the roses in their stead. Yet for the grace of it, if not the import, whatever that might be, was I pleased with a round device of sculpture on one side, about the bigness of My Lord’s seal to a 340parchment, showing the figure of an angel with a spade under arm like a gardener, and bearing roses in a pot; and a like angel-figure, clad like a cellarer, and with a wine-jar on his shoulder; and these two angels, side by side, pacing toward a meagre wight, very doleful and Job-like, squatted hard by a sepulchre, as meditating thereon; and all done very lively in small.

But the thing that meseems was most strange was the amber wherein this device and sundry other inventions were cut; for in parts it held marvellously congealed within its substance certain little relics of perished insects, as of the members of flies on frozen syrup or marmalade. Never had I seen the like thereof before; and My Lord, to whom that night I spoke of it, as he was drinking his posset, about the time of his retiring, he instructed me that that sort of amber was of the rarest, and esteemed exceeding precious, and spoke of a famous piece in the Great Duke’s museum at Florence; and much wished that the Azem had given him that vase in place of the jewelled scimetar you wot of. ‘And Geoffry,’ quoth My Lord somewhat eagerly, ‘didst thou note that the vessel was of one whole piece or in two parts, the bowl part and the standard?’ But verily I could not answer to purpose here, for I did in no wise handle the vase; and I doubt had the jealousy of the attendants permitted it; so that, were there any junction of two or more parts, right deftly was the same hidden by the craft of the artificer.

It befell that at the next coming together of My Lord and the Azem, which was about that stale affair of the two factors at Aleppo; My Lord after that business, and when their black drink, coffee, had been offered us in little cups of filigree, fine as My Lady’s Flanders lace, and great jasmine-stemmed pipes, two yards long, likewise, as is their ceremonious custom; My Lord, I say, holding the amber mouthpiece before him, shaped somewhat 341like a lemon, and of a wondrous clear tint much the same, and of a diameter not behind, for among these people the higher the rank or the longer the purse, the greater the costly mouthpiece, the same being but gently pressed against the lips at the orifice of the inhaled vapour; My Lord, I say, holding this fair oval of clear amber before him, turned, through the interpreter, the discourse to considerations of the occult nature of that substance whereof it was fashioned; declaring, among other items, his incredulity touching the strange allegement that amber was sometimes found with bees glued up therein as in their own crystallised honey, or, if not bees, then fleas and flies. With the wondrous sedate courtesy of all the grandees in these parts, the Azem with his silvery spade-beard, sitting cross-legged on the green silken cushions; he, though never understanding a word of My Lord’s English, yet very gravely and attentively, as before, heard him out; him, My Lord, first, I mean, leaning over toward him, his hand to his ear, for, certes, he was somewhat deaf, being in years; leaning over toward him, I say, and thereafter relaxing and falling back somewhat on the cushions, and so giving another sort of heed to the interpreter; who, having delivered his burden, the Azem did nothing but give a little clap with his hands, and, as it were one of the painted manikins in the great clock at Strasbourg, a pretty little page issued from a sort of draped closet near by; to whom his master made a sign; whereat the page brought to My Lord the aforesaid amber vase, empty, and put it into his two hands; who made as if surprised; and after scrutinising it, and turning it round and round, and discovering the imbedded relics, affected great admiration at being so promptly and in that tacit manner confuted in his misbelief; and much did he laud the beauty of the vase as well; insomuch that the interpreter, a precise clerk in 342his careful vocation, verily he seemed as sore put to it to render My Lord.

But if herein, and all along, My Lord’s purpose was so to work on the Azem as that he, seeing his great pleasure in the vase, might be drawn to make a gift of it; I say, if this were My Lord’s intent, it prospered not to the fulfilment, forasmuch as it was now the Azem’s turn to say how much he likewise, he himself, esteemed the vase, declaring that at such rate did he prize it, he would not barter it, no, not for a certain villa he spake of, though mightily he coveted the same. For besides the beauty of the vessel and the rare sculpture on it, and its being incomparably the biggest piece of amber known in those parts; besides all this, it was the very vase, he avouched—and with a kind of ardour strange to note in one so much upon his turbaned dignity—the very vase, in sooth, that being on a bridal festival filled with roses in the palace of the old Shaz Gold-beak at Shiraz, had tempted their great poet, one Lugar-Lips, to a closer inspection, when tenderly dividing the flowers one from another, and noting the little anatomies congealed in the amber, he was prompted to the inditing of certain verses; for which cause the vase thenceforth forever was inestimable. To which extravagance My Lord listened with his wonted civility, nay, and with a special graciousness, but for all that a bit sadly too, meseemed, and would now again have swerved the discourse; but the Azem was beforehand, and bade the page bring him something from a silver-bound chest near by in an alcove. It was a vellum book, about the bigness of a prayer-book for church-going, but very rich with jewelled clasps, and writ by some famous scribe in the fair Persian text, and illuminated withal like unto the great Popish parchment folios I have seen. And this book, surely of great cost, the Azem with his own hands right nobly did present to My 343Lord, putting his finger on a certain page whereon were traced those verses aforesaid.

But, shortly after, some sherbet and sweetmeats being served, and the Azem’s own mules being at the garden gate, and, the more to honour us, with gorgeous new trappings; our train withdrew in the same state as when we entered, that is, the one great captain-soldier leading, with a mighty truncheon in his hand, and his troop making a lane through which we proceeded to the saddles, they the while salaaming and paying extreme obeisance to My Lord, which, indeed, was but their bounden duty, for he was an Englishman and my noble master.

Now a Greek renegado, one long dwelling in Persia, a scholar, and at whiles employed by My Lord, he being expert in divers tongues of both continents, and learned in the chirography of the Persian and Arabic; this polyglot infidel—the more shame to him for turning his back on his Saviour—he being at the embassy one day, which was I know not what kind of strange holiday with these folk; My Lord for his recreation, and by way of challenge, being a little merry, as was his wont sometimes for a brief space after dinner; he commanded the Greek to put those verses into English rhyme if he could, and on the instant, or as soon soever as might be. Upon which the Greek said: ‘My Lord, I will try; but I pray thee give me wine’—glancing at the table where remained certain nickel flasks of the choice vintages both of Persia and Cyprus; ‘Yes, wine, My Lord,’ he repeated. ‘Now,’ demanded my master severely. ‘Bethink thee, now, My Lord,’ quoth he, saluting; ‘this same Lugar-Lip’s verses being all grapes, or veritably saturated with the ripe juice thereof, there is no properly rendering them without a cup or two of the same; and, behold, My Lord, I am sober.’

My master, after a moment seeming to debate in his 344mind whether this proceeded from a strange familiar impudence in the varlet, or from an honest superstition however silly, for he delivered himself very soberly and discreetly, commanded wine to be served him; when the renegado, quaffing like a good fellow his cup or two, which were indeed five, for I took the tally; he, I say, quaffing at whiles, and all the time holding the vellum book in one hand—and, sooth, but one hand he had, the other having been smitten off by a scimetar, whether in honourable fray, or by the executioner, I know not; he, ever and anon scanning the page, humming and hooing to himself and swaying his body, like the dervishes hereabouts, at last after this mighty ado, sang—he scarce said it—the interpreted verses; which were these:—

‘Specks, tiny specks, in this translucent amber,

Your leave, bride-roses, may one pry and see?

How odd! a dainty little skeleton-chamber;

And—odder yet—sealed walls but windows be!

Death’s open secret.—Well, we are;

And here comes the jolly angel with the jar!’

Wherein, in the ultimate verse, Lugar-Lips did particularise, doubtless, one of the twain in the relievo of the little medallion on one side of the vase, of which cunning piece I have in the foregoing made account.

‘And is that all?’ said My Lord, composedly, but scarce cheerfully, when the renegado had made an end; ‘and is that all? And call you that a crushing from the grape? the black grape, I wis’; there checking himself, as a wise man will do, catching himself tripping in an indiscreet sincerity; which to cover, peradventure, he, suddenly rising, retired to his chamber, and though commanding his visage somewhat, yet in pace and figure showing the spirit within sadly distraught; forsooth, the last Michaelmas, his birthday, he was threescore 345and three years old, and in privy fear, as I knew who long was near him, of a certain sudden malady whereof his father and grandfather before him had died about that age. But for my part I always esteemed it a mighty weakness in so great a man to let the ribald wit of a vain ballader, and he a heathen, make heavy his heart. For me who am but a small one, I was in secret pleased with the lax pleasantry of this Lugar-Lips, but in such sort as one is tickled with the profane capering of a mountebank at Bartholomew’s Fair by Thames. Howbeit, had I been, God knows, of equal reverend years with my master, and subject by probable inheritance to the like sudden malady, peradventure I myself in that case might have waxed sorrowful, doubting whether the grape was not indeed the black grape, as he phrased it, wherefrom that vain balladry had been distilled.

But now no more hereof, nor of the amber vase, which like unto some little man in great place hath been made overmuch of, as the judicious reader hereof may opine.

346

THE MARQUIS DE GRANDVIN

A countryman of Lafayette and Bartholdi, this gentleman is not unknown to some Americans, more especially perhaps, to some of us New Yorkers. He is an honorary member of most of the Fifth Avenue clubs, anything but unwelcome at their chance gatherings, while at their premeditated banquets his appearance—and he always happily times it—is commonly hailed by a plausive clapping of hands simultaneous with the vocal salutation. But a person of genial temper is not only very likely to be a popular man’s man, but also, and beyond that, a favourite with the ladies. For it is something less venial than mere error in the old philosopher penally branded with a horrible name—misogynist, I think—and a soggy soul he must have been; it was something less venial than error in him to say, as he did, that women, however apt to that grand passion which makes the one divine rapture of life, have nevertheless a constitutional incapacity for good-fellowship, that is, in the masculine acceptation of the term. Assuredly, Hymen knows, too few of them practically demonstrate their capacity for it. Some musky dew-drops from the Garden expelled Eve unwillingly carried away quivering in her hair. More than man, she partakes of the paradisiac spirit. Under favourable conditions evincing a quicker aptitude to pleasure than man. How alert to twine the garland for the holiday! How instinctively prompt for that faint semblance of Eden, the picnic in the greenwood!

Now there is something in the fine, open, cheery aspect of the Marquis de Grandvin that conveys a thrill to these 347frames so exquisitely strung to happiness. Not invariably running the risk of incurring dark clouds from their lords, the dames and sisters of the Benedicks of the clubs, at their balls and parties, cast upon the Marquis that kindled merry glance which, according to the old French epic whose theme is Roncesvalles, the ladies bestowed upon Roland; not alone smitten by the fame and taken with the person of that noble accredited nephew of Charlemagne, but rightly inferring him to be not more a David against the Saracen than a champion against still more flagitious infidels, impugners of the sex. Yes, it is by instinct that all superior women recognise in this gentleman a cordial friend. Nor do they approve him the less for his friendly alliance with his charming sphere. This is a verity not out of keeping with another, namely, this feminine appreciation of the Marquis, gracious though it be, hardly extends to such of his qualities as partake of the Grand Style, as one may say, the highly elevated style; a style apparently demanding for its due appreciation a robust habit, in short, the masculine habit. For the most part, it is for his less exalted qualities that the ladies approve de Grandvin. They approve him for the way in which he contributes to those amenities and gaieties in which the sexes upon common ground participate, and wherein, thanks to their gallantry of good-nature, the countrymen of the Marquis de Grandvin have always excelled.

The foregoing hints as to what is the standing in America, or at least among some of us Americans, of the genial foreigner here ushered into a regard less exclusive; that, by patriotic intention goes before the recital, show that not alone in his own sweet France are the blended suavity and power of his genius estimated at their just rate, but that in the high circles of every European capital he is received with even more than good-will.

348Though the subject of this theme, de Grandvin, be a patrician of hereditary mark, he was not consulted in the matter of his progenitors. At any rate, his cosmopolitan sympathies, transcending his class, go out to mankind. Under auspicious circumstances make his acquaintance, and whatever your degree in the social scale, you will find him friendly company, cordial and frank; without condescension, a solemn popery he was never guilty of.

As to his title, if here he be introduced as the Marquis, it is only because his troops of friends on both sides of the water, not excluding even the Levellers among them, insist upon retaining for him an inherited prefix which he himself long ago renounced; and doubtless for the reason that any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

In defence of their insistent employment of the title, a caprice hardly compatible with their political principles, the Levellers of his acquaintance, candid in inconsistency, freely admit that somehow there is something in it felicitously befitting the character innately noble of de Grandvin.

But some fuller account of this genial paragon, upon whom are concentred the otherwise diverging suffrages of the divers parties in Church and State—some account less restricted by considerations of space—is in course of preparation, and if clamorously demanded, may hereafter appear. For the present purpose it will be enough, perhaps, if an outlined picture or two serve to suggest the filled portrait.

Though not so plentiful as our peaches in a good year, there are men of such noble quality that being in their company enriches and mellows one. The wisdom they by contact give out is not celibate and sterile like Solomon’s, but wedded to enjoyment, and hence productive. They would seem to be a confirmation of the otherwise disputable 349maxim of Spinoza, that every advance in joy implies an ascent in the scale of intelligence and capability. The influence of such a man insensibly disposes one to gentle charities, brave conceptions, heroic virtues. They have a suggestion of the potentialities in the unvitiated Adam, a creature, according to hallowed authority, originally created but a little lower than the angels. Almost invariably these men have physical beauty; and the moral charm is in keeping with that, apparently a spontaneous emanation from it. It is as golden wine down in a golden chalice, where, seen through the lustre suffusing the shadow, the delicious fluid looks to be the exuded gathered sap of the precious metal.

It was of the Marquis de Grandvin that the landscape painter, B. Hobbema Brown, an inoffensive sort of theoretical misanthrope, with a treacherous flow of loving-kindness in him—to borrow one of his own eccentric phrases; the same B. Hobbema who, were his significant reticence on the point, no unwise thing in him, by the way, conjecturally rendered into words, would seem in his own private judgment to have been treated illiberally enough by the art-dealers, art-critics, and academic hanging-committees, to say nothing of the art public; well, it was of some other than the Marquis that Hobbema B., returning in moonlight from a choice assemblage, where he had been introduced to him, and undergone the inevitable fascination of the contact; it was of him that Brown enthusiastically exclaimed to his companion: ‘What a godsend to meet such a man! He is a set-off against the battalions of his contraries. Between you and me, mankind taken in a lump are the gods’ job-lot; but, by heaven, the race that can produce a Marquis de Grandvin is not promiscuously to be contemned!’

See there how the talismanic something in the sort of nature here indicated can operate upon another nature 350though of a temper not favourably disposed to receive its benign influence.

In the casual outcome of such a character, gay fancies and suggestions without stint, sallies of wit and bonhomie, all sharing more or less in a certain lyric glow; herein the spiritual bounty to us would seem to be an unconsciousness in the almoner, involving, too, an indifference or unconcern as to who may appropriate, or as to what purpose the appropriation may be applied. In this particular, what recks the Marquis de Grandvin, for example? He is the ripe peach-tree shedding its abundance, careless of the garner; he is the Prince of Golconda at the ball, some of whose innumerable diamond buttons drop from his raiment unheeded by him in the chance fleeting rubs and collisions of the dance.

But how transitory these prodigal improvident ones can prove!—and once gone, how soon all but good as forgotten! True, were an example here demanded, one adapted for popular illustration, not readily could it be supplied. Literature will not furnish it, since these natures, never directly expressing themselves in literature, have no memorial place in its records. Neither are they Alexanders and Napoleons that the fame which is all but independent of literature should trumpet them. Nevertheless, in local tradition, and comparatively recent, I do find a citable instance which, though below the grade, say, of a de Grandvin, and but in a minor way to the purpose, may perhaps for these reasons serve the better to actualise the general truth, in a measure bring it home.

Rufus Choate, the Boston advocate, when inspired to his best before an audience, how he exhilarated and elevated and transported his hearers. But he is gone; and all those fireworks of elfish passion and wit, where are they? Vainly in the Ceramicus of the libraries will you seek any enduring monument of that oratorical 351pyrotechnist. As well ransack the museums of Natural History for the bottled-up tail of Encke’s comet. What shall we say, then? Are there natures strong to draw and enthrall, yet whose influence is like that of the magnet, only operative as a bodily presence? Yes, withdraw the magnet and all is over. And holds this true as to the Marquis de Grandvin? Yea, and shall he also at last vanish, sailing into the boundless Nil, leaving no phosphorescent wake or magic moon-glade behind? Shall naught remain of his cherub sparkle and spirit?—nothing of all those ineffable qualities that make him what Raphael, Milton’s affable archangel, would be seen to be were he commissioned hither to dissuade mankind from ever perpetrating an inhumanity or a pun? And, oh, thou Admirable Crichton, nay, a thousandfold more admirable than he, for art thou not kindly as wise?—of all thy more sustained sallies of bright fantasy and humour, let alone thy erratic coruscations, shall nothing be crystallised into permanence? Nothing at last remain of our Lord Bountiful but the empty larder and void dusty bin? When we laud thee departed, shall the infidel twit us with—What were his assets? If the very plenitude and variety of thy shining gifts, and the preoccupation of thy social charm, if these indispose thee to drudge it as an ‘author,’ or operate as disqualifications; will no painstaking aspirant for the literary fame essay the task of methodising thee, or some little segment of thee, into the literary form? But even thy foremost disciple, Jack Gentian, though out of humble emulation he strive to follow thy devious footing, yet thy brow is among the stars; he ventures not to lift his head to thy height.

But I—ah, brimmed with thy genial flood—I, here, in the small hour, not long returned from a richer than Plato’s ‘Banquet,’ where thou didst pour from thy cornucopia, 352with a hand redundant as that of Millet’s seed-sower, the profusion of thy good things; I, audacious as I am, resolved upon an emprise.

The Marquis, methought, though glorious, is not of the gods, the more reproach to their synod; but I will make them yield a place for him on their golden benches; I will make him an Immortal! How? Monumentalise him to the remotest posterity in a book fragrant as violets, yet lasting as the Pyramids!

Yes, and as the prophets of old, announcing the mind of their deity, in some instances dramatically put on his personality, even so will I assume that of de Grandvin. How otherwise, indeed? since he it is that kindles me, inspires me, usurps me. I will snatch at those themes—New Italy and the Old Masters—wherein this very night we heard him so sportively romance. I will render the fine festivity of his tone, as well as the loftier touch; catch the rhythm of the waves of his seas of invention; swim out there; in short, I did by implication say to myself an insane thing—I will imitate the inimitable!

The issue of the temerarious resolve, how humiliating! And no wonder. The inordinate aim, and the inadequate achievement! The soaring ambition of the balloon, and its abrupt drop at a fatal puncture!

You who have basked in the vital beams of the Marquis, place not in contrast his own radiant aspect side by side with the dim delineation of him in the preceding sketch. And, for the attempted rendering of his thought and style in the piece to follow, take charitable example from the Persian, who in his comment upon the Icelandic version of the fervid orientalisms of Sadi and Hafiz, made humane allowance for the inherent difficulties and presumably numb fingers of the translator in penning it.

353

PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN

John Gentian, Esq., or Major Gentian, or the Dean, or the Major, or Jack—for all these styles are his according to circumstances and the person mentioning or addressing him—is one of those socially notable characters whose names for all the notability will be found rather in the trustworthy City Directory than in the not-always-reliable Biographical Dictionary. Accordingly in the former ‘John Gentian’ is set down as hailing from the ‘Burgundy Club,’ the street and number of the club-house duly and accurately given. In brief, John Gentian is a bachelor having chambers on an upper story of the club-house, a privilege which at his solicitation was cheerfully accorded him, as by seniority of membership, to say nothing of happy qualifications in his character, Dean of the Chapter of Burgundians, for so do they denominate themselves, the brethren of that congenial fraternity.

This captain of the good fellows belongs to a transplanted shoot of Southern stock for two generations taking root and branching out in the North, within the borders of a State which, thanks to its relative geographical position and circumstances originating in that, least partakes of a sectional spirit. For now a fair period, ever since the latter part of 1865, the Dean has gone on in what would seem to be the after-mission of his life, namely, the dispensing of those less abbreviated greetings on the Avenue and considerate old-school hospitalities of the board, hardly practicable for the ‘business-man’ of our 354day, or, for that matter, the man of leisure either, unless abounding in natural benevolence backed up by its desirable concomitant, a comfortable bank account. Do not infer, however, that there is aught of Count D’Orsay superannuated, or Sir Charles Grandison, become senile, in our Dean of the Burgundians. He is no prodigal in airs and graces, and, on the contrary, sometimes takes singular liberties with etiquette, not out of ignorance, to be sure, or the Leveller’s contempt; no, but from a certain impulsive straightforwardness at times, hardly compatible with the abstract theory of a formalised gentlemanhood. Furthermore, he of late has permitted himself an easy latitude in his dress, evincing a lack of proper reverence for mercers and the mode. But yet more astray, he will, upon provocation—say, at some story of perfidy or brutal behaviour—incontinently rap out an expletive, startling to the ladies as Brandt’s flourished tomahawk at the London masked ball long ago. Then again, as if there were no end to his derelictions, he, when convenient to him, thinks nothing of carrying a brown paper parcel in the street rather than trouble the shopkeeper to send some inexpensive small matter to his rooms. Notwithstanding these deviations from the conventionally correct, there is that in the look of Major Gentian, something in the ‘cut of his jib,’ as the sailors say, if not in the end of his coat, that involuntarily inspires respect, yes, even in cabby himself. Cabby, before club-house or theatre, poised on the curb, expectant of the prey, would never dream of hailing him (the Dean) with the ambiguous ‘Gent.’ Should he do so, whether out of ignorance or sly impudence, the Major would have to hold his temper well in hand to obviate a violent breach of the peace. To Boss he objects not, that Dutch monosyllable having an honest bovine sound to it, and being, in fact, a natural localism of a city 355first settled by the Hollander; and if master be not the word’s exact equivalent, it would be difficult to find one.

The Major’s propensity is to occasional unlicensed emphasis in his talk, a thing assuredly not commendable in anybody, very likely contracted from certain experiences, namely, his adventures in early life among our frontiersmen. Nor could his subsequent campaignings during our Civil War have served to displace the secular expletives by Biblical ejaculations such as those attributed to Cromwell’s pious troopers, though, indeed, the historical sceptics of our time have suggested doubts as to whether even these same martial deacons for all their psalmody in the tents did not during active operations against the foe indulge more or less in that ‘horrible swearing’ wherewith ‘the army in Flanders’ stands pre-eminently charged. To terrorise, if possible, this pertains to the true function of a soldier in the field. The point is energetically put by a Roman consul, one of those schooling his infantry on the eve of an eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand encounter of ancient war. To the same purpose is a well-known passage in Shakespeare. But there are various modes of terrorising as a preliminary to closely engaging. The Chinese Achilles, for example, hurls at the foe missiles of an unmentionable name in English, and which explode an abomination of stench. The sequence is hot air, though disagreeable, and what is ‘horrible swearing’ but the same? It is perhaps equally efficacious, and, in military ethics, why may not either be used as an adjunct to the artillery? But alas for the oathing. It becomes a habit, and so in times of peace is mechanically resorted to by the retired Christian veteran when there is no military call for it. In short, a soldier’s or sailor’s oath, however shocking to ears polite, is, at least when the man is not 356actually engaged in tussle with the foe public or private, but an idiocratic form given to whatever meaning may lurk in such phrases as Bless my soul! Thunder! Goodness gracious!

If, however, sin be not of the heart but the tongue, a theological opinion to which some would seem to incline, then woe to no few of our warriors in the late Civil Unhappiness. For, in that case, who but an orthodox Calvinist can with any adequacy appreciate the sublime disinterestedness of their patriotism, since from his point of view, not alone did our heroes jeopardise their lives for us, but mortally endangered their souls. And for what? Oh futility! in the attempts to terrorise enemies who, being our own countrymen, of course, refused to be terrified, though in the end fate, working through force, made them succumb.

Though of all men Jack be the least exclusive as to the company he keeps, and is anything but bumptious in his manner, there have not been wanting detractors who have insinuated a charge against him rather serious in a democratic community, namely, not alone a tendency to the aristocratic in general, but a weakness for certain gewgaws, that savour of the monarchical. True, at certain grand banquets, where as an honorary guest he sits at the high table, banquets more especially of those national societies wherewith our cosmopolitan city abounds—the St. Denis, St. Nicholas, St. Patrick, St. George, St. Andrew; on these occasions the Major a little lays himself open to invidious suspicion by wearing on his left lapel the eagle wings in gold of the Cincinnati, a venerable order whereof he who still reigns ‘first in the hearts of his countrymen’ was the original head. This decoration descended to the Major from his great-grandfather, a South Carolinian, a white-haired captain of infantry at the battle of Saratoga 357Springs, who therefore, being eligible as a Revolutionary officer, was enrolled in the order upon its formation just after the Peace.

Now, an inherited badge of the Cincinnati, every American, however ultra in his democracy, must allow to be something of which no other American need be ashamed. As the Major himself once demanded, and with some animation—‘Compared with this bit of old gold,’ tapping it with his hand, ‘what is the insignia of the Knights of the Golden Fleece or the Knights of the Spanish Order of the Holy Ghost? Gimcracks, sir! and the last, in fact as in name, but a ghostly sort of vanity.’

358

TO MAJOR JOHN GENTIAN, DEAN OF THE BURGUNDY CLUB

With thy rare single-mindedness, so resented by the ambidextrous double-dealers, a virtue putting thee in a worldly sense almost as much at disadvantage with them as thy single arm (the other lost in the Wilderness under Grant) assuredly would in a personal encounter; the genial humour of thy club-chat, garnished, as not unfrequently it is, even like to a holiday barn, with sprigs of classic parsley set about it or inserted cloves of old English proverbs, or yet older Latin ones equally commonplace, yet never losing the verity in them, their preservative spice; thy yellow, wrinkled parchment from Harvard hung up framed in thy bachelor quarters (so convenient to the Club); thy cherished eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati, a golden insignia thou polishest up and sportest on occasion; and—be it never omitted—thy high relish for the qualities of M. de Grandvin, through frequent communion with whom thou hast caught much of his generous spirit enhancing what is naturally thine own, yes, and something of his beaming aspect as well; insomuch that unto thee—after him—belong all the titles of good fellowship. Dean of the Burgundians, but I love thee! Though some of the points just cited might of themselves avail to denote thee, Dean, two other characteristics there are which peradventure may serve to signalise. Though a soldier of the Civil War, and a gazetted one, thou at all times, even upon that legal holiday which has undesignedly 359become the annual commemoration of that war, refrainest from wearing on thy person any memorial thereof. And, ever since the Peace, even as during the entire military contest, no superfluous syllable ever fell from thy lips touching the Southern half of thy country.

Now, as to the personal memorial, honourably worn by so many, if thou declined to wear it, was this because thou wert in sympathy with the spirit of thy deplored New England friend, Charles Sumner—whom, for what was sterling in him, thou didst so sincerely honour, though far from sharing in all his advocated measures? Years ago Grant and Lee joined hands at Appomattox. Art thou such an old-fashioned Roman in thy patriotism that thou wouldst consign to oblivion the fact that thy countrymen, claiming the van of Adam’s alleged advance, were but yesterday plunged in patricidal strife? And, for thy never being a partisan animadverter, is that because for all the free thought that beats in thy brain, at heart thou art the captive of Christ, yea, even something of a Christian, and though but dimly conscious of it, perhaps, art not unmindful of the divine text which implies that if sinners abound they are not in vain demarked from the saints by any parallel of latitude. Or, rather, that there are no saints, but that all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners—miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

However this be, both the omission and the abstention referred to are in significant contrast with thy words relative to that elder war wherein thy grandfather was one of the ‘rebels,’ a contrast emphasised though involuntarily in thy social utterances upon every recurrence of our one national holiday.

On the fourth morning of each July, about the tenth hour by the club clock, spruced up in thy goodly person 360and decked at lapel with the golden eagle suspended by the white-bordered blue ribbon, an order which Washington and Lafayette and thy grandfather and father wore before thee, thou takest thy customary place at the club’s bay-window. There thou comfortably settlest thyself till lunch-time, discoursing at whiles with whomsoever may, fortunately for himself, happen to be at hand.

Now thy Fourth-of-July outgivings, though indeed yearly varying in expression, yet in spirit are much the same. Dost thou remember all that thou saidest on the last Fourth, Major? Hardly. But I do; and will try to refresh thy memory by reproducing it, with some accompanying circumstances, and as if all were of to-day.

After gazing out of the open window for a time, noting the strange Sabbatarian quiet of the Avenue, on other week-days so abounding with diversified life, thou mutterest to thyself a strange litany of lamentations touching the general falling-off in the old-time celebration. ‘Well, well,’ thou mutterest, ‘it is getting along now in its second century, this anniversary, and nearly everything falls off with years. In Victoria’s reign is Guy Fawkes’ Day what it was in Elizabeth’s? I trow not. Sic transit, Sic transit!’

Here some swift return of thought to its everyday channel causes thee suddenly to wheel in thy revolving chair and face inward. Thou remarkest the vacant lounges and sofas, thou absorbest the drear silence. Is it the tabernacle on a week-day? Evidently, thou bethinkest thee of the many absentees. Anon, with thy ample white handkerchief mopping the beads from thy brow, thou exclaimest, ‘Shame upon them! Why, even the thermometer, though a creature metallic, is more sensitive than these renegades to the momentous occasion. Sure, the mercury rises to it! But they—they run from 361it. Now degenerate, not only from their sires, but their own boyhood. Ah, my good sir,’ giving another impulsive turn to the revolving chair so as directly to face the one person present, a somewhat reserved gentleman of mature years engaged in methodically refolding a letter just perused, ‘Ah, my good sir, it is your boy who is your true patriot. He made on the Third for Long Branch or elsewhere? Nay, sir, on the Third, if not before, he lays in his ammunition, his powder-crackers; at early dawn on the blessed Fourth he crams his breeches-pockets with them, and though in his heedless enthusiasm, mixing them up there with his matches, they get ignited and suddenly begin going off like minute-guns hurried up, making him a spluttering blunderbuss to himself and the crowd, what recks he if but luckily he come out of it unharmed? Another boy, a yet more devoted young acolyte of the Salii, should repeated discharges at last burst his toy-cannon, and he go to Hades for it, what then? Ducit amor patriae! That’s the inscription, sir, on General Worth’s monument you and I pass every day. Ten to one you never noticed it—the inscription, I mean. Ah, but he was a paladin, a homespun paladin, General Worth. And happy in his surname, though indeed his worth was of another sort than that of the purse.’

‘And did you personally know the General, Dean?’ inquires the solitary auditor, his curiosity here doing away with a taciturnity seldom yielding but through the persuasive mediation of wine. ‘Did you, personally, know the General, sir?’ ‘Ay, indeed!’ And, after losing thee in revery awhile, and reminiscently ejaculating something to thyself, ‘The last time I saw Will Worth was on the night-boat coming down from Albany—by Jove, it seems but a week or two ago—he then being bound for Mexico to pay his military respects to General 362Santa Anna in the field. But he came back horizontal who went forth so erect! Ay, but like the great Gustavus, sir, from Lützen field, if dirged yet laurelled. Pray, sir, can you repeat the battle-names on the monumental shaft? Chermbusco, Buena Vista, Resaca de la Palma, San Antonio, Cerro Gordo. There’s a valley for you of vowels and victory! Ay, and Monterey, too, that superb dash of arms, one inspiring my chivalric friend, Charlie Fenno Hoffman—remember Charlie, sir? No, no; you don’t go back so far—inspired his fine lyric.’ Now, after a moment’s pause, to rally the memory belike, thou didst kindle, and springing from thy seat, leaving it spinning on its pivot, thy adorned chest expanded, thou didst sonorously declaim this stanza:—

‘The foe himself recoiled aghast,

When striking where he strongest lay,

We swoopt his flanking batteries past,

And braving full their murderous blast

Stormed home the towers of Monterey!’

Then reseating thee, a little panting, and pressing one hand to thy side: ‘Ay, stirring deeds beget stirring rhymes. But stirring rhymes bestir overmuch the cardiac arteries in an old fellow like me. Well, well,’ in reaction lapsing into a muffled mutter, a sort of audible musing, ‘Well, well—they are gone, both gone, hero and bard—long ago. Sic transit.—They sleep, sleep.—In pace, in pace—Requiescant!’

And slowly removing thy gold-rimmed glasses and assiduously rubbing them with thy ample handkerchief, in tone a bit tremulous, thou addressest the mild gentleman thy hearer. ‘The heat of this unwonted season, sir, would not be so inconvenient but for the confounded humidity dampening one’s spectacles so. But where, where now was I? Astraying I’ve been: Let me see⸺’ 363shutting thine eyes and clapping a hand to brow, ‘ah, yes, yes—patriotism of boyhood. Well, such a spluttering blunderbuss as I was speaking of a while ago, or rather such a feu de joie in persona our venerable friend, Judge van Groot, inadvertently made himself as a boy, recruiting his fagged patriotism on doughnuts and cider in one of those booths which in auld lang syne belted about our City Hall Park every Fourth. I hear the sharp, quick percussion even now—see the lad starting up, clapping his hands to his exploding powder-houses, and yet more rapidly withdrawing them, till the booth-keeper put him out by dashing a handy bucket of cider on his trowsers. That was—bless my soul—nigh threescore years ago!—And now? Yesterday with one foot in prunella, his Honour limped off to Saratoga, and, I dare say, sir, without so much as a single powder-cracker in his vest pocket; nay, and very likely never once recalling the circumstances that Saratoga as a great Revolutionary battlefield, or giving name to one, is signally associated with this blessed day.’ Then after a few moments of meditative silence, ‘Myndert van Groot is—let me see—yes, about mine own age. His bay-tree, though planted by the rivers of Burgundy, won’t flourish more than a hundred years longer.—Well, well—tempus does fugit—Memento mori!—die we must—consign to dust—leave all!’ Here, settling back in thy chair, thine eyes fixed upon vacancy, thou murmurest from thy Horace in quite other tones than those which late rolled forth the Monterey stanza:—

‘The purple vineyard’s luscious stores,

Secured by trebly bolted doors,

Excite in vain your care;

Soon shall the rich and sparkling hoard

Flow largely o’er the festive board

Of your unsparing heir.’

364Silence again. Then, suddenly brisking up, ‘But à propos, as the Marquis says’; and, pulling out thy big watch, ‘ay, the lunch hour is at hand. Tobias, hither, thou Rose of Sharon,’ summoning a ruddy-cheeked young servitor, ‘go, see if the steward has ordered it as I directed, kept that Chambertin three leagues from his refrigerator and the bottles in readiness to be gently immersed up to the neck—mind, up to the neck in a water-cooler, the water of its natural temperature at this season. Go, lad, it is important.’ Then turning to the quiet listener, ‘Sir, for myself I am not so particular about these matters, but the two friends I expect to dine with me—Jerry Bland and Captain Don Tempest of the Navy—well, you know them—are; and one must humour the peculiar tastes of one’s friends, you know.’ Here, suddenly reminded that an immediate courtesy was due. ‘Of course, my good sir, you will join us. Nay, I insist upon it. Not good for a man to be alone, especially on the immortal Fourth. Tobias, come back. Tut, he’s gone. William! Go, say we will dine at the round table in the south-west corner, and let there be four covers—four, mind.’

Even so, Major, or much so, on the last Fourth, sitting in the club parlour didst thou by turns ruminate and expatiate, and humorously rail and feelingly evoke the bygone and glow as in the poetic fervour of youth, and involuntarily sigh the sigh of old philosophy, till in the end the home-sense of the eternal sagacity of all things did but result in awakening in thee but the more vividly thy relish for life and the Chambertin.

But on the forenoon of each thirtieth of May, seated—minus the aforesaid historic decoration—in thy reserved corner of the club balcony, in graven sort thou lookest down on the floral march of the Grand Army. Then seemed thou even less intent on returning the greetings 365from some hale comrade in the ranks, or less hearty hero borne along in open barouche; less dwelling, too, on the processional wains of nodding flowers, followed close by nodding plumes of the escort—to thee and the other veterans—a new generation of Mars—less absorbed by all this, than musing on the many mounds those same flowers ere nightfall shall dress. Thy constitutional good spirits seem strangely overcast that day. Thou forgoest the banquet. Nevertheless, it is observable that in the balcony thy empty sleeve is disposed more picturesquely, nay, somehow more conspicuously on that aforesaid thirtieth of every May, than on any other morning of the year. It more catches the eye. Now and then, during pauses in the procession, the crowd on the sidewalk below glance up at it, and expressively, and thou turnest not aside.

‘Ah, Major,’ I said, ‘I love thee; yes, and it is as much for thy queer little human foibles as thy not-so-common virtues. Come now, for all thy annual megrims, prouder art thou of that empty sleeve of thine than even of thy grandfather’s Revolutionary insignia, for this thou didst but inherit, the other, conferred on thee at first hand, and by the God of Battles.’

Not often dost thou discuss the tactics of thy Virginia campaigns, but what things hast thou told us of its byplay—the scouting, the foraging, the riding up to lovely mansions garrisoned by a faithful old slave or two, servants to lovely damsels more terrible than Mars in their feminine indignation at the insolent invader; in other instances being coquettishly served at an improvised lunch on some broad old piazza by less implacable beauties reduced by the calamities to dispensing hospitality for the enemy’s greenbacks. In such and similar passages of the war thou aboundest, passages luckily not susceptible of being formalised into professed history.

366But the better for the felicity of thy friends, thou hast more than one string to thy harp, Major. Did any listener ever tire of thy reminiscences of European travel? What signifies that they date so far back, before some of us were born? Even so do sundry inestimable vintages in the Club’s cellar. Pleasant it is when weary of the never-ending daily news, the same sort of thing forever, how pleasant to be spirited back by a tale, by some veteran’s living voice and eloquent gestures, to a period that is no news at all, a time prior to those more pronounced changes which have come over so few portions of that ancient and manifold world across the Atlantic, a world to which we are bound by unsunderable ties of genealogy.

Highly, Major, didst thou relish that title whereby, as regards so many of us Americans, a rare son of New England with happiest simplicity designated that Elder England, from which his progenitor came—Our Old Name. But if thy filial appreciation of the historic Past has something of Nathaniel Hawthorne in it, the medium, Dean, through which thou recallest it, viewing it as through an irradiated vapour, this is not without a touch of our incomparable friend, the Marquis. He, as well thou knowest, never is so happy, never so blissfully serene, as when wandering in a haze along that enchanted beach.

Among all thy over-sea reminiscences not the least entertaining to us juniors is thy liberal version of that famous Afternoon in Naples. In the wee hours, more especially if inspired by the beaming presence of M. de Grandvin, how affluent hast thou been on that theme; how vivid in description; and, for the rest, how frolic, pathetic, indignant, philosophic; and throughout how catholic and humane. But shall such a recital be confined to the small group of the convivially elect, brothers of the Burgundy? Savours that not a little of the exclusive? 367Have a care, Dean. With even more than is implied in that term, one not lightly to be applied in a democracy, thou hast, unbeknown to thee, perhaps, been reproached.

When General Grant, a bigot for his friends—and thou wert one of his military family in the field—when he, as President, nominated thee consul at that very Naples thou so entertainest us with, what whisper, doubtless started by some rival applicant, what ridiculous whisper, was it buzzed in the lobbies, that in spite even of Grant’s nomination, stranded thee unconfirmed by the Senate? But ‘Pshaw!’ thou exclaimest, amused at the enthusiasm of sophomores, when, ending thy Neapolitan romance we contendingly fire away with:—

‘Bravissimo!’

‘Encore!’

‘Write it out, Major!’

‘Put it in verse!’

‘Good, it will immortalise thee!’

‘And consider, Dean, the glory redounding to the Club!’

To all which thy expression ‘Pshaw!’ and the politely proffered snuff-box by way of an added parry, and little more do we get from thee, O Dean of the Burgundians!

Well, Major, what thou in thy impatience of pen-drudgery and indifference to any reputation except that old-fashioned one of being a man of honour; what thou, for these reasons, perchance, never couldst be persuaded to undertake, I, even I, unsolicited have had the temerity to essay.

And in so doing I have adopted thy earlier rendering of That Afternoon in Naples ere yet thou begannest to exclaim, ‘I don’t know what the dogs is the reason, but I can’t remember anything’; that version seeming to me akin to what engravers call the first proofs, less free 368from the blur that ensues after repeated impressions from the plate. Moreover, not unmindful of the enthusiastic injunction, ‘Put it in verse,’ I have after a fashion done accordingly. As to the interspersed ballads and ditties—at the which, peradventure, thou mayest stare even as Rip van Winkle, after his resurrection, did at his son—I do assure thee, Dean, they are essentially but thoughts and conceits of thine own, the product of seeds which planted and spontaneously developing in me, eventually effloresced into rhyme.

But to soften the liberty here taken, as well as the licence throughout, yes, and not without hope to propitiate and even please thee, I have so contrived matters that thou personated the part here allotted thee at the special instance of M. de Grandvin; thus in a literary way associating thee with one whose social companionship thou so unaffectedly lovest, and whose magnanimous spirit thou art ever fain to imbibe. Vale!

369

JACK GENTIAN

(Omitted from the final sketch of him.)

True, hardly to-day art thou what formerly thou wast. Thou thyself sometimes hintest that thy decline has even more than begun. With which confession for warrant some there be—alas for them! who in private are not slow to contribute confirmatory words and enlarge thereon.

‘Failing?’ says one. ‘To be sure! And how manifest the signs. In July you see him parrying the sun with his big white umbrella green-line; nevertheless, ere the straw hats yet begin to disappear from the promenade, reassuming his slouched felt sombrero he betakes himself to the street’s sunny side.’ ‘I have noted that,’ says another; ‘but—will you believe it?—late I espied him musing on a shaded bench in Madison Square; in the forenoon it was, too, not far from a seated file of disreputable nondescripts, non-producers in deplorable attire, plunged in lugubrious reveries on their doubtless misspent lives. Yes, and presently he rose, and after looking about him went straight up to a solitary old vagabond, and standing before him seemed making personal inquiries of him, and concluded by putting hand in pocket and bestowing something upon him. Now seems not that an indication of impaired senses?—deliberately to put a premium on improvidence and thriftlessness, or worse?’ ‘You go a little too far there,’ observes a middle-aged merchant and vestryman, the comfortable president of a charity; ‘the Major was always benevolent, as officially I have reason to know, 370always benevolent, but too often, as I hear, unsystematically so; and this unwisdom may very likely increase with years. But I hardly thought that he had any way so far decayed in his sense of what is beseeming in a gentleman whatever his years, as publicly to idle, and in business hours, and in such vicinity as you mention. Besides, those Madison Square benches so frequented by the untidy, how can some of them be otherwise than infected, yes, and with vermin. Dear me,’ in a tone of real concern, ‘it were almost enough to banish him from respectable society were it not the esteemed Major and the Dean.’

‘And with a warm deposit at his bank, too; forget not that, my good sir,’ gravely observed a waggish young berry-brown cynic in yachtsman’s attire, secretly amused at all this. Whereat the respectable vestryman with some severity, ‘Sir, that has nothing to do with the matter. This is America, Christian America, thank God; where, be it what it may, one’s bank account is of no account whatever in an American’s estimate of a fellow American.’ Upon which the elders cast a quiet glance toward the young gentleman, significant of their sense that he had been justly rebuked; and the rebuked wag, as conscious of the fact, assumed a contrite demeanour into which, however, he contrived to infuse a twinkle of irony.

‘I was at Mrs. Jones’s dinner,’ volunteered another sexagenarian in an arrested stage of development between the ear and the silk purse; ‘I was at Mrs. Jones’s dinner the other evening—and, by the way, there was twenty-three million represented by the group, twenty-three million dollars, think of that, so I computed it—and between certain parties there was some random talk about Major Gentian, to the effect that he did well in resigning his place as a leading director of the Dime 371Savings Bank, considering that he had generally outlived his usefulness.’

‘The Major ought to have an attendant,’ says a sunken-cheeked, heron-legged bachelor of uncertain years, a sort of man the natural product of the clubs and club-life, so at least the moralising enemies of clubs would doubtless maintain; ‘he ought to have an attendant, at any rate it will come to that before long. Tom Dutcher tells me that at Newport last season, instead of sedately sitting in white waistcoat and armchair on piazza talking stocks and dividends like most respectable old worthies of his kind, the Major more than ever before took to skylarking with those immature little specimens of humanity, obstreperous enough of themselves, Malthusian superfluities of the household, the chastisement of intemperate wedlock, and the bane, as we all have experienced, of many summer resorts. But you know second childhood has a natural affinity for the first.’

‘To be sure!’ chimes in a young Crœsus of complexion pink and white, recently returned from a four-in-hand coaching trip in Scotland. ‘To be sure! And how tediously, too, does he repeat in the smoking-room of the Come-and-Goes, where he occasionally resorts, his musty old romances of travel, and every version varies from the other. His memory is like wares at the auction—going, going, and anon it will be gone.’

‘Yes,’ says yet another, ‘I was talking with him at the ‘Windsor’ yesterday, and his sporadic ideas were like fishing smacks lost in a Newfoundland fog.’

‘Very much so,’ solemnly remarks a clerical-looking citizen, a politician high in municipal office; ‘very much so indeed. But have you observed one little circumstance, gentlemen, and weighed its significance as a marked symptom—at least some of it—of that irreparable change that, alas, comes with years? Major 372Gentian, though a soldier on the right side in the war, besides being of double Revolutionary descent—so I am told—nevertheless is far from being that sanguine New Yorker he used to be, and which in true patriotism we are all bound to be? What is this, I would like to know, but the natural optimist doting into the deplorable pessimist.’

Indeed, Dean, but they do cut and come again at thee, yes, even say these things of thee and more. But never a Burgundian among them, our Club harbouring none of that kidney. Outsiders they are, the profane; the seniors, some of them, confirmed tipplers of tea, a decoction that enlarges the spleen and warpest the brain, or lightly floating the spirit for a while at last lands it in a dry place. However, I will not gainsay these young roosters and old hens, since on some points upon which they click-clock the basis of their talk is true enough. But in the crooked mouth of the invidious, imparting its own twist to all it utters, in effect even veracity lies. Fail thou yet mayest, Major, but never degenerate. Thou mayest outlive thy usefulness (execrable phrase!) but never thy loving-kindness. To the last thou wilt be Jack Gentian; not too dignified to be humane; a democrat, though less of the stump than the heart. And should mortal decline come—which Heaven long defer—and the Black Brunswicker lay siege to thee in thy bachelor tower, thy compatriots, those who best know the true temper of thy genial spirit, would still call thee Jack as in the days of their youth, and though debility should then tongue-tie thee, thou wouldst still respond to them out of thy waning eyes.

373

MAJOR GENTIAN AND COLONEL J. BUNKUM

… As witness this long newspaper clipping without caption inserted in somebody’s scrap-book.

‘Note that badge Major Gentian wears upon occasion. It is a military badge. It is the badge of the national brotherhood of veterans in whose Chapters the grade of the field is ignored, and the general salutes the private—comrade! Is Major Gentian’s badge this badge?’ touching a bronze button on his lapel. ‘Is it the badge of the Grand Army of the Republic? No, men and brethren, it is another sort of badge. A badge which by the original constitution of the order it symbolises was restricted to the officers of the Army of the Revolution, to them, and in primogeniture to their descendants. I remember long ago in my youth the eldest son of a revolutionary officer, and as such an inheritor of the Cincinnati badge, saying, over the Madeira, to his own son, then a stripling, “My boy, if ever there is a recognised order of nobility in this land, it will be formed of the sons of the officers of the Revolution.” What a frank letting-out was that—thanks to the old Madeira—of the spirit animating the Cincinnati in the second generation, even as in the first. And to the Cincinnati Major Gentian belongs; and he prides himself upon it; and his pride here makes him throw back his shoulders, old man though he be—yea, and lends an inch to his stature.

‘Now, gratefully and very fervently do we hold in reverence the memory of the heroes of Seventy-six. Yet 374who but they founded this order? Did John Hancock withstand King George’s tea-tax in the spirit of John Hampden resisting King Charles’s impost of ship-money? Yes, so; but only so. Unto John Hancock the rich merchant, no more than to John Hampden the rich country gentleman of a prior generation, had any practical purpose revealed the gospel of man’s unconditioned equality. Urge not against this aught in the Declaration of Independence. For when the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?

‘Too evident is it that in throwing off the British plush, the men of Seventy-six did not shed the colonial skin. In divers respects, social and political, they remained loyal to British tradition, though justified rebels to the British crown. Assuredly no, in the characterising significance of the word as now current, they can hardly be considered Americans. It is we, their posterity, that are Americans—we, the people, the sovereign American people, who from English and European colonists have in process of time, and under the special guidance of God, developed into Americans. And in view of all this, does not Major Gentian’s Society, the Society of the Cincinnati, lag among us as much out of place as would the old Spanish Order of the Knights of the Holy Ghost.

‘I said just now that Major Gentian is vastly proud of his insignia, and I will do him the justice of admitting that this is not altogether because it is an aristocratic one, but in part because of its historic significance. But ours is a practical age. Not altogether sentimentally do we determine the relative greatness of events present and past. Into such determinations, the elements of number, man, yea, and the no less weighty element of cost, enter in. Well, then, there is Bunker Hill. A famous good fight. Yes, indeed. But how much of a 375muster-roll? How much of a pay-roll? Why, in Virginia we fought battles where a hundred thousand and more would be engaged. While east, west, and south, our files under arms fell not short of a million. And our war-debt, arising in no small part from generous bounties and the regular army pay-roll, soared aloft into two or three thousand millions. Then there is the pension-roll. That, too, is on a scale commensurate with the colossal magnitude of the Great Republic. Why is the blue ribbon of Major Gentian’s badge bordered with white? Major Gentian will reply, very likely, “That is in compliment to our revolutionary ally.” Indeed? But is not white the heraldic colour of the Bourbons, one of whom still preposterously advances his claim to the throne of liberated France? What a fling, then, is this white border at the tricolour of our sister the French Republic! Yes, and what a left-handed slur coming home to ourselves. Men and brethren, for aught I know, an enlightened young Englishman in superannuated old England may be at liberty to speak up for democracy; but in energetic young America, much as we respect old age, shall a hoary-headed old American be tolerated as an advocate of monarchy, or, what is equivalent to that, parading under the Stars and Stripes the craven white of the monarchical Bourbons, the beggars? And is such a man—I put it to your conscience—the sort of man to take place with the law-makers of a people, the chosen people, the advance-guard of progress, a friendly people, the Levite of the nations, to whose custody Jehovah has entrusted the sacred ark of human freedom? (Cries of “No, No,” and riotous applause.)

‘Thou laughest at this, Major, and, after laughing, pooh-poohest it: “Bless you, I divine who it was said all that. But how? Why, much as a blind musician infers who the unseen fiddler is by the twang of his fiddle. It was 376Colonel Bunkum—Colonel Josiah Bunkum. And, of course, he must have declaimed it at some political meeting—yes, I think I remember reading some report of it—during the canvas, when my insistent friends ran me for the legislature. Incidentally, I became acquainted with Colonel Bunkum in Virginia, now more than five-and-twenty years ago. A sunburnt whiskerando he was, whiskers bristling like a thorn hedge; valiant, indeed, but of a contorted sort of valour, quite at odds with the magnanimities and martial amenities. Ay, brave enough, you understand, but no Chevalier Bayard. Less mature, too, in mind than in muscle. Rash in opinion, very rash, headlong. Not a man of broad judicial temper, sir, nor replete with the sapient humour and wise patriarchal quality of our good old Father Abraham. You shall judge, sir. Quoting Scripture, ‘My people perish through ignorance,’ and applying it to the South, and chafing under McClellan’s Fabian tactics, he was forthwith marching from the Potomac to the Gulf with a wagon-train of Webster’s Spelling-Books, backed by another train of heavy artillery. Shot and shell and spelling-books were to be distributed broadcast and gratis, a sort of Mahommed, sir, of the Malthusian sort. Strange, how the coolest valour may go along with a hot brain-pan. Well, well, robust as ever, the colonel is now a distinguished officer in the Grand Army; and finding that I, a brother-veteran, refrain from joining it, and knowing naught of those scruples, patriotic scruples, sir, which sway me; and, unfortunately, without the intuition that might divine them, why, being more of a hero than a philosopher, it puzzles him, it irritates him—he can’t help it, it’s all natural enough—and so, dear me, for something tangible to bite at very conscientiously, doubtless he snaps at my poor little ribbon here. The good God enlighten and redeem him!”

377‘That is charity, Major, Christian charity with a vengeance. But some of us ere now have thought that by such charitable construings (or, are they indolently stoical ones?) of words or actions not charitable, thy failing to take the trouble to resent them, however absurd they may be, and vindicate thyself, thou hast—and more than once or twice—been something of a loser.’

378

THE CINCINNATI

A NOTE

A member of the Burgundy, possessing an unusual library of Americana, which he is at the greatest pains and expense continually augmenting, thus evincing a singular interest in his country, but who, singularly enough, never votes, leaving that function to men wiser than himself (so he puts it), and who for this and the like eccentricities is familiarly known at the Burgundy as the philosopher; to this gentleman I submitted in manuscript my sketch of the Dean. He did not disapprove of the sketch, but pointed out one little oversight, as he civilly called it. ‘In your mention of the ribbon of the Society of the Cincinnati, or rather in Colonel Josiah Bunkum’s mention of it, you in your cursory way too severely tax the information of the general reader should you have any. Walk Broadway from Times Square to the Battery, and could you interrogate every man you should meet, with—“Excuse me, but pray, sir, would you be kind enough to tell me the reason why the blue ribbon of the Cincinnati is bordered with white?” I warrant you not ten of those tens of thousands would be able to answer you. You might as well interrogate them as to the exact form of the insignia of the old Spanish Order of the Knights of the Holy Ghost.’

‘I see your drift,’ said I, amused at his closing allusion; ‘some sort of note to the passage is needed. And who better qualified to supply it than yourself, my dear sir, with your fine library of Americana?’

379He replied that he would be happy so to do, and the following somewhat simplified dissertation is the result, which is given, as I rather rashly engaged, without alteration or curtailment, and is very characteristic of the Burgundy’s eccentric philosopher.

In the ribbon of the Cincinnati, the white bounding the blue commemorates the French alliance during the War of Independence. At the founding of the Society, France was a monarchy, and its natural colour was that of the Bourbons—white. Eligible to the order were all commissioned officers of the Continental army and navy. Eligible to be life-members were also the admirals and captains of the French fleet, co-operating with the colonists in the war, as well as the generals and colonels of the allied French army, and to these in especial compliment was sent the medal of the Society. As to the Continental officers, membership was declared thereby.

Forthwith upon its establishment the Society encountered much adverse criticism, and from some noted public characters, who being civilians were ineligible to membership. Ere long the violent democratic crusade beginning in France, sympathy intensified this criticism into popular hostility. Some members of the order resigned; and even the staid mind of Washington, the General-President of the Society, was swayed on grounds of prudence to question the expediency of maintaining it. But, taking in sail, as it were, the Society rode out the tempest; and now for years has been the least demonstrative of bodies.

As at the outset, it intermeddled not with political parties, and refrained, among other things, from agitating for augmenting pensions, its members long content with the poor pittance the new government with difficulty at last provided; so throughout it has never deviated from 380its one main principle, the priestly one of keeping alive the sacred fire of patriotism.

If the Society of the Cincinnati, a heritage from the Fathers, be really worthy of a respect bordering upon reverence, it is of the sort that the Catholics pay to the bones of the saints; for, indeed, this venerable institution survives but as a relic.

It seems amid the bustle of another age like the Greek monolith, the Fire Column so called, in Constantinople, which unconsumed by the repeated conflagrations of that capital, and rising from among all sorts of lesser erections, attests a temper and an era that shall never be restored. It is a remarkable monument of the times when the British colonist in the spirit of John Hampden resisting the imposition of the tea-tax, and indirectly the Crown, developed in the process of time into a generation less impatient of imposts; pushing no quarrel, indeed, against fiscal arbitrariness, or any sort of power so it be but plural and domestic, wears a hat like the rest of us, and is careful to put on that same humble deference toward the People, which all kings and emperors scrupulously profess for Him Whom—with exemplary meekness ignoring themselves—they officially denominate the Supreme Arbiter of Events. In short, the Society is archaic, originating at a period before we became, to all practical purposes, a distinct People; a race which, though having various superficial traits in common with the English inheriting the same blood with ourselves, is nevertheless, at bottom, unlike; as is frequently observable in uterine brothers who, while in physical aspect a stranger can hardly tell them apart, yet brought to the test of essential character, may be even more than dissimilar.

381

FRAGMENT

Of such redundant natures can it be possible that any can at last be narrowed down to the bier? Yes, die, and in a sense, intestate, too, as leaving no intellectual estate? Nothing indeed but an imperfect memory that ages avow, and is gone? Is this the end of that splendour? But why not? According to authoritative interpreters, the evanescence, the nothingness of things glorious, redounds to the glory of Omnipotence. And with what other aim in view, the theologians would like to know, did the Magnanimous call out the worlds? Two or three hundred years ago, to the amazement of the telescopes, a strange star appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and shining there like a planet for a brief term, abruptly disappeared, and was seen no more. Nor was any star-dust left to tell of the fleet passage. True, out of the same Unknown or Nothing, and back into it again, millions of small meteors come and go; but extinction is signalised in the instance of stars of magnitude; and in corresponding degree the glory of God is magnified, who can work such wonders, to whom the planets are of even less consideration than to the Grand Mogul his golden buttons.

382

FRAGMENTS FROM A WRITING-DESK

CLIPPING FROM THE ‘DEMOCRATIC PRESS AND LANSINGBURGH ADVERTISER’

No. 1

Lansingburgh, N.Y.,

Saturday, May 4, 1839.

My dear M⁠⸺, I can imagine you seated on that dear, delightful, old-fashioned sofa, your head supported by its luxurious padding, and with feet aloft on the aspiring back of that straight-limbed, stiff-necked, quaint old chair, which, as our facetious W⁠⸺ assured me, was the identical seat in which old Burton composed his Anatomy of Melancholy. I see you reluctantly raise your optics from the ugh-clasped [sic] quarto which encumbers your lap, to receive the package which the servant hands you, and can almost imagine that I see those beloved features illumined for a moment with an expression of joy, as you read the superscription of your gentle protégé. Lay down, I beseech you, that odious black-lettered volume and let not its musty and withered leaves sully the virgin purity and whiteness of the sheet which is the vehicle of so much good sense, sterling thought, and chaste and elegant sentiment.

You remember how you used to rate me for my hang-dog modesty, my mauvaise honte, as my Lord Chesterfield 383would style it. Well! I have determined that hereafter you shall not have occasion again to inflict upon me those flattering appellations of ‘Fool!’ ‘Dolt!’ ‘Sheep!’ which in your indignation you used to shower upon me, with a vigour and a facility which excited my wonder, while it provoked my resentment.

And how do you imagine that I rid myself of this annoying hindrance? Why, truly, by coming to the conclusion that in this pretty corpus of mine was lodged every manly grace; that my limbs were modelled in the symmetry of the Phidian Jupiter; my countenance radiant with the beams of wit and intelligence, and my whole person the envy of the beaux, the idol of the women, and the admiration of the tailor. And then my mind! why, sir, I have discovered it to be endowed with the most rare and extraordinary powers, stored with universal knowledge, and embellished with every polite accomplishment.

Pollux! what a comfortable thing is a good opinion of one’s self when I walk the Broadway of our village with a certain air, that puts me down at once in the estimation of any intelligent stranger who may chance to meet me, as a distingué of the purest water, a blade of the true temper, a blood of the first quality! Lord! how I despise the little sneaking vermin who dodge along the street as though they were so many footmen or errand-boys; who have never learned to carry the head erect in conscious importance, but hang that noblest of the human members as though it had been boxed by some virago of an Amazon; who shuffle along the walk, with a quick, uneasy step, a hasty, clownish motion, which by the magnitude of the contrast, set off to advantage my own slow and magisterial gait, which I can at pleasure vary to an easy, abandoned sort of carriage, or to the more engaging, alert, and lively 384walk, to suit the varieties of time, occasion, and company.