OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A FRIEND OF MY CHILDHOOD.

I suppose I must have pulled the bell very hard that day, for otherwise I don't think she would have kept me waiting twenty minutes, as she did. She was only my mother's servant-woman, whose duty was to wait upon the dinner-table and the door, the latter function being the more onerous one. Looking back at my conduct over the lapse of eighteen years, I am disposed to acknowledge that she was right in the abstract in punishing the inconsiderate impatience which made me keep the door-bell upon a continuous ring till I was let in. But how wrong did the event prove her! Scarcely was I warmed up to my work, when, turning my head, I saw a tall gentleman with broad shoulders and a round face, whose look, at first one of inquiry, and perhaps bewilderment as he tried to distinguish the house he was in search of from among a dozen, all characterized by that unity of design which in Philadelphia strikes forcibly the intelligent foreigner, suddenly changed to one of amusement, not, I thought then, unmixed with approval, as he caught sight of me at my reprehensible employment. And as I rang with a persistency which nothing can now call from me, he stood on the bottom step (for it was my mother whom he had come to see) with that expression in which I found so little discouragement, still looking forth from those great eyes of his, which had pierced deeply and sternly so many of the false and hollow things of this world, and which now, not, I am sure, for the first time, were bent kindly down upon a rude boy and his ruder pranks. How little did the latter know about the tall gentleman, and how little too would he have cared even if he had known all there was to know about him:—known that then the age was beginning to recognize its philosopher, whose lessons, sharp and bitter enough at first, were to make it better and truer and purer, if such a thing were possible of accomplishment.

But that he was tall I did know, and my standard of eminence was a purely physical one. Five feet eight I did not despise, but six feet alone commanded absolute and genuine respect; and he, I believe, stood six feet one. The presumption which could keep such a height of perfection waiting at the front door shocked me beyond expression. No, not beyond expression, for the triumphant yell with which the hapless servant-girl was greeted when at last she admitted me, and I burst in exclaiming, "You have kept the tall gentleman waiting half an hour!" must have given, I think, some adequate idea of my feelings. To that incident may I not justly look back with satisfaction? Am I not right in taking pride to myself for having amused for so long a time one whose momentary attention the witty and the wise have thought it no slight thing to have gained? And—who knows?—perhaps he himself did not altogether forget it, and with the two sturdy Buben on the Rhine-boat, and those little men he used to meet at Eton or on the play-ground of the Charterhouse, may not the American boy also have found a place in his kindly memory? But I wish it clearly understood that I did not force myself upon his acquaintance: no lion-hunting can be laid to my charge. On the contrary, after giving him a glance of approbation for proving such an effectual weapon to me in subduing my enemy in the gate—or rather the enemy whose offence was that she was anywhere but in the gate—I did not, I can truly say, bestow another thought upon him till I was sent for to afford him, at his own special request, the honor of knowing me. Were there no servants in the kitchen to be tormented? No cats in the back yard to be chased with wild halloo? No rowdy boys in the alley with whom to fraternize over pies of communistic mud? No little sister up stairs much nicer than any tall gentleman, even though he might have come from across the ocean and be thought a great deal of by the grown-up people, that I should go out of my way to see him, and abandon my cherished pursuits to listen to him talking of what I did not understand, and did not believe was worth understanding? No: my position was a high one, and I kept to it, for, though I gave up my occupations a little while and went down to the parlor, it was simply because politeness and filial obedience were the ruling motives of my conduct. Of the first formal introduction to my friend I have but a shadowy recollection. He said, I think, that he wanted to know the impetuous little boy he had met outside; but nothing more which I can recall. My own share in the conversation has entirely faded from my memory: it is probable indeed that I had no share in it at all, being less at my ease in the conventional sphere of a drawing-room than in the more unconstrained atmosphere of a back alley. Yet in hours of depression, when, in spite of the most sincere desire to think favorably of mankind, I cannot fail to notice that I am not appreciated as I should be by the undiscerning world, and my soul seeks consolation and forgetfulness from higher sources, I half believe that when he went back to his own country, and spoke there, as I have heard he did very often, of the pleasant people he had met here, of the American friends he valued so much, it was perhaps not without an arrière-pensée of his noisy acquaintance of the doorstep in Locust street.

The intercourse so tempestuously begun was threatened with an early extinction, for my newly acquired friend returned soon after this to his home, where were the two little girls whom he was fond of describing while saying that he would not dare to bring them to this country, lest they should come to despise the simple muslin gowns with which they were then quite content; home to the toil of the hard-worked brain, the steady labor of the untiring pen, which was to give us before it rested for ever nothing indeed like his earlier works, but much which we shall not willingly let die; home to England, in truth, but only that, having written the story of certain of its kings, as he had before written the worthier history of some of its unsceptred monarchs, whose sovereign sway is over our spirits still, he might come again across the ocean to greet all who should wish to hear him tell of the Britain of a century past, when our own history had as yet scarcely seen the conclusion of its opening chapter; giving as he did, so minute, life-like details relating to the great men of that time, whose familiar names were to most of his hearers not much more than names, but which, thanks in great part to him, are now as household words. And so we met, and being two years older, I was accorded the honor of becoming one of his auditors, going with my mother to hear each of his lectures. We sat in a box on one side of the stage in Concert Hall, and at this moment I recall the tall, dignified figure standing before the desk on which were placed his notes, and the crowded room full of indistinguishable attentive faces. I sometimes fancy too that I cannot have forgotten what are now favorite passages from those lectures—passages read and re-read, and then read again, till they are known almost by heart. I cannot acknowledge to myself that I do not remember his voice and look, and the tribute of listening silence which waited upon him while he spoke.

One at least of these evenings is well remembered. Its distinguishing feature was my being tipped. My mother and I had gone on this occasion quite early to our places—half an hour or three-quarters before the time when the lecture should begin—and we found the lecturer already at his post. He, with head thrown back, had been walking with long strides up and down the little waiting-room, and talking in bright spirits to my mother, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and diving into one of his pockets he brought out a sovereign—perhaps it was a five-dollar gold piece—and insisted upon giving it to me; but the proposal produced at once a most severe parental resistance, while I disinterestedly looked on—a resistance apparently quite unlooked for by "my illustrious friend," who had much trouble in explaining that this species of beneficence was a thing of course in England. But American pride was silenced at last, though not convinced, as will be seen, for it planned on the spot a compromise which should reconcile the differences of national feeling, though I was induced to suppose that the sovereign was as far out of my reach as ever; and being then, as I said before, above or below such things, I turned all my attention to the lecture, which began soon afterward, and whose subject, the royal bugbear of patriotic schoolboys of that time, I imagined I knew all about. It was therefore with astonished awe that I heard the peroration, when the speaker said, appealing directly to us all: "O brothers speaking the same dear mother-tongue! O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest—dead whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with his children in revolt, the darling of his old age killed before him untimely—our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, Cordelia! Cordelia! stay a little!

Hush, strife and quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy." This view of the subject was altogether new.

The compromise just spoken of—and I must bring to an end my story, already too long—consisted in the expenditure of the five-dollar piece in two of the books written by the bestower of that inflammatory coin. I open the volumes of Pendennis and Vanity Fair which have been lying at my elbow, and across the title-page of each I see written, in curiously small and delicate hand, "—— ——, with W. M. Thackeray's kind regards. April, 1856." These were the books.

H. R.

HAMLET IN A FRENCH DRESS.

If any one, on a rainy day or a lonely evening, wishes to drive away the blue devils by the perusal of some laughter-compelling volume, we can recommend for the purpose no better reading than the tragedy of Hamlet done into French verse by the Chevalier de Chatelain, a gentleman well known as a very successful translator of English poetry. With singular good sense and feeling he has selected, not the play as Shakespeare wrote it, but the stage-version thereof, as the foundation of his work. For which Heaven be praised! for what he has done is sufficient, in all conscience. Not that his translation is totally devoid of merit. On the contrary, some passages are admirably rendered, and give the sense and sound of the original in a manner really remarkable when the difference between the two languages is considered. But there is such a calm conviction on M. de Chatelain's part that he is doing his work faultlessly, that, in view of the ludicrous errors, additions and variations with which his text abounds, the effect is irresistible.

For instance, to begin at the beginning, the phrase

is translated

And in the same scene—

is rendered—

In the next scene we are treated to a small specimen of M. de Chatelain's genius as an emendator of Shakespeare. For no one can consider this passage a translation of the text:

That charming page of a delightful book will, we think, be sought for in the original in vain. Still more delicious is the interpellation into Hamlet's first soliloquy of the following lines, referring to the "unweeded garden":

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! When did Hamlet talk about the cholera morbus?

Passing over some minor variations, we come to the brief closing soliloquy of the scene:

Thus Shakespeare, and thus M. de Chatelain:

Doubtless Hamlet did "smell a rat," but this is the first intimation we have had of his scenting an eel.

Thus Hamlet addresses the ghost:

Probably the "ponderous and marble jaws" suggested this extraordinary comparison.

In the next, act, evidently thinking that poor Ophelia has been neglected by her creator, M. de Chatelain makes Polonius speak of her to the king and queen as "un vrai morceau de roi"—a gentle method of suggesting that she is worthy of the distinguished honor of a royal alliance. But the fair Ophelia is destined to suffer nearly as unkind treatment from the hands of her French usher as she endures from her princely lover. We give entire the translation of her beautiful lament, which begins—

and which M. de Chatelain thus renders:

We are at a loss which to admire most—Ophelia sucking the music from Hamlet's honeyed verses, or the "sweet bells" whose tin-tin changes to a tocsin, or the comparison of Hamlet to fine lace, or the "melancholy ending to a grand epic."

The passage—

is thus translated:

M. de Chatelain confesses in a note that his translation is not in accordance with the text, but he adds: "Nous ne concevons pas la penée ainsi exprimée." It is a good thing for Shakespeare that he has found a French commentator who understands what he meant to say better than he did himself.

Ophelia's first exclamation in the mad scene, "Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?" is translated,

Such an epithet applied to the middle-aged and matronly Gertrude, the mother of the thirty-years'-old Hamlet, is pretty—very pretty, indeed. A few pages farther on the "bonny-sweet Robin" of Ophelia's song is supposed by the translator to be a bird, as he thus renders the passage:

It is also exceedingly amusing to note how the old adjective "whoreson" bothers M. de Chatelain, who seems to consider it a word of weight and meaning. The "whoreson dead body" of the gravediggers' scene is turned into "le cadavre des enfants de nos mères;" and in like manner that "whoreson mad fellow Yorick" is presented to us as "un fou né d'une fille à la morale elastique."

The tragedy of Hamlet by Ducis does no wrong to the manes of Shakespeare, for though the title-page declares that it is "imitated from the English," nothing is left of Shakespeare's play save the names and the fact that Hamlet's father had been murdered before the action of the drama begins. Hamlet is the reigning king of Denmark, Claudius is first prince of the blood and father of Ophelia, and Polonius is an ordinary conspirator. There is no ghost and no gravedigger. Ophelia does not go mad, there is no fencing-scene, and Hamlet, after declaiming through innumerable pages in the set style of French classic tragedy, solemnly stabs Claudius, and then declares that as he is a king he must consent to live for the good of his people.

L. H. H.

ANECDOTES OF PUBLIC WORTHIES.

George Washington. One day, in a fit of abstraction the juvenile George cut down Bushrod's favorite cherry tree with a hatchet. His purpose was to cut—and run.

But the old gentleman came sailing round the corner of the barn just as the future Father of his Country had started on the retreat.

"Look here, sonny," thundered the stern old Virginian, "who cut that tree down?"

George reflected a moment. There wasn't another boy or another hatchet within fifteen miles. Besides, it occurred to him that to be virtuous is to be happy. Just as Washington senior turned to go in and get his horsewhip, our little hero burst into tears, and, nestling among his father's coat-tails, exclaimed, "Father, I cannot tell a lie. It must have been a frost."

"My son, my son," stammered the fond parent as he made a pass for his off-spring, "when you get to be first in war and first in peace, just cover your back-pay into the Treasury, and the newspaper press will respect you!"

Abraham Lincoln. Early in the war a party of distinguished gentlemen from New England called on Mr. Lincoln to urge the appointment of a certain Mr. Brown to the post of quarter-master. The President, who was amusing himself by splitting portions of the staircase of the White House into rails, received them cordially. They stated their errand in an earnest but respectful tone, and calmly awaited his answer. Mr. Lincoln, drawing himself up to his full height and clapping the spokesman of the party on the shoulder, began to tell a story about a dog-fight he once saw in Kentucky.

By and by it had gradually grown dark: several hours had passed away, and neither dog appeared to get killed or to gain any advantage over the other. One by one the party had dropped out, till the leader (who did not wish to disturb Mr. Lincoln's hold on his shoulder) was left alone, trying to conceal a yawn and to look interested. Suddenly, Mr. Lincoln, with that peculiar smile on his countenance which Mr. Carpenter can talk about, but can't paint, remarked, "By the way, my friend, I'm sorry for Brown, but I gave that appointment to the other man yesterday."

Daniel Webster. The following anecdote of the great Massachusetts statesman has never before appeared in print:

One day, Clay, Webster and Calhoun met upon the steps of the Capitol. Mr. Clay ventured to remark, in his most affable style, that it looked like rain. Calhoun looked wise, but said nothing. Evidently he took in the whole situation at a glance. It was a crisis for Webster. Carefully laying his thumb behind the third brass button of his blue coat, he gazed from out of those cavernous eyes and grandly uttered these prophetic words: "No, gentlemen, the American people will never forsake the Constitution. We shall have fair weather."

And so it proved.

Alonzo Savage. This time it was the pupil who put the question. The Sabbath-school teacher encouraged her children to bring each a Scripture question to be propounded to the class. Alonzo Savage said he would like to be told why St. Stephen was like a thanksgiving raisin? He allowed it was because they stoned him.

That boy has grown up and entered on a career of usefulness. He gets steady wages as a railroad brakeman, and last week he celebrated his golden wedding. All because Alonzo was faithful at Sabbath-school.

Sarsfield Young.

THE CANADIANS.

A New York oracle, discoursing lately upon Canadian affairs, concludes that American ideas are pervading that region because the people speak of "baggage" and take the right hand in driving on the road. Having traveled somewhat in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and "the Island," I have never heard the term "baggage" used there except by Americans, as they call people from the States. The word is invariably "luggage" in hotels, steamers and stage-wagons. On the road all the people in those provinces whom I met took the left hand, and if any one should attempt to deviate from this old custom of England, he would surely come to grief. When Canadians take greenbacks at par, or make their morning porridge of corn instead of oats, perhaps they may be ready for those other innovations.

What causes the curious difference between the people on the two sides of the boundary-line? for a difference exists in customs, in appearance and in the tones of the voice. It has been a favorite theory that the New England thinness of fibre and sharpness of voice came from the harsh climate and piercing winds; but in Canada the climate is more severe, and the winds are as piercing, yet the faces and forms of the people are rounder and more robust, and their voices, especially those of the women, have a soft and mellow intonation very different from those of their cousins in New England. The customs and habits are also different. In Canada one sees little of the hurried life of the States, always at high pressure. The people take life more easily than we do, and look less anxious. Do these differences arise from different political institutions, and are the burdens of life greater in a republic than under a monarchy?

C.

NOTES.

Self-deception and superstition nowhere reign more supremely, at least in civilized communities, than among the wretched devotees of the gaming-table, who are ever promising themselves to quit the mad pursuit, ever flattering themselves that the next coup will be their last, and always expecting that some quite supernatural piece of luck in that final coup will secure the long-sought fortune. Some time ago we referred in a "Note" to the fanciful combinations which the gamesters of Europe had been making, in their play, on the numerals connected with the death of Napoleon III. M. de Villemessant in his last work gives a very ludicrous instance of the extent to which a superstitious gambler can carry his belief in presentiments, in theories of luck and in prognostications. He tells us that a certain Paris vaudevillist was persuaded that if a man unexpectedly found a piece of money when destitute, it would bring him good luck. Accordingly, before setting foot in a gambling-house he never failed to hide—from himself—a coin in the bottom of a pocket, where he was fully determined to forget it. When he had lost his all (except, of course, the aforesaid lucky piece) he would put on his overcoat, tie up his comforter, seize his umbrella, and open the door, when, all of a sudden, his hand happening to be thrust by mere chance into his watch-fob, would, wonderful to relate! hit upon the very piece whose existence he had pledged himself never to suspect save in the case of direst need. "What a streak of luck!" he then regularly exclaimed. "I can't be mistaken, can I? It isn't a louis, any way? By George, it is! Well, if this isn't luck alive!" Then our good vaudevillist would hurry back, deposit his umbrella, unroll his muffler, shed his overcoat, throw his lucky louis on the cloth—and lose it! After all, incredible as this story seems, M. Villemessant's vaudevillist is but a type of a great class of men who deceive themselves by devices which in others they would pronounce monstrosities of silliness, and who hug their delusions with a gravity none the less profound from their own half consciousness of the sham.

It was a theory, we believe, of that profound philosopher, Mr. Weller senior, that turnpike-keepers were confirmed misanthropes, who, after a bitter experience in life, had sought that occupation as a means of venting their spleen against everybody who should come their way. We have never observed in our own experience—more limited, it is true, than the meditative Tony's—that the milk of human kindness is specially sour in the breasts of tollgate-keepers; nevertheless, there are few occupations in which a man delighting to worry his fellow-creatures in a small way could more effectually do so. The pike-keeper inflicts daily a legion of infinitesimal annoyances. He stops people who are in a hurry, and forces them to find change for the toll—stops them in the fierce sun, in the drenching rain, in the thick of a snow-storm or at dead of night. He puts an ignoble end to the excited trotting-match on the road: he alike mercilessly pulls up Paterfamilias hurrying for the doctor and the city man struggling to catch the train. Often, though the toll itself is a trifle, yet the loss of those two minutes which would have saved the appointment or caught the train, nay, even the bore of pulling off one's gloves and pulling out one's wallet with the mercury below zero, tries the traveler's temper. The emancipation of highways from all taxes levied upon wayfarers is a mark of modern civilization. The mediæval plan was to extort a toll from every luckless traveler in the name of baron or bandit. In our day Algerine corsairs, Italian brigands, Chinese pirates and Mexican guerillas have continued the thievish custom of "tributes," and not long ago even Montana Indians established themselves on the leading roads and levied tolls from the passers-by. The civilized differs from the savage or feudal practice in rendering an equivalent for the contributions exacted—that is, it provides from their proceeds a stout bridge or a smooth turnpike, and keeps it steadily in repair. But the county or State should take care of highways and bridges without putting an impost on travel. Especially in the suburbs of cities is the preservation of tolls a relic of commercial barbarism. In New England they have gradually become almost extinct, cities or counties having bought the franchises originally granted to private companies. These petty exactions upon the freedom of travel ought to cease everywhere.

It is well known that many persons who scrupulously refrain from perusing Lord Byron's Don Juan, yet enjoy witnessing Mozart's opera of Don Giovanni, following the libretto with assiduity, and laughing with special heartiness at Leporello's song as it rehearses the adventures of his master. In the same way, many who are rather shocked at Camille, find no trouble in listening to La Traviata, and weep for the woes of Favorita when that opera thrown into the form of an English novel excites their censure or disgust. The fact is, that the Italian language, like the cloak of charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Never did it cover them more strikingly than in an instance recounted by L'Eclipse. The present French government, according to that paper, lately prohibited the theatre of La Porte Saint-Martin from playing Le Roi s'amuse of Victor Hugo, a piece familiar to Frenchmen in its reading edition for two-score years. The edict seems to have been rather arbitrary, since, whatever its morality, at least the play could give no political offence, there being but the remotest kind of comparison possible between the court of Francis I. and the government of Marshal MacMahon. But be this as it may, on the very day after its prohibition of Le Roi s'amuse the government inserted in its budget a subvention of a hundred thousand francs for the Théâtre Italien, whose favorite performance is Rigoletto. Now, Rigoletto is only a bad Italian translation of Le Roi s'amuse; so that the droll spectacle was offered of the government prohibiting one theatre, at a great loss, from playing the very same piece which next day it offered another theatre twenty thousand dollars for playing in Italian! The Eclipse satirically suggests that the secret must be that "entrer par la fenêtre" becomes harmless as entrare per la finestra, and "donner la main" is innocent as "donare la mano" and that Italian purifies everything. If this be so, could not the Paris journalists borrow a useful hint from the affair, and avoid suspension by the government through the simple device of turning into Italian verses, of the operatic sort, those passages of the editorial articles which if printed in French would provoke the censor's ire?

During the recent disgraceful squabble and riot of the monks around Jerusalem there was one incident that should especially pain all lovers of art. This was the destruction of the two pictures by Murillo in the Bethlehem church that fell a victim to ecclesiastical fury. They were true Murillos, and masterpieces; and, what is worse, having been despatched to the church immediately on their execution, and there retained, it is believed that they have never been engraved. They were unusually well preserved, too, for, on being placed in the oratory of La Crèche, both canvases had been covered with glass to protect them from candle-smoke. One of the subjects was the Nativity, the other the Adoration of the Magi. In reading with involuntary indignation and disgust of this barbarous instance of iconoclasm, one is reminded of what Thackeray wrote on the same scene and topic nearly thirty years ago. In his Journey from Cornhill to Cairo, speaking of the leading Christian sects in and around Jerusalem, he says: "These three main sects hate each other; their quarrels are interminable; each bribes and intrigues with the heathen lords of the soil to the prejudice of his neighbor. Now it is the Latins who interfere, and allow the common church to go to ruin, because the Greeks purpose to roof it; now the Greeks demolish a monastery on Mount Olivet, and leave the ground to the Turks, rather than allow the Armenians to possess it. On another occasion, the Greeks having mended the Armenian steps which lead to the (so-called) Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the latter asked for permission to destroy the work of the Greeks, and did so. And so round this sacred spot, the centre of Christendom, the representatives of the three great sects worship under one roof, and hate each other!" The church of La Crèche is, as its name implies, the church of "The Manger" (i. e., the reputed place of the nativity of Christ); and to this spot, and the furious wrangles of which it has been the scene, we may therefore apply the exclamation which Thackeray makes regarding the tomb of Christ: "What a place to choose for imposture, good God!—to sully with brutal struggles for self-aggrandizement or shameful schemes of gain!" The Germans had the grace to try to spare with their bombs the spire of Strasburg cathedral; religious fanaticism in the Middle Ages directed itself to the destruction of "pagan" art, no matter how beautiful; but in these enlightened days for ecclesiastical fury to take up the barbarous rôle of destruction, which even savage war discards, is pitiable indeed.

Comeliness becomes every day more and more an affair of chemistry. Science has now found what bids fair to be a very "glass of fashion"—not a metaphorical, but a literal glass, at least for lean people. The chemical properties of each color in the solar spectrum have long been known, and of late years it has also been discovered that plants may be made to thrive wonderfully in green-houses constructed of blue or violet panes, the production of such nurseries being sometimes doubled or trebled by this device. But the experiment has been pushed further, for some English chemists maintain that rooms provided with violet windows, or even with hangings of that color, will fatten the occupants! Shakespeare's "glass wherein the noble youth did dress themselves" was not so practical a possession as this. Surely, hereafter those who would divest themselves of their lean and hungry look may grow obese at will, and turn the scale at the very pound required; and this, too, by no such regimen as the Oriental one of rice and indolence, but merely by passing a season under a violet dome or a blue crystal green-house. Such a remedy is good tidings for all the wan, the haggard and the wizened of society, and for those "whom sharp misery has worn to the bone." Henceforth there need be no "starvelings," "elf-skins" or "dried neat's tongues" of leanness for the Falstaffs to mock. And the fat men, too, the "huge hills of flesh," shall they not have their complementary color in their windows to make them thin? Let the compassionate Bantings look to it.